Appendix

A common disorder of the large intestine is inflammation of the appendix, or appendicitis. Waste that accumulates in the appendix cannot be moved easily because the appendix has only one opening (input without an output). The symptoms of appendicitis include muscular rigidity, localized pain in the right lower quarter of the abdomen, and vomiting. The chief danger of appendicitis is that it might rupture and empty its waste contents into the abdominal cavity, producing an extremely serious condition called peritonitis.

Doctors claim that there is no known use for this little organ. There are a several supposed vestigial parts in modern humans, the appendix being one of them (wisdom teeth being another), but this does not mean they should not know what the function of this organ is (or was). I find this to be strange because it seems that animal biologists and some medical researchers do know what this thing is for.

Adv Exp Med Biol. 1994;355:249-53. “As the rabbit matures, the appendix appears to evolve into a secondary lymphoid tissue resembling secondary GALT in appearance and possibly in function.”

Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 1998 Jun;10(6):455-7. “The immunological function of the appendix is not well known, but ...”

Part of our immune system? I have found many documents that claim a function for the appendix, both in other animals and in humans. If I can find this data, what are the doctors doing in their spare time?

Omentum

I bet you never even heard of this one. The omentum is an apron-like double fold of fatty membrane that hangs down in front of the intestines. It contains blood vessels, nerves, lymph vessels and lymph nodes. It acts as a storage for fat and also might limit the spread of infection within the abdominal cavity.

Spleen

The spleen is the largest of the lymphoid tissues. It is just about the size of the heart and is a spongy material that will hold up to 1/3-gallon of blood. It is located on the left side of the body, just behind the stomach. The spleen is a valuable organ that produces some of the white blood cells, filters the blood, destroys old worn-out red blood cells and returns needed iron to the blood, disposing of the rest as waste. The spleen also stores excess blood for emergencies; for example, when oxygen in the circulatory system is short.

We often hear that the victim of an auto accident has had a ruptured spleen that has been removed surgically. Because the spleen is so soft and spongy, it cannot be repaired by surgery, so it is removed to stop the loss of blood. Why do doctors think you can live without this thing if it has all these functions? And if they take it out, do you need drugs or attachment to a machine for the rest of your life???

Liver

Thirty percent of the blood pumped through the heart in one minute passes through your body’s chemical factory, which is called the liver. Your liver cleanses the blood and processes nutritional molecules, which are then distributed to the tissues. Your liver also receives bright red blood from the lungs, filled with vital oxygen to be delivered to the heart. The only part of the body that receives more blood than your liver is your brain. Your liver is located at the top of your abdomen, just below the diaphragm and has two main lobes. It is the largest gland in your body, weighing 2.5 to 3.3 pounds. When you eat, more blood is diverted to the intestines to deal with digestive processes; when not eating, three-fourths of the blood supply to the liver comes from the intestines.

Your liver also produces about 2.5 pints of bile in its ducts, which is delivered to the gall bladder for temporary storage through a small tube called the “cystic duct.” Your Liver makes the important decision as to whether incoming substances are useful to the body or whether they are waste. Your liver is extremely important and has multiple functions. Your liver detoxifies blood cells by mixing them with bile and by chemical alteration to less toxic substances, such as the alteration of ammonia to urea. Many chemical compounds are inactivated by the liver through modification of chemical structures. Your liver converts glucose to a storage form of energy called glycogen, and can also produce glucose from sugars, starches, and proteins. It also synthesizes triglycerides and cholesterol, breaks down fatty acids, and produces plasma proteins necessary for the clotting of blood. Your liver also produces bile salts and excretes bilirubin.

Historic note: A “lily-livered coward” was someone whose liver contained no blood. The Greeks and Romans sacrificed animals to the gods before going into battle. When the liver was examined, if it was healthy and the blood was bright red, a victory was promised; if it was diseased or the blood was pale, defeat was predicted.

Anyway, back to being serious: This is a very important organ (well, gland actually) and we’ll talk more about it, the small intestine, and the repression and revitalization of their functions in later newsletters.

Gall Bladder

Your gall bladder, a small pear-shaped sac that is situated just below the liver, is an active storage device, absorbing mineral salts and water received from the liver and converting it into a thick mucus substance, called “bile,” that will be released when food is present in the stomach. This bile is released into the duodenum (exit from the stomach; the first part of the small intestine) only when food is present there. It has a storage capacity of only 1.5 fluid ounces (approximately, depending on the body type).

When food leaves the stomach, a secretion causes the gall bladder to contract and expel its contents into the duodenum, where the bile disperses the fats in the food into liquid. Some say this is only an aid to digestion, but given that what is released is mostly waste products removed from your blood by your liver, likely this release is programmed to also get that waste to move through the intestines along with the food.

Now I have a big question here for doctors who blithely remove gall bladders and claim you don’t need this thing anyway (as many Atkins’ Diet followers are beginning to discover): How do you get the output of the Liver to deposit it’s waste into the duodenum only when food is present if they have taken out the organ that performed that function? And what does that bile do to the intestine if there is no food present?

Historical note: Pythagoras, the 6th Century BCE Greek mathematician, believed that life is based on the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, which correspond to the body’s “humors”: blood (hot and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), yellow bile (hot and dry), and black bile (cold and dry). The balance of these humors supposedly determined one’s health and intelligence. We still speak in terms of “melancholia” (excess black bile, leading to depression) and “phlegmatic” (sluggish or impassive) and scientists have named the heavy mucus secreted in the respiratory passages “phlegm.” But then, old man Pythagoras was a bit of a “square.” Pi are not square; pies are round. Oh, come on; where’s your sense of “humor”?

OK, OK, I’ll knock it off for awhile.

The next newsletter will briefly connect these main digestive organs and glands to the rest of the body. Again, my focus on these organs is because I firmly believe that the majority of illnesses we have (or think we have) are ingested by “bad” foods and the toxins associated with them. These things we have just covered (Newsletters 2 and 3) are the main places where sickness enters the rest of your systems, so if we really want to know the causes of diseases, we should start where the disease starts (begin at the beginning rather than merely treating symptoms).

I am also going to attempt something you won’t find in Gray’s Anatomy: a flow chart of the interconnection of all your major body parts. Keep your fingers crossed on that one.

Reader Q&A

I figure that questions asked by one or more of you should be shared with all of you, if they are relevant to the subject matter being studied. However, I don’t really want to turn this into an open discussion forum because we might lose sight of the educational goal by degrading into an urban myth forum, so please send questions or comments to me and I will rebroadcast them if the are applicable.

Q: What do you mean by “vestigial parts in modern humans”? I looked the word up in the dictionary but it didn’t seem to fit your context. Did you mean “obsolete”?

A: Well, no, or I would have used that word. “Vestigial” has a long drawn out definition, and you should note that I also prefixed that with “supposed.” Doctors who refer to a vestigial organ basically mean that we have evolved to the point where we might have once required this thing, but today we no longer need it. I remember, as a child, hearing some science teacher in school claiming that the appendix was for ridding us of airborne radioactivity during the epochs when we had to live with volcanoes all around us. I didn’t question that then, but today that answer seems silly. Some really old medical texts I have scanned imply we have 180 vestigial organs, which today we know to be pure BS because nearly all of them have been proven to be, in some way, involved in the body’s immune defense functions. Some of those are involved only during the childhood years and go away by themselves after puberty (e.g. tonsils). I am guessing, because in many animals the appendix is still in use, that the appendix was involved with aiding the digestion of our foods back when we ate raw meat and chewed on bones (and/or actually ate the bones or at least sucked the marrow out of them). Likely this little sac accumulated things that took a long time to dissolve and might not have made it out of the colon or would have caused illness if allowed to continue its journey through the body. That can’t be the entire use because of its location near the end of the digestive tract. There are hundreds of “guesses” as to what the appendix was originally used for and I haven’t finished my study to the point where I am sufficiently confident I have the right answer to give you.