Bryson's writing is irreverent, fun, and still educational. The main thesis of this book is: the body is amazing, but no, we don't know why it does anything. I enjoyed reading this book, but when I got to the chapter on infectious diseases, I almost cried because it was clear that this was written before the pandemic and Bryson's prediction that the planet was due for a pandemic was so spot on. Anyway, I don't know if this book will stick with me the same way A Walk in the Woods or In a Sunburned Country, but you can think of this as a travelogue of your own body if you like.
I think there's something effortless about the way Bryson writes nonfiction. The body is a complicated topic and there's some science-y stuff here that is pretty in the weeds, but it all makes sense and is witty at the same time. I find his style admirable and if I were a nonfiction writer, I think Bryson would be on my bookshelf next to Didion and Orwell.
So Many Lines I Underlined and Read to My Husband:
"Cadmium, for instance, is the twenty-third most common element in the body, constituting 0.1 percent of your bulk, but it is seriously toxic. We have it in us not because our body craves it but because it gets into plants from the soil and then into us when we eat the plants. If you are from North America, you probably ingest about eighty micrograms of cadmium a day, and no part of it does you an good at all." (page 13)
How terrifying.
"Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast. The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around the Earth." (page 15)
I like this image of my destroyed corpse going around the globe.
"Every day, it has been estimated, between one and five of your cells turns cancerous, and your immune system captures and kills them." (page 18)
Again, I type, how terrifying.
"In regions like northern Europe and Canada, it isn't possible in the winter months to extract enough vitamin D from weakened sunlight to maintain health no matter how pale one's skin, so vitamin D must be consumed as food, and hardly anyone gets enough - and not surprisingly. To meet dietary requirements from food alone, you would have to eat fifteen eggs or six pounds of swiss cheese every day, or, more plausibly if not more palatably, swallow half a tablespoon of cod liver oil. In America, milk is helpfully supplemented with vitamin D, but that still provides only a third of daily adult requirements. In consequence, some 50 percent of people globally are estimated to be vitamin D deficient for at least part of the year. In northern climes, it may be as much as 90 percent." (page 25)
I take a daily multi-vitamin and four calcium + vitamin D tablets every day. I may be one of the few in the northern climes who does indeed get my vit D requirement.
"The idea that all fingerprints are unique is actually a supposition. No one can say for absolute certain that no one else has fingerprints to match yours. All that can be said is that no one has yet found two sets of fingerprints that precisely match." (page 30)
I just...I am undone by this. Is nothing in true crime true anymore?
"In another widely reported study, the Belly Button Biodiversity Project, conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University, sixty random Americans had their belly buttons swabbed to see what was lurking there microbially. The study found 2,368 species of bacteria, 1,458 of which were unknown to science...The number of species per person varied from 29 to 107. One volunteer harbored a microbe that had never been recorded outside Japan - where he had never been." (page 32)
Human bodies are strange.
"Of the million or so microbes that have been identified, just 1,415 are known to cause disease in humans - very few, all things considered. On the other hand, that is still a lot of ways to be unwell, and together those 1,415 tiny, mindless entities cause one-third of all the deaths on the planet." (page 39)
I just hate this. I hate all of it.
"Antibiotics are about as nuanced as a hand grenade. They wipe out good microbes as well as bad." (page 49)
This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
"The rate of antibiotic withdrawals - because they don't work anymore or have become obsolete - is twice the rate of new introductions." (page 50)
See previous statement. If we do enter a post-antibiotic world, I hope I'm dead.
"The pain threshold for noise is about 120 decibels, and noises above 150 decibels can burst the eardrum." (page 89)
I'm mostly keeping this because of my "how loud is the neighborhood" study that I am going to embark on any day now*.
"...more than half of all first heart attacks (fatal or otherwise) occur in people who are fit and healthy and have no known obvious risks. They don't smoke or drink to excess, are not seriously overweight, and do not have chronically high blood pressure or even bad cholesterol readings, but they get a heart attack anyway. Living a virtuous life doesn't guarantee that you will escape heart problems; it just improves your chances." (page 117)
Sometimes when I'm working out, I tell myself that I'll live better in my old age. This has made me start to think that I should just eat ice cream and watch television instead.
"Giraffes, oddly, sometimes have gallbladders and sometimes don't." (page 150)
Quirky.
"It remains something of a mystery even now as to why we have two kidneys." (page 151)
The riddles of human life.
"Even with the advantage of clothing, shelter, and boundless ingenuity, humans can manage to live on only about 12 percent of Earth's land area and just 4 percent of the total surface area if you include the seas. It is a sobering thought that 96 percent of our planet is off-limits to us." (page 189)
Humans are so smug, but we really shouldn't be.
"...we don't know why allergies exist at all. Dying from ingesting a peanut is not something that confers any obvious evolutionary benefits, after all, so why this extreme sensitivity has been retained in some humans is, like so much else, a puzzle." (page 203)
Argh. I'd like an explanation, please.
"Every time you breathe, you exhale some 25 sextillion (that's 2.5 x 10^22) molecules of oxygen - so many that with a day's breathing you will in all likelihood inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every person who has ever lived." (page 205)
This is comforting, in a way. It's like you're still in contact with all of your dear loved ones. Also, it means that you share air with that jackass who bullied you in high school, too, so I guess it's just how you look at it.
"Today just 18 percent of Americans smoke, and it is easy to think that we have pretty much solved the problem. But it's not quite as simple as that. Nearly one-third of people below the poverty line still smoke, and the habit continues to account for one-fifth of all deaths." (page 216)
Smoking stinks. Don't do it.
"If you do get the hiccups and they don't go away spontaneously after a few minutes, medical science is at a more or less complete loss to help you." (page 216)
Again, what is the point of it all if science can't help us?
"The average American consumes twenty-two teaspoons of added sugar a day. For young American men, it's closer to forty. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum of five." (page 232)
But I guess who cares because we're going to have a heart attack anyway?
"Most men have erections during REM sleep...Typically a man will be erect for two hours a night." (page 253)
I am obsessed with this fact.
"...the United States is in a league of its own, with a maternal death rate of 16.7 per 100,000, putting it thirty-ninth among nations." (page 283)
This is embarrassing. The U.S. needs to address the racial and economic gaps in material care, as well as the overall numbers.
"...people born by C-section have substantially increased risks for type 1 diabetes, asthma, celiac disease, and even obesity and an eight-fold greater risk of developing allergies." (page 286)
Imagine how much guilt a poor woman would feel if she read this and blamed herself. Man, this world is terrible.
"You would think that if any condition is universal, it is the headache, but 4 percent of people say they have never had one." (page 298)
As a chronic headache sufferer, I find this astounding. Also, fuck off to those people.
"According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, about 40 percent of adult Americans - 100 million people - are experiencing chronic pain at any given moment." (page 299)
Shocking. No wonder the opioid epidemic is a thing.
"We are the only primates that undergo menopause, and one of only a very few animals. The Florey Institute in Melbourne, for instance, studies menopause using sheep for the simple reason that sheep are almost the only land-based creatures known to experience menopause, too. At least two species of whales go through it. Why any animals get it is a question yet to be answered." (page 353)
Why, human body, why?
"As Daniel Lieberman told me, reaching 80 is largely a consequence of following a healthy lifestyle, but after that it is almost entirely a matter of genes. Or as Bernard Starr, a professor emeritus at City University of New York, put it, 'The best way to assure longevity is to pick your parents.'" (page 355)
I guess this is why I don't eat ice cream and stop working out.
*I've complained about the church bells before. They go off every fifteen minutes. They are super loud. I need to measure the loudness, take a look at other noise ordinances in other jurisdictions, and take it all to the city council.
Oh, requested from the library, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the headaches, as someone who has had migraines for decades. Years ago I was in the office and someone was going home sick, and he said, quote, "It's the weirdest thing, my head hurts." And I just stared at him blankly, like, what? You don't know what a headache feels like? I probably looked like a goldfish, big eyes and open mouth.