Bless those Blasts and Clasts
As promised here are some reflections on a subject that should hold our attention more often than it usually does but which comes to the fore only when we feel pain and have difficulty walking or running or even sitting owing to a sprained or broken ankle or dislocated joint. I am referring of course to our bones, at least to some of the two hundred and eight of them, and to how important it is for us to learn more about them if we want to lead a pain-free productive life.
Most of us can off the cuff name some of the most common bones that make up the skeletal system. Take the femur, for example, which is timbered, hung and strapped with beef, with its roundish head that fits into the concave underpart of the pelvis; next, consider our lovely wrist, made up of little carpals that nature has designed to look like jewels and which have been given nigh-sounding but attractive names like capitate, lunate, hamate, pisiform; by then your eyes would have focused on your phalanges, little fans of unimagined ingenuity that radiate into the hands without which I would only be able to gaze at the computer screen, unable to communicate with you. Likewise, if we could have an inside view of our verebrae atop which sits the domed roof of the highly evolved but so vulnerable brain, the mysterious pelvis that gyrates to the tantalizing intrusion of sex or motherly responds to the stirring of a developing fetus impatient for life, we would have more cause for wonder at the resourcefulness and creativity of nature. For it is out of the nurturing uterus nestling inside this pelvis that we all came from into a world that is as amazing now as it was at the beginning of life on earth.
Maybe we should all worship our bones with propitiatory rites like some African tribes do instead of attributing so much importance to diamonds, which though priceless and make women them goggle-eyed and even swoon, have a certain coldness and soulless shine about them. Whereas bone, which conjures up pictures of dread in most of us, is indeed the core and the matrix of man after the mortal flesh has been shed. Bone is might. It is bone to which the soft tissues cling and to which they are strung firm without which man is but a helpless slithering creature. What is this miracle of creation that makes us stand head high under the sun and is twice as strong as oak? Engineers estimate that one cubic inch of bone will hold quite well under the flattening force of two tons. How is it that this substance does not dissolve in our body fluids and offers almost total resistance to hot and cold alike? The rigidity of bone is what allows us to stand tall without which there would not be any room for human pride and arrogance giving us a strong albeit illusory feeling of being absolute masters of the universe. And yet it is within such brick-hard confines that is located the very factory of the blood in which , each day, one million million red blood cells are made and channelled into the circulation. It is the bone-marrow that manufactures the very stuff of life, these vital blood cells that course their three-score-and one days in our body, and then die.
A cursory look at the bone does not reveal much; it looks creamy and stony, but do not be fooled by it. It is very much alive, it is flowing with life-giving activity and it is never the same at any two moments. As blood courses through our veins, calcium is being exchanged from it to the bone and vice versa on a continuous basis under the control of hormonal chieftains seated at various glands. Fluid too flows into and from the bone, though ever so slowly, impelled by a hidden force as mysterious but as inexorable as the law of gravity itself.
True to life, bone like everything else obeys the overriding principle of give and take. Twin races of cells, one the Blasts which are aptly named for they behave like disciplined Roman soldiers on a sacred mission to build new bony structures, each one built like Titans ready to uphold any weight. Close on their heels are the Clasts, arrayed in full battle gear ready to bore and tunnel through a layer of bone like moles through a manicured lawn. They gnaw and chew everything on their path but unlike moles which sometimes damage the grass beyond recognition, the Clasts do not burrow to destroy but to cleanse. Just as chimney sweeps diligently brush and siphon away all the grime and soot from a clogged-up flue, the Clasts get rid of old cells in the bone, all the slag of old age and the detritus of ill-usage. There is a ceaseless competition between the Blasts and the Clasts but it is a harmless and quite useful marshalling of opposing forces whose primary aim is to ensure replacement of old bone cells with new ones. It is a constant race between growth and decay bent on the imperative goal of renewal without which life is soon at an end. But alas! all things created must perforce come to an end sooner or later and it is the Clasts which are triumphant in old age for while the Blasts expend all their energy and die out of sheer exhaustion, the Clasts are left with residual energy. The bone however becomes porous, light and brittle. That is why the bone of the elderly easily break, and but slowly knit.
Of late shark-cartilage has become a household term and even I am taking at least six tablets of this miracle-product with a conviction closely resembling religious zeal. What is exactly cartilage? It has been called the Mother-of-Bone and with good reason! Strategically positioned in young bones are belts of cartilage which are actually growth centres for the bone. From birth right up to the age of twenty cartilage is gradually replaced by osseous material at its margins but not too much and all the while the centre of the cartilage remains a fiery pit, allowing the body's growth to continue. Otherwise we would all be stunted dwarfs. In adult years, most of the cartilage has been transformed except for at the various joints of the skeletal system where it acts as shock absorbers. Likewise the ears too are made up of cartilaginous substance which keeps them aloft failing which we would all look quite funny, like spaniels with their flapping ears that always seem to be in the way. Just imagine what would happen if nature had not made provision for a little cartilage to pad the joints! We would be as rigid as statues and scream with pain at every step we take.
At some time or another in our lives, unless we are extremely lucky like those few souls who seem to have made a special pact with the devil or the angels, we might have a bad fall and break either a wrist or an ankle or even a hip bone. Almost at once, a blood clot forms between the two fragments and in a short lapse of time it begins to carnify. In short order, nature's storm troopers deliver new fibrous tissue and blood vessels to repair the damage. And if the broken bone has been set and immobilized, bone-forming cells, the Blasts, get to work on the jellied mass restoring it to its former glory with almost equal strength. Calcium is the vital element in this process for it is the indispensable ingredient of reconstruction without which no bridge can be constructed between the two severed fragments. There is a kind of self-mechanism present in the body that acts on drive and instinct at the very moment of fracture. It is a cellular call to action, a marshalling of combat and construction units that rush to the trouble spot with the furious determination to restore any damage.
Also bone can be grafted from one site to another to bridge the gap two impaired framents of bone that refuse to heal or to fuse an unstable joint. Modern orthopedic innovations have completely revolutionized the particular field of reconstructive surgery and the time is not that far behind when the first truly bionic man will be introduced to the world. Already fact and fiction blend and intertwine in an age of unprecedented scientific accomplishments that baffle the mind beyond belief. Human civilization has gone through many epochs but none has been marked by so many amazing developments in scientific research and in such a short space of time. There does not seem to be any limit to man's imagination and capabilities. Whatever he sets his mind on he can achieve as long as he is provided with the appropriate means and motivation. But one may be tempted to ask if man, in daring to pry into secret places that have off limits for countless generations, is not opening a whole can of worms that may eventually turn against him and bring upon mankind the wrath of the gods. Are we on the verge of angering them to the point of self-destruction? In tampering with genetic engineering, supposedly for our own good, are scientists not stealing something sacred and forbidden from the realm of supernatural beings? Will they not like Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven to give it to mere mortals for which Zeus punished him by ordering Hermes to chain him to Mount Caucasus and have a vulture feed daily on his liver, incur the ire of the gods and unleash all sorts of evil upon the world?
As we can see, bones are fascinating stuff which earn our admiration and respect. They are a fact of physical life each of whose parts holds a treasure of electricity. The simple act of walking changes the electrical potential of your bones, as the poles shift from positive to negative and vice versa. The stress and shear and impact of jumping and running for instance require the very best of shock absorbers allowing the bone to bend and relent so as to avoid any fracture.
Unfortunately, it is the lot of all created things to be subject to disease, aging and death. And the bone does not escape the same fate. Should the muscles attached to a bone cease to function, as in stroke or paralysis, almost half the bone served by those muscles is quickly resorbed, and disappears. Go beyond its tensile strength and it inevitably fractures. Fractures are bound to occur in the condition known as osteogenesis imperfecta, wherein the process of ossification is defective. The bone fails to form into a continuing sheet but is made up of scanty nests of osteoblasts. A child born with such a disease may survive but with half his bones broken. Just imagine the ordeal of simply changing the infant's diapers which may cause the fracturing of his thighs. And we all know how the elderly are so prone to various bone fractures when they slip and fall. Their bone is so fragile and brittle, most often cracking at the neck of the femur which bears the heaviest weight. In most cases such fractures prove to be the harbingers of death for confined to bed in such a predicament the victim usually falls prey to confusion and pneumonia.
Lovers of great tragedy will remember the scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet where this immortal character speaks to a skull. Contemplating the receptacle of the brain, the seat of all knowledge, one contemplates the very fate of man. The quintessential symbol of man's past, present and future, the skull as bone is the keepsake of the earth, all that remains of him when the rest has long since crumbled away. The unforgettable scene of the skull in Hamlet has been rehearsed and acted out over a million times and no wonder for man is fascinated by his own death which baffles and intrigues, angers and exasperates him like no other question in his short sojourn on earth. A skull endures for a million years and, if then dup up from the ground, suggests to anthropologists what sort of a man or woman it once looked like and poets have waxed philosophical about it and vented their feelings in poetry of unequalled beauty.
Who among us has not reflected upon what will happen to us when we are gone. We know we will be buried somewhere before long but where and in what conditions no one knows. In the final analysis, man has to come to terms with the fact that he is first and foremost made up of bone and that his skeleton will outlive his brain and everything else that constituted him by millions of years. Long after he is gone, his bone will still retain his genetic imprint and with luck a curious anthropologist will unearth it from oblivion and give it new life. Indeed it is the bones that stand closer to man than any other thing and it is it that challenges time with a greater chance of success. The rest perishes and then is heard no more. Few are those who have dwelt upon the skull and man's condition in the insoluble cosmic riddle and come back without a shudder. It is best to leave such a pastime to strong hearts and minds. It is said that if one stares too long at a mirror one's skull eventually shows through. It's not something I am about to try no matter what the wager is.
In this essay I have not mentioned anything about arthritis or osteoarthritis that affect so many people. My intention was not to write on a medical topic which I would only have a superficial knowledge of and which is better left to the experts. I meant it to be a philosophical treatise with the sole purpose of stimulating your mind and lead you to the fascinating question of the why and wherefore of life as seen through the prism of my own reflections on what bone is and what it represents to us all. Your conclusions will I am sure concur with mine and you would on closer analysis agree with me that of all the imprudences dared by man in his brazen reach for ascendancy, the most arrogant was his decision to stand up, to eschew his all-fours, and, piling his vertebrae one on top of the other, to thrust himself erect. Of course his daring brought prizes along the way but mostly they have been apples waggling from a very high branch which is always just out of reach. Man is about to pluck the forbidden apple for the second time if he has not done it already and in my estimation he is about to be dealt a severe blow from the same old pontifs who once castigated him and Eve for their reckless temerity. You may be tempted to say all this is just balderdash. But it is really?
Oh, yes! Our bone is king on earth and in heaven. For God Himself borrowed one of man's ribs to make woman and ever since man has sought woman out with all his might and appetite. No matter where he is, whatever he does, his mind is fixed on woman or women if you espouse Hugh Hefner's philosophy. When a man holds a woman to his breast he is really holding on to the bone that is cushioned by flesh. And when he makes love to her, he is in actual fact performing an age-old rite of nature that was tens of thousands of years in the making and which has not yet reached the state of perfection. For it took a long time indeed for man and woman to evolve to front-to-front copulation from the primitive front-to-back position. This new frontal dialogue made for a more exhilarating experience which is referred to as love and which allows both mates to view each other's ecstasy and increase the chances of impregnation. Flesh to flesh, bone to bone, Homo erectus picked and chose his mate, laughing himself sick at kine and behemoth. In ancient times, so they say, furry breasts were in great demand and generally speaking hairiness garnered rave reviews among our primitive ancestors. Unlike today where hair, except a good head of hair, is to picked, shaved and zapped at all costs. I still remember the days in Europe when a woman was proud to display her glorious armpit, with a full growth of scented hair.
But this man who thrust himself from the earth, who wore the stars of heaven in his hair, was guilty of overweening pride. In his act of defiance against the law of gravity, he was to pay dearly for his newly gained erect stature. The vertebrae, unused to their new columnar arrangement, slipped, buckled, and wore out. Next the arches of the feet collapsed. The hip joints ground to a halt. Not only the bones suffered deleterious consequences; the fragile blood vessels as well were distended beyond their limits due to the pooling of blood in the lower region of the body with the attendant discomfort of hemorrhoids; varicose veins had made their appearance. Our guts started sagging and producing hernias and turning us all to soft lump.
If there were a wise philosopher in those days to warn man against adopting such an upright posture, he would have maintained his original gait, his god-given stance. He should have maintained his low profile, continued to slouch toward his infernal copulations and earned his eternal rewards. But having dared to defy nature, and raised his head to look with shameless swagger at his creator, he has earned himself eternal damnation. Such is the revenge of Bone, the mainstay of our vainglory, of our imagined superhuman might, but in the end our Achilles' heel, the Trojan horse that will eventually burn down our topless towers. It is Bone that confers beauty to the flesh that made Helen of Troy turn a thousand heads and launch a thousand ships but alas! it is Bone too that speaks to man through the ages reminding us of his great folly and of the carnage that lasted for ten years in and around the walls of Priam's city. Will modern man heed Cassandra's warning? Will we at the close of the century learn once and for all to stop defying the gods? If we don't, the universe may soon be aflame and Dante's Inferno will pale in comparison to what awaits us!
Claudio Wye
January 1999