Carbohydrate Metabolism

 Carbohydrate Metabolism

Introduction

Carbohydrate ingested as food is either polysaccharide like starch or glycogen, disaccharide like sucrose, lactose and maltose or monosaccharide like glucose and fructose. During digestion all are converted into monosaccharide mostly glucose. Since all the carbohydrate in the cell is mostly utilized as glucose, carbohydrate metabolism means glucose metabolism.

Carbohydrate metabolism supplies energy to all cell functions stimulates fats and protein metabolism, converted into other forms of carbohydrate, fats and proteins as per the need of body, provides reserve depot fats and provide for the synthesis of nucleoproteins. Thus carbohydrate metabolism is the main metabolism of the body. It is the sum total of four processes-

·        Glycogenesis

·        Glycogenolysis

·        Glycolysis

·        Gluconeogenesis