Tuesday

Why Doesn't My Stomach Eat Itself?


In Texas we eat a lot of Mexican food, but there is one dish that has not caught on very well north of the Rio Grande: Menudo. A loose translation of Menudo is: cow’s stomach soup. Sound appetizing? I’ve tried it and it really isn’t too bad… but some North Americans just can’t bring themselves to eat stomach or “tripe”. If you ever decide to put some stomach in your stomach make sure its 2nd stomach tripe and not 1st stomach tripe… well... I’ll save the rest of that discussion for another day and move on.
If my stomach can digest stomach then why doesn’t it eat itself? In fact, why don’t the enzymes our bodies produce to break-down our food breakdown the very cells which produce them? These cells are made up of the same cellular structure as our food. So it stands to reason that our stomachs should digest themselves.
Well… God created a little cell that lines our digestive tracts by the millions. It’s called a Goblet Cell (pictured) and it releases a Mucous substance (blue in picture) to protect our internal organs from harmful substances including digestive enzymes. This cell also secretes anti-biotic and anti-viral proteins and enzymes to further protect us from what we ingest. Which do you think came first: digestive enzymes or goblet cells? Neither... they were created at the same time so we could eat without being eaten. Isn’t God amazing?

2 comments:

  1. This was the first Google result for "why don't our stomachs digest themselves". You answered the question. That was cool. Then you started talking about how your magical imaginary friend created it. That was weird. Anyway, nice read. : \

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  2. Thanks for the compliment, but not the insult. Your notion that people who believe in a creator have an imaginary friend is... well... ignorant. I don't mean that as an insult, you're just ignorant of the large amount of respectful debate on this issue. (Although it could be you are just rude and intellectually lazy.) I point you to various posts on this blog to begin your education: http://www.follow-the-light.org/2009/11/atheist-no-more.html and the posts that follow and http://www.follow-the-light.org/2012/10/10-to-44th-power-really-youre-serious.html. People who are really educated are also humbled by the knowledge of all they do not know. My atheist grandfather was a humble studious man and would have never insulted another person who was also striving for knowledge. If you are aware of your position then you know it is dependent on chance, and you know the chance of the system described above just happening to exist is so small I think I can say it is off the probability charts. And then you have to deal with the DNA (language) behind the system and processes. Protecting your ignorance by insult is probably something you do regularly in your daily life... you should look into that...

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