All Life is in the Blood

     All life is in the blood.  It is the single organ system that sustains and unifies all of the organ systems in the body.  All of the functions of the blood are many and crucial to life within the body.  With any significant injury or trauma blood loss can be critical and will lead to shock and potential death.  On the battlefield, hemorrhage (or blood loss) is the leading cause of death.  America has been in many wars throughout history and has marched on historic battlefields in the cause of freedom.  From  the Revolutionary war, to WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, American soldiers have given their lives and have shed their blood that we might continue to live in safety and share in those basic inalienable rights which established our country making it the greatest on the planet.  You may not agree with the causes behind these conflicts, regardless, each of us owes them our respect, applause, and th...

     As we approach the Easter Weekend with all the colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, and endless baskets of candies, I wanted to take a moment to focus your thoughts on the true meaning of the holiday.  Misperceptions of Easter have been propagated even since the recognition of the Christian Church. For centuries, people looked at Christ's day of crucifixion as a tragic event as if it served no purpose as it was called "Black Friday".  Many misguided groups, throughout history, have even tried to label others as "Christ killers" thereby propagating a gospel of hate rather than love.     As a physician, when I have treated the most simple to the most critical of illness, I give medications that ultimately need access to the blood.  For simple illness, I might give oral medications or sub-lingual medications that will be absorbed into the blood stream through the blood vessels in the mouth or the stomach.  For more severe illness I might pres...

     Have you ever woken up in the morning later than you should have and forgotten to eat breakfast trying to get out of the door? Later, you feel sluggish, faintish, with low energy, and even sleepy.  Later you eat and seem to feel much better and can accomplish the tasks for the remainder of the day.  Have you ever had to fast a few meals or even a few days?  Doing so, can cause a cascade of metabolic reactions within your body to compensate for a lack of food (energy source).  Some of those reactions can make you feel down, fatiqued, foggy, sleepy, and with symptoms of stomach aches and headaches.      Energy can be stored as sugars within the liver, as fats through out the body, and proteins in muscles and tissues.  It is the blood that is the sole source of transport of all those sources of energy.  It is also the transporter of all the regulatory hormones that govern those sources of energy.  It is the blood that e...

     I was a sickly child.  Having frequent infections, on constant antibiotics, and I was eventually sent to Houston for evaluation.  Their diagnosis entertained agammaglobulinemia or Bruton's disease.  Very simply put the disorder was characterized by very low or absent antibody levels.  Antibodies are complex proteins in the blood that help protect the body from illness.  Their hope was that I had the transient form of the disorder and would eventually "grow" out of it at or around adolescence.    After years of monthly gamma globulin (antibody) shots, my own antibodies eventually returned to normal levels and now I have a robust immune system.  Nevertheless, in spite of my transient disease, I survived those early years of illness which later guided my path to into medicine.     Within our blood there are many ways the body protects and heals itself from billions of potential invading organisms and insults.  It i...

      Have you ever wondered why when you have a pain in one part of your body everything else seems to hurt?  Have you ever wondered why an infection in the tonsils, a finger, or toe can seem to cause high fevers, chills, body aches, and so much discomfort it lands you in bed?  Quite simply the body is connected in so many ways.  Nerve pathways, skin, muscles, tendons, and connective tissues.  Nothing however connects the body and makes it unified like the blood.  The blood connects the beating heart, the liver, the lungs, the bone marrow, the kidneys, and so much more.  Likewise the blood of Jesus connects the church (the body of Christ) together.  When one part of the body hurts the whole is affected.  Similarly, w ithout the blood of Christ, we have no connection with God, our Heavenly Father.  It is that ever flowing substance that carries the life giving nutrients to the life of mankind.  "... that at that time you w...

     Have you ever desperately needed a shower after a long grueling day?  Obviously, some jobs are more stressful and seem to collect more grime than others.  Nevertheless, each of us go through the days of our lives coming in contact with experiences, abuse, neglect, sin, dirt, and grime.  We all need a good shower to help remove the stench that we and this world can create.      It is the blood that is the medium for cleansing of the body.  The lungs, liver, and kidneys remove, detoxify, and filter the harmful wastes, toxins, byproducts of the body's daily functions and exposures.  These organs are able to cleanse the body through the ever flowing properties of the blood.  In order for this cleansing to happen, the blood has to be constantly circulated through the body. If blood flow stops, toxins, byproducts of metabolism, and wastes accumulate and death rapidly occurs.     Spiritually, the blood of Christ is no...

     The body tightly regulates its immune system.  Anyone who has had a cold or flu can attest to it.  It isn't the virus per se that causes you to feel so bad, it is the body's immune response to the invader.  Fever, runny nose, sneezing, and coughing are all responses the body uses to liberate itself from an infection.  The body acts violently to protect itself from an infection and has the ability to regulate the reaction as not to cause too much harm.      Furthermore, once the infection is liberated, the body then suppresses the reactions to a baseline state. Occasionally, the immune system gets confused and gets turned on against itself causing severe autoimmune diseases.  Autoimmune diseases are diseases like Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Myasthenia, and Multiple Sclerosis.  They are diseases that occur when the body's identity is confused and its natural processes of forgiveness are subverted.      Ther...