In the video “Metabolism & Nutrition: Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology“ posted on the CrashCourse YouTube channel (with around 15.9 million subscribers), an expert explains the nature of metabolism in the body and its close connection to nutritional factors.
Metabolism is a complex process that involves much more than personal trainers and advertisements might have you believe.
Today, we are exploring some of its key components, including essential nutrients like water, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, as well as how anabolic reactions build structures and require energy, while catabolic reactions break things down and release energy.
Video content structure:
- 00:00 – Introduction: Metabolism
- 2:30 – Metabolism, Anabolism, and Catabolism
- 3:47 – Essential Nutrients: Water, Vitamins, Minerals
- 4:44 – Carbohydrates
- 5:53 – Lipids
- 7:15 – Proteins
Summary:
All living organisms must constantly take in and break down food to provide the raw materials necessary for survival. All of this activity requires energy, which we also get from food.
So how does our body actually metabolize what we eat into energy and raw materials?
The answer lies in a never-ending series of reactions dedicated to doing two important and completely opposite things: One set of chemical reactions breaks down the reactants you supply, reducing large, complex substances into smaller pieces. Another set of reactions assembles those smaller pieces into new, larger products, stitched together to form you.
Therefore, our body is constantly regenerating itself — always in a state of loss, but also always rebuilding.
These two groups of reactions are where everything we’ve learned so far comes together. These processes make up your metabolism, helping your digestive, endocrine, circulatory, and respiratory systems truly connect with one another.
Watch the full video [HERE]. You can select Vietnamese subtitles to follow along with all the information provided in the video.