Heraclitus words

6th January 2007

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus made the famous remark, "You cannot step into the same river twice, because the river is constantly being changed by new water rushing in." The same holds true for the body. All of us are much more like a river than anything frozen in time and space.

The skin is new every month. You have a new stomach lining every four days, with the actual surface cells that contact food being renewed every 5 minutes. The cells in the liver turn over very slowly, but new atoms still flow through them, like water in a river course, making a new liver every six weeks. Even within the brain, whose cells are not replaced once they die, the content of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on is totally different today from a year ago.