There might be more of the periodic table inside of you than you think.
There also might be more of the periodic table inside of you that actually does something to keep you alive…than you think.
And to unpack that concept, we're going to pull a Magic School Bus and shrink down to microscopic size to understand how the body works.
Across the breathtaking savannahs of hemoglobin and the beautiful beaches of thyroid hormones, we will find massive herds of carbon and flocks of hydrogen.
And if we're very quiet, and look very closely, we'll also see some of the rarer elements that are just as vital for our health.
Of the 118 elements on the periodic table, about 90 of those occur naturally on Earth.
And just six get most of the credit for keeping living things alive.
Together, we call them CHNOPS: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur.
And each of these elements exist naturally as individual or pairs of atoms, but they're more useful to us when they mix and match into molecules we know and love.
From the relatively simple water, to the rather complicated DNA.
