[Kim Jaeho's Life Story]<185> The Key to Life, Faith

According to the 2018 life table from Statistics Korea, the life expectancy of newborns in 2018, calculated based on age-specific mortality rates in 2018, is 79.7 years for men and 85.7 years for women, which is 1.7 years longer for men and 2.4 years longer for women than the OECD average. Healthy life expectancy, which refers to the period of living in good health excluding the duration of illness, is 64 years for men and 64.9 years for women. This means men are expected to live an average of 15.7 years and women 20.8 years suffering from diseases or injuries.

People suffer from diseases or injuries for a significant part of their lives, and these conditions sometimes cause premature death before reaching their full life expectancy. Reducing the duration of illness to extend healthy life expectancy is one of the important life goals for everyone. To reduce the duration of illness, it is necessary to prevent diseases and injuries as much as possible and to respond wisely. But how well do we understand the causes of diseases or injuries, and how wisely are we responding?

Fortunately, we are born with a system encoded in our genes that is superior to any human-made method for preventing and overcoming all diseases. Thanks to this, all indicators within the body are always maintained at appropriate levels (homeostasis), and numerous problems such as wounds, harmful substances and bacteria entering the body through food or breathing, and thousands of cancer cells generated daily are naturally healed without our awareness.

Serious problems arise if homeostasis is not maintained in our body. Even without any deliberate action, homeostasis responds to changes in the external environment to stably maintain all internal conditions such as body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, sodium concentration, and hydrogen ion concentration (pH). When any variable rises above the appropriate level, it is lowered, and when it falls below, it is raised, managing so that it does not go beyond the proper range (see Life Story episode 182).

The cells in our body are frequently damaged or exposed to toxic substances, suffer from nutritional or oxygen deficiency, stress, and other causes, and die (hundreds of thousands of the 6 billion DNA molecules are damaged daily). Cells die when their lifespan ends (some cells live only 2-3 days, while others live until death), but damaged or dead cells are repaired to their original form or replaced with new cells to consistently maintain all functions.

There are also multiple excellent layers of defense to prevent pathogens such as the COVID-19 virus or bacteria from entering the body and causing infectious diseases. Our skin blocks any bacteria or viruses from entering the body, so unless they enter through the mouth, nose, wounds, contact with bodily fluids, insect bites, or contaminated medical devices, no pathogen can enter the body.

Bacteria and viruses that enter the body are expelled through nasal mucus, coughing, sneezing, mucus in the respiratory or gastrointestinal tract, vomiting, and diarrhea, and are killed by stomach acid secretion. Surviving bacteria and viruses are attacked by immune cells called white blood cells, and the immune cell attack continues until the disease-causing bacteria or viruses are completely eliminated. White blood cells also attack and remove cancer cells formed from mutated normal cells.

Despite having such an excellent system, we get sick because this system malfunctions due to poor lifestyle habits. If this precious system is restored, naturally all diseases can be cured. The seventh letter T in ‘NEW START’ (see Life Story episode 6), which protects life, stands for trust, meaning the belief in the existence of this system.

Advances in genetics and epigenetics have revealed that this life system is encoded in genes within cells, and diseases occur when these genes are damaged. The ‘Human Genome Project,’ completed in 2003, shows on a genetic map which gene on which chromosome among the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a cell causes which disease when damaged (for example, a person with lung cancer has damage to a gene at the top of chromosome 3, and an obese person has damage to a gene at the bottom of chromosome 7).

Understanding this life system shows that the best way to cure diseases is to create a good environment for genes so that the life system can function properly and repair damaged genes. When infected with the COVID-19 virus, people whose system works well do not develop symptoms, and about 80% of patients whose system works relatively well recover over time not because of treatment but because this system functions, which is the same principle.

Jaeho Kim, Independent Researcher