Health news this week announced that new research confirms previous studies showing that babies born in summer months are healthier on some measures than those born in winter months. The idea that summer birth confers lifelong benefits, and winter birth is associated with degenerative stressors is nothing surprising for people who view the body as operating according to the same general principles as large bodies, like planets or stars, or others kinds of things, even rocks, sheets of metal, trees, sunlight, water, smoke, or an ice cube. These people I’m referring to are biophysicists who are thinking about the principles of non-equilibrium physics and the extent to which they can be applied to the functions of the human body. This is not meant as a metaphor, but as a genuine aid in explaining metabolism. The body is not like other systems, it is other systems, just to a limited extent. The application of physical principles shouldn’t reduce one’s thinking—simplify away its m
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