Millions upon millions of cells, of all shapes, sizes, and functions. One goal: to maintain the balance of scientific processes that make up the phenomenon of life. We know about the broader strokes of what makes our body tick. The heart beats without ever taking a day off, our blood flows in intricate vessels and we breathe in and out. It’s second nature to us, but there’s a lot that we take for granted. Ignorance is bliss, some might say. However, some human physiology secrets really help us appreciate just how much of a trooper our body can be. Some other mechanisms are downright bizarre!
Evolution is nature’s progress drive, and our species has been through quite the journey. Let’s see how many of these obscure facts you might know in some way! Before we begin, though, let’s get everyone up to speed: Since we’re dealing with physiology, we’ll be focusing mostly on the function side of things. Believe it or not, there’s quite a lot to unpack in that realm alone! Time to start with what’s in plain sight.
Your immune system doesn’t know your eyes exist.
Diversity Within Immunity: The Human Physiology Secrets Of Privilege
Before you ask me to get my own eyes checked, let me explain. It’s no secret that our 576-megapixel eye is one of nature’s brilliant examples of natural engineering. There’s a ton of unique cells and tissues that help make such vision possible. In other words, the eye houses an environment vastly different from the rest of our body. This difference includes everything from cell composition to pH. With such a delicate balance, you can’t have the immune system waging war and causing inflammation whenever an antigen pops in, can you? The eyes have their own, subtle immune response system to reduce collateral damage to this vital body part.
This is known as an immune privilege, one of the most useful human physiology secrets. We evolved this mechanism to protect the more delicate organs in our body. Some other organs in our body enjoy this privilege too, like the brain and the placenta. It’s the reason cornea transplants are largely successful, with no risk of tissue rejection. The flipside to this is that if an eye infection does catch the attention of your general immune system, that’s when it’s going to get complicated. Conditions like scleritis and uveitis are a real pain if they proliferate, mostly because quelling the immune response system is half the battle. Basically, the eye lives rent-free as far as the immune response is concerned!
We have a built-in swimming mode for oxygen supply.
Automatic Conservation
We’re not built to breathe underwater. We’d need gills for that. Nature always finds a way, however. Through a nifty diving reflex, we’re able to stay underwater much longer than we’d normally be capable of. This reflex kicks in whenever a specific set of nerves are triggered. In practice, this means that even wetting your face with cold water and holding your breath can get this reflex rolling! The main goal of this reflex is to keep your vitals steady. As this reflex activates, your heart rate will slow down and your blood supply will be rerouted to your brain and lungs. This mechanism optimizes your oxygen consumption for underwater settings by some clever rewiring. The shift is dynamic too, with the heart rate adjusting itself based on the water temperature. Mother Nature really did think of everything!
The best way to relieve our stress is to burn it, quite literally.
Cortisol, Core Strength & Everything In Between
We live in stressful times. Have you ever felt that you gain weight when you feel stressed out over a long time? There’s actually some foundation to that. Cortisol is our in-house stress hormone, and it’s always on the lookout to keep us calm. Once secreted, the excess cortisol has to go somewhere, right? The only place for it to go is the fat deposits. Like with most other hormones, too much or too little cortisol is a problem.
The human physiology secrets point to staying fit here. Regularly working out has two benefits: a) It sweats out the cortisol from your system, and b) It conditions your body to manage its cortisol thresholds better. Aside from that, there’s the obvious benefit to your mental health and the perception of your own fitness (more on psychology and cognitive bias here). In a way, we’re pre-programmed to accept exercise as a valuable stressbuster. The question is, are we ready for the grind?
Our eyes come with powerful autofocus.
Picture-perfect vision
Whip out your phone camera. Focus it on a nearby object, then quickly shift the camera a little to the side. See that motion blur during the transition? Shaky pictures are a bane. Let’s take a step back, though. How come that never happens with our eyes as they quickly rove from different elements in the visual? Say hello to saccadic masking. The human physiology secrets behind visual perception are complex, but we’ll break it down.
A saccadic movement is any quick shift of the eye. It’s all about speed, so the eye forms priorities. During the split-second of a saccade, the image focusing on the retina goes for a toss. In that instant, you’re basically blind. You can never see your eyes moving in a mirror image. Light flashes? Can’t see it. Movement perception? Completely lost. Remember that it’s just for a split second, though. It’s a fair trade to have clear imaging at all times, without the headache of processing blurry images all the time.
Your muscles aren’t usually allowed to fire at full power.
The Human Physiology Secrets To Muscle Balance
Here’s the thing: pound for pound, our muscles are strong. So strong, in fact, that most of the things they’re attached to couldn’t keep up if push comes to shove. Tendons, ligaments, and bones form their own network with muscles, working together to achieve movement. If the muscles in a specific region fired on all cylinders in one go, you’d definitely break something. Constant soreness is never fun. That’s why our bodies have a self-checking muscle mechanism built-in, by the name of Golgi Tendon Organs (GTO).
These organs are the fuses of muscle circuitry, except that they’re not just single-use. They exist in such a position that any extra tension in the muscles sets the alarm nerves ringing. At once, it sets a feedback loop in motion to prevent excess strain and potential damage to your tendons. Under certain conditions, though, it is possible for these checks to be bypassed. True power awakens (albeit with some damage)!
Human biology is a fascinating mode of self-introspection and discovery. There are so many human physiology secrets that we know next to nothing about. Ongoing research seeks to unearth a lot more about the finer mechanisms of our body.
If you’d like to see more articles exploring this arena, please feel free to leave a comment below, or connect with me!
Work of Art♥️