Is Oxygen Really Converted Into Energy in Our Bodies?

[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.