Transform oxygen into energy?

Will Anderson

I just started reading a pamphlet written my an M.D. about a poorly understood illness.

On the second page he writes: "Hypoxia is a technical term meaning the inability to transform oxygen into energy." On the next page he writes: "It is due to a problem at the cellular level converting oxygen into energy."

I didn't do very well in high school chemistry, and that was over fifty years ago, but I seem to recall that we were taught back then that the energy released by metabolism came from the carbohydrates that were being "burned," not from the oxygen.

I mean, oxygen is an element, so it would seem that a process to "transform oxygen into energy" would require "splitting" the atom in something like a nuclear reaction, wouldn't it?

Have I been laboring under a misconception for over half a century?

Is oxygen actually "converted" or "transformed" into energy in our bodies at the cellular level?

Will Anderson

chemisttree

The pamphlet was poorly worded. You have an accurate understanding as to where energy comes from. Oxygen is involved but not the source of the energy.