Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Are We Hollow?

We are used to thinking of our human bodies as solid, and that everything that lies beneath our skin belongs to an inside world. It would be more correct to say that we are hollow. The design of the human body is much more interesting, and artistic than you may or dare think.

Running through the middle of the body is a log tunnel, the digestive tract. The space inside this tunnel (the lumen, from the Latin for light or opening inside a tubular structure), bordered by the inner layers of the mucosa, carries substances that don't belong to you. This strange exterior world flows inside you, transporting foods, liquids, substances, chemicals, and bacteria ー everything that you have swallowed and consumed. The digestive tract controls the passage of all these foreign substances, as they pass through your body from the mouth to the anus during digestion. En route, the foods you eat are assimilated and become the building blocks that make up your body, they become you. 

The digestive mucosa is the human body's customs service: a "high-intelligence service of the state." You depend on its work for your health and your life. The digestion and absorption of nutrients that it undertakes are vital functions, as essential as breathing and the beating of the heart. A bad digestion should be given equal importance to poor respiration or a cadiac condition.

Looked at in a certain way, you really are hollow. Your essence and continuity to interrupted by the lumen of this tube that runs through you carrying foreign substances; this tube is in charge of the vital functions of defence, strength, nutrition, energy, growth, construction of new tissues, and detoxification. 

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