What is heme?

Heme is like the special spark that helps your body do big things, like making you able to run and play.

Imagine you have a toy car. To make it go vroom, you need a little battery inside. Heme is kind of like that battery in your blood cells, especially the ones called red blood cells, which help carry oxygen all around your body.

Heme has something called iron inside it, and iron loves to catch oxygen. It's like a little hook that grabs oxygen from your lungs and takes it to other parts of your body so you can keep moving and growing.

Without heme, your red blood cells wouldn’t be able to do their job very well, kind of like how your toy car would be stuck if the battery was missing.

You find heme in hemoglobin, which is the special protein inside your red blood cells. It’s also why when you get a cut, the blood turns red, that's heme showing off!

So heme is like the power source for your body’s super team of oxygen carriers!