It’s Good to Know: What’s the Appendix Good For, Anyway?

If you have to have your appendix removed, it won’t have much of an effect on your health. In fact, you probably won’t notice anything different, except for the surgery scar, of course. So why do we have an appendix in the first place?

Its purpose has baffled scientists for hundreds of years. But a team of surgeons and immunologists at Duke University think they have the answer. They have proposed that the appendix stores beneficial bacteria. They say that when a person’s stock of "good" intestinal bacteria, which helps digestion, is decreased by illness, the appendix steps in to replace it.

(Source: Discover Magazine)

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