In the last video, I said that our human body cells can either burn sugar or fat for creating energy that we need. In this video, we're going to go a little bit deeper in what actually happens inside the cells. Inside each cell, there are two to 3000 organelles called mitochondria, whose job it is to break down molecules of food. To create the energy we need to live. You can think of them as an energy factory, and assembly line. raw materials go into the cell by being absorbed through the cell's membrane.
And energy is produced by the mitochondria. Yeah, actually, this process could be called at this assembly line because larger molecules are broken down into smaller ones for nutrients. This slide shows a very simplified representation of the process. When a cell burns sugar. cells can burn either sugar or fat. And they are very good at flipping from one to the other, which served our ancestors very well.
When cells burn sugar, certain toxic byproducts are produced, namely, lactate, acetate, ethanol, and acetaldehyde. acid is also produced. Normally, the liver cleans out these toxins and they're eliminated from the body generations ago, the sugar burning season would pass, and the toxins would be eliminated more thoroughly during the season when the cells burn fat. However, if the body continues to use sugar in excessive amounts continuously, the waste byproducts accumulate and eventually damage the mitochondria by starving them of oxygen. The damaged mitochondria make less and less energy until they cannot function at all, and trigger inflammation and disease. This is an invisible process that seriously harms our health after decades of eating the wrong things.
Now let's look at the cell metabolizing fat for energy. There are no toxic byproducts. It is simply a clean process. It is therefore much more efficient at creating energy. There are no waste products to overload the liver, or to clog up the veins, arteries and capillaries. We all have a choice about what we eat.
But it's not so easy to make this choice. If we don't have the correct information to guide us. In the next lecture, you will find that all foods are not what they seem. We look at the way that foods are presented in the supermarkets and what the labels tell us