Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Volga bomb. Here, we all know that you are
Speaker 1: what you eat, But how exactly do the things that
Speaker 1: you eat get turned into pieces of you? I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of bones in particular here. The foods we humans consume
Speaker 1: are soft, especially compared to other animals diets. But from
Speaker 1: them our bodies build strong, hard materials like fingernails, tooth enamel,
Speaker 1: and bones. So how do we do it? How do
Speaker 1: we soft fleshy humans turn soft fleshy food into bones.
Speaker 1: Let's start off by zooming in all the way down
Speaker 1: to the cellular level. Your body builds bone tissue with
Speaker 1: the help of specialized cells called osteoblasts. Osteoblasts work together
Speaker 1: forming a tight fit layer over areas where bone needs
Speaker 1: to grow or be repaired. These cells secrete a particular
Speaker 1: combination of amino acids, primarily glycine and proline. These amino
Speaker 1: acids are the building blocks of proteins. Not unlike voltron,
Speaker 1: they fold up with each other into something more than
Speaker 1: the sum of their parts, though in this case it's
Speaker 1: not a space bearing super robot, but strong triple helix
Speaker 1: threads of protein. Your cells get these amino acids from
Speaker 1: the foods that you eat. Meat, fish, dairy, and lagoons
Speaker 1: contain both glycine and proline, and you can also get
Speaker 1: proline from stuff like gelatine and cabbage. Once you're osteoblasts
Speaker 1: secrete the immuno acids and they come together to form
Speaker 1: the protein threads. Enzymes give those threads a stabilizing polish.
Speaker 1: Vitamin C helps those enzymes work. Without it, the threads
Speaker 1: can't come together to form bone tissue correctly. That's what
Speaker 1: happens in scurvy, and it's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: you should eat some fruit sometimes. Cantaloup, citrus, kiwi, mango,
Speaker 1: and berries are all good sources. The thus stabilized threads
Speaker 1: are molecules of what's called collagen, which is the most
Speaker 1: abundant protein in the animal kingdom. Collagen molecules packed together
Speaker 1: into long, thin fibers called fibrals. In there many types
Speaker 1: fibrals create these scaffolding that bodily tissues are built upon,
Speaker 1: from your corneas to your blood vessels to your skin.
Speaker 1: They're sturdy and kind of flexible, like steel beams in architecture.
Speaker 1: They're also relatively lightweight. Adult human bones are about ten
Speaker 1: collagen by mass, but if your bones were collagen fibrals alone,
Speaker 1: you'd beat sentient silly putty. So to add further support
Speaker 1: your osteoblasts, guide deposits of a strengthening layer of mineral
Speaker 1: crystals along the fibrils, like pouring concrete over steel beams.
Speaker 1: The mineral in question here is the compound calcium phosphate.
Speaker 1: Calcium and phosphate bond in your system after you consume
Speaker 1: foods that contain them. For calcium, that's dairy and soy products, eggs, shrimp,
Speaker 1: and dark leafy greens. For phosphate, it's dairy, whole wheat, nuts,
Speaker 1: and legumes, and this, along with dairy's amino acid content,
Speaker 1: is why milk and fortified food adds talk about how
Speaker 1: these products help build strong bones, though of course all
Speaker 1: the other foods we've mentioned due to this mineral coating
Speaker 1: is just a few atoms thick, but it gives bones
Speaker 1: their stiff structure, and it accounts for about of adults
Speaker 1: bone mass. Finally, the coated fibrils get gummed together with
Speaker 1: a sort of shock absorbing glue made up of spiraled
Speaker 1: collagen molecules that can uncoil when stress is applied, and
Speaker 1: then snap back into shape. This helps prevent fractures at
Speaker 1: a molecular level, like if you connected your steel reinforced
Speaker 1: concrete beams with springs. Your skeleton also contains small amounts
Speaker 1: of magnesium, sodium, and bicarbonate, plus a bunch of water
Speaker 1: like by mass. So how does your body get ahold
Speaker 1: of all of these substances. Well, your digestive system is
Speaker 1: a fancy molecular blaster. When you eat, your teeth, gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal muscles and digestive juices break food down to the
Speaker 1: point that it's molecules already to be harvested. Your gut
Speaker 1: bacteria helped too. There are some molecules that are cells
Speaker 1: can't process by themselves. Our gut bacteria eat those molecules
Speaker 1: and poop out compounds that are cells can process. The
Speaker 1: cells in the walls of your swall intestine pass everything
Speaker 1: that they can into your blood stream to be carried
Speaker 1: on to maker cells like your osteoblasts. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by me and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other reinforced topics, visit our
Speaker 1: home planet Paw Stuff Works dot com