Your Hidden Superpowers — An Appreciation Post For The Human Body
Take a minute to stop and think about it
Did you know that you have more superpowers than Tony Stark?
Probably not, because they remain hidden within you.
You don’t have to remember to switch them on or off; just like the latest iOS, they run in the background regardless – pumping blood, breathing in oxygen, filtering out toxins and rebuilding time and time again.
Awestruck
I grew up with a nurse for a mother – someone whose full-time job at home and in the office is to nurture and care for. There never seemed to be a clear distinction between work and home.
She’d tell us to wash under our axilla and in our umbilicus, instead of using normal words like ‘under your arms’ and ‘in your belly button’.
She’d describe, in intricate detail, what happened on the operating table that day and educate us about how the human body works. Her love for her craft even made me pursue a major in physiology at university. But most of all, it made me awestruck and grateful for what our human bodies are capable of.
Maybe if more of us shared in this appreciation we’d refrain from treating them so poorly.
So, what are these superpowers that I speak of?
Defence Mechanisms Better Than Any Army
Our bodies are well-oiled machines with tight security protocols. They house our internal organs in a nice, comfy, cosy environment – akin to the feeling of Hygge as the Danes call it. If external agents (viruses or diseases) disrupt this idyllic scenario, a sleeping army of white blood cells awakens and are called into action.
Various battalions, consisting primarily of B and T cells, strategically fall into place. Helper T-Cells kick off the immune response, killer T-cells then target and destroy infected cells but only with approval from regulatory T-cells who ensure that healthy tissue isn’t attacked in the process. Once the war is over, memory T-cells keep a record of the defence tactics to be used for a faster, effective response, should the foreign invaders be foolish enough to return next time.
I can’t even organise my weekly calendar let alone organise my immune response to fight my battles for me. Yet somehow our bodies know exactly what to do.
Climate Control That Would Make Greta Thunberg Smile
Our bodies maintain a constant body temperature of 37 degrees celsius without us having to adjust the thermostat. We can just sit back and let auto-pilot kick in to ensure we never go over or under this temperature.
Wow!
37 degrees is the perfect temperature for enzymes to function. They need this Hygge environment to survive as they are involved in the various chemical reactions that take place in our bodies. If it gets too hot they die and if our bodies get too cold they slow down.
Our internal thermostat is called the hypothalamus and receptors on our skin and blood vessels alert base camp to let it know whether we are hot or cold. Our brains then form a response to get us back to 37 degrees.
When we are cold our body needs to warm up and conserve heat energy. To keep us warm our blood vessels constrict so that less blood reaches the surface, our hairs stand on end and we begin to shiver as our muscles contract.
If we are too hot, the opposite happens so that heat energy can be released from our bodies cooling us down. Our blood vessels expand to allow blood to reach the surface, our hairs lay flat and we begin to sweat.
The world is unable to control climate as well as our bodies can and this is truly remarkable.
Innate Healing Powers
Ever cut your finger, got bruised playing sport or stepped on something sharp? These usually result in superficial wounds that require time, rather than surgery to heal.
How does the body heal without us having to tell it what to do?
As the body can detect foreign invaders, it can also detect when someone has tried to break in. Think of skin like the bricks and mortar of our house, when a window is broken anyone can get it. If there is a cut in our skin the windows are open for blood to gush out and bacteria to come in.
Our skin repairs itself in a 4 step regenerative process:
- To prevent blood loss our vessels tighten and a blood clot forms
- The skin turns red and inflammation occurs to keep the bleeding under control and secure the skin barrier. Members of the white blood cell army, known as macrophages, travel to the site and eat up any bacteria that might have slipped through the wound.
- A few days later the constructions workers (fibroblasts) arrive to start the rebuilding process. They create collagen in the wound and form connective tissue so that new skin can begin to grow.
- The builders then complete the remodelling process over time so that the wound can mature and the skin can strengthen.
Ever started a renovation project of your own? These projects never run on time and are always marred by problems. Yet the 4 step healing process seems to be project managed so well that we can do it in our sleep, without any disruptions.
Transmitting Thoughts Quicker Than a Google Search
Google returns a search in less than 0.2 seconds.
Your eyes can process an image in less than 0.013 seconds — approximately 200 milliseconds faster than a Google search.
Wow! Imagine that, our eyes are constantly responding to external stimuli and our brains then compute a response to that stimulus in under 0.18 seconds.
That’s pretty damn fast and it all takes place along a network of approximately 86 billion neurones in our brain. Electrical signals are transmitted along axons to the synapses and passed on to the next neurone via chemical neurotransmitters. The signal is then received by the next neurone’s dendrites and passed further along. The speed of our thoughts varies depending on the distance the signal needs to travel and the number of neurones involved.
Next time you do a simple task like walking, reading or even just using your phone take a minute to stop and think about all the neural pathways sending signals back and forth, to ensure you can function in your daily life.
Highly Organised Logistical Networks Transporting Blood
Our cardiovascular network puts Amazon distribution centres to shame.
It consists of a vast system of blood vessels — arteries, veins and capillaries over 60,000 miles long. If laid out flat, end-to-end they could wrap around the Earth twice over. Their main function is to transport oxygen to your cells so they can convert it into energy to carry out vital functions.
You breathe in and out approximately 22,000 times a day — let that sink in.
It’s a process that you are unaware of but behind the scenes, there is a huge coordinated effort being played out. The heart, lungs, brain, bones and gut all play a role in ensuring that oxygen gets delivered quicker than AmazonPrime’s next day service.
Oxygen travels through the vessel superhighways by combining with the haemoglobin in red blood cells. Think of them as a fleet of London double-decker buses driving along collecting passengers (oxygen). Approximately 2.5 million red blood cells are created per second to ensure that all the oxygen we breathe in is distributed.
Furthermore, these double-decker buses are pushed through by a very powerful pump known as the heart. Our heart pumps on average 100,000 times a day making the process highly efficient — probably the most efficient supply chain known to man.
Imagine if just one of these elements was to malfunction — it would bring our whole cardiovascular system to its knees.
Please Appreciate Your Body
These are just a few of the superpowers we possess and once you dig deeper to understand the human body you realise that we have many more. It’s phenomenal what our bodies can do without us even actively thinking about it.
No matter how many imperfections you think you have, you need to understand how hard it works to ensure you are ok. You need to nourish it, exercise it and most of all do everything in your power to maintain loving self-talk.
We have 38 trillion cells in our bodies and each of them can hear your thoughts — good and bad. Make them happy by taking care of yourself and your body will reward you in many ways.