What in the world is a metabolism?!?

Question

My family and friends and other people always say "Oh, you're so skinny! You must have a really fast metabolism!" and I'm just like "Yea, I do!" But I honestly have no idea what a metabolism is! Please tell me, so I actually know what people are talking about when they say that!

Answer 1

the sum of the physical and chemical processes in an organism by which its material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available. Compare anabolism, catabolism.

Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down large molecules, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism, on the other hand, uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.

Answer 2

Metabolism basically refers to how fast/slow your body processes food.  When people say you have a fast metabolism they mean that food doesn't stay in your system for very long and that your body doesn't store tons of extra fat and calories.  You might hear people that are slightly (or very) overweight blame it on a slow metabolism.

Answer 3

Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down large molecules, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism, on the other hand, uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.

The chemical reactions of metabolism are organized into metabolic pathways, in which one chemical is transformed into another by a sequence of enzymes. Enzymes are crucial to metabolism because they allow organisms to drive desirable but thermodynamically unfavorable reactions by coupling them to favorable ones. Enzymes also allow the regulation of metabolic pathways in response to changes in the cell's environment or signals from other cells.

The metabolism of an organism determines which substances it will find nutritious and which it will find poisonous. For example, some prokaryotes use hydrogen sulfide as a nutrient, yet this gas is poisonous to animals.[1] The speed of metabolism, the metabolic rate, also influences how much food an organism will require.

A striking feature of metabolism is the similarity of the basic metabolic pathways between even vastly different species. For example, the set of carboxylic acids that are best known as the intermediates in the citric acid cycle are present in all organisms, being found in species as diverse as the unicellular bacteria Escherichia coli and huge multicellular organisms like elephants.[2] These striking similarities in metabolism are most likely the result of the high efficiency of these pathways, and of their early appearance in evolutionary history

I hope this will help you :)

Answer 4

To Wikipedia!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism

lol Cheater answer.