3 Reasons Metabolic Pathways Are Crucial to Maintaining Your Health

Our “metabolic pathways” are the key interactions that take place every moment between our genes and our entire cellular structure. Simply put, a metabolic pathway is a way our cells burn sugar to power the body’s activities.  Even from this basic definition, it’s clear that these pathways are crucial to healthy functioning, but there’s a lot more to it than simple generalities.

3 Reasons Metabolic Pathways Are Crucial to Maintaining Your Health

We Need Them From Start to Finish

We depend on the whole metabolic cycle at every point for every biological system, from our brain to our digestive system to our circulatory system. We are made up of millions and millions of molecules, and we continuously need to generate new ones to signal to our cells what to do. We also need each of those molecules to go away when they’re done!

These two processes must be in equilibrium—when old molecules don’t catabolize (degrade) quickly enough, they can hang around and do damage to cells. If new molecules of the right type aren’t anabolized (generated) as they should be, we cannot function properly.

The metabolic cycle and the series of reactions it generates continuously re-form the substances needed to feed this cycle. In grade school, we learned the Second Law of Thermodynamics: that all natural processes tend to degrade to entropy when left to themselves. Our metabolic cycle is what stops our bodies from doing that almost as soon as we are born. It’s what keeps us going.

When They Are Dysregulated, We Get Diseases

We all know that some diseases are caused by viruses or bacteria, but many of the most catastrophic diseases we face—such as cancer and Alzheimer’s—usually have nothing to do with a virus. They grow within our own bodies, and research shows that an abnormal metabolic state is behind them all.

Beyond that, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that, even in the case of disease brought on by a virus, metabolic disorders can make us much more susceptible and the diseases much more deadly.  Burning sugar in a well-regulated manner is a foundational element of strong immune system function and the maintenance of good overall health.

We Can’t Figure Out How to Change Specifics Without Them

If these chemical processes are so important, you might wonder why scientists don’t just go in and modify or manipulate individual pathways or processes to get the results we want. It would be great, for example, if we could tell our bodies to stop producing the chemical signals that turn “on” too much cellular growth, which can cause cancer.

The problem is that every attempt to do this on an individual level so far has resulted in only very limited success. Most of the time, either nothing happens at all, or far too much happens and there are unintended consequences.

What does this mean for you? In summary, it means that, at least for now, the best way to maintain your health is to support all your metabolic pathways as a whole rather than try to target individual chemical processes. A good combination of regular strength-training and aerobic exercise, a varied diet of unprocessed foods, the right glucose-controlling supplements, and avoiding smoking and too much alcohol are all key to a healthy metabolism.

Our metabolic pathways are beyond important–they are foundational to every biological system. To learn more about important all natural blood sugar controlling supplements to support your metabolism, visit Panacea Scientific today.