The Oceans Flow Through My Veins

Remember that line from a song I quoted in yesterday’s RDA? “I am made of the stuff of the stars, and the oceans flow through my veins.”

Let me explain the second part of that. Your body contains water, a lot of it. I don’t think that surprises anyone. But what not everyone knows is that it’s not pure water – it contains some salt, 0.9% by weight, as a matter of fact. And this concentration is the same for most living cells. If you’ve ever gotten a small cut on your hands and sucked on it, you may have noticed that blood is slightly salty, for instance.

No matter whether it’s a bacteria or a bald eagle, a horse or a human, a blade of grass or a giraffe, we all have the same concentration of salt in our cells. Why? Well, all of the evidence that we have says that life started in the oceans. The first cells probably had the same concentration of salt inside as the ocean water did outside. And things have just stayed the same ever since.

But the oceans haven’t. The oceans have gotten increasingly salty over the many years since the first living things. So the ocean has gotten saltier, while we’ve stayed the same. But it still comes down to this; you have a certain concentration of salt in your body. It all has the same concentration as that ancient sea. You and every other living creature still hold the memory of our Mother Ocean “running through your veins.”