What happens to water in your body produced from aerobic respiration?
Jan.25, 2010 in
Aerobic Respiration
When sugar is burned, carbon dioxide and water are produced. What happens to the water that our body produces from aerobic respiration? Does it get sent into our system the same way it would if we drank a glass of water? Thanks.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Well, not exactly to be honest. See, if you drink the glass of water, it gets absorbed and sent to the blood, here the opposite occurs, it is created and then sent to the blood stream if the osmotic pressure favors that.
The water in our body is divided in three compartments, extracellular liquid (PLASMA and INTERSTICIAL LIQUID) and intracellular liquid. These three compartments are in constant equilibrium and the water in our body is redistributed accordingly to volume and concentration changes. When there is excess water, it is excreted in the urinary system.
January 25th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
A lot more happens when “sugar is burned” than produce carbon dioxide and water. Here’s Chem 101 – I hope I can break it down in an understandable way!
Water is needed to maintain concentration gradient to keep hydrogen ion concentration high on the outside of a cell and low on the inside. Whether you drink it, take it from the foods consumed or it’s a byproduct of a reaction, it’s a necessary component of our chemical makeup and is a constant presence at the cellular level.
What I believe you were referring to is glycolysis, which is breaking down glucose in the first step of ATP production (ATP is your body’s fuel). Glucose is a six carbon molecule (C-C-C-C-C-C).
In glycolysis, it splits into two three carbon molecules (C-C-C and C-C-C). This set of three carbon molecules are called pyruvate or “fire” molecules. If oxygen is present, the next step (the Kreb’s cycle) begins (oxygen is present in aerobic respiration). If there’s no O2, it’s anaerobic respiration and the pyruvate reduces to lactic acid (that’s what you produce when you push yourself very hard physically, use up your energy stores and/or exceed your oxygen consumption).
Since you’re interested in aerobic respiration, the pyruvate continues through the Kreb’s cycle (citric acid cycle). These two pyruvates take a bridge into the cell’s mitochondria, but in order to do so, they need to lose one carbon each. Once they lose that carbon, they now become citric acid (acetyl-CoA). To keep it simple, the Kreb’s cycle involves more chemical changes… but the bottom line is that at the end of the cycle, you’re left with NADH and FADH2.
NADH will yield 3 ATP’s in the final phase and FADH2 will yield 2 ATP’s in the final phase (which is next). Both NADH and FADH2 contribute positive hydrogen ions via electron transport.
That water you were talking about is needed here. As the hydrogen ions are bumping into the cell’s membrane with force (because the water is maintaining a steady concentration gradient), they cause the ADP to combine with another phosphate, creating ATP. That’s why sugar (glucose) gives you energy….and that’s what happens to the water.
I think I just used up all my glucose explaining that