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The self repairing body |
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Arnab Bose
halloarnab@gmail.com
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Your body has warranty on many important organs. Here's how to cash in before it expires.
If humans were like salamanders, that careless carpenter down the street would have a full set of fingers. But soon after our primordial ancestors slithered out of the muck, limb regenesis was chucked out of our genetic portfolio like John Bobbitt's infamously severed manhood. The good news: our bodies still retain some important repair mechanisms.
"Regeneration is actually a default state when we're embryos," says David L Stocum, PhD, a regenesis researcher and dean of the school of science at Indiana University-Purdue University. "We gradually lose that ability as we develop-except in certain kinds of tissues."
The holdouts? Your arteries, skin, liver, lungs, digestive tract, and certain parts of your brain. They're all continually refreshed-if you're healthy. "It's called maintenance regeneration. It's kind of like working on your car," says Stocum. "You've got something going on-you're low on oil, you buy few litres. A taillight goes out, you replace it. The clutch is acting up, you fix it. It's the same thing with your body." (A few parts-including the liver and severed bits of fingertips-can even grow back. Studies suggest that adult stem cells in those areas play a role.)
Make sure your body has all the tools and parts it needs for a tune-up. Sometimes it's as simple as revving your engine. Here's how to mend broken bones, bypass clogged arteries, sprout new brain cells, and more-by optimising your body's in-built regenerative powers.
YOUR ARTERIES
The natural defence: When your pipes start to clog like Mumbai's Western Express Highway at rush hour, a healthy body can handle the traffic by enlarging existing arteries and even growing new ones. It's a natural process called angiogenesis, and here's how it works.
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Think of your arteries as pipes that power a machine. Keeping them clean helps
Links between blood vessels, called arterial anastomoses, normally supply local tissues with blood, like arterial roads shunting traffic away from expressways. These arterial roads can be pressed into service as full-fl edged arteries.
"The cells in the vessel are able to detect when stress is increased, and that prompts signals that enlarge the anastomoses," explains Dr Sharukh Golwalla, cardiologist and MH advisory board member. "Blood can cross over [to an unclogged vessel] and keep going."
What you can do: First clean your pipes. Cholesterol can hinder the repair process. Researchers at Harvard Medical School compared tissues from two groups of open-heart patients-one group with clogged vessels and the other with clear ones-and found that the clogged blood vessels weren't able to respond to growth signals. "Angiogenesis can't occur if the cells in the blood vessel are damaged or blocked by cholesterol," says Dr Golwalla. So keep your cholesterol low.
Make your own detours by running, swimming, shooting hoops-whatever it takes to get your blood pumping. A 2004 study published in the journal BMC Physiology found that endostatin, a factor involved in arterial growth, shot up by an average of 73 per cent in healthy volunteers after about 10 minutes on a treadmill at an average of 8kmph. Even better: the effects lingered for up to two hours, and the harder the subjects worked, the more endostatin was released.
YOUR BONES
The damage: A broken bone
The natural defence: "The healing response is generated by the living parts of the bone, the cells that live within the matrix," says Dr T Sringari, joint replacement and orthopaedic surgeon, Paras Hospitals, Gurgaon.
No, Keanu, healing faster isn't a matter of choosing the red or blue pill. The matrix Dr Sringari is talking about is the lightweight but durable calcium carbonate structure that makes up most of your bone. Inside little pockets in the matrix are living cells, including bonebuilding osteocytes. When you break a bone, they're released from the pockets.
What you can do: Eat your greens. They'll give you loads of vitamin K, a compound that helps lock bone cells into place as they lay down new scaffolding. One serving of spinach or broccoli provides more than the recommended intake. This is important as "deficiency of a required substance can slow down the healing process", says Dr Vikas Gupta, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Fortis, New Delhi. And bring on the chutney-mashed avocados and tomatoes are good sources of vitamin K, too. Never heard of vitamin K? No surprise: less than 50 per cent of all men ages 18 to 44 get enough of it, researchers at Tufts University found.
Besides the K, you also need the C, "a vitamin that aids the formation of collagen fibres during bone healing", says Dr Sringari. Also take in more calcium in the form of milk and milk products, he adds, and stay off tobacco and aspirin.
Don't take it lying down. A busted bone isn't a sixmonth excuse to sit on your butt. "At some point, you have to introduce a modicum of stress on the bone to stimulate those osteocytes to lay down more bone," says Sherwin SW Ho, MD, an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Chicago. Most breaks are ready for light stress at six weeks.
Initially, Dr Ho gives his patients squeeze balls and a regimen of light curls for arm breaks, and crutches for leg breaks. "Once you're ready for heavier exercise, you should do a couple of sets of 15 to 20 repetitions per day at the highest resistance you can complete without pain," says Dr Ho. |
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