Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Skipping Guts - Addendum 2

Beginning with the idea of expressing gut lengths as a proportion of height (Skipping Guts), I wandered into the idea of a standard (or reference) male and female (Skipping Guts - Addendum). While, to my knowledge, gut length is not mentioned in the reference tables to which I referred, the weights of different organs are.

Based on the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) standards, the physiological differences between the 70kg "Reference Man" and the 60kg "Reference Woman" are precisely defined to ensure consistency in medical and scientific research. Thus, they supply standardised organ weights (or perhaps I ought to say 'mass', as these values are no doubt applied to astronauts).

Organ Mass Comparisons
The Reference Man (170 cm, 70 kg) generally has larger organ masses than the Reference Woman (163 cm, 60 kg) due to overall body size, though the proportions relative to body weight vary.


…and one could go on. There are other standards. For example, basal metabolic rate (BMR) also mentioned in ICRP Publication 89 but, having added two addenda to my original post, I will stop here.