Experts reveal the “body secret”: Stop saying it is useless!
What would happen without an appendixes ? Experts give answers.
Holiday returned home from the Wilderness Preservation Association Volunteer Task Force, and met her daughter at the front door to send her friends home, and they invited their college-age friends to the community to watch the sea and watch the oil thistles.
I asked them what was the fun thing about this gathering.
“In the afternoon, we took our students to play by the creek next to our community, and I didn’t think they were so brave, some little beetles crawled up and lost their color and were stunned for half a day,” said A. Bo.
B-Bo helpfully explained: “Urban people rarely see bugs, fear is of course! But when one of the friends was traveling abroad, someone in the team got acute appendicitis, which made everyone nervous for a while. It was a real hassle to get sick in an unfamiliar place in life. Fortunately, we did not get acute appendicitis when we traveled by train to Siberia on a self-service trip through the desert.”
A. Bo was a little confused: “Blind bowel is useless and will cause problems. Isn’t it bad to cut it off so that it gets inflamed while traveling?”
At the mention of this question, I was interested: “Who says that a blind colon is useless? Will useless organs that cause serious problems persist in our bodies? Shouldn’t the power of evolution eliminate these deadly risks?”
AB Bao was startled when he heard my question.
A Bao quickly replied: “Isn’t it common sense that the cecum is useless?”
B-Bo thought: “We say that at school, and textbooks are written the same way, shouldn’t there be a problem?”
I nodded: “True, so far, most medical experts still think that colostrum is useless, but some scientists have disagreed over the years and have done some research to solve the same riddle of the appendix.”
I looked up “Our Bodies, Thinking of Wild Nature: The Original Memory and Evolution of the Human Body” from a bookshelf, and went on to say, “The formal name of the appendix is the appendix, which is a small suspended lump of meat located at the bottom of the digestive tract, roughly the length of the index finger. There’s a bunch of bacteria, antibodies, and immune tissue inside. “When the cecum ruptures, the extremely high density of bacteria circulates around the sterile abdomen, forming an infection that poses a very serious threat to physical health and a high mortality rate if not treated promptly.”
Having said this, I suddenly thought of a piece of common sense that is easily overlooked: “You should know, right? From the mouth, esophagus, and then to the small intestine, large intestine, and anus, the entire closed digestive system allows bacteria to exist, and even human digestion It is estimated that there are more than a thousand kinds of microorganisms in the Tao, and most of them cannot grow and reproduce without the intestinal tract. It is difficult to study in a laboratory environment. Therefore, we are still very unfamiliar with the functions of these bacteria. In addition to the intestinal tract, the human body In addition, other blood vessels and tissues are generally sterile. If there is an infection from foreign bacteria, it will cause great harm.”
A. Bo was a bit hasty: “Dad, didn’t you tell me what the hell is good for a blind colon.
I laughed and said: “Don’t rush, this is a very interesting topic that we can think about together. More than three hundred years ago, humans began appendectomy, which saved many lives, and the vast majority of patients who underwent appendectomy have no sequelae, such as living a chaotic life, so most people think that the colon does not function is a very logical assumption, and even think that a blind bowel may be Like a man’s nipple, without any useful function, it is a ‘monument’ left by the process of biological evolution.”
A. Bo continued to ask: “Since it is useless and will cause serious problems, is it not reasonable to cut it off beforehand? It’s like you’re helping a patient pull their wisdom teeth.”
I laughed: “Long crooked wisdom teeth are indeed a new problem gradually arising in the changing times. However, let’s go back to the appendix. Studies have shown that appendicitis has an incidence rate of one-sixteenth of the entire human population. That is, one in every six people may become inflamed with appendicitis.
If acute appendicitis is not treated, about half of people will die. You think that in the history of human evolution, thirty-two percent of the mortality rate is quite high. You have learned evolution, learned about the power of natural extinction, and genetic traits that are fatal or debilitating. It is difficult to preserve them in the gene pool. In other words, there is no danger of going blind. By the way, evolution shouldn’t waste so many resources on it, it should have disappeared from the human body by now. So some scholars say that the cecum is not a vestige of degeneration, but rather developed and finely constructed, just that so far there is not much research to prove its function.”
AB Bao was shocked when he heard this, thinking it was too unusual.
I went on to say: “Residents of backward areas often eat bad stomachs, that is, ingesting unclean or toxic food, and have gastrointestinal diseases, and the body’s greatest defense mechanism is to empty everything in the intestines as quickly as possible through the upper vomit. We just mentioned that there are over a thousand bacteria that coexist in a healthy and normal human digestive tract, and when the digestive tract is cleared, these symbiotic bacteria are also eliminated. Therefore, some argue that the cecum hanging on the side of the small intestine is a refuge that provides a safe haven for intestinal protozoa when the digestive tract is completely cleared of bad bacteria, parasites, and toxins, and then return home.
B Bao thought: “It sounds reasonable, but is there any scientific evidence to support it?”
I nodded: “Recently, people started doing research on the immune system of the human gut. This year’s Nobel Prize was established with a donation from a taiwani entrepreneur, and the award-winning research on the treatment of this type of immune disease. Like the organisms in the cecum, there are studies that suggest that the immune system needs to be exposed to an environment with parasites and microorganisms in order to develop and function.”
A Bao was a little confused: “Is immunotherapy related to the cecum?”
I replied: “We have always thought that the insects, microorganisms and bacteria around us are horrible, harmful, and we want to destroy them completely, we sterilize and disinfect them everywhere, but in fact, humans coexist with many microorganisms and evolve and grow together, like countless bacteria in the gut. “Some experts also suspect that many emerging autoimmune diseases and allergies may originate in the human immune system during development without being ‘infected’ by certain parasites or microorganisms that cause abnormalities in immune function.”
A Bao didn’t believe it: “Isn’t this amazing?”
Bao thought: “This is not Taiwanese slang for dirty eating, dirty manure, that is, children grow up in unclean environments such as mud, but grow tall and strong and healthy; they grow up from a small child in a very clean environment and are weak and sick.”
I laughed, “This may be the experience and wisdom of our ancestors!”
At this time, Mom kept yelling for us to have lunch.
I said to Bo, “There is still a lot that humans don’t know about the body or the phenomena of life, and if you’re interested, I’ll look for some data to discuss with you later.”
About the author｜Li Weiwen (dentist, writer, environmental volunteer)
The motto is “not enough play in life”, the most desirable gifts in life are “compassion” and “wisdom”. The pursuit of wisdom is through reading, and compassion calls friends to work in the public service community, so the focus of life is “reading, friends, nature”.
Loves friends and nature, so he served as a Scout leader almost thirty years ago and founded the Wilderness Preservation Society with friends almost twenty years ago, with the initial office also located in his own dental clinic. Loved to read, she turned the clinic into a library for community members to borrow. She has served on the Golden Ding Awards, the National Book of Good Books, and the Civil Service Commission for Reading Selection Committees, among others.
Believing in the impact of images on the public, he has served as a director of public television and television companies and accompanied children to learn life education from film.
Works include “Live the Joy”, “Lost and Found Flowers”, “Your Phone Won’t Start”, “Give Yourself the Best Gift”, “Read Only the Good Book”, etc.