Seven Organs You Could Totally Live Without
The human body is an incredibly complex machine
made up of systems of organs all working together
to keep things humming along smoothly.
So you’d think that taking anything out
would make the whole thing break down.
But of course, lots of people live without
some of their organs.
Like, you’re better off without an appendix
if it’s giving you a problem, for example.
And you can afford to lose all kinds of more
important organs, too, like a giant chunk
of your liver or even an entire lung.
Because yeah, your body is a finely tuned
machine — if you don’t mind me saying
so — but it also has a bunch of redundancies
that allow it to adapt to some pretty extreme
changes.
So here are just a few of the bits you can
live without.
Number one, the brain.
You didn’t think we were gonna go there!
Of all of the organs in the human body to
lose, even partially, you would think that
the brain would be a total dealbreaker.
I mean, it controls or coordinates basically
everything else.
But it turns out that sometimes, it’s better
to live with just one hemisphere — half
a brain, in other words.
Like when people have a kind of epilepsy where
seizures stem from one side of the brain.
This can happen with some developmental brain
disorders, or with rare conditions like when
one brain hemisphere is abnormally large.
One-sided seizures are often difficult to
treat, and they can be debilitating.
So sometimes doctors recommend a hemispherectomy:
the removal of some or all of the half of
the brain that’s affected.
It’s a very rare, extreme operation, obviously,
but when it’s successful, it can result
in a relatively normal life.
After a hemispherectomy, between 50-90% of
patients become completely seizure free.
They do experience some paralysis in the half
of the body normally controlled by the missing
brain hemisphere, but most are still able
to walk if they could before the procedure.
And the surgery doesn’t usually result in
cognitive deficits, either.
Younger patients tend to have fewer side effects
because the remaining healthy hemisphere is
still developing, allowing it to compensate
for what’s missing.
Still, it’s a difficult procedure with major
risks, so doctors don’t just chop out half
of somebody’s brain without carefully weighing
other options.
But the idea that you can lose half of your
brain and still be alive at all is pretty
incredible.
You might even say it’s … mind-blowing.
Breathing is another thing that’s kind of
essential for human life, so you would think
that losing a lung would cause a lot of problems.
But you can get by just fine with just one
lung.
Lung diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease, cancer, or tuberculosis can wreck
someone’s lung tissues.
So in some cases, part of a lung or even the
entire lung will be removed in a surgery called
a pneumonectomy.
When one lung is removed, the extra space
allows other organs to shift a bit, giving
the remaining lung some more room to expand.
Studies have shown that in some animals like
dogs and rats, the remaining lung can actually
grow new alveoli—the little sacs where gas
exchange happens.
It’s thought that children who get a pneumonectomy
might also do this since their lungs are still
developing.
But in adults, it’s more likely that the
alveoli just stretch and expand a little to
move more air through.
Ultimately, one lung is able to do about 70-80%
of what two lungs can, and that is usually
enough.
Depending on age and other health factors,
it might be a bit more difficult to do strenuous
activities, but some people who have had this
surgery go on to run marathons, which is more
than I can say for me.
Your stomach has to be tough enough to mush
around your meals in gastric acid before passing
them along to the small intestine.
So it’s fairly resilient.
But it can still become impaired or diseased
to the point that the patient needs surgery
to redirect the digestive tract around their
stomach or to remove part of it.
And in some cases, surgeons perform a total
gastrectomy to take out the whole thing
and just connect the esophagus directly to
the small intestine.
Oddly enough, this doesn’t really affect
the overall process of digestion since most
of it occurs in the small intestine anyway.
But since there is no stomach to store food
in, patients often need to eat smaller, more
frequent meals.
Sometimes they also need additional vitamin
supplements for things that aren’t absorbed
well by the small intestine, like vitamin
B12 or vitamin D.
And some patients might develop a side effect
called dumping syndrome, which, no, does not
refer to the ‘dumping’ that you may be
thinking of right now.
Sugars and starches are usually digested in
the stomach, but after a gastrectomy, they
“dump” straight into the small intestine.
Since the intestine isn’t used to that,
it recruits water to help break those things
down, and a lot of that water comes from your
blood, causing a drop in blood pressure.
With dumping syndrome, that can cause all
kinds of unpleasant symptoms after a meal:
cramping and bloating, nausea, weakness, dizziness,
and low blood pressure.
But generally, dietary changes are enough
to overcome these issues, and people without
a stomach get enough calories to go back to
their lives.
The spleen, which sits to the left of the
stomach, is also a pretty useful organ.
It’s involved in filtering blood, including
removing and breaking down old red blood cells,
and it’s one of the places where infection-fighting
white blood cells are produced.
But when bad things happen to someone’s
abdomen—like if they get shot or stabbed
or get in a motorcycle accident like my father-in-law,
the spleen can rupture.
That’s super dangerous because it can result
in internal bleeding that could be fatal.
The spleen can also cause problems if it becomes
enlarged from an infection, because the swelling
can trap and destroy healthy blood cells,
leading to anemia.
In those cases, doctors will do a splenectomy,
where they remove part or all of the spleen.
It’s typically considered a safe procedure,
but because of its role in the immune system,
people without a spleen are more prone to
infections, especially from certain bacteria.
So for people without spleens, it’s important
for them to boost their immune system by taking
preventative antibiotics and staying vaccinated.
But the redundancy of the human body means
the immune system isn’t completely destroyed.
And the liver can pick up the slack when it
comes to filtering blood.
Speaking of which…
Your liver does a lot—it processes nutrients,
detoxifies your blood, and produces bile,
a fluid that helps digestion.
And yet, while you can’t have your whole
liver removed, you can donate more than half
of it to help someone whose liver is diseased.
What’s really amazing, though, is that unlike
your other organs, your liver will grow back.
Your liver is made of hepatocytes, specialized
cells that don’t actively replicate…that
is, until some are missing.
When a piece of liver is removed, hepatocytes
reactivate and start replicating again, growing
new liver cells.
Liver regeneration is so efficient that you
can lose up to 65% of your liver and it’ll
grow back within a year.
Just a quarter of a liver can become a completely
new liver in a transplant recipient.
Like any major surgery, there are risks and
potential complications.
But if you’re in good health and feeling
altruistic, liver donation is a thing that
you can do and probably be totally fine afterwards.
Tucked underneath your liver is a small, pear-shaped
organ: the gallbladder.
Its main job is to store the bile that the
liver produces until it’s needed for digestion.
But sometimes, the components of bile harden
into small pebble-like stones, and if those
stones become a problem, doctors just yank
out the whole thing.
Bile is mostly made up of cholesterol, bile
salts, and a waste compound called bilirubin
that’s responsible for the color of your
poop.
In the small intestine, bile’s job is to
help digest fats and break down fat-soluble
vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D.
But for reasons that actually aren’t well-understood,
the cholesterol and bilirubin in bile can
harden into gallstones, which can cause blockages
in the bile duct, the tube that leads to the
small intestine.
Problematic gallstones are super painful,
and without treatment, they can lead to infections
and inflammation and even be deadly.
Unlike kidney stones, which can often be peed
out, gallstones don’t exit willingly.
Sometimes they can be dissolved with medication,
but usually they return after the meds are
stopped.
So in most cases, the treatment for gallstones
is to remove the gallbladder entirely by performing
a cholecystectomy.
This surgery was first performed in 1882.
A German surgeon noted that other mammals
don’t have a gallbladder, so he figured
ours probably wasn’t too important.
And he was kind of right.
The bile still gets to your small intestine
without it — it just doesn’t get temporarily
stored along the way.
If your gallbladder is removed and the surgery
goes smoothly, usually all you have to show
for it is a tiny scar and maybe a little bit
of extra indigestion.
Each of your kidneys is made up of more than
a million filtering units called nephrons,
which remove waste and excess fluid from the
blood.
If that doesn’t seem too important to you,
just imagine what would happen to your house
if you couldn’t take out the trash for a
couple months.
In your body, increased levels of waste can
cause vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration...
The whole body can swell, increasing blood
pressure and imparing breathing.
And chemical imbalances from improper fluid
management can lead to serious issues like
bone and muscle loss.
Ultimately, kidney failure can be fatal.
Yet, you only really need one of your kidneys.
Each day, a pair of kidneys filters about
150 liters of blood to produce about a liter
and a half of urine.
But even one healthy kidney can do all that
work on its own, which is why live kidney
donation is a thing.
When one kidney is removed, the other kidney’s
nephrons compensate by getting bigger so they
can each do more filtering.
It becomes just as effective as two kidneys
would be.
And weirdly, leaving a bad kidney or even
two inside of you isn’t a problem, either.
Recipients don’t always get their faulty
kidneys removed, so they actually end up living
with a total of three kidneys, even though
only one is doing all of the work.
Obviously, your body works best and is the
healthiest when all of the parts are present
and functioning.
But it is definitely possible to live a healthy
and relatively normal life without some organs,
because the human body is incredibly good
at adapting to change.
Remove an organ or two, and it just takes
it in stride, it’s like, “I’m gonna
be one big lung now, I’m fine!”
I mean, it doesn’t look that impressive,
I don’t think, but it is pretty wonderful,
thank you body! .
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