We inhale O2 and exhale CO2, so does that mean we just add carbon and exhale the same oxygen we just inhaled? Why cant we just exhale carbon?
In: Biology
When we breath in oxygen, it diffuses across the membranes in the lungs into the bloodstream and then gets transported to different parts of your body and eventually to individual cells. The cells take oxygen and react it with glucose (a type of sugar) to create energy + water + carbon dioxide (CO2). The energy is used to power cellular functions, the water eventually gets excreted as urine or sweat, and the carbon dioxide get transported back through the bloodstream to your lungs, which you then exhale.
I’m a chemist, not a biologist, but I’m 100% certain there are no processes in the body that creates pure carbon (examples of pure carbon = diamond, charcoal, graphene). Pure carbon is a solid (especially in the conditions encountered in the human body) and so even if the body could produce it, it couldn’t be expelled through breathing.
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