Basically the title.
I guess a secondary point to that, how does a body ‘tell’ when a person is a spesific age, and therefore start some internal biological process automatically?
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This is a very difficult question to answer, because of how broad of a topic it is. But, let’s use one example of blood sugar levels. 80% of the sugar in your blood is used by your brain, meaning regulating blood sugar levels is very important one). One way your body does this is with your liver, which has the job of making sure there is enough stuff in your blood for your brain to use as food. To do this, liver cells have a special kind of enzyme that changes how liver cells respond to blood sugar levels.
See, most cells take sugar out of the blood and use it for energy. When sugar levels are low, most cells are able create their own sugars through a process called gluconeogenesis. The enzyme that controls if a cell makes its own sugar, or takes sugar out of the blood, is different in your liver cells. This enzyme, called glucokinase in liver cells, is far more selective than the form of the enzyme in most other cells (including your neurons) called hexokinase. This added sensitivity is how your liver controls if it creates sugars for your brain, or if there are enough sugars for your liver cells to take up sugar from the blood.
This is just one small example!
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