how can one simple chemical, like cyanide, be so detrimental to the human body, compared to just carbon and just nitrogen?

Question

I just found it so wild that our bodies are full of carbon and nitrogen (even if as part of other chemicals. We breath, what I assume, to be molecular nitrogen. But then slap a carbon atom to a nitrogen atom and you’re screwed. Why?

In: 27

Answer 1

It’s precisely because it’s close but not quite the materials of our body that it’s a problem.

Like your body’s natural processes are bonding and reacting to things made up of C, H, N, O, etc.

Cyanide is disrupting a cellular process that turns carbon based molecules into cellular energy. When the carbon that has nitrogen on it enters that process, it blocks the process entirely, not just being incompatible, but shutting down that receptor to being able to engage in processing cellular energy. If that’s happening to cells in critical systems, then you are being poisoned.