By The Way...

Saturday, October 6, 2007
8:35:00 AM EDT
Hearing Leaving on a Jet Plane -- John Denver
Your appendix? That useless flap of intestine that you generally only notice when it explodes on you while you're on a camping trip? We found out something new about it:

Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut. That’s the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal this week.

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix’s job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The article also suggests that in this guise it'd be somewhat more useful to people who don't live in particularly clean surroundings, disease-wise. Which is to say the appendix isn't particularly useful to you, the indolent Westerner, but it might be useful to someone who lives in a hut in a place where most people don't get much in the way of immunization.

I think this is neat. I still have my appendix; I like the idea it may actually be doing useful instead of, you know, freeloading.

How's your appendix these days?


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This entry has 4 comments: (Add your own)

• #4 Comment from nidexiaofeng@... 
  11/10/07 2:43 AM | Permalink

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• #3 Comment from ondinemonet 
  10/6/07 4:00 PM | Permalink

  Hi John :)
  
  My appendix went KaBang when I was about 6 or so. My sister and I had spent the entire afternoon, prior to the explosion, playing Monopoly and eating Planters Peanuts. For YEARS I blamed the Planters company. ;) But I too have had a history of tummy troubles, so now I have to wonder, or I have closure, I am not sure which! LOL. I won the game by the way. Tee Hee. I was a stubborn kid.
  
  -Carly
• #2 Comment from lcurry8690 
  10/6/07 1:37 PM | Permalink

  I said goodbye to my appendix 27 years ago, but have had a history of gastrointestinal complaints ever since.  So, now this new snippet makes me go "hmmmmmmm....."
• #1 Comment from bbartle3 
  10/6/07 8:50 AM | Permalink

  The removal of my appendix,
  if you have to know, was taken out
  after it "exploded" from my stupid
  going into denial about the pain I
  was suffering, with the additional
  insult to my body of a shot of demeral
  given to me by a senile, retired doctor
  in my NYC apartment building. Recently
  another scar, at right angles to that one,
  was added to the cluttered scenery of
  my abdomin: a scar about 2 1/2 inches
  long, a window through which my hernia
  was repaired with roofing tile or some
  such.  The best, and still best, explanation
  for the existence of the appendix is that
  it's a left-over from evolution. But if you're
  a Fundy, gar' 'head believe whatever you want
  to beieve: it's your Constituional right!
  
  Barry