How does food transformed into energy

After several hours without eating, blood sugar can drop as low as Using glucose for energy and keeping it balanced with just the right amount of insulin — not too much and not too little — is the way our bodies maintain the energy needed to stay alive, work, play, and function even as we sleep. Insulin helps our cells convert glucose into energy, and it helps our bodies store extra glucose for use later.

For example, if you eat a large meal and your body doesn't need that much glucose right away, insulin will help your body store it to convert to energy later. Insulin does this by turning the extra food into larger packages of glucose called glycogen. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles. Insulin also helps our bodies store fat and protein. Almost all body cells need protein to work and grow. The body needs fat to protect nerves and make several important hormones.

Fat can also be used by the body as an energy source. With diabetes, the body has stopped making insulin, has slowed down the amount of insulin it's making, or is no longer able to use its own insulin very well. When this happens, it can lead to several things. For example, glucose cannot enter the cells where it's needed, so the amount of glucose in the bloodstream continues to rise.

This is called hyperglycemia high blood sugar. When blood sugar levels reach or higher, the kidneys try to get rid of the extra sugar through the urine. This makes a person urinate more than usual. Anaerobic exercise like sprinting or powerlifting increases the size and quantity of powerful fast twitch fibers. These fibers fatigue more rapidly and are used for quick bursts of energy. Training these muscle fibers also improves the strength of muscles and enables hypertrophy, or increased muscle size.

Aerobic workouts trigger metabolic changes in the muscle tissue, including an increase in mitochondria — that is, the organelles that use oxygen to help create ATP, explains the American Council on Exercise ACE. Along with this increase in mitochondria, there's a boost in the levels of enzymes used to metabolize fat.

Your muscles are then better able to access fat and use it for energy, leading to fat loss. Meanwhile, fast-twitch fibers use ATP stored in the muscle cells to generate energy. The metabolic changes produced by anaerobic exercise help to increase levels of ATP and supply energy to muscles, according to the ISSA. Fast-twitch fibers are then able to act quickly and powerfully when recruited. Note that because fast-twitch fibers deplete more quickly, they require longer periods of rest between exercises to replace spent ATP, says ACE.

Your anaerobic workouts fuel fat loss, too. Anaerobic exercise boosts the production of human growth hormone and testosterone, which are both needed to increase muscle size. By growing muscle size and quantity, anaerobic exercise helps your body burn more calories at rest. There also may be cardiovascular benefits to both aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Research published in the World Journal of Cardiology in February states that both types of workouts have a favorable effect on lipid metabolism and improved cardiovascular health.

We hope you have been able to easily digest this primer and that you are inspired to take your metabolism into your own hands and feed your body what it deserves! The majority of people who are overweight or obese are eating more mostly empty, unsatisfying and vitamin-lacking calories than their bodies can use. Which, with a little effort, can become as easy as whole-wheat crusted spinach pie! Carol is a journalist with a green heart who believes that presenting information in a positive and accessible manner is essential to activating more people to join the search for equitable and sustainable solutions to global problems.

Email Tweet Share. Photo: Ed Yourdon. Source: OECD Health Data via Nation Master The cause of the epidemic is pretty much the same in both the developed and developing worlds: at a time when urbanization is leading more of us to sedentary lifestyles, people are eating the wrong stuff on a regular basis. Getting your head around your metabolism As primal as they may feel, hunger pangs, the actual act of eating and the ultimate generation of the energy that keeps you alive are all part of a complicated system of chemicals and signals between brain and body.

Protein Protein, we all know, is another vital macronutrient. However, the protein myth is just that — humans do not biologically need to eat meat. Source: The Vegetarian Resource Group When it comes to how much protein a body needs, opinions can vary. And unfortunately we are still not done because by keeping up our high sugar diets month after month, year after year eventually the body starts fatiguing and you begin to develop a state called insulin resistance where essentially the cells stop reacting and responding to insulin and eventually this leads to complete burnout of the pancreas and you develop type 2 diabetes where you have to inject yourself with insulin!

Sadly this situation is happening more and more frequently with recent reports suggesting that one-third of people born in will develop diabetes at some point in their lives!

That is a staggering and frightening statistic and to reiterate what I said at the outset it is obvious that what we are currently doing is not working! Leave this field blank. Your email address will not be published. Call Kilworth Chiropractic Clinic.

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