Does anyone ever thought of why do we breath OXYGEN to live ? why not other gases? Does anyone know why we only release CO2? Many people thing it as the carbs , proteins and fats are BURNING inside our body to produce CO2 and water as usual if we burn some stuff , but there is something really complex going on here . Lets learn this in great detail! We breath and eat to respire , remember that respiration and breathing are 2 different things , breathing is only for taking in oxygen , but cellular respiration is breaking down food to generate energy( in the form of ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate which is a very high energy molecule and the energy stored in the phosphorous bonds could be easily extracted by breaking them ). The defenition of cellular respiration is as follows: The process by which living organisms extract energy from their food is called cellular respiration. There are 2 types of cellular respiration - Aerobic and Anaerobic respiration. Anaerobic respiration is a type of respiration as the name suggest , which does not require oxygen to breakdown food, and thus produces very less ATP molecules, only 2. Organisms such as Yeast uses anaerobic respiration to respire. When you are running , our muscles needs a greater amount of energy as compared to which can be given by aerobic respiration as we cannot breath that fast or our lungs will rupture , so to fill the requirements of our muscles, muscles anaerobically respire, which supplies the extra ATP molecules for our muscles, and the products which are left are ethanol and lactic acid. That is why there is a lot of pain in the joints after running very fast as the lactic acids are deposited on the bones and it hurts. Then goes aerobic respiration. It uses Oxygen to breakdown food. As it uses oxygen to breakdown food , it gives 36-38 ATP molecules! That's a lot as compared to anaerobic respiration. That's why anaerobic respiration is the oldest form of respiration and aerobic the best one. Almost all multicellular beings respire Aerobically.
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