Metabolism is a word you
must have heard of if you are having any health issues lingering on for a long
time. For understanding this, you need
to know what happens to the food that you take in daily, after it enters your
body. As you take in the food through
the mouth, food not only tastes good in your mouth but it also provides
nutrition for all the components of your body, for the brain function, muscles,
blood, bones, and much more. Take for
example, salad, it contains full of nutritional benefits but your body cannot
do much with the food as it is, as the food enters your body, it gets broken
down into molecular components so that you can actually use the nutrition these
molecules provide. All the activities
including the chemical activities happens in your body to convert these
molecules or use energy derived from it are called metabolism. This energy drives our bodily process which
is very critical for our survival.
Metabolism is a broad
term, and it includes all the chemical activities in your body. As mentioned, Metabolism is divided into 2
categories:
Catabolism: Catabolism involves all of the metabolic
processes that tear down the molecules that generate energy to drive our bodily
process. One way of understanding
catabolism is to compare the food that we eat to a large building and other
structures, when catabolism process starts, it is like earthquake which makes
the large building and other structures fall apart and reduced to rubbles and dust, same is a type of process with Catabolism which makes our food are taken
in are digested and thus generate energy.
Anabolism: Anabolism is the
opposite of Catabolism. Anabolism is the
process by which organisms synthesize complex molecules of life from simpler
ones obtained through our food that is few types of raw materials are used to
synthesize a wide variety of end products required by our body. Anabolic processes produce peptides,
proteins, polysaccharides and lipids amongst others. These molecules comprise of all the materials
of a living cell, such as membranes and chromosomes, as well as specialized
products of specific types of cells, such as enzymes, antibodies, hormones and
neurotransmitters.
Although Catabolism and
Anabolism occurs simultaneously in the cell, the chemical reactions of both are
controlled independently of each other.
The reasons why the chemical reactions are controlled independently is
because Catabolism is a so called downhill process during which energy is
released, while Anabolism is an uphill process which require input of energy. At certain points in the anabolic process,
the cell must put in more energy into a reaction.
