In our last blog I shared what was the first part of what it means to be optimally functioning or in other words to have true health. In this blog, I want to share the second part of what it means to be optimally functioning. The second part is about optimal biological functioning. To understand this part let’s define the word biology. The word biology is defined as the study of life of a living organism and an organism has life because of the many processes within it that allow it to keep functioning.
Therefore, biological life is composed of processes and we depend on these processes in our body to function properly in order to be alive and full of health. Some examples of these processes from a gross point of view are digestion, respiration, reproduction, circulation, excretion or immunity. But let’s dive into one of these processes in more detail to give you more of an appreciation of how amazing our human bodies really are. Let’s talk about digestion for example.
The first step in your digestion begins in your mouth and as soon as you start chewing your food saliva is excreted from your glands to begin the breakdown process. Next, you have to be able to swallow your food properly through your esophagus and when it reaches your stomach that’s where the food is ground up by your strong stomach muscles and further broken down by the stomach’s acids and powerful enzymes. Next the pasty food-like substance is pushed through your small intestine where it is then further broken down by enzymes from your pancreas and bile from your liver into its smallest form so that the nutrients from your food can be absorbed to into your body by your bloodstream. Once the food passes into your large intestine water is reabsorbed back into the body and the food turns into a more solid form and the last step is of course elimination. WOW! Now that was an extremely brief explanation of your digestive process. This should give you a sense of complexity of your body. So think about this. Imagine what would happen if just one of these digestive steps failed. What would happen to you? Do you see where I’m going with this?
In your body there are thousands if not millions of process occurring every day. If just one of these steps of these processes were to fail what would happen to you? What would happen to your health? And how many of these failed processes are we even aware of? Most likely none when they first start to fail. So that begs the question that if even one step of these processes failed does that lead us one step closer towards health or towards becoming sick? I believe it is one step towards sickness. And if that leads us one step towards becoming sick does that lead us towards life or disease? I say disease and disease as we know leads us towards death…yikes.
So to end this blog, again I want you, the readers, to think about what controls and coordinates every single process in your body. What is it that makes sure everything in your body is in one hundred percent working order?
Until our next blog, we’ll talk about the 3rd part of what it means to be optimally functioning.
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Dr. Tyler A. Kong
Therefore, biological life is composed of processes and we depend on these processes in our body to function properly in order to be alive and full of health. Some examples of these processes from a gross point of view are digestion, respiration, reproduction, circulation, excretion or immunity. But let’s dive into one of these processes in more detail to give you more of an appreciation of how amazing our human bodies really are. Let’s talk about digestion for example.
The first step in your digestion begins in your mouth and as soon as you start chewing your food saliva is excreted from your glands to begin the breakdown process. Next, you have to be able to swallow your food properly through your esophagus and when it reaches your stomach that’s where the food is ground up by your strong stomach muscles and further broken down by the stomach’s acids and powerful enzymes. Next the pasty food-like substance is pushed through your small intestine where it is then further broken down by enzymes from your pancreas and bile from your liver into its smallest form so that the nutrients from your food can be absorbed to into your body by your bloodstream. Once the food passes into your large intestine water is reabsorbed back into the body and the food turns into a more solid form and the last step is of course elimination. WOW! Now that was an extremely brief explanation of your digestive process. This should give you a sense of complexity of your body. So think about this. Imagine what would happen if just one of these digestive steps failed. What would happen to you? Do you see where I’m going with this?
In your body there are thousands if not millions of process occurring every day. If just one of these steps of these processes were to fail what would happen to you? What would happen to your health? And how many of these failed processes are we even aware of? Most likely none when they first start to fail. So that begs the question that if even one step of these processes failed does that lead us one step closer towards health or towards becoming sick? I believe it is one step towards sickness. And if that leads us one step towards becoming sick does that lead us towards life or disease? I say disease and disease as we know leads us towards death…yikes.
So to end this blog, again I want you, the readers, to think about what controls and coordinates every single process in your body. What is it that makes sure everything in your body is in one hundred percent working order?
Until our next blog, we’ll talk about the 3rd part of what it means to be optimally functioning.
--
Dr. Tyler A. Kong