An awe-inspiring tour of the brilliant systems that keep the human body alive through circumstances ordinary and extraordinary.
How can someone live with only half a brain? How have more than 150 people survived free falls from supposedly fatal heights? From renowned physicians and medical educators Avraham Z. Cooper and Anthony C. Breu, Why Doesn’t Your Stomach Digest Itself? reveals how the human body―an everyday wonder of strength and resilience―pulls off miracles, both routine and extreme, to simply persist. Most of these go unnoticed: Your gastric juices, strong enough to digest a razor blade, somehow do not digest your stomach itself. Some are more obviously spectacular: The ability to run a hundred-mile race or survive (in one unfortunate man’s case, up to seven) lightning strikes. A celebration of your body’s incredible ingenuity and astonishing capacity to withstand even the direst circumstances, this book is full of fun facts, vivid anecdotes, and questions you never even knew you had. You’ll never take your body―or your digestion―for granted again.
