In some religions, like the Hindu, when a member passes on, he or she is cremated and the ashes spread on River Ganges. In our environment it is not the usual practice but some people do opt for cremation. Remember the famous FEMI KUTI’S SISTER?
I had a similar experience with a senior colleague who instructed that his body must be cremated and the ashes put in a casket and given a complete funeral ceremony. I had the rare privilege of delivering an oration in the church during the ceremony knowing that what was inside that casket was just 18 per cent of the late man’s body mass. The truth is that if you burn an average 70kg man to ashes on death, the solid ashes you’d harvest can barely fill up an empty beer bottle. This mainly would be the minerals and salts. The rest must have evaporated.
The fact remains that more than 70 per cent of the human body mass is nothing but water domiciled in the different compartments of the body. To illustrate this, let us take a journey with a bottle of water drunken by a thirsty individual. The water is swallowed by the mouth, which is the beginning of a long pipe that has its structure altered at different sites and finally ends up at the anus. In this tube known as the Gastro-intestinal tract, the water is referred to as transitional fluid. Its functions start immediately with the taste buds on the tongue.
From here, it becomes a medium through which solid food substances are conveyed and as a milieu in which digestion takes place. As it moves along the intestinal tract it is absorbed into the blood vessels for distribution to all parts of the body.
In this compartment it should appropriately, would have been referred to as intravascular fluid! But by now it is already in the blood and the consistency of blood is fluid. But when the red blood cells and the white blood cells are separated from other components of the liquid what we have is PLASMA, which has a high percentage of water. In the intravascular compartment, water is the diluent of the substances in the blood, both cellular and non-cellular and is involved in the maintenance of the osmotic integrity of the cellular component of the blood as it circulates round the body. It also continues to function as a carrier of nutrients, hormones and waste products of metabolism in the blood.
In terms of description, intravascular fluid is also referred to as part of extracellular fluid together with interstitial fluid, which is the fluid that surrounds cells in the body and in the process providing them with nutrients and helping them to evacuate waste products of metabolism. The contents of interstitial fluid include sugars, salts, fatty acids, amino acids, co-enzymes, hormones and neurotransmitters. The composition of interstitial fluid to a great extent depends on product exchange between specific organs and the blood. For example, you’d expect a high concentration of insulin in the interstitial fluid of the pancreas after a meal of carbohydrate. The implication of this is that the composition of the fluid varies from one organ to another. Commonly the interstitial fluid does not contain red blood cells because of their sizes but does accommodate white blood cells.
It must be noted that it is the plasma in the intravascular compartment that filters into the interstitial compartment. The next compartment is the intracellular fluid also known as the Cytosol. The cell is the basic unit of life and the fluid compartment is surrounded by the cell membrane. In the cytosol are suspended organelles, the microscopic equivalents of the organs of the body. This is where the basic physiological activities that sustain life at the molecular level take place. The cytosol together with the organelles is known as the cytoplasm. The biggest structure in the cell is the nucleus. The fluid contained in the nucleus is known as nucleosol and this is where genetic materials especially deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA are domiciled.
Eventually, the interstitial fluid coalesces to form a special kind of vessels known as lymph, which empties its contents into the right atrium of the heart. These vessels have valves that ensure that the flow of lymph is unidirectional towards the heart. The lymph is populated by a special kind of cells known as lymphocytes. These cells are the engine room of the immune system of the body. They form the body’s defense system
The last compartment where there is fluid collection, which ironically is not much bothered about, is the transcellular fluid compartment. This fluid is usually found where water does not accumulate in significant quantity in the body and even when present does not have any known physiological activity. These areas include the aqueous and the vitreous humor of the eyes, the cerebrospinal fluid of the brain and spinal cord, synovial fluid in the joints, the peritoneal and the pleural cavities. At best, they may serve as cushions and lubricants in areas so found.
Transcellular fluids are actively secreted Freon, the plasma that has almost the same composition with them. For example, in the central nervous system the cerebrospinal fluid is secreted by special cells in the choroid plexus in the lateral ventricles known as ependymal cells.
Movement of water from one compartment to another involves different mechanisms. Firstly, movement results from differential in hydrostatic pressure from the pumping heart. In this situation, water moves from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure area, commonly from the intravascular compartment to the extracellular compartment. The second mechanism is the flow of solvent from a zone of low concentration to that of high concentration through a semi-permeable membrane, which can allow low size molecular weight substances to pass through – phenomenon, known as osmosis. Apart from osmosis, water is also actively transported from cells through activities of enzymes as we have in say sodium/potassium ATPase ion pump.
Water in the body is constantly in a dynamic state. The fluid in the interstitial compartment can drain through the lymphatic channels to the general circulation and it is carried by the arterial system to the kidney, where there is filtration and an obligatory loss of water in urine. Water is also lost from the lungs during respiration and from the skin during perspiration.
You can see that water is everywhere there is life. Ironically water is made up of two explosive gases! A molecule of water contains two HYDROGEN ATOMS and one OXYGEN ATOM. So, when you read the Bible next, note: “In the beginning……the spirit of God was on the surface of the WATERS.”