Your Body: The Missing Manual

Appendix A. The Final Word

You’re now at the end of your eye-opening journey through the human body. Along the way, you learned how your body builds skin, fat, muscles, and bones. You peered inside to see essential organs at work, like your heart and lungs. You traveled your body’s intricate passageways, exploring the arteries and veins that nourish your cells and the winding digestive tract that carries your last meal away. You watched your body translate light, chemicals, and vibrations of air into a rich medley of sensory experience. You saw it battle disease. And you experienced the pleasures of sex and the pains of death.

It’s all a bit overwhelming. Because no matter how intimately we think we know our bodies, their amazing capabilities, fatal flaws, and messy compromises are nothing short of staggering. Hopefully, you’ve picked up enough practical advice to become a better body owner, whether it’s through regular exercise, good nutrition, or disease prevention. But even if you aren’t planning to change anything, you’ve certainly learned how to enjoy your body’s quirks and capabilitiesy—and that’s all part of the fun of life.

If you’re wondering where to go next, you can check out the follow-up reading that’s listed, chapter by chapter, on the “Missing CD” page for this book at www.missingmanuals.com/cds. It links to websites and books that expand on the themes you’ve touched on in these chapters. And if you’re ready to launch a completely different trip, you may be interested ...