Which organ repairs itself

The liver is the only internal organ that can regenerate itself. In fact, you can lose up to 75 percent of your liver, and the remaining parts can regenerate itself into a whole liver again. Amazing stuff.

Hepatocytes are the liver cells that are responsible for the liver's ability to regenerate; they act as stem cells that can re-form liver tissue.

An aside: Do you know the story of Prometheus? This poor fellow gave fire to the humans. The elevation in temperature also triggers certain cellular mechanisms which help your body fight the infection. Bodies also heal and regenerate themselves through stem cells. As a fetus is being formed in the womb, embryonic stem cells divide and differentiate into all the necessary cell types to mature into a fully developed human.

Once the body is formed, the embryonic stem cells disappear and their descendants, adult stem cells, are left behind. Your adult stem cells divide, producing an identical daughter stem cell and a healthy, mature cell of a specific type.

Unlike embryonic stem cells, each type of adult stem cell only has the ability to become certain types of tissue. For example, Mesenchymal Stem Cells have the ability to regenerate bone cells, fat cells, muscle cells, and cartilage cells, Neural Stem Cells help to regenerate nerve tissue in the brain and spinal cord, and Epithelial Stem Cells regenerate skin. Adult stem cells can reproduce for a long time but are not immortal and will eventually stop reproducing as efficiently as they did when you were young.

Some of these are obvious, and others we are still learning about. We do know that your body needs adequate high-quality sleep, healthy foods, and exercise.

Various types of stress and toxins cause harm. Even your mindset can impact your health. Getting the correct amount of high-quality sleep is crucial. A large portion of repair and regeneration is done while you are sleeping.

Not getting enough sleep not only decreases the amount of time that your body is most effective at healing, it also weakens your immune system. This makes you more susceptible to illness, which requires your body to direct its healing processes toward beating the illness, rather than repairing damage from natural daily activities.

A healthy nutrient-rich diet is also vital for healing processes. Your body needs it for optimal health and energy. Conversely, your diet can be a major source of environmental toxins, which build up and put an enormous amount of strain on your entire system. Diet can also cause inflammation and contribute to digestive disorders. Stocum, Ph. The holdouts? Your arteries, skin, liver, lungs, and digestive tract, and certain parts of your brain. They're all continually refreshed—if you're healthy.

It's kind of like working on your car," says Stocum. A taillight goes out, you replace it. The clutch is acting up, you fix it. It's the same thing with your body. A few parts—including the liver and severed bits of fingertips—can even grow back. Studies suggest that adult stem cells in those areas play a role. Make sure your body has all the tools and parts it needs for a tune-up. Sometimes it's as simple as revving your engine.

Here's how to mend broken bones, bypass clogged arteries, sprout new brain cells, and more—by optimizing your body's regenerative powers.

Your Arteries The damage: Narrowing blood vessels. The natural defense: When your pipes start to clog like I at rush hour, a healthy body can handle the traffic by enlarging existing arteries and even growing new ones. It's a natural process called angiogenesis, and here's how it works.

Links between blood vessels, called arterial anastomoses, normally supply local tissues with blood, like exit ramps shunting traffic away from expressways. These exit ramps can be pressed into service as full-fledged arteries. Terjung, Ph. What you can do: First, clean your pipes. Cholesterol can hinder the repair process. Researchers at Harvard medical school compared tissues from two groups of open-heart patients—one group with clogged vessels and the other with clear ones—and found that the clogged blood vessels weren't able to respond to growth signals.

Laham, M. Once the clot is in place, blood vessels reopen a bit to allow the necessary amount of oxygen back into the wound for healing. Next, white blood cells begin digesting dead cells in order to make room for new cells to form. They also fight infection and oversee the repair process. In the rebuilding process, oxygen-rich blood cells arrive to build new tissue by creating collagen you usually see the result of this process as a scar that starts out red and dulls over time.

Over time, the new tissue gets stronger until the process is complete. For example, on elderly patients, skin and muscle tissue have generally lost tone and elasticity and their circulation may be compromised, lengthening healing time poor circulation in the extremities can also slow healing time in diabetic patients. For obese patients, the risk of postoperative complications is higher because excess adipose tissue, or fat, at the wound site does not have a good blood supply, making it more vulnerable to trauma or infection.

Dehydration, which causes an electrolyte imbalance, can also decrease oxygenation to the tissues, which is needed to promote natural healing. Chronic diseases can also pose healing challenges because the immune system functions at a lower capacity, making patients more susceptible to infection.

Patients who have taken steroids, have undergone chemotherapy, or who are infected with HIV also have compromised immune systems.

Despite the bodies amazing self-healing abilities, sometimes it needs a little help.