It's suprising to me that as miraculous of an organism as the human body is, more attention isn't paid to it in general society, more than just the children's song level equivalent of "hands, figures, hips toes." I, for one, know very little about the endocrine system, the jugular veins, the diaphragm (causes hiccups!) the metatarsals (in the feet!) and the patella (kneecap), even though I feel like that should be general knowledge. It was only until MJ injured her leg and had to repair her tibia that I understood how delicate even something so strong-sounding like legs are and realized the fragility of human beings. Also, MJ took a class in anatomy as a prerequisite to nursing school which gave me some inspiration to catch up to her.......and of course I'm constantly reminded (about every episode and a half) how incompetent I am at the human body category (that and the Bible and music/songs categories).
Especially with the advent of the pandemic and the coronavirus this past year, I would have thought books and articles about the human body would get a lot of traction, given everyone's extra allotted time at home. Kind of like the bump in attention that the book "1984" received in 2013 after Edward Snowden's revelation that the government is essentially spying on us, or the bump in books like "Fahrenheit 9/11" after the War on Terrorism. Instead, I think most Americans at least focused more on conspiracies, or whether masks work or not, the history of viruses, and death counts more than how the human body processes viruses and other diseases. We take our bodies for granted that we WON'T get diseases and just spontantaneously combust or run into other problems, but the human body actually works really really hard every day to make sure we're healthy, producing antibodies, using white blood cells, preventing zits (some bodies work better than others in this department), and just making sure our hearts continue pumping all the time (this is vitally important). I can't think of a single thing I've ever done for a 24-hour period straight without doing anything else in between (even sleeping!) but the heart does it 24/7, all day every day! Maybe if we knew how hard the body is working for us we would make sure to treat it like a baby and give it love and attention in the form of healthy food, ample sleep, at least some exercise every day, and minimal tobacco/alcohol/harmful substances, but of course no one likes preachy material and people don't like others telling them what to do, even something as mundane as wearing a mask.
It is kind of cool though that we can monitor generally how we are doing, as MJ does with her trusty stethoscope that she carries around at the hospital and at home. Other reliable ways unfortunately have to do with the digestive system and observing one's poop and pee to see if they are irregular color or unusual smells, the dark side of gauging one's health. Also, there's apparently a cancer-sniffing dog that can detect cancer just by smelling a patient's breath? Seems much more useful than the drug-sniffing dog at the airport!
I also feel lucky that we live in the times that we do now (other than this whole pandemic business) and not, say, any time in the world's history older than than the last 100 years. In the early 1900's the average life span was like 47 years, meaning I'd on average only have 14 more years to live! Really devastating if one of those years was spent locked down in a pandemic. As for the pandemic, it is pretty interesting to read articles on how the virus spreads and is transmitted from one human being to the next. Scientists still aren't completely sure about the causes and droplets in the air and being outside in open air and whether sunlight kills the virus, but it doesn't seem to spread, as some first thought, through surfaces and touching different places. MJ still wants me to wash my hands and gets upset when I touch different areas ( and she likes to kick open doors Chuck Norris cowboy-style to avoid touching them), but I'll continue being careful with my hands because pre-pandemic I was definitley way too loose about touching things and eating (it's a good thing I did these things as a kid too to build up a strong resistance, which is actually what some of the science suggests- don't make everything too clean for a baby/small child because they won't be able to build up resistance to dust, diseases) etc. and letting our powerful immune system develop properly. The human immune system- the eighth wonder of the human world.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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