That basically means they use water to basically cleave the bonds that connect the individual sugar monomers. So hydrolysis is used not only in carbohydrate breakdown, but also in the breakdown of proteins and lipids. In fact, hydrolysis is the most common type of catabolic process that exists inside the body. Catabolic simply means the breakdown of this is different than anabolic, which means the synthesis of. Now, although there are many different types of sugars that exist in nature, we have five member sugars, we have six member sugars and so forth. The most common type of sugar, monomer of sugar that is used by the body is glucose.