eli5 Why can’t humans sprint a marathon?
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Other replies are good but also miss my the point of energy production.
Everything in our body requires something call adenosine 5- triphosphate or ATP to work. ATP is literally what makes us live. We have two types of metabolism: aerobic, or with oxygen, and anaerobic, with out oxygen. Aerobic is the normal state of our body. It’s when the max amount of oxygen is binding to our red blood cells and perfusion (oxygenation of the cells) is happening at a consistent rate. When we are using an aerobic metabolism, the cellular respiration produces 36 ATP while anaerobic only produces 2 ATP. All this is related to many different systems in the body including glucose levels, sodium and potassium, fluid shift, just a lot of things. But the basic concept to understand is we produce a lot more energy when we have the correct amount of oxygen in our system. When you run and exercise, your heart rate increases, your respiratory rate increases and the total amount of oxygen being retained and sent through out your body is reduced. Reduction of oxygen = reducing of ATP produced = less effective performance from cells = degradation of cells = death. Like someone said before, with the car example, is kinda correct except i would say it more like going 100mph is going to drain your gas tank a lot faster then going 30mph, if that make sense?
Metabolic states is a super interesting topic. And your seemingly simple question gets into a lot of different topics that include acid-base balance, perfusion (I think it’s called the Fink principle)fluid balance, the whole 9 yards.
I also remember reading something about how humans are designed or evolved to be essentially plodding long distance runners. Like we just used to tire our prey out by chasing it. Kinda like how the villain in horror movies only has to walk ya know?
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