Vestigial Organs Not So Useless After All, Studies Find

Appendix, tonsils, various redundant veins—they're all vestigial body parts once considered expendable, if not downright useless.

But as technology has advanced, researchers have found that, more often than not, some of these "junk parts" are actually hard at work.

Case in point: the spleen, which a new study shows may be critical in healing damaged hearts.

Researchers studying mice discovered that the spleen stores monocytes, white blood cells essential for immune defense and tissue repair.

Previously, scientists had thought monocytes were made only in bone marrow, like other types of white blood cells, and were "stored" in the bloodstream.

But the new study found that the spleen contains ten times as many monocytes as blood—making it a far more important storehouse.

What's more, the spleen is the source of 40 to 50 percent of the monocytes involved in nursing lab mice back to health after a heart attack, said study co-author Filip Swirski of Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Systems Biology in Boston.

"If you're going to survive a heart attack, your heart has to heal the proper way, and that depends on monocytes," Swirski said.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Doh, I want my appendix back!

I don't give stars and flags out much except for topics that actually teach me some new information!

It states that these help heal mice...so I am guessing they are making a inference that ours does the same?

Tonsils are rarely removed anymore, even when infected. You would be hard pressed to find a Physician willing to perform a Tonsillectomy unless you have frequent cases of ACUTE tonsillitis occurring 3 times per year for 3 years, 5 times per year for 2 years, or 7 or more times in 1 year.

Same with the Appendix. Physicians will still perform an Appendicectomy in emergency situations of ACUTE appendicitis where the Appendix has ruptured, but in non-emergency cases they will resort to Antibiotic regimen first.

My doctor told me that I have an active (functioning) Appendix. He has no idea what it does, but just knows I'm the first case he's ever seen of one that is apparently active. I know precisely what it does and when it became active. I suffered a caffeine overdose from consuming 5lbs of Chocolate-covered Espresso beans in a 1 hour period. I had convulsions, projectile vomiting, blackouts, and had to get my stomach pumped at the Emergency Room. Ever since then, the moment that I drink coffee or eat Espresso beans the entire contents of my Intestinal Tract are immediately purged within 3-5 minutes of consumption of the recognized toxin. From my personal experience it seems to remember toxins and upon detection of them in the Digestive System it purges the entire Digestive System to prevent the toxin from entering the blood stream. This was probably an incredibly useful survival ability to our ancient ancestors who ate whatever strange berries they could find. As it seems to be dormant until you suffer an extreme physical reaction to a toxin, it doesn't mean that it's non-functional.

I had my gallbladder removed a few years ago.

tip: dont ever go to the hospital unless its life threatening on or near New Year's Eve. omg worst experience ever. kept me not eating for 4 days till the doctor decided to come in.

I know that the gallbladder stores excess bile after the liver creates it. mine was shot. so much pain i nearly doubled over. got to the hospital and they thought i was just a druggy wanting a fix. untill my liver enzyme report came back. then they gave me this stuff called diloted (sp?) man thats good. about like morphine. as soon as i got it. all i could say was WHEW THANKS FINALLY!

supposedly only women past menopause are supposed to lose it. im 25 male. sucks i want it back.

whenever i drink coke, it runs right through me now sorry tmi i know

reply to post by mahtoosacks


Ya had my gall bladder out too and exact same thing happened with Dr.'s thinking I was a drug seeker, stupid doctors lol.

But ya after it comes out you realize it actually was doing something.

Your digestive system gets a little messed up and mine has stayed messed up for about 3+ years now.

Gallbladders are important...don't get yours removed! I had attacks from eating too much processed food, and they wanted to remove it. In Europe they advocate diet to heal the gallbladder and remove stones. If you do have yours removed, you will have digestive problems the rest of your life.
Ironically, after surgery up to 20% of patients still experience the pain of "Gallbladder Attacks", even though their gallbladders are gone. This may be due to spasms in the bile duct, the liver or general inflammation in the digestive system, which is especially possible if part of the root cause includes food allergies, which can inflame all the body's mucous membranes. Gallbladder disease is a direct result of a malfunctioning liver.
Apples are a miracle for gallbladders. One a day keeps the doctor away. The other miracle food/supplement for gallbladders is milkthistle.

I am convinced my gallbladder is fine now after having no attacks for over three years. It is a diet related disease, and the cure is through diet....omit the processed crap.

Man!! Every time I come to post something, someone has already beat me to it. *sigh*

This is some crazy news right here. I still have all of my "vestigial organs", thank god. I don't want to part with them! It never made sense to me when they say, "You don't really need it anyway". Well, I've always been sure they are there for a reason.

It also goes to show how much we assume we know about things. We almost always are having to go back to the drawing board or admit we were wrong about something we made assumptions about.

Yeah, those arrogant doctors/scientists have always called anything they didn't understand the workings of "junk".
THey still do that.
Its about time the realized that they haven't got it all figured out.

Gall bladder.....some years ago I was having a problem. I went to have it checked out....Doc wanted to remove it. I said, "no". I went home and started taking Lecithin. It is an emulsifier and will dissolve Gall Stones.
If you do take it go easy tho, because if you take too much the stones may crack and then you will have a problem.
I do suggest that if you are in a bad way with stones - to have just the stones removed. They'll tell you that they will come back...but take your chances and do some corrective dieting. The stones actually start forming in the liver. So it is really the liver that is messed up.

I'm glad to say i have my tonsils and appendix.

Does anyone here have wisdom teeth still? I wish I had convinced my mum to let me keep mine as I have a terrible overbite and when they were growing in I actually felt like they were fixing it by pushing my bottom teeth foward more and helping my teeth straiten out from being crooked.

I never understood why she was so insistant that i get it done, as she herself never had them grow in so never had to have them taken out.

I was told if I didn't get them out by her and others that I would suffer from terrible headaches,
but I never saw that they were giving me any problems
I mean i got the occasional headache but I did before and still do sometimes just from sinus and allergies and such.
and didn't and still don't understand the reason of removeing something if it wasn't doing any harm :s i was pretty much forced into it tho, I blame brainwashing of society :-p

I am just wondering if anyone has them still and if so if they give them any problems or actally seem to serve a purpose.

reply to post by fraterormus


That's an amazing theory about the appendix possibly being able to detect previously determined toxic foods when you eat them. It reminds me of my rat. I learned that rats can't vomit so they learn very quickly what makes them sick and, if something does, they won't eat it again.

When I was a kid I had an aversion to salisbury steak. I don't know why I did the first time, but I couldn't keep the stuff down when I was given it to eat for dinner. I didn't eat it again until I was an adult and now I can eat it. Maybe appendixes have bad memories?

This is no suprise. Part of vestigiality is that things which have lost thier original function get given new ones eventually.

legs /--\ fins/flippers is a telling example.

The appendix was always bound to do something, probably a few things but we don't need it for our grass rich diet anymore.

[edit on 31-7-2009 by Welfhard]

Originally posted by shadowind
Does anyone here have wisdom teeth still? I was told if I didn't get them out by her and others that I would suffer from terrible headaches. I am just wondering if anyone has them still and if so if they give them any problems or actally seem to serve a purpose.

I have all four of my Wisdom Teeth. They were painful when they first came in but my Dentist told me that since there was plenty of room in my mouth I could keep them. However, he told me that most people do not have enough room in their mouths for Wisdom Teeth which is the reason why they are commonly removed (because they could come in crooked, become abscessed, misalign your front-teeth, have their roots intertwine with the roots of your molars, cause pressure on your molars, etc.).

I've never had headaches from them, although it is annoying when I get small food particles stuck back there. If you think flossing your back molars is a pain, imagine trying to floss your Wisdom Teeth!

As far as their purpose, I assume they are replacements for your molars. Once upon a time, before Dental Care from someone other than your Barber, we would lose teeth like there was no tomorrow. That's why we originally had two sets of teeth and a partial third set. When you wore out and rotted your Baby-Teeth, your Primary Teeth would come in. When you started wearing out and rotting out your Primary Teeth, your Wisdom Teeth came in. I would assume that the reason our Third Set of teeth is only partial has to do with dietary changes as one grows older. If you are an older caveman, you probably couldn't hunt anymore (or weren't fast and strong enough to hunt well) and started living off of nuts and berries that you could gather as you aged. Thus, your body didn't need front-teeth for ripping and tearing flesh anymore...but it did need extra molars for crushing and grinding.

Originally posted by nunya13
reply to post by fraterormus

 

When I was a kid I had an aversion to salisbury steak. I don't know why I did the first time, but I couldn't keep the stuff down when I was given it to eat for dinner. I didn't eat it again until I was an adult and now I can eat it. Maybe appendixes have bad memories?

When I was a kid, I wouldn't eat tomatoes cause I felt sick. Now I love em.

Originally posted by nunya13
When I was a kid I had an aversion to salisbury steak. I don't know why I did the first time, but I couldn't keep the stuff down when I was given it to eat for dinner. I didn't eat it again until I was an adult and now I can eat it. Maybe appendixes have bad memories?

Well, when the Appendix forces a flush of your Dietary Tract it doesn't come up, it goes out the other direction...very quickly...no matter what state of digestion it is in. Imagine flushing a toilet when you press the plunger. That's what my Appendix does at least. 5000 psi water cannon out of my backside if I consume coffee in any form now.

There was another recent Scientific Study that showed the Appendix appears to be a backup manufacturing plant for good bacteria in the Digestive Tract. If the bacteria in your Digestive Tract gets wiped out for some reason, your Appendix manufactures more. This stands to reason with my personal experience as nothing is left in my bowels the moment I consume coffee, so my body needs to rebuild the bacterial cultures in my intestines every time it flushes the entire Digestive System.

Originally posted by fraterormus
5000 psi water cannon out of my backside if I consume coffee in any form now.

God. A life not worth living....

[edit on 31-7-2009 by Welfhard]

I saw this and I knew i had to comment. I was born without my Appendix or my Tonsils. I didn't have them removed, I was just born without them at all. None of the doctors I have seen can tell me anything about this occurrence. Has anyone here ever heard of this or know anything at all about this abnormality? I am curious as to why my body didn't make these parts.

Originally posted by burnboy07
I saw this and I knew i had to comment. I was born without my Appendix or my Tonsils. I didn't have them removed, I was just born without them at all. None of the doctors I have seen can tell me anything about this occurrence. Has anyone here ever heard of this or know anything at all about this abnormality? I am curious as to why my body didn't make these parts.

Deepthroat? Is that you?

Well, everyone is born without Tonsils, just as everyone is born without knee-caps and adenoids. Amazingly we are born incomplete and don't grow these parts until around Age 5 (the adenoids start budding as early as about 12 months). It is highly possible that something occurred during your early physical development that caused them not to grow. Most likely your adenoids were too large to allow room for the tonsils to start growing.

Being born without an appendix is apparently very common. Approximately 1 in 100 000 people are born without an appendix. Very rarely there are those born with not one but count 'em two appendixes.

Originally posted by lostviking
Gallbladders are important...don't get yours removed! I had attacks from eating too much processed food, and they wanted to remove it. In Europe they advocate diet to heal the gallbladder and remove stones. If you do have yours removed, you will have digestive problems the rest of your life.
Ironically, after surgery up to 20% of patients still experience the pain of "Gallbladder Attacks", even though their gallbladders are gone. This may be due to spasms in the bile duct, the liver or general inflammation in the digestive system, which is especially possible if part of the root cause includes food allergies, which can inflame all the body's mucous membranes. Gallbladder disease is a direct result of a malfunctioning liver.
Apples are a miracle for gallbladders. One a day keeps the doctor away. The other miracle food/supplement for gallbladders is milkthistle.

I am convinced my gallbladder is fine now after having no attacks for over three years. It is a diet related disease, and the cure is through diet....omit the processed crap.

I hate living on corn flakes and non fat milk. i could eat only a few other foods.

I had gallstones for 5 months before i could get in to have surgery.
with gallstones every-time you eat any thing with fat in it the gallbladder dumps and when it dump a stone moves and blocks it.

I got my gallstones from doing a rapid weight loss diet.
I went on a diet and lost 50 pounds in 5 months.
Then i lost another 15 pounds living on corn flakes and non fat milk waiting for surgery,

Rapid weight loss. As the body metabolizes fat during prolonged fasting and rapid weight loss—such as “crash diets”—the liver secretes extra cholesterol into bile, which can cause gallstones. In addition, the gallbladder does not empty properly.

After the surgery the only problem i have had is the clips used in the surgery (laparoscopic) get hung up or twisted and get very painful.
lucky this only happens when i have to fast over night for lab work.
This my be what some people call "Gallbladder Attacks" after they have had there gallbladder removed.

but not nearly as bad as a gallstone attack.

One thing i did find out is most doctors have NO IDEA what to tell someone with gallstone attacks to eat the minimize the attacks.

Every doctor i went to told me to go on a BLAND DIET????
I had to go on the internet to find out that the proper diet when you are having gallstone attack is a fat free diet.
And you can not trust the labels on the products as a few lie about there fat content.

If you have ever been on a fat free diet you do not want it also to be bland.
bland food taste like cardboard.
Tabasco sauce helps a lot.

reply to post by fraterormus


That is fascinating. I tend to believe the same thing, but my belief is related to alchohol poisoning during a competitive beer drinking session back in college. I may drink 2 beers a year, if that. It makes me vomit.

In my family, most of us have our appendix on the left side of the body, and usually pointing back in towards the inside. It is hard to find, and almost caused my uncle to die as the doctors didn't know what to look for.

[edit on 31-7-2009 by bigfatfurrytexan]

Originally posted by fraterormus

I have all four of my Wisdom Teeth.
As far as their purpose, I assume they are replacements for your molars. Once upon a time, before Dental Care from someone other than your Barber, we would lose teeth like there was no tomorrow. That's why we originally had two sets of teeth and a partial third set.

Well, the real reason is, if we didn't loose any teeth, the tooth fairy would be out of a job. And kids would loose a small but - to them - significant income.

There used to be the 10% brain myth also, claiming that we only use a fraction of our brain, and that chunks of it could be removed, without sequel...
Which was true for Ronald Reagan, but not the rest of us. We do use all of our brain.
So kids, please do not remove your Pineal Gland. It is not but a remnant from our evolutionary past, and your Melatonin synthesis would get all screwed up.