We Are Not Born with Instructions: The Human Body Already Knows
- Dr. Howard A. Friedman MD, founder of HHOM LLC
- Nov 11, 2025
- 5 min read
11-06-2025
By Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D. | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps | Internal Medicine | HHOM LLC
Poem — Before the First Breath
Before breath became a habit,
and the heart knew its rhythm,
we arrived—
unbriefed, untrained,
handed a universe of flesh
with no instructions tucked inside.
----Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D.
Introduction — We Come Without a Manual
When a baby enters the world, everyone is a stranger. No one leans over the crib and explains how to raise a heartbeat, how to breathe in sleep, or how to heal a wound. Yet within that small, quiet body lives the most advanced machine on Earth. From the first moment, it works without being taught. The lungs know to expand. The heart knows to pump. The immune system—completely naïve—begins learning the world one microbe at a time. No one explains any of this to the child, because there are no instructions to give. The body comes fully equipped, but not fully understood.
We grow up inside this machine without ever truly being handed the manual.
The Unseen Machinery
Before we can speak, walk, or understand our own names, the body is already running a thousand silent programs.
The digestive system extracts nutrients. The cardiovascular system sends blood through 60,000 miles of vessels. The respiratory system trades oxygen for carbon dioxide. The nervous system wires itself, shaping how we think, feel, and love.
Above all of it, regulating every organ, is the brain. And buried deep within it is the control center almost no one is taught about as a child: the autonomic nervous system—the part of the brain that keeps you alive without asking your permission.
Sympathetic nervous system — the alarm. Heart rate climbs, blood pressure rises, cortisol and adrenaline surge. Muscles tense. Inflammation prepares for injury. This is fight, flight, or freeze.
Parasympathetic nervous system — the restoration. Heart rate slows. Blood pressure drops. Digestion resumes. Healing begins. This is rest, digest, and repair.
Even in sleep, they alternate command. Stage 4 sleep belongs to the parasympathetic system—deep, restorative, cellular repair. Stage 5 REM sleep leans toward sympathetic—dreams, rapid eye movement, heightened brain activity.
No one hands us these details. No instructions—just machinery, already running.
The Choice We Don’t Realize We’re Making
By adulthood, we aren’t just passengers in this system—we’re at the controls. We can sway this machinery with how we breathe, think, respond, and focus.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s physiology.
When you breathe slowly, feel gratitude, or sit in silence, the parasympathetic system steps forward: heart rate slows, digestion activates, inflammation decreases.
When you rush, argue, stew in anger, or live inside fear, the sympathetic system dominates: cortisol rises, immune function drops, muscles tighten, healing shuts down.
Most people think emotions are intangible. They’re not. Peace, grief, joy, anger—they’re measurable patterns of chemistry and electricity.
We are making choices every day: not moral choices, but biological ones.
Gratitude is not sentiment—it is an anti-inflammatory. Silence is not laziness—it is a recalibration of the nervous system. Kindness doesn’t just make you a better person—it makes you a healthier one.
If the human body had instructions, one line would be printed in bold:What you pay attention to becomes your chemistry.
Section 4 — The Brain’s Editor: RAS, Addiction, and Reality
We do not see the world as it is. We see the world our brain allows us to see.
Inside the brainstem lives the Reticular Activating System (RAS) — the gatekeeper of awareness. It filters billions of bits of sensory data every second—light, sound, touch, motion—and decides which tiny fraction reaches your conscious mind.
You don’t notice your heartbeat until it speeds up. You don’t notice your breathing until someone says, “take a deep breath.” You don’t see all the red cars—until you start wanting to buy one.
That isn’t the world changing. That is your RAS changing. What you focus on—fear, beauty, anger, gratitude—programs the RAS. Then the RAS edits reality to match. And then there is the brain’s pleasure system—designed to reward survival: food, water, safety, love, connection. But today, it’s hijacked by sugar, alcohol, opioids, scrolling, gambling, pornography, applause. These don’t just activate pleasure—they overwhelm it.
Dopamine floods, receptors numb, and soon the brain needs more just to feel normal.
Addiction isn’t a moral failure—it’s a survival system rewired by modern life.
If the Body Came with Instructions
We begin life with no map. But over time, if we listen, the body starts to speak. Not in words—but in heart rhythms, sleep cycles, tension, inflammation, and breath.
If there were instructions, they might sound like this:
When the world feels loud, find quiet. The body cannot heal in constant noise.
Breathe slowly—deliberately. Long exhalations tell the brain, “We are safe.”
Eat food that can rot—just eat it before it does. Real food spoils because it’s alive. Processed food doesn’t spoil because it’s engineered for shelves, not for human cells.
Move your body. Sleep when it’s dark. These are not wellness trends—they are ancient survival codes.
Practice gratitude not because it’s polite, but because it resets your biology. It lowers cortisol, calms the amygdala, and opens the immune system.
Pay attention to what you pay attention to. Your brain is always listening—and it will build your reality from whatever you repeatedly tell it matters.
Guard your pleasure system. It was built for joy, connection, creation—not for constant dopamine floods.
We are not born with instructions.But the body is always whispering them.
Closing Poem — The Manual Was Always There
No one handed us the manual,
so the body whispered instead
—in tight chests, racing hearts,
in tears we didn’t plan on crying.
Listen long enough,
and you’ll hear it say: slow down,
breathe back into yourself,
you already know the way.
---Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D.
—Dr. Howard Friedman, M.D.
Board-Certified | Internal Medicine | Veteran | U.S. Army Medical Corps
Founder of Howard’s House of Medicine (HHOM LLC)
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: If we’re born without instructions, how does the body know what to do?
A: Because it’s built with memory deeper than language. DNA carries billions of years of biological intelligence. Long before thought, the body already knows how to breathe, pump, digest, and heal. The manual isn’t written on paper—it’s coded in every cell.
Q: Can we really influence our biology with thought or emotion?
A: Yes. Every emotion is chemistry in motion. Calm breathing lowers cortisol. Gratitude activates parasympathetic repair. Chronic anger elevates inflammation. The mind doesn’t sit on top of the body—it moves through it. Your focus rewires your physiology every day.
Q: What does it mean to “listen to the body”?
A: It means recognizing symptoms as signals, not nuisances. Fatigue, tension, insomnia, and pain are the body’s way of whispering, “Something needs balance.” Listening isn’t mystical—it’s biological awareness. The body speaks quietly; healing begins when we finally hear it.
There is so much your know that is not taught in medical school. What set you on a different path?
This article reminds me of HeartMath - a company that makes a monitor measuring heart rate variability. Their website contains a wealth of wisdom and research - largely ignored. Have you run across this company? Worth a peek.