Our Body, a Marvel, a Machine...
The human body is the best work of Art
( Jess C. Scot)
How many of us really know our body well ? I definitely didn't know it well until recently.
We can play the "naive" card and say "well, I am not a physician" to know my body and try to escape this question. But, that doesn't help as our proof of existence is our body and nothing else.
Yes, everyone of us MUST understand the What, How and Why of our body. Let me share what were my leanings about our body recently!
First let me talk about our "Heart" - This is one beast of an organ that cant skip a beat ( literally...) On average the heart pumps about 7600 litres of blood every day !! When it comes to its actual beats, on average again there will be 86400 - 144000 beats a day. Do we even realise the laborious task of this organ day and night to keep us alive? I guess, most of us don't and instead we make our heart work harder many times. Our diets are very high in saturated fats (processed foods) that clogs our arteries, very similar to an old pipe under the kitchen sink with waste. This means, the heart must pump (or beat) even more blood to get to the other organs or body tissues which in-turn increases the load on the organ which may eventually fail. Imagine how you will feel if someone asks you to climb 100 more stairs after you went to the top of Burj Kalifa via Stairs, I'm sure you will not be pleased. But our heart doesn't stop and meets any extra load and keeps "beating" and that is why our heart is so precious to care for. If you think of our heart as a water pump that helps blood to reach various organs, then the load on this pump must be optimal, otherwise the fail is inevitable.
Lets move down to our Gut - Scientists are calling this "our second brain", the simple reason being the gut has its own nervous system so it can carry our certain tasks without information from our brain.
From the time we put some food in our mouth, the food will travel approx 30 feet before it reaches the exit. Our gut has an amazing sequence of events to process the food, starting from
------> Esophagus (pipe from mouth to stomach that carries the food)
------> Stomach ( where enzymes break food to small size)
------> Small bowel (where liquid from Pancreas, Liver, Gall Bladder are added to food and the blood carries the nutrients from here)
------> Colon (all the liquid is absorbed here, so mostly creating a solid waste)
------> Rectum (A waste storage where all the left over from the previous steps are stored and excreted via anus as stools)
So next time when you eat a slice of Pizza think of the 30 feet tunnel, so make a wise choice and help your organs by eating foods that are high in Fiber (aka Vegetables). Fiber is digested slowly which means more nutrition absorption, easy excretion and a healthier life !
Similarly we have other important organs like our Liver (A Detox demigod), Kidneys (The twin filters), Pancreas (The Regulator - keeps blood sugar in check), Spleen (Dual actor - Recycles Red blood cells and stores White blood cells) and Brain. I left this at the bottom even though this should be at the top, just because I can detail the the complexities of the other organs first. Now your "brain" is tuned in to absorb the more interesting facts of the brain itself. Visualise as if your brain sees itself in the mirror :)
The brain needs no exaggeration for its importance, the very fact that made me think hard was "Brain doesn't feel pain". Yes, our brain when surgically operated don't feel any pain as there are no pain receptors in the brain itself. Isn't it interesting? there are many more such fun facts. But for now, I want to really talk about the real power of our brain.
Our brain as most of us know, has left and right sides. Left controls right, right controls left side functions of the body. Further there are 4 quadrants in our brain each having their own functions. I don't want to make this your biology lesson, but the shear complexity of brain is such that there are plenty of unknowns about its behaviour. But the beauty lies in this very uncertainty of the brain and its functions. A term often heard is neuroplasticity (simply understood as "brain wiring" itself), our brain is amazing that it can move some functions from one area of the brain to another completely when required.
So for example a 6 year old child having a brain surgery and looses half of his/her brain, by the age of 18 they can regain the entire brain function of a normal adult. This itself is one heck of brain's brilliance at a time of adversity to rewire itself.
Since brain is so crucial, it is in a very protected case(skull) and it comes with a blood brain barrier. BBB stops pathogens(bacteria or virus) to enter our brain, without BBB our brain can be completely exposed to dangers from other parts of body. This gatekeeper that controls who enters and who doesn't is a trusted soldier of brain. Just imagine,how the entire ecosystem must be tightly coupled so all these things happen seamlessly.
So next time when you struggle with a maths question, don't worry ! Your wiring is probably done differently to be an expert "Artist" who can draw a beautiful picture of something!
We are all different in our body features - skin, eyes, hair, height to name a few, but the cognitive feature is an invisible one that makes every one of us an unique entity. So trying to be someone in looks might work, but trying to be someone's mind is never possible.
The body that is so superior in its design and function, is a marvellous machine that no one ever could understand its full potential. Being "Bodywise" is a must and not an option !
