Compare And Contrast The Process Of Lipids And Carbohydrates

During a race, there is an inherent increase in energy requirements and these requirements are maintained by the many biochemical events happening within the body. This essay explores the metabolic processes that occur at the start of the race, 5 minutes into the race and 45 minutes into the race in terms of mobilization, biochemical pathways used for degradation of molecules and comparing the yield of ATP of the two types of fuels involved, namely carbohydrates and lipids.
Carbohydrates, which have the empirical formula (CH2O)n, acts as the predominant source of metabolic energy in muscle cells during exercise. They are stored in the liver and muscle cells as glycogen which is a branched polymer. Lipids mainly exist as triglycerides, which are made up of three fatty acids joined to one glycerol molecule, and are stored in adipose tissue. However, lipids exist as ketone bodies when in excess.
Before a
These results show that lipids are better at storing and producing energy when compared to carbohydrates. This is because fatty acids are more reduced and are anhydrous, in comparison to carbohydrates, due to the non-polar hydrocarbon tails. This in turn allows for more energy per unit mass to be stuffed into lipids compared to carbohydrates. However the race shows that carbohydrates are used up before lipids with carbohydrates being predominantly used at the 5min mark and lipids being mainly used at the 45min mark. This may be due to the fact that carbohydrates compared to fatty acids can be more readily converted since the metabolism process is much simpler. Carbohydrates do not have to be transported to the muscle cells since they are already present within the cells themselves while fatty acids are not. Fatty acids also require many additional processes for them to enter the mitochondrial matrix to begin oxidizing in the first