Listening to the body

(our body’ cells maintain a lesser concentration of sodium and greater concentration of potassium within the cells, relative to their concentration outside the cells. Sodium-potassium pumps numbering in thousands for each cell, do this active transport using energy from ATP. A simple animation is available here. Image sourced here)

Carrying a bit a motivation from the idea of human possibilities that i talked about in the previous post, i decided to embark on a self-designed “self-improvement” program What better place to start with, than our physical system itself ! As the cliche goes, a sound mind in a sound body. Our human body is ofcourse a mind-boggling-ly complex ecosystem of about one hundred trillion cells. phew ! To put things in perspective, a stack of one hundred trillion one-dollar bills measures 6,786,616 miles. That would be traversing earth to the moon and back, 14 times. (math here). Our bodies are really an “ecosystem” in the sense that all these cells are individual units of life in themselves (going by a broad definition of “life”), but co-operating with each other through chemical and electrical signals, to make the whole organism possible, and to keep the organism in homeostasis as much as possible. Ofcourse, if we take the body’s ability for rejuvenating and repairing itself for granted, and keep on badgering it with unhealthy life-style and food choices, it will show up one day as a disease.

Perhaps, there is a lesson here in terms of Earths ecology too, in that there is a limit to Earths ability to maintain homeostasis and life-as-we-know-it as well. I love this analogy of looking at Earth as an giant organism (romantically referred by some as Gaia). Species of the earth maybe taken as it’s cell’s. Forests, composed of tree-cells, are the lungs of the Earth. Rivers, it’s blood vessels, carrying life-giving water to various cells. Oceans, it’s heart, pumping water through the river vessels. Bacteria, its digestive system, recycling matter into elements… and so on, depending on how much you’d like to flex those imagination muscles. You might have already sensed where iam going with this. Imagine what might happen to our health, if we alter our body’s system, in the scale we are altering Earths system. We have to appreciate that Earth is maintaining homeostasis pretty ok .. so far. But we take it for granted, at our peril.

Anyway, as i decided to look for natural living ideas, i remembered one guy who comes on a local TV channel. I googled his name, and fortunately he has a decent website going. Dr.Raju’s Natural lifestyle. Check out the material in Ebooks section. We might find some of his recommendations to be extreme, but hey, “extreme” is relative. Fast-food lifestyle will look extreme to him Anyway, i picked some reco’s that i thought i’d be able to incorporate in my life right way. One of the things he talks about is salt, and he’s quite bearish on it. As i wanted to understand a bit of science behind it, i picked up a human physiology book, and looked for the effects of excess salt on our bodies. Boy, i was surprised ! Whoever thought too much of good old common salt could trigger so many changes in our body ! For starters, a bit of excess common salt will result in:

1. Water rushing out from intra-cellular fluid to interstitial fluid and blood plasma, because of osmosis.
2. This results in increased blood volume, due to increase in water content. And so, increased stretching of atria of the heart. (I suspect the well-known linkage between salt intake and high blood pressure comes in here).
3. Triggers following chemical / hormone changes: Increased release of atrial natriuretic peptide, decreased release of renin by kidneys, decreased formation of angiotensin-II and decreased release of aldosterone.
4. Now the above will result in decreased reabsorption of salt (NACL) by the kidneys, and so increased loss of salt and water in urine. Thus the body attempts to maintain homeostasis by ejecting extra salt from the body.

To me, learning about body’s workings is always an exercise in wonder of its complexity and intelligence. Although body’s workings may appear mechanical, i see it as work of innate intelligence. How do we tap into this intelligence ? From “language older than words”, i remember a quote of Derrick Jensen. I’ll paraphrase here .. “listen to the land. If you listen carefully, it will tell you exactly what to do”. We may as well apply this principle to tap into body’s intelligence — Listen to the body. It gives many signals when our lifestyle goes offtrack, but one has to be in tune to listen to those subtle signals. The signals range from gross physical .. as diseases, to subtler psychological .. as disturbed mental state. In general, i think this principle works very well to keep us in good health. But, there’s a catch. The body does “like” those deep fried fast foods and host of other unhealthy stuff ! Shouldn’t we be listening to the body then ? Clearly, there seems to be an aspect of the body that we should not listen to, but rather discipline it. I guess, we need the services of judicious mind afterall, to engage in the art of listening to the body but knowing when to discipline it.