(orchestral music)
- Hey there and welcome to Brain Stuff.
I'm Josh Clark and this is the Brain Stuff
where I bring you a very
important public service
announcement about oxygen.
Oxygen is probably the most
important thing that you need,
more than food, water, even hugs.
You can go weeks without food,
you can go maybe days without water,
but within 10 to 15 minutes
of being deprived of oxygen,
your brain dies.
But have you ever
wondered, "Exactly why do
"I need this oxygen to survive?"
I'm here to tell you.
So, oxygen is the most abundant
element on planet earth.
It makes up 23% of the atmosphere,
89% of all of the earth's water,
and about 47% of the earth's crust.
And it's lucky that it is
in such abundant supply
because not just you need it to survive,
but almost all living things
with the exception of
anaerobic life, of course,
need oxygen to survive.
Now, what you say?
What about plants?
Plants don't need oxygen,
they give off oxygen.
That's where we get our oxygen from.
That is true.
Photosynthesis does produce
oxygen as a byproduct
and you do take that
oxygen in for yourself.
But, when the sun's not out and
all the humans are sleeping,
and there is not photosynthesis,
plants breathe.
They actually gather oxygen from the air
and from the soil through their roots,
which they use to break down
sugars to use for energy.
It's a process called cellular respiration
and you do the exact same thing.
In fact, now we've
reached the first reason
why you need oxygen to survive.
Cellular respiration.
In cells throughout your
body, there's all manner
of functions and processes
being carried out.
And all of this stuff is
powered by cellular respiration,
where carbohydrates are broken down
in the presence of oxygen
into something called
adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
Now ATP is an energy
source that can be used
for just about any function
by just about any cell
in the body.
It's kind of like the common currency
of all cellular processes.
So you can think of cellular respiration
as the process of converting
carbohydrates into ATP
in a similar way where foreign currencies
are converted into dollars at the cambio.
You can take those dollars
and use them in any cell you like.
Cellular respiration also
produces a couple of byproducts
as well, mainly CO2, carbon dioxide,
H2O, water, and heat.
And that heat is the
second reason you need
oxygen to survive.
See, since all of our cellular processes
are being fueled by this
oxygen that's carrying out
cellular respiration
and also producing heat,
it's pretty clever and
efficient to use that heat
to warm said body.
So everything we do from
thinking, to running,
to going like this, uses
cellular respiration.
It thus produces heat,
which keeps our body
temperature at a nice, warm, toasty state.
Well, let's get back to
those byproducts again.
Remember, you produce carbon
dioxide and excess water
during cellular respiration,
and your body has to get
rid of that stuff somehow.
So, let's think.
If you need to take in
oxygen from the environment
and you need to get rid of
wasted CO2 and excess water,
what could you possibly do
that would lick both of
these at the same time?
(high-pitched chiming)
Breathing does this.
It's actually an elegant solution
to what I like to call
the conundrum of the aerobic organism.
So, are you pretty good at breathing?
We want to know.
You can leave a comment below,
maybe subscribe while you're at it,
and check us out at our
website, brainstuffshow.com.
