Human cells are microscopic in size, yet their jobs are larger than life

Wednesday, December 16, 2015 by: Julie Wilson staff writer
Tags: biological cells, good reads, fascinating facts

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(NaturalNews) The complexity of the human body is difficult to grasp, even for researchers who devote their entire lives to studying it. One of your body's most fascinating concepts is its intricately designed cellular structure, and the way in which cells communicate, function, die and regenerate. Click here for striking images of a cell's natural beauty.

In their book Decoding the Human Body-Field: The New Science of Information as Medicine, authors Peter H. Fraser and Harry Massey help readers begin to understand the importance of every day cellular processes. The following is an excerpt from their book:

"No one knows exactly how many cells make up the human body, but the numbers are beyond imagining. At birth, your body has about ten thousand trillion cells. However, because that number decreases radically as you develop, by the time you are an adult your body contains between 50 trillion and 100 trillion cells, which can be grouped into about two hundred different types. It's impossible to make sense of such huge numbers.

"To get a handle on it, imagine you have a metronome that makes an audible click with each swing of the arm. As the arm swings to the left, click. Back to the right, click. If you heard a click every second, it would take more than 31,546 years to tick off one trillion seconds. If you heard a click once a second for every cell in your body, using the conservative estimate of 50 trillion cells, you would be listening for more than 1.5 million years!"

30 trillion red blood cells circulate through the human body

"However, only about 10 percent of these cells make up the solid aspects of your body, such as your bones and tissues. Approximately 40 percent make up the nonsolid parts of you, such as your blood and lymphatic fluids. You have about 30 trillion red blood cells and 500 million white blood cells circulating through your body. Your lymph system is crowded as well, as it contains roughly one trillion lymphocytes and other immune cells.

"The other half of the cells in your body are bacterial cells, most of which are beneficial and inhabit your digestive system. To get a true count, you will need to decide if you want to include the cells of the 100 trillion microorganisms that call your eyeballs, mouth, nose, ears, skin, and other areas of your body home. Our bodies are actually vast ecosystems for these organisms, many of which we could not live without because they contribute to the vital functioning of our bodies.

"It only makes sense that with so many trillions of cells in our bodies, cells are indeed tiny things. How tiny? About twenty microns wide, on average. To appreciate just how small the average human cell is, imagine marking off one inch on a piece of paper. If you laid average-size cells side by side, you would be able to fit 1,270 into that inch."

Though tiny, cells contain dozens of microscopic structures

"If you are like most people, you can hardly conceive of anything so small. So it comes as a shock to think that a cell, which seems so incredibly tiny as to be almost nothing, is intricately structured and massively crowded. At the scale of chemistry, it is actually huge: it houses more than a dozen structures inside of itself and more on its surface, and it is host to uncountable numbers of molecules that zip in and out of it every second.

"Although cells are incredibly tiny, they are intricately constructed, containing dozens of smaller, functioning structures within them that coordinate thousands of processes. Every cell is the center of a whirlwind of activity, doing everything that is necessary to keep you alive.

"Every second millions of cells die. They have to be identified and then dismantled and swept from the body, even as new cells are being born to replace them. Take the red blood cells in your body. Every second almost three million red blood cells die, and every second new blood cells are made to replace them."

For more on the way information is coordinated throughout the human body, be sure to pick up a copy of Fraser and Massey's book today.

Sources:

Amazon.com

DailyMail.co.uk