When it comes to getting and staying healthy, knowledge is power.

What’s there to know about your body systems? Guts are guts, right?

Not so fast.

The body is comprised of groups of organs that perform specific biological functions but work together like the most complex of ecosystems.

Like an ecosystem, when one component doesn’t do what it is supposed to, it affects the health of all of the other systems that depend on it, like so many butterflies flapping their wings in your Lady Garden. To keep your human ecosystem functioning right, it’s important to understand how your body systems work and what you can do to treat them right.

What is it that you misunderstand about these hips?

my hips?

These are my hips-

these fifty – two inch hips

attached to this thirty-six inch waist

are my hips and they tell herstory

perhaps you question the size of my hips-

the second largest continent in the world sired these hips

of course they would be as large-

the oldest civilization on earth gave birth to these hips

of course they would be as wide-

Self-Portrait

Portrait artist Riva Lehrer’s groundbreaking work on identity and disability has been exhibited at such prestigious venues as the United Nations, National Women’s Art Museum and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Lehrer has been an invited lecturer throughout the United States and in Europe, and was the subject of the documentary Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer. She is a professor of anatomy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lehrer has Spina Bifida, a congenital disorder where part of the spinal cord is exposed through an unfused section of the backbone.

Ms. Fit chatted with Lehrer over Thai food in her cozy Chicago apartment. What follows are excerpts from that conversation and, because she’s really smart, we let her do most of the talking.