3.1.7. Part 1: Energy Metabolism - What Do We Mean

1. *Summary: This text discusses the fundamental role of energy in cellular function, explaining how cells require oxygen and glucose to produce ATP. It describes the process as a slow burning of food with oxygen, resulting in energy. The text emphasizes the necessity of energy for cellular survival and function.*

So by energy metabolism, what we mean is you can see this process from several different angles. In the most traditional sense, if you open a textbook on biology, what you will see is that cells of our body needs energy. So this is like the basic fundamental fact. Without energy, nothing can happen in a cell. I mean, it will literally die within seconds. So the way to get energy for a cell, you would need oxygen. That's what we are breathing in. And we need the glucose. These are the sugars that we digest with food. Once you consume them inside the cell, they are converted to a different form of energy called ATP. It doesn't matter in the actual the main point here being we need oxygen, we need food. And when you combine oxygen with food, you have something like slow burning and you would get energy as the outcome of this slow burning process. Okay. So we do need energy. This is out of the question.