- Chemistry illustrates how the body takes food and breaks it down into energy and waste. To understand this, students must grasp chemical equations and how bonds hold molecules together.
- Health care workers and athletes alike must understand the process of lactic acidosis, where overworked muscles try to pull energy from lactic acid. This is part of anerobic respiration, a complicated chemical process that requires knowledge of chemistry to be understood.
- Students of anatomy & physiology must learn a lot about bones, from their names and locations to how they are formed. Since bones are the body's major storage spots for chemical elements like calcium and phosphorus, knowing chemistry is vital to understanding how these minerals are stored and released.
- Many of the major components of life include proteins, sugars, fats and enzymes. These complex molecules feature chemical bonds and reactions in the body.
- The body is made up of many solutions of different concentrations. The principle of diffusion determines how nutrients get into--and stay inside--cell membranes. These are only a few of the many ways chemistry is important to the study of anatomy & physiology.
