WHY DID WE NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS BEFORE?
The absence of foundational principles in biophysics, chemistry and biochemistry textbooks used in medical schools has left deuterium biochemistry entirely off the medical profession's radar. This is a tremendous oversight.
It is now clear that, in fact, every proton (hydrogen) utilizing biochemical reaction in the body serves to separate hydrogen from deuterium.
Actually, the deuterium story started back in 1931. This is when Professor Urey devised a method for the concentration of any possible heavy hydrogen isotopes by the fractional distillation of liquid hydrogen: this led to the discovery of deuterium. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934.
You may have heard of deuterium in relation to nuclear power plants. Deuterium atoms in high concentration in “heavy” water have indeed been used in reactors because they slow down nuclear reactions, yet their similarly strong biological impacts on enzyme reaction architectures have long been ignored.