Chemistry in Human Body
Editor's Note: This occasional series of articles looks at the vital things in our lives and the chemistry they are made of.
You are what you eat. But do you recall munching some molybdenum or snacking on selenium? Some 60 chemical elements are found in the body, but what all of them are doing there is still unknown.
Roughly 96 percent of the mass of the human body is made up of just four elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, with a lot of that in the form of water. The remaining 4 percent is a sparse sampling of the periodic table of elements.
Some of the more prominent representatives are called macro nutrients, whereas those appearing only at the level of parts per million or less are referred to as micronutrients.
These nutrients perform various functions, including the building of bones and cell structures, regulating the body's pH, carrying charge, and driving chemical reactions.
The FDA has set a reference daily intake for 12 minerals (calcium, iron, phosphorous, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum and chloride). Sodium and potassium also have recommended levels, but they are treated separately.
However, this does not exhaust the list of elements that you need. Sulfur is not usually mentioned as a dietary supplement because the body gets plenty of it in proteins.
And there are several other elements — such as silicon, boron, nickel, vanadium and lead — that may play a biological role but are not classified as essential.
"This may be due to the fact that a biochemical function has not been defined by experimental evidence," said Victoria Drake from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.
Sometimes all that is known is that lab animals performed poorly when their diets lacked a particular non-essential element. However, identifying the exact benefit an element confers can be difficult as they rarely enter the body in a pure form.
"We don't look at them as single
You are what you eat. But do you recall munching some molybdenum or snacking on selenium? Some 60 chemical elements are found in the body, but what all of them are doing there is still unknown.
Roughly 96 percent of the mass of the human body is made up of just four elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, with a lot of that in the form of water. The remaining 4 percent is a sparse sampling of the periodic table of elements.
Some of the more prominent representatives are called macro nutrients, whereas those appearing only at the level of parts per million or less are referred to as micronutrients.
These nutrients perform various functions, including the building of bones and cell structures, regulating the body's pH, carrying charge, and driving chemical reactions.
The FDA has set a reference daily intake for 12 minerals (calcium, iron, phosphorous, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum and chloride). Sodium and potassium also have recommended levels, but they are treated separately.
However, this does not exhaust the list of elements that you need. Sulfur is not usually mentioned as a dietary supplement because the body gets plenty of it in proteins.
And there are several other elements — such as silicon, boron, nickel, vanadium and lead — that may play a biological role but are not classified as essential.
"This may be due to the fact that a biochemical function has not been defined by experimental evidence," said Victoria Drake from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.
Sometimes all that is known is that lab animals performed poorly when their diets lacked a particular non-essential element. However, identifying the exact benefit an element confers can be difficult as they rarely enter the body in a pure form.
"We don't look at them as single