• Question: How many cells do we have in our body? How many die every minute?

    Asked by angelo775 to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 28 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by 125461224p, islamudeen0076, shaheerzaki786.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      There are about 70 trillion cells in a human body. As to how many die every minute – it depends on all sorts of things – like your age for example – you wouldn’t think it but when babies are born, millions of their brain cells die – they are supposed to because they have done their job – this is called ‘apoptosis’ or programmed cell death. Once a cell has done its job ,it is set to self- destruct. Another mass extinction of brain cells happens when you become a teenager!. You can speed up the rate of cell death in your body by drinking alcohol and taking drugs – in that case the cells aren’t due to die, but they become too stressed with dealing with the chemicals in your blood and conk out as a result. Fortunately we are pretty good at replacing most of these, so we can cope with an occasional glass of alcohol.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      of the 100 trillion Cells in our body, we know that we are in constant flux. The number of cells that die must roughly equal the number of cells that are produced. Tissues, including bone replenish themselves at varying rates.

    • Photo: Vee Mitchell

      Vee Mitchell answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      What’s a trillion or so cells either way. There are incredible numbers of cells in your body and they are constantly being replaced becase the body already has a supply ready to replace them (eg skin, hair, blood cells) or because we have an army of cells which can be programmed by our body to become any cell that is required – known as Stem cells. Many scientists think that degenerative diseases of the brain like Alzheimers occue because the balance changes between the number of cells dying and the bodies ability to replce them from Stem cells ie more dying, less repair.

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