I’ve heard of headaches and stomachaches and chest pain and lungs hurting and kidney stones and intestinal pain and muscle aches and back pain and joint pain and gallbladder pain and neck pain and sunburn.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain about their liver.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I would like to think that running would lead a person to lose pounds rapidly, but I have always found, and I have found again this time, that the increased exercise trains your body to want to eat more. So the running program I started in September is not failing, and neither would I say it is excelling. I haven’t quit, which I suppose is the most positive factor.
What happens to the body when you make a sudden change in activity is somewhat of a mystery to me. For example, I don’t battle with hunger so much after a 10 mile run, as I do with a constant desire to eat. It’s as if I can’t stop thinking about eating (something I did not need help with).
So I’ve been thinking of the physical body a lot anyway, because of the way the running has affected me. Then, I encountered some interesting facts in my biochemistry course.
When muscles exercise, they rely on the liver -of all organs!-to supply them with continued glucose for energy. The liver has access to huge supplies of oxygen, which enable it to make energy more efficiently. The liver is right downstream from the heart for one thing, and gets blasted with oxygen with every heartbeat.
But here’s the thing. The liver has to burn more energy to send glucose to the muscles than the muscles receive from the glucose. The liver burns six ATPs of energy to send glucose to the muscles. The muscles break down the glucose and receive two ATPs of energy to continue their strenuous task. So really the body is losing four units of energy overall.
I find it fascinating that this works, and it reminds me of organizations, especially the church. There’s even a chapter in the Bible devoted to pointing out that different members of the body are good at different things. One person or group may be good at actions that help and bless many people. But there may be others behind that person or group who are actually helping supply that energy at their own expense.
Like a liver, they work overtime, efficiently, silently, doing a support job that no one thinks about, perhaps even expending more energy than the more obvious person is using.
And, ironically they rarely complain!
If you eat a large meal of death cap mushrooms (I also read about this in bio chemistry) the first system to complain is the stomach and intestines. People have nausea and diarrhea a day or so after eating the mushrooms. Then, because the noisy organs are now happy, they think they’re getting better.
It isn’t until a few days later that the poison, which settled in the liver soon after the first meal, and began attacking the system of new cell building, that the person becomes deathly ill. Cell by cell, the silent organ dies, until it is rotten.
And, do you know what happens then? Does the body shrug it’s shoulders and move on?
No. Unless there is intervention like a liver transplant, the rest of the body dies too. The liver is that important.
These are the silent movers of the world who are rarely considered.
Until, perhaps, they aren’t there.