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Source of Life Energy

FreeChile

Graduate Poster
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Feb 10, 2005
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Here's another curious question I've had for a while now and it may have a very solid scientific explanation.

Where does the animal body get it's power from? I imagine it is from nutrition. However, I also understand a human being can go for 60+ days without eating and 3-5 days without drinking.

I guess the mystics would explain this in terms of prana, life energy, the source, the spirit. However, these become circular when you ask where those get their power from. Another problem I have with the spirit think is that it separates from the body at times (like in dreams) to Fantasy Land. This would mean the body is disconnected from its source of power and would have no reason to function anymore. Yet, during sleep, this is not the case as vital organs continue to function.

I remember someone asking another question that seems related to this in the past. I think the question was "if you had a mental reboot switch, would you use it." I guess one way to reboot the human body would be to separate it from its source of power.

Any thoughts or ideas?

And may The Force be with you...
 
Uhh, what do you think is the purpose of eating? We get energy from our food, in the form of various combustible substances, mainly carbohydrates and lipids (fats).

The combustible stuff is stored in various ways in our body, in fat depots and other places. So when we have not recently eaten, we draw on these stores. Depending on your initial condition and the amount of energy you are needing in the given situation your stores will hold out for quite some time, although 60 days without eating (at all) is long. Most will not be able to make that. Also in situations where your energy requirments are high, you will last considerably shorter.

The energy exchange of the body is well explored, and we putput, over time, exactly what we input. No need to call on some mysterious force here.

There is, in fact no need to resort to a spirit to explain any function of our bodies, including dreams. Although some will try to contradict this, they are all well encompassed in a materialistic model.

Hans
 
May I ask why you don't start your scientific queries on the Science board? There are people over there, such as Rolfe, Badly Shaved Monkey and ThirdTwin that are quite qualified to answer you, and I don't think they venture into Religion & Philosophy very often. Although you did get the omnipresent MRC_Hans to answer you ;)
 
Because I rarely browse individual forums. Instead I use the "view new posts" function. :p.

Hans
 
FreeChile said:
I remember someone asking another question that seems related to this in the past. I think the question was "if you had a mental reboot switch, would you use it." I guess one way to reboot the human body would be to separate it from its source of power.
Click to expand...
Isnt going to bed every night a mental reboot?
 
Re: Re: Source of Life Energy

Yahweh said:
Isnt going to bed every night a mental reboot?
Click to expand...
Yes it is. I am thinking more of a complete reboot, like a computer, not just a mental one. Could we cause all bodily functions to stop? Even during dreamless sleep, this is not possible as the body is breathing and the heart is pumping blood. At least that is what I am told happens in that case.

So it appears that the body as a computer is always in perpetual motion, unlike any other machines we know. Well, maybe the computer is close to it since it maintains a bios chip with a battery. But even this can be disconnected. Is it possible to disconnect the human BIOS chip?
 
Re: Re: Re: Source of Life Energy

hammegk said:
Not so far as *I* can tell .... How about you? ;)
Click to expand...
You are correct it is not a reboot since the memory remains intact. Sleeping at night is more like a standby function.
 
As far as the computer analogy is concerned, not all memory is wipe in a reboot. Only the RAM is wiped not the ROM, and you could probably argue that the data on a hard drive could count as well.
 
Re: Re: Re: Source of Life Energy

FreeChile said:
Yes it is. I am thinking more of a complete reboot, like a computer, not just a mental one. Could we cause all bodily functions to stop? Even during dreamless sleep, this is not possible as the body is breathing and the heart is pumping blood. At least that is what I am told happens in that case.

So it appears that the body as a computer is always in perpetual motion, unlike any other machines we know. Well, maybe the computer is close to it since it maintains a bios chip with a battery. But even this can be disconnected. Is it possible to disconnect the human BIOS chip?
Click to expand...

1) Are you seriously stating that you don't know if people breathe during sleep?

2) Humans don't have BIOS chips.
 
Dappadee said:
As far as the computer analogy is concerned, not all memory is wipe in a reboot. Only the RAM is wiped not the ROM, and you could probably argue that the data on a hard drive could count as well.
Click to expand...
I don't see why so much time is being spent on the human-computer analogy. Yes, by saying that memory is ROM or HD, sleep is now comparable to a reboot. But then the analogy fails somewhere else, namely that the ROM and HD sirvive even if there is no power, no "life energy" to come back to the topic of the thread. Analogies eventually fail, I don't see why this one is being explored when there are physicians on the board who could explain how the human body gains nutrients, transports, stores, and converts energy, etc.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Uhh, what do you think is the purpose of eating? We get energy from our food, in the form of various combustible substances, mainly carbohydrates and lipids (fats).

The combustible stuff is stored in various ways in our body, in fat depots and other places. So when we have not recently eaten, we draw on these stores. Depending on your initial condition and the amount of energy you are needing in the given situation your stores will hold out for quite some time, although 60 days without eating (at all) is long. Most will not be able to make that. Also in situations where your energy requirments are high, you will last considerably shorter.

The energy exchange of the body is well explored, and we putput, over time, exactly what we input. No need to call on some mysterious force here.

There is, in fact no need to resort to a spirit to explain any function of our bodies, including dreams. Although some will try to contradict this, they are all well encompassed in a materialistic model.

Hans
Click to expand...
I am not disputing that it is from nutrition that we get our energy. I'm just wondering if there is a button or series of switches in the body that correspond to the energy burning, storage and consumption machinery.

Yes 60+ days refer to very extreme cases. Professional meditators are known for this kind of stuff. I remember hearing that some individuals in Ireland did this for that long. Also remember the 40 days by Moses in the woods. Some Judeo-Christians actually try to fast for this long. So going from there to 60 is not that far.

By the way I used be a runner and I ran as much as 13 miles at once and maybe more. I recall reading in my running magazine that an ice cream is more than enough energy to run a marathon.

Also, you are correct about the spirit comment. There is no need for such a thing.
 
I don't see why so much time is being spent on the human-computer analogy. Yes, by saying that memory is ROM or HD, sleep is now comparable to a reboot. But then the analogy fails somewhere else, namely that the ROM and HD sirvive even if there is no power, no "life energy" to come back to the topic of the thread. Analogies eventually fail, I don't see why this one is being explored when there are physicians on the board who could explain how the human body gains nutrients, transports, stores, and converts energy, etc.
Click to expand...

All very true. I can't say I have ever thought about a human-computer analogy before, I was just playing advocate.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Source of Life Energy

roger said:
1) Are you seriously stating that you don't know if people breathe during sleep?
Click to expand...
I infer that others do because I can see their bellies moving while they sleep or I can sense air if I put my hand on their nostrils. So this makes me conclude that I may be operating the same way. This is what I meant by that.

2) Humans don't have BIOS chips.
Click to expand...
My impression is that the human body does not need such a chip since it is never actually turned off. So it may not even have an off switch. So as a machine, the body is quite an impressive one. So maybe we could build a computer that went around looking for a source of energy to maintain its own energy level instead of using this BIOS chip idea. It may make it a better machine.
 
Dappadee said:
As far as the computer analogy is concerned, not all memory is wipe in a reboot. Only the RAM is wiped not the ROM, and you could probably argue that the data on a hard drive could count as well.
Click to expand...
You've brought up a good point about the hard drive. Is there a hard drive in the human body somewhere? Where even if there was a reboot, the memory could be retained. Also, it would be possible to remove the human drive from one individual and install it on another.
 
Donks said:
I don't see why so much time is being spent on the human-computer analogy. Yes, by saying that memory is ROM or HD, sleep is now comparable to a reboot. But then the analogy fails somewhere else, namely that the ROM and HD sirvive even if there is no power, no "life energy" to come back to the topic of the thread. Analogies eventually fail, I don't see why this one is being explored when there are physicians on the board who could explain how the human body gains nutrients, transports, stores, and converts energy, etc.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely right. Yet the functioning of living organisms remains a topic of philosophical discussions and debates. Questions like do we have a spirit, is there consciousness, are we material or spiritual in nature, tata, tata, tata ... remain? So could it simply be that threads like this don't really want an answer to certain simple questions?

Do you see how this is indeed a philosophical question? Not all philosophical questions follow a strict rule of logic as we would like.

Also, I do appreciate your efforts to bring us back to the real world.
 
Here is my source of life energy!

mountain%20dew%20limonande.jpg


(Sadly can't get it in the UK, bah)
 
FreeChile said:
I am not disputing that it is from nutrition that we get our energy. I'm just wondering if there is a button or series of switches in the body that correspond to the energy burning, storage and consumption machinery.
Click to expand...

What the heck does this mean? "A button or series of switches?" Switches aren't processes, they're controllers of processes.

The human metabolism is well understood, and you can get it from any decent biology textbook. (Or you can look for the relevant terms, like "glycolysis" and "Krebs cycle," on the Web). And there are certainly control mechanisms that the human body uses. As a runner, you were probably familiar with the phenomenon of "hitting the wall." There are two basic metabolic pathways, the so-called anaerobic and aerobic pathways, that "burn" different chemicals, using different enzymes. You "hit the wall" when your body runs out of glycogen, the chemical that fuels anaerobic respiration, at which point that particular process more or less shuts down.

And, yes, there are ways to adjust (within broad limits) how your body burns fuel. For example, "aerobic training" will increase the efficiency of your aerobic metabolism. But there's no way to shut it down entirely, and for good reason. Cells that don't metabolize are called "dead"....
 
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