Better Metabolism

I see someone else posted a separate idea concerning Vitamin C. That idea concerns using genetic engineering to give humans back the machinery that most animals (other than primates) have, to internally produce Vitamin C. No more scurvy! I'm all for that, too! (Actually, I had independently thought of it years ago.) Furthermore: why stop at fixing up the body to make Vitamin C? Why not include the genetic machinery to make ALL the vitamins? AND all the "essential" amino acids, too?

And UnaBubba suggested that the body might be fixed up to more thoroughly process all the biological matter that it deals with, and I think that's a fine idea. As an example, consider the fact that when some internal body cell dies, the pieces usually get carted off to the intestinal tract for disposal. Instead, why not ensure that the pieces become fuel? Only the most difficult-to-use stuff should be discarded. And on the input side, while I don't know if we want the genes of bacteria that ruminants use to digest grass for them, we could consider it. Would YOU eat grass if you knew you could survive on it, and you were in the midst of a shortage of ordinary foods? According to some things I've read, various desperate people HAVE tried it at various times and places...not very successfully, I might add.

quarterbaker requested "Improved conscious awareness of nutritional needs" -- and I think that that may not be necessary if we can build in the genes for all the essential vitamins and amino acids. Still, knowing that you are low on iron or calcium or potassium or some other mineral would indeed be good. Equally detailed awareness of metabolic conditions should go hand-in-hand with voluntary metabolic control -- you could lose weight easily by turning up the Basal Metabolic Rate, you could kill cancer by telling them to burn calories at TOO HIGH a rate (cellular overheating), and other neat tricks.

Also, such control may help solve other physical problems that various people have. How fine a voluntary control can we achieve? While I suspect that biofeedback training might be necessary for people to get the fullest benefit from conscious metabolic rate control, if precision is attainable, then such things as bone spurs could be dissolved <in vivo>. In a way, this also connects to my Telomerase Production Hormone post, because to rebuild a broken body involves more than metabolizing the the stuff that is getting in your way -- you also have to make new cells take the places of the old. Without control of telomerase, there is a limit to how many generations of new cells that once can have. I should also mention here that much of this part of this idea was pretty thoroughly described in the science fiction novel "Threshhold", by David R. Palmer. (It was written before telomerase was discovered, though....)

angel mentioned a buoyancy problem, which possibly is related to having too little body fat. Body fat is the main reason why humans tend to float -- I've read that all the other large primates cannot swim and have so little body fat that they would drown easily. In general, women have more body fat than men, and appear 'softer' and 'curvier' than men in consequence -- and they usually tend to float better than men, too. Easy/ voluntary metabolic-rate control could fix anyone suffering from low body fat -- if they were willing to gain some weight, that is. Cultural conditioning may have to be overcome, before some people will accept such a notion!