The Human Body and Discoveries Every year scientists make new breakthroughs in understanding the human body and brain. Sometimes these discoveries are made by accident and other times they are made because scientists work very hard to find answers. Humans have been trying to find out how their bodies work for thousands of years and this has led to some incredible breakthroughs in medicine. Some ancient races became very good at repairing wounds because they discovered the best methods to use. We know evidence has been found showing people surviving ancient brain operations. While the ancients didn’t know about germs as such some of them knew you had to keep wounds clean or you could die. Today we have gotten to the point where some astounding discoveries are being made. One of the things which was found about six years ago was a switch in the human brain which controls consciousness. Scientists experimented with this switch and found they were able to turn off consciousness using electrical stimulation. Electrical experiments on the brain have been going on for quite some time, for over a century to be exact and maybe even longer. A woman who had epilepsy had her consciousness turned off. She stared into space unaware of anything which was going on around her and as soon as the electrical stimulation stopped, she returned to normal. What I find strange about this is the fact even though it was discovered six years ago, it is being talked about again, as if it just happened. There is this relationship between the human body and electricity which has never been fully understood. Our bodies are machines that run on electricity and someday we are going to find out there is a lot more to electricity than we know today. The hope is by finding the consciousness switch in the brain we may be able to bring people out of comas. There may also be other uses for this switch and as experimentation goes on, we may find it is being used in areas like weapons research. The military would love to be able to turn off the consciousness of enemy combatants. A new discovery was made a couple of years ago, it was the discovery of the space between cells which was filled with fluid and scientists gave it a name they named it the Interstitium. The scientists now believe this is how tumors spread throughout the body. I’m not a doctor, but from what I have read this sort of reminds me of the intercoastal waterway which extends throughout the United States and can lead you to almost anywhere in the country. What the scientists disagree about with each other is some of them believe this is some type of new organ where others do not. Another thing scientists have found is pretty disgusting. We all know our bodies host hundreds of millions and maybe more bacteria but in a recent study conducted in 2014 a high-powered microscope was used to search human faces. What it found out made everybody in the study uncomfortable. It found everybody in the study had arachnids known as Demodex brevis living in the pores of their face. Yes, that’s right everybody in the study had them which means we probably have them also. When you’re talking about arachnoid’s you’re talking about spiders and in this case microscopic ones. When knee operations went bad and no causes could be found, surgeons started to scratch their head not understanding what the problem could be. Then something happened in 2013. A doctor in Belgium decided to do more research on knees. After doing exhaustive research he found there was a ligament in people’s knees which nobody knew about. This leads us to believe we may not know as much about our bodies as we think we do. There certainly may be other discoveries just waiting to be made, even in areas we thought we knew everything about. One of the most upsetting medical procedures to many people is harvesting stem cells from fetuses. Maybe this will become a thing of the past due to a discovery which was made. The discovery was adult teeth contain stem cells. This discovery went against conventional thinking since scientists had believed stem cells change into other cells over time. When they found this out, scientists decided to experiment and shot a laser into a tooth and found a damaged tooth regenerated twice as fast. In 2018 scientists believed they had made an incredible discovery. Up until then it was believed mitochondrial DNA can only be passed on by mothers. What they found was there were rare cases where dads could pass it on. They found quite a few people who had inherited their mitochondrial DNA from both their mother and their father. Some scientists decided to study déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we get a feeling we have been some place before, or we have done something before which we have never done. These scientists believe the feeling comes from the fact there is a misfiring of neural pathways. In 2015 a breakthrough was made in heart implant surgery. A man received a mitral heart valve which was nothing new, but the way he got it was revolutionary. The man had no massive scar on his chest. His heart never had to be stopped during the operation either. The device was made out of titanium and nickel. A new type of surgery was developed called transcartheter which allowed for this type of replacement. This has made it much safer to have a valve replacement than in the past. All of us have heard there is no two sets of fingerprints that are exactly alike. This is why whenever identity is absolutely needed, fingerprints will usually be taken. But did you know there is another object in your body which could be printed which is unique? It turns out people’s tongues are all unique and if you took a tongue print it would only match the person whose tongue was printed. There are quite a few people who have autism and scientists have discovered something about their brains. There is an excess of immune cells in brains affected with autism. What does this mean? According to what some scientists have said, this is an indication autism may be an autoimmune disease. A new study was taken about exercise. Most of us tend to think if we were going to exercise, we should just go to the gym or outside and do it after breakfast. The study did indicate something a little different however. It indicated you would lose more weight if you exercised before breakfast. Scientists tested a group of men who are bicyclists and found if they didn’t eat before they cycled and then ate breakfast afterwards, they would lose more weight.
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