Emily Kwong

But Ping, what have you learned from using yours?

Ping, thanks for coming on the show.

Happy eating this holiday season.

Short Wavers, stick around because we are going to continue riding the glucose wave.

We'll talk to Sarah Kim about why your body needs glucose to function and what happens when there's too much or too little.

I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

Okay, short wavers, to go even deeper with glucose and digestive health, I am talking to Sarah Kim, the doctor at University of California, San Francisco, who you heard from earlier.

And Sarah, I just want to start with some of the basics about sugar in the body because we ultimately need glucose to function, right?

Absolutely.

I remember having to draw from memory the Krebs cycle in freshman biology class, and it was all about how the mitochondria convert glucose to

usable energy to ATP.

Okay.

Glucose is the thing we're after for energy.

So

How does it get stored in our bodies?

Okay.

And I know that part of what's happening with like glucose uptake, like the cells sucking in that glucose involves this hormone called insulin.

What's insulin doing?

And we all know how frustrating it is to get locked out of the house.

you know, when you're just at the door and all you need is that dang key.