Think about having a machine which,
under most circumstances, will repair itself if only minor repair is
needed. And even when there are major
break-downs this machine will, with a little assistance, mend itself until it
is practically in new condition. Talk
about a self-maintenance program! Every
several years this machine would basically regenerate into a new unit! We have such a machine and it is US! Before our birth, a marvelous set of
operations have been put into place by the joining of two cells, one provided
by the father and the other provided by the mother. From this union, approximately nine months
later, becomes the person that the world knows as YOU! It has baffled doctors and scientists for
centuries, and research continues on the engineering marvel that is the human
body. Not only is man (and by using the
masculine form I am referring to both male and female collectively as the human
family) a stunning artistic creation, but the way he is “wired”; the
functioning of every organ in his body; the simple yet sophisticated operations
of every muscle, every joint, everything working together in harmony, makes him
Creation’s best output yet. There are
many fascinating aspects about this human “machine”, let’s consider just a few
that have been discovered from medical and scientific research.
Hair
Men lose about 40 hairs a day, women
about 70. Your hair grows at 4
nanometers per second (.000000004 n/s).
Hair on the head grows for between two and six years before being replaced.
In the case of baldness, the dormant
hair was not replaced with new hair.
Hair is found exclusively in mammals, and human body hair is barely
visible as it is thinner, shorter, and more translucent than the hair of other
animals.
Heart
The human heart has a mass of
between 250 and 350 grams (about 9 to 12.5 ounces) and is about the size of
your fist. Your heart beats some 101,000
times a day. During your lifetime your
heart will be about 3,000,000,000,000 (3 trillion) times and pump about
400,000,000 liters of blood.
The heat created from our rapidly
beating heart would kill us, if it were not designed with a special lubricated
bag that reduces friction.
Nose
Your nose can remember 50,000
different scents. Human beings have a
very weak sense of smell, and it doesn’t always work well. However, humans can discriminate between
thousands of different odorant molecules, each with its’ own structure.
As mammals, our DNA contains about a
thousand genes that code for different odor receptors. But as humans, only 40% of these are
functional, which may explain why dogs are better at detecting odors than we
are.
Blood
Blood accounts for 8% of the human
body weight. The average adult has a
blood volume of roughly 5 liters (approximately 169 ounces), composed of plasma
and several kinds of cells. About 55% of
the whole blood is blood plasma, a fluid that is the blood’s liquid medium,
which by itself is straw-yellow in color.
Brain
The brain is a pinkish-gray mass
that is composed of about ten TRILLION (10,000,000,000,000) nerve cells. The adult human brain weighs, on average,
about 1.5 kgs (about 3.5 pounds) with a size (volume) of around 1,130 cubic
centimeters (cm3) (approximately 69 cubic inches) in women and 1,260 cm3 (about
77 cubic inches) in men, although there is substantial individual variation. The brain operates on the same amount of
power as a 10-watt light bulb!
Eighty per cent of the brain is
water. One-quarter of the brain is used
to control the eye. We actually “see”
with our brains, with the eyes basically being cameras. The left side of your brain controls the
right side of your body and the right side of your brain controls the left side
of your body.
Your brain will stop growing in size
when you are about 15 years old.
Although the brain is often compared to a computer, unlike the wires in
a hardwired computer, our brain cells are constantly making new connections and
“pruning” old ones that are unused.
Eyes
The approximate field of view of a
human eye is 9 degrees out, 75 degrees down, 60 degrees in, and 60 degrees
up. The human eye can distinguish about
17,000 different colors.
On average, you blink 15,000 times a
day. Women blink twice as much as
men. The retina contains about 1.25
million rods and 7 million cones. The
rods pick up shades of gray and help us see in dim light. The cones work best
in bright light to pick up colors.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth. Babies are always born with blue eyes.
The first cornea transplant was in 1905, when a day laborer
who had been blinded by accidentally burning his eyes with caustic lime got a cornea
from an 11-year-old boy
Bones
When a baby is born, it has 300
bones in its body. But by the time it
reaches adulthood, it is left with only 260 bones. This is because the smaller bones eventually
join together to form stronger single bones.
The bones in your body are not
white. They range in color from beige to
light brown. The bones you see in
museums are white because they have been boiled and cleaned.
Your bones produce new bone
throughout adult life, constantly changing shape to handle new stresses, such as
extra weight during pregnancy.
Knee
Upon birth, a baby will not have a conventional
knee cap, but a growth formed of cartilage.
In females this turns to a normal bone knee cap by the age of three, in
males the age is about five.
In sports that place great pressure on
the knees, especially with twisting forces, it is common to tear one or more
ligaments or cartilages. Doctors
performed the first successful transplant of an entire knee joint in 1908.
It is hard to imagine that all these
intricacies of the human body only happened by accident as many propose by
accepting the theory of evolution. We
have no difficulties in expressing overwhelming appreciation to humans who
invent (create) new machines that perform unbelievable purposes, but we cannot
(at least many cannot) bring themselves to give thanks to our Creator for the
marvelous way in which he made US!
THOUGHTFUL GEM
"Could you say ONE kind thing to
everyone you meet today?"
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