Metabolism

Metabolism is the process performed by any living thing in order to continue to live. It includes animals' eating, digesting and breathing, plants' photosynthesis and respiration in both. It is normally a set of chemical reactions that obtain energy for life from the environment, these chains of reactions are termed metabolic pathways and eventually lead to the complete transformation of nutrients into energy or other materials that can be used by the body.

Outline Only
This article is only a brief description of the subject and is not intended to give a full explanation.
Check out the "see also" or "references" sections, or Wikipedia's article for more detail.
Live, reproduce, die
Biology
Life as we know it
Divide and multiply
Greatest Great Apes
v - t - e

Science fiction origin

The theory of metabolism was first introduced in the 13th century science fiction novel Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis. See the Wikipedia article on Theologus Autodidactus.

Evolution

Metabolic pathways are often very similar even in dramatically different species, utilising similar food sources and enzymes to work. Central common pathways are present in all domains of life from complex animals to simple bacteria. These pathways can be tracked throughout evolution.

Metabolic rate

The speed of someone's metabolism is often to blame for people being overweight or underweight. Although this is partially true, the real cause is that they haven't matched their food intake to their rate of metabolism. Age, drug intake and time of day are all factors that affect metabolic rate.

Woo

Many woo-peddlers describe miracle weight loss plans that center around somehow modifying or rebooting "your metabolism", usually with very little reference to where the actual energy released goes. A simple search of Natural News provides a plethora of examples, many contradictory.[1]

This biology-related article is a stub.
You can help RationalWiki by expanding it.
gollark: ++roll d20
gollark: I look for books on advanced bee summoning.
gollark: I look for books on wards in general.
gollark: I look for books on breaking book containment wards in libraries.
gollark: This is the *only* """library""" in existence?

References

http://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/weight-loss/what-is-metabolism-and-how-to-increase-it.html

This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.