The Gift That Keeps on Giving

What’s on your wish list this year? Maybe you are hoping for a new doll or a new truck. Maybe you are hoping for something more exotic like a hatchimal or a drone. Or maybe you want what my mom always asked for—peace on earth. Whatever you are hoping for, at this time of year when gift giving and gift getting is on nearly everyone’s mind, it seems like the perfect time to talk about one of the greatest gifts of all time—your AMAZING body!

Of course it’s an AMAZING story how your body came to be in the first place… two little cells, one from your mom and one from your dad that grew into AMAZING YOU… WOW! However, what’s equally AMAZING and maybe even MORE AMAZING is that you keep re-creating yourself all the time! That’s right, your body is constantly getting rid of old sick and dying cells and replacing them with new (and hopefully) healthy cells.

While there is no way to know the exact number of cells your body is creating every day, even a good estimate will absolutely astound you! Consider that cells die at a rate of about 50 to 70 billion cells die each day (in an average adult.) That means your body has to, at the very least, replace those. For younger people who are still growing, they have to replace what they lose (which is fewer than the adult), but they have to produce more cells than they lose to account for growth! In addition to those, however, your body is constantly replacing red blood cells. Every second, 2.5 million red blood cells die (don’t worry… that’s a small number compared to the trillions of cells you have in your body). To replace those, your body makes new ones at a rate of about 2 million per second (in a healthy adult). Since there are 86,400 seconds in a day, that means that your body produces over 172 billion red blood cells alone EVERY DAY! That’s a total of 222 billion to 242 billion cells produced every day by the average human body. That requires an enormous amount of organization, intelligence, and work! How does your body do it!?

Well, you have an intelligence within you that you are born with. We all do. And that wisdom not only creates our bodies but keeps it working in organized fashion for our whole lives. It uses your nerve system to communicate and coordinate.

Chiropractors check to make sure that your inborn wisdom is expressed as fully as possible. They do that by making sure that the bones of your spine aren’t disrupting the function of your nerve system. The clearer you nerve system, the better the communication and the better you can be the organized, intelligent, hard-working, AMAZING person you were meant to be! What Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh applies to you, too, “Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” You are AMAZING! A gift that keeps on giving. Don’t EVER forget it.

—By Judy Nutz Campanale, DC, ACP, FCSC (hon)

Provided and published by ICPA. For more information, visit discoverkidshealth.com