Let's look at some organic compounds. Organic compounds are large carbon-based molecules. That means they contain mostly carbon atoms with other ones attached to them. They make up our macronutrients, the food stuff we eat most of, the carbs, the fats, the proteins.
This is compared to our micronutrients, which we only use very little of. Those are our vitamins and minerals, but more of that later. Nucleic acids are the molecules making up DNA.
We'll discuss those a little bit later too. Look down here, we have a couple more words. Polymer versus monomer. A polymer is a long chain molecule that is formed by bonding together monomer units.
Uh-oh. In contrast, a monomer is the simplest unit from which a polymer is formed. Polymers are made via dehydration synthesis.
That means the small building blocks or monomers are joined by the removal of OH from one monomer and the removal of H from the other at the site of bond formation. Basically, we take a water molecule, an H2O, away to form a bigger molecule from two smaller ones. We dehydrated.
De means without. Dehydrate means without water. Polymers are broken by hydrolysis. Hydro is water, as we already know now, and lysis, interesting word, learn it, it comes back all the time here. It means to separate or to split up or even to kill as in when a cell autolysis and destroys itself.
Yeah, they do that. Anyway, monomers are released or separated from a polymer by the addition of a water molecule, the H2O, splits into an OH added to one monomer and an H added to the other molecule. Now let's talk about carbohydrates.
Chemically, carbohydrates are rings of carbon atoms with hydrogens and oxygens attached to them. The ratio of hydrogen to oxygen is 2 to 1. That's the same ratio as the water has. Hydrogen and oxygen 2 to 1, H2O.
Carbohydrates, therefore, dissolve well in water and are said to be hydrophilic. Hydro, we know again, means water. And phyllic means loving.
So carbs and water go well together. Sugar dissolves well in water. The contrast of that is oil, which does not mix well in water.
Look at an oil and vinegar salad dressing. Vinegar is mostly water. Unless one shakes it before pouring it over salad, you don't get them mixed up. You get them separated.
A single sugar ring is a monosaccharide. Glucose is our blood sugar. It is the universal cellular fuel. Other forms of simple sugars are fructose and galactose, which then our body, when we eat it, converts to glucose.
Another sugar is a 5, not 6, carbon ring. Those are functionally very different. They are part of our DNA, which is where our genetic code is stored.
Those are ribose and deoxyribose. Joining two monosaccharides will make a disaccharide. Two monosaccharides are connected by dehydration synthesis.
When we look at important disaccharides, we have cane sugar. We can also call that sucrose. And that's a glucose and a fructose. That's our table sugar.
Then we have milk sugar. We call that lactose and that's a glucose and a galactose. Some people are allergic to that one.
And then we have maltose. And maltose is a glucose and a glucose. The difference between our table sugar and the high fructose corn syrup is the fructose to glucose ratio.
More fructose gives us a sweeter taste, because fructose carries the taste, but the glucose carries the energy. Fructose is not useful for the energy, so it will go to the liver, be processed, and then will go into the fat cells. However, it cannot be used for energy. This unfortunately will make us more lethargic. Polysaccharides.
Poly refers to many. Polysaccharides are long branching sugar chains. They are used for fuel storage in our body, called glycogen. They're both stored in the liver and the skeletal muscle.
That way we have easy access to blood sugar when needed, since the liver can release glucose into the bloodstream very fast. Muscles themselves need a lot of energy, So then they don't have to fatigue too fast when we have glycogen stored in them. Mm-hmm. Okay. We never stop hearing that we are too fat.
Why is that? Well, we eat too many carbs and move or exercise too little. From the food perspective, we went wrong as a nation in 1992 when we were told to eat more grain products, some protein, but only a little fat.
Well, fat in food satisfies. Without it we eat more carbs to get that feeling. Well too much sugar is converted to fat inside our body.
There we have it. What happens when the sugar is in the body? Carbohydrates are broken down to glucose so the cell then can use it to produce energy.
The more processed the carb is, the simpler the sugar is, the faster it gets broken down by chemical digestion. Which by the way starts in the mouth. And so then the faster all these processes go, the faster that blood sugar reaches the bloodstream. The glycemic index is a measuring tool to figure out how fast that process goes.
And we use a number and that number, 100, is the baseline and that is how fast does table sugar go before the glucose is released into the bloodstream. Some, like rice, white rice, has 110, so that goes faster. So we gotta be careful how much white rice we eat. The faster the blood sugar rises, the faster the pancreas has to secrete the hormone insulin into the bloodstream to remove glucose so that the blood sugar gets brought into the cell and away from the bloodstream.
The hormone insulin has the ability to open specific channels in the wall of the cells. So the sugar then can get into the cell and used to make energy. Sugar in the blood is a problem because it makes it sticky.
Or we can call that viscous. And sticky blood is damaging to the body over time. If we eat simple sugar too often, the pancreas has to work very hard and we'll get tired. And then over time we will burn out.
And that eventually leads to type 2 diabetes. And that is one of our country's biggest killers. When the blood sugar is not well managed anymore, Glucose cannot enter the cell, well, well that makes us constantly hungry and the blood glucose level is always high.
Then that damages many tissues and that leads to pain and to suffering. Oh brother. But that's why we want to eat a balanced diet and not just go for the chips and cookie type food all the time.
See, if we eat a hearty protein rich breakfast like eggs, the blood sugar is much more balanced than after a donut for example.