This Is How Your Body Turns Food Into Energy

Your body needs energy to do, well, everything. But where does that energy come from? In this episode, Patrick dives into how exactly mitochondria power the cell, how ATP works, and, alas, the Krebs cycle. Buckle up!
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While we need energy to help us move our bodies and do everyday work, our cells also need energy to move their little bodies, manufacture new proteins, and make chemical reactions happen.

Our bodies have a few ways of turning reactants into products—namely extracting energy-rich molecules from the food we eat and turning it into energy.

Enter: a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. While, like you might have guessed, adenosine triphosphate has three phosphates, it’s actually the bonds between them that we’re more interested in.

And that is because the chemical bonds that hold those phosphates together hold a lot of energy. When one of those phosphates is broken off, that ATP becomes ADP, or adenosine diphosphate plus one loner phosphate.

That transformation of ATP to ADP results in usable energy that our cells can use to power our biological processes.

So that begs the question — where does ATP come from and how exactly do we turn our food into usable energy? Find out more in this Human.

#energy #krebscycle #humanbody #health #physiology #seeker #science #humanseries

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Read More:
How Cells Obtain Energy from Food
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB...
Cells require a constant supply of energy to generate and maintain the biological order that keeps them alive. This energy is derived from the chemical bond energy in food molecules, which thereby serve as fuel for cells.”

Mitochondria & ATP
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/...
“The energy currency for the work that animals must do is the energy-rich molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The ATP is produced in the mitochondria using energy stored in food.”

The Citric Acid Cycle
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB...
“We now begin an exploration of the aerobic processing of glucose, which is the source of most of the ATP generated in metabolism. The aerobic processing of glucose starts with the complete oxidation of glucose derivatives to carbon dioxide.”
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This Seeker health miniseries will dive deep into the cellular structures, human systems, and overall anatomy that work together to keep our bodies going. Using the visual structure and quick pacing of Seeker’s Sick series, these human bio-focused episodes will give a new audience an inside look on what’s happening inside all of us.

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