Heart Report
by Ward Bond Phd.
For us to stay healthy and active our bodies need energy…lots of energy. The energy produced by each of the trillions of cells in our bodies keeps our hearts beating, our muscles contracting, our brains functioning to send signals to the far reaches of our bodies, and our nerves carrying those signals to each of our organs to sustain life. Each day, our bodies produce and consume extraordinary amounts of energy. Let’s take the heart for example.
At
any given moment an average heart contains less than one gram of stored energy,
about 0.7-grams to be exact. But every day our hearts consume almost
6,000-grams of energy in performing its ceaseless work of pumping blood and
delivering life-giving oxygen to tissues throughout our bodies.
Think about the magnitude of
this feat! Six-thousand grams is more than 10 times the average weight of a
heart and almost 10,000 times the amount of energy that is normally found in
the heart at any one time. Ask yourself, “Where does this energy come from?”
and “How can the heart produce such an extraordinary volume of energy?”
In large part, the answers to
these questions are found with D-ribose, as you will see.
ATP —The Currency of
Life
The energy that fuels our bodies is held in a small molecule with a large name. Adenosine triphosphate, or simply ATP, is the compound found in every cell in our bodies that gives us energy. In fact, virtually all the energy used by our bodies comes from ATP. Because of its universal importance in the body, ATP is commonly referred to as the “energy currency” of the cell.
In each cell, ATP is made,
consumed, and re-processed in a cycle that keeps a continual supply of energy
flowing. And our bodies have developed very elaborate metabolic processes to
make sure we don’t run out. These processes efficiently recycle energy as it is
used, making fresh energy constantly available to sustain life.
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