Types of Gags

Gags are primarily centered on the dominant and submissive dynamic in kink. The gag is a piece of bondage equipment that muffles a submissive partner. Since gags come in a variety of shapes and sizes, it’s best to understand which bondage piece should be incorporated into your S&M experimentation.

Chondroitin sulfate is a sulfated glycosaminoglycan (GAG) composed of a chain of alternating sugars (N-acetylgalactosamine and glucuronic acid). It is usually found attached to proteins as part of a proteoglycan. A chondroitin chain can have over 100 individual sugars, each of which can be sulfated in variable positions and quantities.

Although heparan sulfate tends to be emphasized as the most biologically active glycosaminoglycan, dermatan sulfate is a particularly attractive subject for further study because it is expressed in many mammalian tissues and it is the predominant glycan present in skin.

Glycosaminoglycans have high degrees of heterogeneity with regards to molecular mass, disaccharide construction, and sulfation due to the fact that GAG synthesis, unlike proteins or nucleic acids, is not template driven, and dynamically modulated by processing enzymes.

Heparan sulfate is a member of the glycosaminoglycan family of carbohydrates and is very closely related in structure to heparin. Both consist of a variably sulfated repeating disaccharide unit. The main disaccharide units that occur in heparan sulfate and heparin are shown below.

Hyaluronic acid is a polymer of disaccharides, themselves composed of D-glucuronic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, linked via alternating β-(1→4) and β-(1→3) glycosidic bonds. Hyaluronic acid can be 25,000 disaccharide repeats in length. Polymers of hyaluronic acid can range in size from 5,000 to 20,000,000 Da in vivo.

Proteoglycans are proteins that are heavily glycosylated. The basic proteoglycan unit consists of a "core protein" with one or more covalently attached glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chain(s). The point of attachment is a serine (Ser) residue to which the glycosaminoglycan is joined through a tetrasaccharide bridge (e.g. chondroitin sulfate-GlcA-Gal-Gal-Xyl-PROTEIN).