The human body continues to amaze...
Not to get all sappy but I really do stand in awe of the human body when I read about the everyday things it does just to keep us going. For instance:
- Yawning. One theory is that opening wide is a way to keep your brain from overheating. The brain actually burns up about one-third of the total calories you take in, so it gets pretty hot up there. By bringing in a huge amount of air, yawning cools the blood flowing up to the brain, so your can keep thinking/daydreaming/reading Weighting Game.
- Rubbing a boo-boo. You know the instinct to rub your elbow when you whack it on a table corner? (Or, if you're like me, smack your wrist hard against the door jamb when, while doing a drunken striptease on Thursday night, you attempt to playfully toss your top to your husband but instead whip your arm up overhead, resulting in a large bruise the next day). Well, that natural tendency to massage away the pain is your bod's way of blocking discomfort. The sensation of touch travels faster that pain, and the nervous system can only process one of these feelings at a time, so rubbing the owie wins out over throbbing hurt. This is good news for chronic bangers like myself.
- Eggs in a basket. When a little girl is born, she essentially is carrying a key ingredient on what will one day develop into her own daughter: eggs. Women are born with about one to two million immature eggs, or follicles, in our ovaries. Most of these will die as we age, and by puberty, only about 400,000 follicles remain. Each time we go through a menstrual cycle, up to 1000 follicles are lost but one special lil lady will mature into an ovum (egg) which then gets released in what is known as ovulation (unless you're on the Pill or another method, which prvents ovulation by tricking you body into thinking it's already preggers.) So if you happen to be pregnant and give birth to a girl, you can, in a way, say hello to your future grandchild. Yikes!
- Muscles working in pairs. Because our skeletal muscles only pull in one direction, they come in pairs (think quadricep/hamstring; biceps/triceps.) When one muscle in a pair contracts, its counterpart pulls in the opposite direction to straighten the joint out again. Without this, we would be all messed up - with no triceps muscle, for instance, your arm would be permanently bent in that comic arm-in-cast-propped-up-by-a-stick way.
- Leftie or rightie. Now this on I'm positive about, but I believe the reason so many women (myself included) have a larger left breast versus right is because the heart, located to the West, pushes that baby up a bit. Anyone else heard this theory?
OK, off to appreciate my body and the delicious tastes it lets me experience in Nueva Vallarta, Mexico!! Guacamole and ceviche, here I come!!
Comments
Hey my left boob is bigger than my right too!! I didn't realize that other women were this way too... I wonder if the heart also has to do with why that one is also the better milk producer (TMI? Sorry.)
You're right Leslie! The human body IS a miracle. And so is good guacamole - so eat up before returning to the Land of Bad Mexican Food (aka, The Midwest).
