Read the top of each card for the simple version. Open the technical one if you want the mechanism.
Hydration
Water is only useful once it gets inside your cells
Picture it Pouring water on a dry sponge that is wrapped in plastic. The water is right there and the sponge stays dry.
Drinking water is the easy part. Getting it through the cell wall is the part that needs help, and that help is minerals.
The technical version
Water crosses membranes by osmosis, following the concentration of dissolved particles. Sodium and potassium set up that gradient across the membrane, and aquaporin channels let water follow quickly. Drink enough plain water without replacing electrolytes after heavy sweating and you dilute blood sodium, which is why endurance athletes are warned about hyponatremia.
pH
How sour or how soapy something is
Picture it Lemon on one end, soap on the other. pH is just the number for where something sits between them.
Runs 0 to 14. Seven is neutral, like pure water. Your stomach is near 2, which is roughly lemon juice, and that is on purpose.
The technical version
pH measures hydrogen ion concentration on a logarithmic scale, so each step is ten times the last. Stomach acid at pH 2 is a hundred thousand times more acidic than blood at 7.4. Your blood is held in a narrow band by the bicarbonate buffer system plus your lungs and kidneys, which is why no food can meaningfully change it.
Hydrogen
The smallest thing there is, and the thing pH is counting
Picture it If atoms were coins, hydrogen is the penny. One proton, that is the whole thing.
When people talk about acid, they are really talking about loose hydrogen. More floating around means more acidic.
The technical version
Hydrogen ions are single protons. Cellular respiration works by pumping them across the inner mitochondrial membrane to build a gradient, then letting them flow back through ATP synthase, which spins like a turbine to make ATP. Nearly all the energy you run on comes from moving hydrogen ions across a membrane.
Electrolytes
Minerals that carry a tiny electric charge
Picture it Salt in water makes it conduct electricity. Your body runs on that same trick.
Sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. They move fluid where it needs to go and let nerves and muscles fire.
The technical version
Every nerve impulse is a wave of sodium rushing in and potassium rushing out across the membrane, then the sodium-potassium pump resetting the gradient using ATP. Roughly a fifth of your resting energy goes to running that pump. Muscle cramps after heavy sweating are what happens when the gradient gets sloppy.
Enzymes
Tiny tools that cut food into pieces small enough to use
Picture it Scissors shaped for exactly one kind of paper. The right pair makes the cut instantly. The wrong pair does nothing at all.
You make your own. Some also come in with raw food, and heat destroys those.
The technical version
Enzymes are proteins that lower the activation energy of a reaction, speeding it up by many orders of magnitude without being consumed. Their shape is the mechanism, which is why heat denatures them permanently. Worth saying plainly: most plant enzymes you swallow are broken down by stomach acid rather than used as-is. Preserving them is a reasonable argument for cold-pressing, not a dramatic one.
Energy
Your body's only real currency is a molecule called ATP
Picture it Food is money in the bank. ATP is the cash in your pocket. You cannot spend the bank balance directly.
Everything you eat gets converted into ATP before your body can use it. Caffeine makes no ATP at all, it just hides tiredness.
The technical version
You cycle through roughly your own body weight in ATP each day, constantly rebuilt from ADP rather than stored. Glucose enters glycolysis, then the citric acid cycle, then the electron transport chain, which is where the hydrogen gradient comes in. Magnesium is a required cofactor at multiple steps, which is one concrete reason a mineral shortfall shows up as tiredness.
