[eli5] Humans and most animals breathe in O2(dioxide) and breathe out CO2(carbon dioxide) , where does the carbon come from?
In: Biology
The food you eat.
The carbohydrate you eat is long chains of sugar. They are broken down to simple sugars like Glucose that is C6H12O6
You can sum up your metabolism of it as
C6H12O6 + 6O2 = 6 H20 + 6 CO2 + usable energy.
So sugar + oxyger = water + carbon dioxide + usable energy.
It comes from the sugars, fats, and proteins in your body that you are using for energy. They are all chemicals made of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Combining them with oxygen in your blood gives off energy your body can use, and leaves behind carbon dioxide and water. There are many chemical reactions involved, but at its basic level it’s pretty similar to fire (which also burns carbon and gives off CO2 and water).
That is also where the weight is going when you “lose weight.” You are breathing it out. And for that reason, how hard you are breathing is a good way to determine how fast you are burning calories, for example when comparing different exercises.
Blood sugar that you’ve burned. The complete reaction goes…
C6H12O6 + 6O2 –> 6CO2 + 6H2O + 2.8MJ of energy
So glucose (produced from food you’ve digested) reacts with oxygen (which you inhaled) and the products are energy, carbon dioxide (slightly poisonous; you exhale that) and water (useful, mostly your cells hang onto it but you can pee it out if you have excess).
[Edit: I wrote the reaction in *moles*, so we’re talking 1 mole (180.18g) of glucose to produce 2.8 megajoules.]
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When you eat food you basically put it into little machines inside you, the machines pull apart the food into energy to use, but need oxygen to be able to work properly. When the machines have finished with the food then they have some co2 left, and we breath it out.
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humans breathe o2 but they use o2 and carbohydrates for cell respiration, and the end products are co2 and water. carbs are just oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen in different amounts and arrangements.
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