Tag: Your amazing

Your Amazing…

May 3, 2021Blog, Encouragement, , , , Leave a comment

FEET !

That’s right, your amazing feet. They are marvelous body parts that we give too little credit and probably too little attention to. And yet without them, we would have no support or balance.

I was reminded of their immense value last night when I got home from work after spending 12 hours in my black, (very stylish, of course… ha ha ) “combat boots”. Seriously, from 7:45 AM to 7:45 PM I wore them. AND, while at work from 1:00-6:00 PM, I was literally on my feet the whole time. No sitting, only walking, and standing.

When I walked in the door after work, I couldn’t get my poor size 8’s free fast enough. Ahhh, relief! What ever was I thinking when I left in the morning, or was I even thinking at all?

Well, that night, I thought alot about feet and their overlooked importance to us. (as mine were throbbing severely)

Lets talk about feet, shall we? Do you realize jus’ how amazing they are built and what they endure for us?

Did you know that:

  • You have 8,000 nerves in your feet, more per square centimeter than anyplace else in your body
  • Your daily walking cause your feet to experience forces totaling tons, actually equaling a fully loaded cement truck
  • Each foot takes 1.5 times your body weight
  • And when you run, up to 5 times your weight
  • There are 28 bones in your feet, a quarter of all the bones in your body!
  • You have 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons in your feet
  • there are 250,000 sweat glands in your feet that are capable of making a half pint of sweat a day

Your feet are AMAZING! Their design is a masterpiece able to withstand and adapt to uneven surfaces. Able to flex and twist and carry you wherever you choose to go.

These finely tuned pieces of machinery have two important functions:

  1. weight bearing
  2. propulsion

Both of which require stability during your walk, run, jumping, balancing, climbing or any number of other activities that you do. Without your feet, your life would have no support or balance.

By the time you are 50 years old, the average person will have walked 75,000 miles and sustained sprains, strains and possible fractures. But your feet got the job done for you. One stat even said that if you walk 8-10,000 steps a day, that makes 115,000 in a lifetime; or equal to 4 times circling the globe.

And the hero is – YOUR FEET.

Add to these astounding facts that the bones in your feet don’t actually harden until your 21, and that these natural shock absorbers grow totally new toenails every 6 months, (slower than fingernails, which grow .01mm a day) and I think that we have established the fact the you have amazing feet.

Our feet stand us up.

So the next time you’re wondering if you can take a stand, or feel like you are lacking the support that you need – consider your wonderful feet. You are standing, and you do have support!

When you are evaluating your life and wondering if things are in the right balance for you – consider your feet.

Our dependable feet- constant for support and balance, our unsung hero’s for allowing us to stand up.

Your amazing feet!

Cheers to your feet,

Debbie

Your Amazing …

October 6, 2020Blog, Encouragement, Inspiration, , Leave a comment

Brain

Your brain never stops working.

The brain is the most powerful processing unit ever designed. Every second it receives information from the senses, chemical messages and other stimuli and it reaches a conclusion for us, automatically. It links data pieces to make a thought, decision, memory or picture of the world for us to understand.

It is the body’s command center for perception, thought formation, and memory creation.

Your grey matter is the most powerful computer ever designed, able to handle 10 to the 16th power amount of data per second! Consisting of 100 billion nerve cells and other neurons which could add up to 1 quadtrillion connections, each with the ability to combine and increase storage capacity.

Performing over 100,000 chemical reactions every second, and sending signals traveling along neurotransmitters at speeds of 268 mph, there are no two brains that are alike.

Whether you are awake or asleep, it is always working, making connections, processing information, creating chemical reactions, transporting signals to fill in gaps and complete mental processes.

During your sleeping hours, the brain is still active, controlling your body functions, and is engaged in activities necessary for your life to function as well as bringing you a better quality of life by helping us remember the things we learned the previous days.

It is the unconscious mind that tries to make connections with concepts you understand and work them into your actual learning. Even within your dreams are woven symbolic representations to connect concepts to your own individual understanding and experience.

Brain plasticity, which is your ability to adapt to input, is vital for your healthy functioning, too. Your brain not only helps you adapt to and in situations but it also removes waste products and unused data blocks, so that it can weave short term memories into long term memory banks. And , of course, your brain works to help your body and muscles grow.

Generating enough wattage to light a light bulb and provide a human 70,000 thoughts a day, this is a remarkably designed organ.

At only 3 pounds, a single, sand sized piece of brain tissue (eeww) contains 100,00 neurons and 1 billion synapses all communicating with each other!

AND, all brain cells are NOT alike. There are as many as 10,000 specific types of neurons. In fact, if all your neurons were lined up side by side they would stretch out 621.371 miles. But you wouldn’t be able to see them because they would still be invisible to the naked eye. (10 microns wide)

Your amazing, always working, powerful brain!

All this happens, keeping you alive and aware in your world without so much as a thought or worry from you.

Your brain functions powerfully, tending to you, your surroundings and all the stimuli that comes at you, striving to make connections and decisions on your behalf, allowing the quality of your life to be the very best that it can be.

Your amazing brain, it never stops working.

It is always processing on your behalf, always making connections for you. Whether you are awake or asleep it is always working, helping you to grow, remember, understand and be.

Isn’t that exactly what God, the Creator does?

Isn’t the brain a small picture of of the complexity and power of God and His care for you?

Go back and reread this post, as you do, think of all the descriptions of the brain and its complexities picturing Almighty God, and His complex, intricate love and care for you in your world.

Your God never stops working.

Cheers to you.

Your Amazing…

September 15, 2020Blog, Encouragement, Inspiration, Personal Growth, , , Leave a comment

Eyes

Helen Keller, who lost her eyesight and hearing to scarlet fever, as a toddler of nineteen months is quoted as saying,

“Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.”

Helen Keller

Would you agree? Disagree?

Helen Keller, with the patience and expertise of Anne Sullivan not only overcame her blindness, deafness and muteness but developed her sense of touch so sensitively that she “listened to music” via the vibrations in the air and things around her.

She also developed her sense of taste and smell so acutely that she was able to gather more info through her limited senses than we probably do with our five senses. And yet, she had no eyesight.

Helen eventually went on to become the first deaf-blind person to earn a college degree. She is amazing!

“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which is to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a man-made world.” “It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.”

We see, but do we have vision?

Our eyes are amazing. They provide vision of the world around us, and also reveal if we’re happy, tired, down, or confused and they even serve as “windows to the soul”.

Allow me to take you through a quick review of how exactly our amazing eye works. (Thanks to my own refresher course at livescience.com.) Then I’ll tie it all together with some interesting applications for you. Hang in there.

We humans have a “camera-type” eye. Just like a camera lens focuses light onto film, our cornea focuses light onto our retina, that big screen at the back of our eyeball. The cornea is transparent and is at the front of your eye to help focus the incoming light.

The iris, you’ll remember is that part that gives you your eye color. It is ring-shaped and it has an adjustable opening called the pupil. The pupil controls just exactly how much light enters the eye. It has to adjust to let the light in.

The colorless, transparent lens is located behind the pupil and focuses the light onto the screen of your retina. (Aren’t you glad we don’t have to remember all this before we see anything? It just happens, we have sight, we have an amazing eye.)

Inside that eyeball chamber are two different kinds of jelly, liquid type substances. The aqueous humor and the vitreous humor. (Can you guess the application of these two? 🙂 ha ha)

Of course, there are muscles involved inside the eye, too. The ciliary muscles for example, hold the lens and must both relax (pull and flatten the lens) and contract (thicken the lens) for far away and up close sight.

Review is almost done.

On the retina are millions of light sensitive cells called rods and cones, which differentiate between us seeing colors or black and white. When the light hits them it is converted to an electrical signal that travels to the brain via the optic nerve.

The brain then accepts that electric signal and changes it into images for us to see. Phew!!!! Review done.

Seriously, I could say nothing else and I think we’d be challenged and reminded just how amazing our eyes are, right? How perfectly designed. How intricate. How complex, having liquids and electric signals in the same spot without loss of power. How significant each part is and vital for sight to be effective. If a part of the eye anatomy is defective, sight is hindered, disabled or lost. For perfect clarity and vision, all parts of the eye must be fully functional.

The same can be said for the clarity of our other vision. By that I mean our “world view”, how we see the world around us. Not just anatomical seeing. The “eyes” through which we see what is happening around us.

Check out these practical tips for clear eyesight in these days, that I have drawn from our look at the amazing eye:

  1. Cornea – we need to focus on the light. Let the light in, focus on it not the darkness
  2. Lens – we must fight to stay transparent, stop trying to hide or cover up what we are feeling
  3. Pupil – we can and must control what we allow into our lives. We give things an opening and we decide how much to let in. Put controls in place in your life.
  4. Aqueous and vitreous humor – LAUGH! Find joy. Seek humor, make people laugh, laugh yourself. It is a medicine that we need a double dose of in these days.
  5. Ciliary muscles – to see things in the distance we must relax. Pull back, flatten out. Learn to relax and not jump too far ahead. To see things up close we need to have a bit more thick skin. Thicken our lens, be tough and we will see more clearly.
  6. Retina – seeing color is determined by millions of very, very sensitive cells; and those cells are responsible for sharp, clear vision. Our vision of color will sharpen as we are sensitive to those around us.
  7. Signal conversions – remember that everything we see has been converted to appear as an image we see. The brain makes translations for us and helps us make sense of what we are seeing.

We have an amazing eye who’s function is to help us see clearly. Today, at the very least I trust that your appreciation for your vision has been boosted.

Yet, beyond that, I hope that you are able to take away a more tangible lesson from the eye to apply and use to help you see more clearly in these days.

“It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.”

You’re amazing and so are your eyes.

Cheers to you.