Health Tooty Fruity

Your body is a very busy place. Every second of every day, all around the clock, year after year, you make thousands of different enzymes, hormones, antioxidants, and chemical messengers. Every day millions of new cells replace old cells. Your taste buds, for example, only last a day or so, while you replace your entire skin every 30 days. Every day you make millions of red blood cells to replace the ones that wear out as they pound through your blood vessels.

The building blocks of everything that happens in your body are just twenty-two amino acids. All cells are made from them, and your body is regulated by them. Where do the amino acids come from? From the protein in the foods you eat, because proteins are nothing more than long chains of amino acids.


Why You Need Amino Acids

Pretty much all of you that's not bones and teeth is made up of protein. All that protein is made upof different combinations of amino acids. And all those amino acids are made just from atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, with a little sulfur thrown in here and there.


A protein is an organic substance made up of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Proteins are made
from strings of amino acids. Every one of the twenty-two amino acids is a small molecule that has an amino group-a chemical fragment containing nitrogen-and an acid group-a chemical! fragment containing carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.