[Music] this is a cow's liver and it acts in the same way as yours but it's a lot
bigger it's massive it's extremely heavy it certainly is and even in humans your liver
is your biggest internal organ one of your liver's main jobs is to make sure you have
a steady supply of glucose it's a backup energy storage system but if I cut into it
what you can see is there are so many blood vessels running through the liver it's got
a massive blood supply now let me get the ouch cam on that Chris this is amazing any glucose
that isn't being used immediately for energy travels through these blood vessels so it can
be stored here this brown mushy tissue is made up of liver cells called hepatocytes once glucose is
stored in these clever hepatocyte cells we call it glycogen which is made of lots of sugar molecules
that are stuck together and it can store them in the liver cells until it's needed by your body
we can show you how your liver turns these sugars into energy by setting fire to some glucose we're
going to need a safety screen check protective face Shields check fire gloves check come on
grumbles you too excellent let's burn 8 000 grains of rice over the next three months on a very small
campfire no Chris we're going big we want the kind of glucose that gives a short energy burst
explosion not particularly useful for the human body but excellent for a glucose energy experiment
pick one of my jelly sweets Chris one better in this test tube is a chemical called potassium
chlorate at the moment it's a powder but I'm gonna melt it using these blow torches here we go
we're using this to speed up the reaction that happens at a much slower rate in your body there
we go you ready okay I'm ready stand back the jelly sweet Chris [Music] this is really good
it's
making loads of noise
let's see that again you don't need to worry there aren't many explosions
going on inside you it all happens very slowly but what you can see here is how
your liver turns one substance into another to release energy
we measure food energy in calories just that one sweet contained about 20 calories that's a lot for
one sweet but you could get as much energy from five strawberries or half a carrot that's actually
enough calories to get you through 30 minutes of Sleeping four minutes of walking around or two
minutes of running as fast as you can your liver is the biggest single store of glucose energy in
your body and when you're grown up it will be able to store as many as 400 calories of energy
I mean imagine what the full 400 calories that your liver can store would look like if it was
all burnt at once you don't need to imagine it let's supersize it three two one go
[Music] whoa take a look at all that energy oh
whoa so we've shown you that we get glucose from the food we eat for energy and that it's stored
in your liver's hepatocyte cells in the form of glycogen and that helps maintain your blood
glucose levels your liver is a Powerhouse it can store around 400 calories of energy which
are slowly released into your bloodstream to maintain a constant supply of energy
[Applause]