Here are a few facts and figures I have gleaned over the years about the human body.
You’re a marvel of creation: 50,000 cells in your body will have died and been replaced by new cells in the time it takes you to read this sentence.
Your fingerprints were fully formed three months after conception. Mathematicians have calculated the theoretical probability of two sets of identical fingerprints (and these dear people possibly need to get out more) as 1 in 1,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 – that’s one in a quindecillion.
DNA contains all the unique genetic information that makes you you. If all the DNA tightly packed into every cell of your body were stretched out and laid end to end, it could make 8,000 return trips to the moon.
There are about 70,000 human genes of which only 78, those found in the X and Y chromosomes, distinguish men from women. Apart from observable differences in reproductive organs, body shape, skeletal structure and muscle mass, male and female brains are wired differently (there are on average more connections between left and right in women and more between front and back in men) and this helps the two sexes to complement one another.
The active bacteria in your body weigh about 2 kilos. Even after cleaning your teeth, there are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people in the world. It sounds gross but actually they are vital to your well-being, helping you break down food you would otherwise be unable to digest.
Your eyes can distinguish about 10 million different colours and shades; if your eyes were a digital camera, it would be advertised as ‘580 megapixels’.
80 of your 206 bones are located in your hands and feet. Your bones are constantly recycling, just like skin. In fact, your skeleton is entirely reconstituted about every seven years.
Your heart pumps 7,200 litres of blood around your body every day into about 40 billion blood vessels. Laid end to end, they would stretch four times the circumference of the earth at the equator. Each one of your kidneys, about the size of a computer mouse, contains a million filters, sifting and cleaning around 1.3 litres of blood every minute.
Your lungs contain around 300 million alveoli and if they were spread out, they would cover an area about the size of a tennis court. The digestive acids in your stomach are potent enough to dissolve razor blades, which is why you need - and receive - a brand-new stomach lining roughly twice a week.
The liver is the Swiss army knife of your internal organs. It stores iron, produces bile, filters and detoxifies poisons, makes blood, fights against germs, manufactures proteins, stores energy like a battery, helps with clotting and produces the cholesterol necessary to make the hormones oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
If you’re a woman, your ovaries contain up to half a million egg cells, yet only 0.08% will ever get the opportunity to help form a new human being.
If you’re a man, your body manufactures about 1,500 new sperm cells every second - enough to repopulate the entire planet - 8 billion people - in just 61 days (but, gentlemen, please don’t!)
You have between 5,000 and 10,000 taste buds on your tongue. Each one contains 50 to 100 specialised sensory cells that detect different tastes.
And I could go on about our genius for creativity and inventiveness, our amazingly efficient immune system, the nutritional perfection of mother’s milk for babies, our remarkable sense of balance, our ability - unique in all creation - to appreciate and be moved by art and music…
Such are the discoveries of science and simple observations we can all make. And the Bible portrays all this, not as an improbable fluke of entirely random chemical accidents, but as a purposeful display of God’s wise and loving craftsmanship:
Body and soul, I am marvellously made!
I worship in adoration - what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
From Psalm 139 (The Message).
Also published at www.kingsdarlington.org
