“Though not the first to do so, he performed an ingenious experiment on meat broth in sterile flasks and proved definitely that air contains no “vitalizing element,” no spirit that can summon life from dead matter. Life is built solely, if mysteriously, from elements on the periodic table”
Have you ever wondered what periodic elements exist in your body and what role they play in keeping you alive? Overall, there are about twenty-five known elements that play an essential role in the human body. To break it down even further, there are four main elements that make up 96% of your body. The remaining 4% of your body is made up of 3.5% major elements and 0.5% trace elements, each playing a vital and continuous role in keeping us alive and functioning.
The four main elements in our body are oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. These elements contribute to a majority of our body weight and play a vital role in our bodies. Even though oxygen makes up 65% and hydrogen makes up 10% of our body weight, they are both still responsible for forming water. Water constitutes 60% of the human body and participates in multiple metabolic reactions that help maintain homeostasis by moving nutrients, antibodies, and other essentials thought the body. In addition, carbon makes up 18% of our body weight and plays a role in metabolic reactions. A single carbon reaction plays an important role in amino acid metabolism, which leads to DNA and RNA. Lastly, nitrogen makes up 3% of our body weight and plays an important role in building our DNA. DNA is the genetic information that gives each person their unique characteristics and qualities. Our nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, are made partly out of four nitrogen bases. Although these four elements play a significant role in our body, this does not imply that the smaller elements are insignificant.
Trace elements make up a small amount of our bodies and they play specific roles in maintaining homeostasis. The human body only needs a small amount of trace elements. For example, iron is found in hemoglobin, a red protein that transports oxygen into the blood of vertebrates. Iron is responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the remainder of the body. Oxygen allows cellular respiration reaction to occur. Cellular respiration is when your body creates ATP, a high energy molecule, that burns the fatty and sugar acids in our cells to produce energy. As shown though iron, trace elements still carries a great amount of importance. This furthermore reveals that trace elements exist in our bodies for a reason; they exist because we need them.
Whenever we think about elements, we think about chemistry, the periodic table, scientific experiments, and perhaps even The Big Bang when the creation of elements began. However, we never stop to think about why these elements are in our bodies and how perfectly the ratio of these elements sustain in our bodies. Let’s think about this logically. Assuming that The Big Bang theory is true, one can conclude that the elements were all created from hydrogen and helium which eventually created the Earth. Therefore, one may conclude that these elements created life itself. Humans have elements in their bodies because we were created by the Earth and the Earth was created from elements. Additionally, as time passes, the first life forms on Earth continued to evolve. The alterations in our bodily structure results in the ratio of elements in our bodies to change, making it possible for humans to survive.
