01/21/2025
You’re not the same person you were 10 minutes ago.
Your body is constantly regenerating itself. New cells are made, and old ones are discarded.
Every 7 to 10 years, you get a completely new body with new sets of organs and tissues. Your stomach regenerates itself every 4 days. The stomach cells that help you digest food are replaced every 5 minutes.
You get a new liver every 150 days. The entire outer layer of your skin, called the epidermis, replaces itself every 4 weeks. Your pancreas, which helps regulate your blood sugar level, is renewed every 50 days.
And every 4 months, you get a new set of red blood cells across your entire body. Even after you donate blood, it would only take 12 weeks to completely replace the red blood cells you donated. Your taste buds that help you enjoy a variety of foods are replaced every 10 days. Although cells are always regenerating, the process can be slow for some parts. Bones, for instance, require up to 10 years to fully regenerate.
As we age, bone regeneration slows down and our bones become weaker. Despite this incredible regeneration capacity of the human body, some parts of your body are never replaced, such as the cells that make up the inner lens in your eyes and the neurons in your cerebral cortex.
Fat can also accumulate and stick around depending on your diet and physical activity. Even though everything in your body is replaced, the only thing that remains of you is your consciousness, self-awareness and memories. As I said, your taste buds are replaced every 10 days, but the memory of the delicious food you tasted before is still there, and new taste buds are ready to experience it.
