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Metabolism: for optimal body functioning

Metabolism: for optimal body functioning

Edited by: TOP DOCTORS® at 10/10/2023

Metabolism is a series of vital processes that are in charge of maintaining the proper functioning of the body. Metabolic disorders are associated with virtually all diseases and their treatment focuses on correcting the defects that cause such disorders.

Dr. Salvador Escorcia Vargas

Major metabolic processes

Metabolism in general can be subdivided conceptually in many parts, but generally it is done in 2 mainly, it is anabolism and catabolism.

Anabolism refers in simple terms to generating complex substances of simple elements and the opposite catabolism. These processes mainly support sub processes that are important such as reproduction, repair and the search for cellular structuring. When these complexes are lost the diseases are generated. All diseases are implicit in these complexes or metabolic alterations. Then a normal metabolism is healthy and an abnormal metabolism is disease.

Metabolic disorders

In general all diseases are actually alterations of the metabolic processes. On a regular basis patients and physicians frequently relate some diseases with metabolic disorders. Among them the most common are for example diabetes, cholesterol disorders, disorders of calcium and other substances such as uric acid. Metabolic disturbances can occur even before birth, such as insulin deficiency or the deficiencies of multiple enzymes that lead to diseases that are not compatible with life. Others are for example the thyroid diseases that through alterations in a single hormone or in a group of hormones of this gland, generate diseases that people know as hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism. These and many others are metabolic diseases.

Treatment of metabolic defects

Treatments of metabolic diseases or diseases in general seek mainly is to correct the defect on which the metabolic disorder was generated. Almost all diseases today have forms of treatment and are almost always aimed at the correction of the underlying abnormal element, optimizing the metabolic processes and therefore the vital balance. In the case of diabetes, for example, it is a question of having a much better effect of insulin or of recovering this same hormone in organisms. In hormone deficiency diseases (eg hypothyroidism, menopause, low stature, type 1 diabetes, etc.) are treated by replenishing the hormones and in other cases where these hormones are excessive they are modulated or the glands from which they are excised have disease control.

Internal Medicine in Miguel Hidalgo