With our bodies containing about two hundred trillion cells, predicting how many chemical reactions in the body that take place each day is almost impossible to do with any certainty. Each of our cells is responsible for completing chemical reactions every day, so a rough estimate is said to be around four hundred billion chemical reactions in the body. These chemical reactions in the body are neatly arranged into very orderly pathways. Molecules, which are the specific arrangement of atoms, are either taken apart or built up in every chemical reaction.

In any living organisms, chemical reactions are needed in order to store or release energy. Energy is needed by every living thing in order to carry out work, or necessary functions. This is more commonly known as our metabolism. If all the energy that was stored in our cells somehow got released in an uncontrolled fashion, we would literally start on fire, that’s how much power they contain.

The activation of energy that the body needs to produce a chemical reaction can be caused by the random collision of the molecules. This random act is way to slow of a reaction rate to sustain life. In order to force the chemical reactions in the body to happen faster, our cells use proteins known as enzymes. They assist by binding to their reactants and lowering the activation energy necessary for the two to react. Enzymes can also put pressure on the chemical bonds which make them easier and faster to break apart. If you have ever tried to break a stick with only your hands, it is not easy to do. When you add your knee into the equation, it gives you more force to get the job done. The enzymes would be that helping force like your knee. They are the catalysts to help speed up chemical reactions in the body.

Entropy is the way in which randomness is measured. Over time, even a well ordered structure will become disorderly, so an input of continuous energy is needed. Every chemical reaction in the body will increase the amount of entropy because there is always heat released in the reaction. Heat is one of the lowest quality energy types because it is an uncoordinated random movement of molecules, so it is not easily controlled to perform any work at all.

If you burn a chunk of wood, all the energy from that reaction is released all at once, in a random process. In chemical reactions in the body, and more so, our metabolic reactions, the energy is released in a very controlled process. The energy is released in a process of smaller steps resulting in electrons that are lost or gained by atoms. The common form of energy that is carried in cells is called ATP. It has three very high energy phosphate groups that are attached to it. When these phosphate bonds in ATP are broken, the energy gets released in order to power the necessary activities that the cells must perform.