The New You
Sit down. Relax. I’m going to bore the crap out of you with science for the next few minutes.
Over the course of reading a few books, I came across the idea that our cells replace themselves on a regular basis. The idea isn’t a new one but it’s certainly fascinating. Every day, once our cells have run their course they pack it in, fold themselves up, and ship themselves off to our liver or spleen for recycling. It’s a wonderful process, almost altruistic, and very much against human nature.
If I were a cell that was scheduled for termination, I’d do just about everything I could to survive. This would make me cancer, so it’s a good thing that I’m not a cell, but many other cells end their lives with a quiet dignity for the sake of us. They do it so often that, if you’re in your forties, there’s a decent chance that most of you isn’t what you were at birth.
A quick search online reveals that the average cell lasts about seven to ten years, but that’s somewhat misleading. Heart muscle cells last about forty years, assuming you take care of them. Skeletal muscle cells stick around for fifteen whereas the average blood cell bounces around the circulatory system for 120 days before it’s shipped off for recycling in the spleen and liver. Skin cells last a decidedly less robust two to four weeks. Many white blood cells last for only a few days.
Neurons in our brain are the only exception, although even some of those are replaced, albeit at a much slower rate, as we age. For the most part, however, we’re born with a limited amount of neurons and that’s all we get. I’m not a neurologist but this idea goes a long way towards explaining how I can walk determinedly into the kitchen only to spend five minutes trying to remember what I intended to do.
Given all of the problems that our brains can give us as we get older it seems a tad unfair that those neurons don’t regenerate. After all if the rest of our cells replace themselves so frequently that we’re essentially pretty much but not exactly us, why don’t our neurons?
Unfortunately, the replacement process isn’t perfect. As fantastic as DNA is at replicating itself over and over again to the tune of 1 billion pairs without an error, damage to the structure accumulates over time. Little caps on the ends of chromosomes called telomeres also get shorter, which prompts a cell to stop dividing. Stem cells also become recalcitrant, which impairs the body’s ability to produce healthy cells. As disagreeable as these effects may be when it comes to a lack of muscle strength, saggy skin, or any of the other unpleasant aspects of aging, the effects upon our brains would be even more disastrous.
I’d even go so far as to say that if the cells that make up the very organ that makes us who you are, that defines your very self, are replaced however slowly, you might wake up one day as someone who isn’t you. And that’s assuming it all happened faultlessly without errors. For some people, waking up to be a different person would probably not be a bad thing. For the rest of us who aren’t in politics or broadcasting or selling essential oils and who like being who we are, the results would be less than desirable.
Of course, consciousness and our sense of self is much more complicated than that. Exactly how complicated is a nut that brighter people than I are trying to crack, at least as far as I understand. Or to be more precise, at least as far as someone who can easily forget why he entered a kitchen yesterday can understand.
About the Author
derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.
Related Posts
Origins of a Cranky Old Man →
The Colonoscopy Files: Part I →
My New Morbid Streak →
