“There are only two ways to live life: one is as if nothing were a miracle and the other is as if everything were a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein
The miraculous intelligence of the body
The human body is made up of 37 to 100 trillion cells; even the lower figure suggests that there are 75 times more cells in the human body than there are stars in the Milky Way. Trillions of chemical reactions occur in the body every second, all coordinated with each other. Many cells can produce more than 1,000 reactions per second, and each cell knows what the others are doing.
As an individual, I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, but my amazing body effortlessly coordinates trillions of actions and interactions every second. My body has the ability to simultaneously turn a hamburger into blood and bones, wage war on an infection, produce billions of new cells, create an entirely new human being, track the phase of the moon, and maybe even imagine a happier world. This is multitasking on a grand scale!
If I could be as strong as my bones
When human bones are healthy, they are one of the strongest structures imaginable:
–Your bones are twice as hard as granite.
– Your bones are 4 times stronger than concrete when stretched.
– Despite this incredible strength, your bones are approximately 5 times lighter than steel.
Wonders of you: your amazing perception
Our body’s sensitivity to its environment is also something amazing to behold. Here are some surprising facts about our senses:
– The human eye can process 36,000 pieces of data per hour and distinguish 10 million different colours and 500 shades of grey. The eye is so sensitive that if the Earth were flat, a flickering candle could be seen from 29 kilometres away.
– The human ear can distinguish half a million different tones between frequencies of 20 to 20,000 Hz.
– Humans have between 5 and 6 million odor-sensing cells, allowing us to detect more than a trillion different smells. Approximately 75% of human emotions are triggered by smell.
– The skin contains more than 4 million sensory receptors and science has determined that a human finger can distinguish textures up to 13 nanometers wide. This means that on a smooth surface, humans can sense large molecules and single-celled organisms.
– Humans have up to 10,000 taste buds and our mouths are home to up to 200 different species of bacteria.
Be amazed by the capabilities of the body.
Sometimes I wish I could fix things as efficiently as my body does. Every day, our DNA suffers up to 100,000 breaks per cell, the vast majority of which correct themselves spontaneously. In the skeleton, there are 42 billion living cells buried in bone that communicate with each other, known as “osteocytes.” Osteocytes sense where weak bone needs to be repaired and where new bone needs to be formed. Today, there are 2 million skeletal sites where pieces of old bone are broken down and new ones created.
The body is also better at communicating and developing relationships than I am. Bone cells communicate with each other through a network of tiny blood vessels the same size as the neural network in the brain, which contains 23 trillion connections that, laid end to end, add up to 175,000 km in length – a distance more than halfway to the Moon! And these connections are by no means limited to the body’s own cells: the vast majority of cells in the human body are not human cells, they are bacterial cells, and we get along quite well with these 100 trillion neighbours.
And there are more wonders to come from you because in essence, everything in the universe, including you, is recycled star dust dating back 13 billion years. Looking at it, it took billions of years to create my magnificent body, so I pray to all the Divine forces to use it well in the new year and all the years to come.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” -Carl Sagan
