Anatomy

"You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”"

"Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other."

"Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."

"Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."

"Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

"τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη."

"There are bitter tears in human flesh."

"What you have eaten, what you have eaten -- it was not bread that you have eaten, it was your flesh that you have eaten!"

"How can you desire flesh, which by nature is devoid of consciousness? The mind you desire cannot be seen or touched; and that which can be is not conscious. Why do you embrace it in vain?"

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."

"All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else."

"We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,” and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped."

"When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is “inner” or “new.” When speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called “sensual,” “outward,” or “old.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”"

"In after ages, when humanity will have regained robust health, when peace will have been once more established between body and soul, and they again live together in primal harmony, it will scarcely be possible for men to comprehend the unnatural enmity Christianity has set between them. Happier and fairer generations, born of free unions, and nurtured in a religion of joy, will smile with pity at their poor ancestors, who passed their lives in melancholy abstinence from all the enjoyments of this beautiful world, and who mortified the warm, rosy-hued flesh till they became mere pale cold ghosts."

"All those men and women … who in their body serve the world through the desires of the flesh, the concerns of the world and the cares of this life: They are held captive by the devil, whose children they are, and whose works they do."

"When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh."

"When the spirit is lukewarm, and gradually growing cold as it moves from grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind of the flesh forms the conscience."

"Rahula, whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to, that is, head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind dispassionate towards the earth element."

"But what is meant by “flesh” (σάρξ)? It is not what is corporal or sensual but rather the whole sphere of what is visible, available, disposable, and measurable, and as such the sphere of what is transient. This sphere becomes a power over us insofar as we make it the foundation of our lives by living “according to it,” that is, by succumbing to the temptation to live out of what is visible and disposable instead of out of what is invisible and nondisposable—regardless of whether we give ourselves to the alluring possibilities of such a life imprudently and with desire or whether we lead our lives reflectively and with calculation on the basis of our own accomplishments, “the works of the law.” “Flesh” embraces not only material things but also all of our creating and accomplishing insofar as it is concerned with achieving something demonstrable such as fulfilling the demands of the law (Gal. 3:3); to “flesh” belongs every achieved quality and every advantage that we can have within the sphere of what can be seen and disposed of (Phil. 3:4ff.)."

"FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity."

"From my youth upwards My Spirit walked not with the souls of men, Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers, Made me a stranger; though I wore the form, I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

"Any kind of material form whatever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all material form should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”"

"Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. ... Following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. ... They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all."

"The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements. Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens."

"Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food."

"When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures."

"Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it."

"Neurons do not just fire and not fire . . . they must be capable of passing on much more subtle information than yes or no. They are not just hammers hitting the next nail, either more frequently or less so. They are, to complete this analogy, a carpenter’s kit, with screwdrivers, pliers, pincers, mallets—and hammers. . . . Each neural impulse is transformed along the way, and nowhere else than at the synapses."

"Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city."

"A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy."

"An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?"

"Every neuron, ... contains about a million pumps—each one is a slight bump on the cell membrane—and every pump can swap about 200 sodium ions for 130 potassium ions every second."

"Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones."

"There is no question, then, that RNA presents a filing system perfectly capable of handling any load of learning and memory which the human being is likely to put upon it—and a billion times more than that quantity, too."

"When you learn a new skill ... you are training your neurons to connect in a new way. . . . The more you use your brain, the more efficient it will become."

"Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver."

"A healthy, mature human being of normal intelligence may have upwards of 20 million RNA molecules [thought to serve as a ‘filing system’ for memory] in each neuron. . . . An RNA molecule made up of merely 25 links could have any one of a million billion different combinations, . . . In fact, every RNA molecule contains many hundreds of units—not merely 25."

"The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections."

"In some developing tissues, a mass of identical cells somehow differentiates into many types. ...The mechanism behind this process appears to have evolved early on, and is highly conserved... At first this intimate mixture of fates seems puzzling, but there is a relatively easy way to achieve it: instruct each cell 'Be different from your neighbors.' This mechanism is known as lateral inhibition. An example is the nervous system. Since nerve cells form networks with long thin connections, and their ability to function depends on this geometry... when a cell develops into a nerve cell, it sends signals to nearby cells telling them not to do the same."

"We are what we are, ... because our brains are basically chemical machines rather than electrical ones."

"The normalization of placebo pills and subsequent withdrawal bleeding means that even in 2017, many women do not know that extended cycle pills exist, let alone that menstrual suppression is a safe option. Combined with the fact that the percentage of schools teaching students about contraception has declined drastically since 2000, this means that many women are likely to stay in the dark about their options when it comes to choosing whether or not they want to bleed once a month."

"On a philosophical level, Seasonale and other extended cycle pills ignited a conversation about what it means to have a period, and whether our eagerness to suppress our menses is reflective of internalized patriarchal forces. In 2006, a filmmaker named Giovanna Chesler tackled the surprisingly controversial subject in an hourlong documentary, Period: The End of Menstruation? "Women are not sick," she told the New York Times in an interview the following year. "They don't need to control their periods for 30 or 40 years." A vocal group of feminist activists agreed with this assessment, arguing that skipping your periods is unnatural and that marketing menstrual suppression products sends the wrong message to girls: that there is something wrong with menstruating. "These messages underscore that women's natural functions are defective, dysfunctional, and in need of medical intervention," Chris Bobel, a women's studies professor and author, told Ms. magazine in 2010, neatly summing up this line of criticism. "How is this feminist?""

"Many women are unaware that consistently skipping withdrawal bleeding is an option, let alone that extended cycle pills exist, or that menstrual suppression can also be accomplished with hormonal IUDs, NuvaRing, birth control injections, and contraceptive patches."

"Other women had a less political reason for wanting to keep their monthly withdrawal bleeding: Many use it as a way to ascertain whether or not they're pregnant, a method that gynecologists confirm is reliable. (Though, they warn, bleeding is not uncommon during the first trimester of pregnancy.) Those in favor of menstrual suppression—including many feminists—argued that allowing women to choose whether or not they wanted to endure their periods or withdrawal bleeding was a long-awaited step in the right direction, especially since the side effects hardly differ from those of regular oral contraceptives. This group also disliked the idea of equating menstruation with womanhood, which they saw as reductive gender essentialism. A majority of menstruating people seem sympathetic to this side: A 2006 survey on menstrual suppression by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals found that "few women have an emotional connection to their period," and that only eight percent of women "enjoy their period in some way.""

"At present, more and more registrations for a variety of diseases support the therapeutic benefits of MSC transplantation in clinical trials (www.clinicaltrials.gov). In contrast, the registrations of MenSCs are still few, and no more than 10 clinical trials are presented by searching “menstrual blood stem cells”. Actually, the therapeutic potential of MenSCs has already been recognized in several kinds of diseases in pre-clinical research, which is fundamental for future clinical applications in tissue repair and regenerative medicine. Similar to BM-MSCs, MenSCs also have several merits, including the ability to migrate into injury sites, differentiation into different cell lineages, secretion of soluble factors, and regulation of immune responses. Therefore, more researches need to be explored before MenSC becomes a common use in clinical application and treatment."

"Because MenSCs possess good immunosuppressive properties, they are able to intravenously inject large amounts of cells to injured body. From short-term studies, they are safe and reliable after cell transplantation, and they migrate into the inflammatory or injured sites, which has a regenerative inhibitory effect on inflammation. Currently, no evidence of tumor or toxicity following administration of MenSC has been found in nude mice. Moreover, we assessed that MenSCs had significant inhibitory effects on tumor growth in a mouse glioma model. No obvious physiological or serological abnormalities were observed in four patients with multiple sclerosis for the use of MenSCs. Although researches indicate that MenSCs are rapidly evolving, it is not yet determined how long MenSCs can survive in foreign bodies and there are no data guaranteeing their long-term safety owing to lack of specific markers to monitor these cells in vivo."

"In order to achieve the end goal of the use of MenSCs in clinical implementation, the standard criterion of sample collections is needed to produce high quality and high consistency of MenSCs; more importantly, fundamental pre-clinical research is demanded for establishing more treatment strategies and exploring precise signaling pathways. Finally, the long-term safety of MenSCs should be assessed before they are used in clinical medicine. In summary, although more work needs to be done, MenSCs have been proved to play multi-functional roles in treating a variety of diseases through diversely therapeutic strategies in preclinical research, which will be contributed to the development of MenSC-based treatment in regenerative medicine and clinical applications."

"Menstrual blood-derived stem cells (MenSCs) are a novel source of stem cells that can be easily isolated non-invasively from female volunteered donor without ethical consideration. These mesenchymal-like stem cells have high rate of proliferation and possess multi lineage differentiation potency."

"Knowing that a woman is fertile (generally speaking) only for about three to five days out of the month and that her fertility is naturally obstructed (e.g. by the sticky mucous produced by progesterone around the cervix) the other days of the month, I do not want to say that the mere fact of a woman's fertility being obstructed is intrinsically wrong. Otherwise God would be immoral for creating a cycle which includes infertile periods! What I want to say is that a woman's cycle, on a biological level, is ordered toward fertility, toward the procreation of life. For example, the purpose the follicle stimulating hormone is to cause the maturation of an inchoate egg which is to be released into the fallopian tubes after ovulation. As the egg is maturing, the follicle which contains it releases estrogen which builds up the endometrium to prepare a home for the possible child that is conceived when the egg is fertilized. Furthermore, about day fourteen in a normal cycle, the luteinizing hormone causes ovulation, the egg is released into the fallopian tubes, the follicle where the egg had been is transformed (also by the luteinizing hormone) into the corpus luteum which then secretes progesterone which further prepares the endometrium to receive the child and also causes a change in the mucous around the cervix . . . . . . the mucous becomes thick, sticky, infertile; it will not allow sperm to pass through the uterus into the fallopian tubes where fertilization of the egg occurs. If fertilization does not occur the corpus luteum dies and therefore no longer secretes progesterone, the endometrium is no longer sustained by the progesterone; it is sloughed off, menstruation occurs, and a new, fresh release of the follicle stimulating hormone begins the cycle all over again. However, if fertilization did occur then the zygote floats down the fallopian tube, implants itself in the blood-rich endometrium with hair like roots; these roots (villi) just so happen to produce human chorionic gonadotropin which just so happens to keep the corpus luteum alive which just so happens to continue to secrete progesterone for the three months necessary before the placenta develops to the state where it can secrete a hormone to keep the endometrium intact so that they baby can grow and flourish. My point is that a woman's biological cycle is ordered marvelously, wondrously toward life. Yet, this cycle is not merely a biological phenomena; it is part of who the woman is. The human person does not ‘have' a body. The human person "is an incarnate spirit: a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit""

"Menstrual blood-derived stem cells (MenSCs) are a novel source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). MenSCs are attracting more and more attention since their discovery in 2007. MenSCs also have no moral dilemma and show some unique features of known adult-derived stem cells, which provide an alternative source for the research and application in regenerative medicine. Currently, people are increasingly interested in their clinical potential due to their high proliferation, remarkable versatility, and periodic acquisition in a non-invasive manner with no other sources of MSCs that are comparable in adult tissue. In this review, the plasticity of pluripotent biological characteristics, immunophenotype and function, differentiative potential, and immunomodulatory properties are assessed. Furthermore, we also summarize their therapeutic effects and functional characteristics in various diseases, including liver disease, diabetes, stroke, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, ovarian-related disease, myocardial infarction, Asherman syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, acute lung injury, cutaneous wound, endometriosis, and neurodegenerative diseases. Subsequently, the clinical potential of MenSCs is investigated. There is a need for a deeper understanding of its immunomodulatory and diagnostic properties with safety concern on a variety of environmental conditions (such as epidemiological backgrounds, age, hormonal status, and pre-contraceptive). In summary, MenSC has a great potential for reducing mortality and improving the quality of life of severe patients. As a kind of adult stem cells, MenSCs have multiple properties in treating a variety of diseases in regenerative medicine for future clinical applications."