Explain in
detail the aerobic and anaerobic metabolism and comment on the differences
between them:
Every
sporting gesture or muscular contraction needs an energy that it obtains by the degradation of nutrients, this degradation is known as metabolism.
The
degradation of these nutrients will give us a quantity of what we know as ATP,
which will provide us with the energy necessary to perform physical exercise.
There are 2
ways to get this energy:
Aerobic
metabolism: Uses oxygen to produce energy in the form of ATP. There are three
ways (they work simultaneously):
- Glycolysis: Oxidates the glucose and releases energy (ATP molecules)
- Krebs Cycle: Oxidates a molecule (Acetil-CoA) and releases energy (ATP molecules)
- Electron transport chain: Different molecules are oxidated and releases energy (ATP molecules)
These
processes can produce a lot of energy (32 ATP molecules) releasing CO2 y H2O
The
anaerobic metabolism : uses nutrients due to the absence of oxygen.
Unable to
oxidize it, it uses another process, instead of the oxidation it uses the fermentation,
which doesn´t oxidize, it reduces the nutrients for oxidate them later
This
process produces a smaller number of molecules compared to the aerobic
metabolism.
The anaerobic metabolism produces 2 molecules of ATP
The anaerobic metabolism produces 2 molecules of ATP
Differences:
- The main difference is that the aerobic metabolism needs oxygen to produce ATP, while the anaerobic doesn´t need any oxygen
- The anaerobic metabolism is usually carried out at the beginning of the exercise, it´s generally used to do short but intense exercises. The aerobic metabolism occurs when physical activity is prolonged and the organism needs more energy
