THE MIRACLE OF METABOLISM

Metabolism is a broad term that covers all of the work your cells do. The vast majority of this work involves pumping molecules in or out of cell membranes (their walls) and converting one kind of molecule into another. Your body is a walking, sloshing bucket of thousands of molecules interacting — enzymes, hormones, neurotransmitters, DNA, and more — and hardly any of it comes in its usable form directly from your diet.

Instead, cells are constantly bringing nutrients and other useful molecules circulating in the bloodstream in through their walls for use as fuel or building blocks, converting those molecules to something else, and then pushing the stuff they’ve built out of their walls to be used elsewhere in the body. Cells