Can We Take Full Control Over Our Own Body? πŸ€”

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Fellow author @Thremos has recently published an article about the human body and how many things it does are regulated by itself --pretty much without us having to think about it or having any control over it. His article (link below) inspired me to write this article.

Let's get started with one of his examples

Take for instance breathing. You do it automatically. And if you are perusing a strenuous task, you automatically breath harder.

The same is true for our heart beat. It speeds up if we do strenuous tasks. But sometimes, it also speeds up in situations where it is not necessary. Or not even helpful at all. Sometimes, it is even a hurdle: Imagine you want to give a presentation and your heart starts racing... Your body does it by itself, but your body isn't helping you with that...

The body's self-regulation doesn't end there

It's really amazing how many processes our body regulates by itself. Fortunately and unfortunately, I might add. It's great that we don't have to constantly remember to breath and to remind our heart to beat. But there are also downsides to our body's autonomy.

Just think about trying to build muscles as an example. How do we do that? We spend a lot of time and effort in the gym lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises just to stimulate our body to grow its muscles. If you had full control over your body and could decide to grow muscles just like that, all this effort would be unnecessary. After all, all we do with the exercises is to tell our body "you're not strong enough, build more muscles" or "your endurance is not sufficient, improve it". Our workout is more or less just a crude way to communicate with the automatic regulation of our body. The muscles don't grow during the workout, they grow afterwards in the time you take to recover from your workout. And basically, all our body needs to grow muscles is the proper food. And the signal to do so. πŸ’ͺ

Another example is aging

If I could, I would have stopped my aging process a couple of years ago already. I constantly feed my body with fresh food. All the building blocks it needs to rebuild itself. And what does it do? It slows down its own rebuilding. 😐 I wish I could speed it back up. That would probably make me look much younger again. And injuries would heal a lot quicker. My body used to know how to do that when I was younger. And now it either seems to have forgotten how to do it. Or it is unwilling to do so. πŸ™„

What if we could take full control over our own bodies?

If we had great control over some or all of the the processes governing our bodies, there might be unintended consequences. If we sped our cell division back up, that would probably increase our chances to develop cancer as well... If we could grow muscles without putting in any effort, we would build a great physique, but not build the character and obtain the virtues that go along with it.

Would our world become a utopia or dystopia?

I believe that so far, most inventions and discoveries had their side effects and their downsides. That said, mankind has always found a way to make the benefits outweigh the downsides. Maybe not right from the start, but at least after the side effects became apparent.

My conclusion

Generally speaking, I believe that any invention or discovery can and will eventually be used for the improvement of our world.

The only exception is an invention that either directly eliminates us or that has the potential for a run-away-effect. I will explain what I mean by that in a future article about AI - Artificial Intelligence. Stay tuned!

The comments

What would you like to change about your body? Would you want to live forever?

Let me know on the comments!

This is the article by fellow author @Thremos which inspired me to write this article. If you liked this article, you will most likely also enjoy his.

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Comments

hmm, I think I don't have anything in mind to change some parts of my body. I had fun reading this one especially on the Aging paragraph, it is because the more we age our body is also aging our organs will work slowly unlike before when we are you. If we can able to heal our wounds faster and stop aging we will be tagged as β€œmonsters” and we will be immortal. Immortality is sad, we will see our loved ones died while we wont and probably be left alone and lonely in this world πŸ˜†

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4 years ago

I'm glad you had fun reading the article. 😊

I believe if the technology of slowing down, stopping or even reversing aging is available, also our loved ones will have the choice of using it. 😊

I would even go so far as to say that it will be "normal" to stop aging around the mid to late twenties or early thirties and continue living with the health and fitness level of a body around that age.

Once a person decides that it's time to leave the planet, there will probably be programs to help that person with that choice. That might sound cruel initially, but compared to living as long as possible with a body constantly deteriorating, I would prefer the scenario in which I have full control over my body (with technology).

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4 years ago

Oh my gosh, so you probably enrich yourself with the technological advancements if there are any that will stop aging.

Well, it isn't impossible too because technology now is evolving every day. I even saw a robot dolphins or whales (correct me if I am wrong)that looks like the real dolphins and behave like the real one too, so probably scientists are now working for humans too..

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4 years ago

PS: I would be hesitant to use the first versions of anti aging technology. Even with smartphones it took about a decade before we saw phones that were really good and affordable. And probably a decade of feature phones before that and two decades of cell phones even before that. I believe that biological technology might have an even slower development. πŸ™ˆ

With bio technology we are at the stage of the first color TVs, I believe. So still a long way to go before we reach the affordable, excellent smartphone stage.

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4 years ago

Exactly, it will take long enough before that happens just like the smartphones today it took I think 2 decades before we enjoyed the advancement and great features of it. So probably that biotechnology for human will take longer than smartphones development.

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4 years ago

Oh wow, I haven't seen the robot dolphin or whale yet. But it sounds very interesting. I will take a look into that. 😊

Yes, technology has made big leaps and in some areas we have made incredible progress. I hold an example in my hands right now: The smartphone. It packs so much computing and graphics power, display, battery, wireless and camera technology and for such low prices (if you buy one of the lower prices models) that it pretty much replaced the "dumb phones" entirely.

In other fields the progress has been much slower. I'm not sure whether we will see an incredible break through in the next decades or just slow and steady progress as we still don't understand how biology works in detail. But I see great potential for the fusion of technology and biology. 😊

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4 years ago

If you are familiar with the movie β€œFree Willy” the whales that they were shooting there are robot whales..

Yeah, I agree with you that the fusion of biology and technology is has great potential.

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4 years ago

Oh wow. It has been a long time since I watched that movie. Therefore, I can hardly remember the whales. But it's amazing that they had them robotized back then already. πŸ‘

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4 years ago

Yeah, I just know it recently that the whales they were shooting with are robots after watching facts videos.

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4 years ago

this is awesome! I'm glad we can illuminate different aspects of the body =) I had never thought about the idea of our muscles needing the feul and a signal! such a fascinating idea. Thre are sutdies using hypnosis to have people visualize tkaing 3 pointer shots, and people who practiced 3 pointers, and a group of poeple who just showed up the day of. By the end of it the hypnosis people were something like 75% accurate to the physcial practe, while the ones who should up were way lower, like 30ish%. Just the idea of being able to "signal your body to grow instead of pushing it to the point of pain and stress...thats the life right there.

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4 years ago

That's great that you mentioned these hypnosis studies. I haven't heard about those yet, but I have heard of studies in which the participants were to visualize doing a workout (something like weight lifting) and a physical improvement was noticed. I believe this study did not require the participants to be hypnotized. Instead, they were supposed to think intensely about doing the workout.

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4 years ago

essentially the saem thing yes! blah blah but hypnotism by definition is a guided medititation. so its just intense thought towards the process with someone aiding you so you can focus on it while moving your body away from the physical and more into the metnal

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4 years ago

Ah, I see. Thank you for explaining that. πŸ˜ŠπŸ‘

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4 years ago

This article was good and by reading this we can have the idea what happened to our body

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4 years ago

Thank you. I'm glad you like the article.

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4 years ago

That would be awesome if we could use my 100% of our body. That means we could use 100% of our brain. Means we will have super power like movies

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4 years ago

That is a common misconception that we only use 10% of our brains, but in fact, we use pretty much all of it. But not all of it all the time. So, there is probably some room for improvement.

But I believe that unfortunately, we will probably not ever have a pill like in the movie "Limitless" (great movie by the way).

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4 years ago

Yeah.. That's right

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4 years ago

Sometimes our body function does worked by it's own. So we can't control by ourself. You really covered a lot. Keep it up

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4 years ago

Thank you very much for your kind words. I appreciate it! πŸ˜ŠπŸ‘

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4 years ago

Welcome dear 😍

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4 years ago

I think It's impossible to take 100% control in our body or brain. If it happen, that's would be out of mind! Just wow fact haha

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4 years ago

I agree with your point. I doubt that there will be some simple technique which allows us to control such processes.

However, I think that technology could do that for us. I believe that it has a very long way to go in these areas. I'm curious to see how far that will be... 😊

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4 years ago

Live long. Hope you will see it

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4 years ago

I am definitely trying and I hope it won't come too late for me. 😊

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4 years ago

This nice one of article

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4 years ago

Thank you very much. πŸ˜ŠπŸ‘

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4 years ago

nice post! no, i don't want to live forever. it would be nice to have green or hazel colored eyes though... =)

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4 years ago

Why would you not want to? Assuming you can stay at your current level of strength, health and fitness?

Changing eye color would be fun. 😊

And thank you for visiting. πŸ‘

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4 years ago

i just think humans are meant to have a certain expiry date. otherwise life would have no meaning. it's up to every individual to live their own life and to do as much as they can with the limited time that they have. if there's no rush to do things, everyone would just procrastinate!

have you seen the movie "About Time" starring Rachel McAdams?

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4 years ago

That's an interesting point of view. Personally, I don't feel motivated to get something done by knowing that my life will end one day. I believe I would find enough activities to persue for millenia. πŸ˜…

I haven't watched that movie yet. I have just watched the trailer and it looks interesting. (By the way, is the protagonist his own father?)

I watched the movie "Butterfly Effect" that explores a similar topic of traveling back in time to specific events and sometimes wish I had that capability. πŸ˜…πŸ™ˆ

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4 years ago

i won't give away much if you plan to watch the movie. the protagonist's discovery at the end of the movie is what i'm getting at.

and the reason you are not motivated to get something done is because you feel there is a lot of time remaining. that will change as you get older... =)

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4 years ago

Very interesting article dear.keep writing

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4 years ago

Thank you very much. I appreciate it!

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4 years ago

Looks like is non crypto day ;) I wrote a science article about extinction

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4 years ago

Thank you for the tip, by the way. 😊

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4 years ago

Haha, I will make sure to check it out. πŸ˜ŠπŸ‘

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4 years ago

Very interested post

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4 years ago

Thank you. I'm glad you found it to be interesting.

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4 years ago

It's not easy to take control your body 100%. Sometimes many disease break us to control our body to 60%.

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User's avatar Ahb
4 years ago

That is true. Especially right now with the world wide pandemic, we can be happy if we stay healthy.

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4 years ago

We can't take full control pf our body. Most of the events that happen within our body are already 'programmed' such as breathing and sleeping. Say breathing fpr example, no matter how much you keep yourself from sleeping, time will come that your body will give up when it becomes very tired. It will shutdown like a machine does.

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4 years ago

I agree with you. I doubt there will be a breathing exercise or technique which allows us to access such processes. But I believe that technology could help in these areas. I'm curious to see that play out.

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4 years ago

I'm also curious and excited to see what technology could do about it. Let's see in the future.

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4 years ago

Good article although I felt like youu were going off the subject when you mentioned inventions. Do I want to live forever? Maybe. It's a tough question that I would honestly have to think about, the biggest being do I want to seee my loved ones die or this world become worse?

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4 years ago

Thank you for your feedback. I can totally see your point. But let me elaborate why I went into inventions:

If we managed to control processes in our body which we currently cannot access or which take a lot of effort to influence and we manage to reduce the effort significantly, I think this could be called an invention. That is true no matter how much or little technical the solution turns out to be.

That is why I went there.

When it comes to living for forever, remember that other people would probably also have that capability if you had it. Unless it's exclusive for the extremely wealthy. However, any technical solution rarely remains accessible only for a few. Most trickle down to (almost) everybody.

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4 years ago

Ahh I understand now. Thank you for clearing that up.

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3 years ago

You're welcome. Thank you for your reply. 😊

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3 years ago

We actually need to control our body by itself.

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4 years ago

How do you mean that? Could you elaborate a bit more?

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4 years ago

I can relate to the ageing you discuss. Not me but Mum. If only her body is as good as when she's young she's the healthiest 87 years old in town! She feels like she doesn't own her body and no matter exercise and breathing gadgets she used still not doing any good.

Can I lose the belly fats without exercising or even if I eat anything and everything? Lol I don't like the idea of dying and living forever is not for me to decide anyway. I just wish I live and to see my children happy and build their own family. :)

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4 years ago

Yes, I notice it already as a healthy 35 year old who tries to eat healthy, doesn't consume alcohol, tries to avoid sugar and works out at least 4 times a week. πŸ™ˆ

I believe it will be only downhill from here on forward. πŸ™ˆ I definitely try to slow down the deterioration as much as possible, but it's a battle I will lose eventually. The question is just when.

Is your mum really 87 years old or is that a typo? Because you look like you're in your twenties. That would make your mother about 60 years old when she gave birth to you. πŸ˜…

Thank you for the tip, by the way!

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4 years ago

Omy you're very fit!!!! Sexy man! πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

My knees are very bad when it's cold I feel 60 for goodness!

Sorry to confuse you it's my Mum in law. And my age is not on the calendar already don't flatter me with 20's(I wish)

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4 years ago

Hehe. πŸ˜‚

Ah, I see. That makes sense. 😊

Well, you do look a lot younger than you are apparently. 😊

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4 years ago

Thank you. 😊

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4 years ago