Life Blood

Blood is a life- and- death issue.  How does blood keep you alive? every second of every day, blood delivers vital nutirents, oxygen, and other chemicals to all of your organs.  It also carts away your body's waste.  In addtion, flowing blood can cool you off or warm you up, when necessary.  Blood is also your best weapon against germs and other invaders.  Your bloodstream creates microscopic defenders called antibodies.  They coat germs, making it possible for white bloods cells in the bloodstream to kill them.
    However, the very liquid that keeps you alive can also kill you.  Within hours, blood can spread poisons and other harmful elements all over your body.  deadly diseases travel from one body to another via the bloodstream.  Your blood may not have the right kinds of defenders or enough defenders to protect you. 
    How can you blood both give life and take it away? Stay tuned in class to find out.

(Information Taken from: Kids Discover Magazine: Blood, Editor Stella Sands.)

Mouth, Esophagus and Stomach Oh My!!!

Before we can put food inside the  mouth, the body needs to be ready to make use of the food's nutrients.  This process is called digestion.  It occurs when food passes along a long tube, which begins with the mouth, throat and esophagus. 

Even before food arrives, the sight or smell of food triggers the release of gastric juices.  As food fills the expanding stomach, the nervous and hormonal systems control the churning of food, and mixing with gastric juice, until the time comes for emptying.  The volume of the stomach can increase from just 0.1 pints (50 ml) when empty, to a massive 8 and a half pints (4 liters), after a big meal.  It can expand bevause of big folds in its lining.

We finish off this process with the small and large Intestines located in a limited space in the abdomen.  It's here that the breakdown of major food groups-carbohydrates, fats, protiens and others-into simple, usable nutrients is completed.  Leftover waste is also removed.

 (Information taken from: Dr. Frankenstein's Human Body Book: The Montrous Truth About How Your Body Works   Author: Richard Walker.)

Beauty is only Skin Deep...

Your Skin is an amazing part of your body.  It helps to protect you from infection, keeps water in your body, regulates your body temperature and gives you vital information about the outside world.  This one organ has multiple jobs that are important to maintaining your body's dynamic equilibirum or balance. 

Take a look at some of the pictures and diagrams below, they truly make you appreciate the skin you're in!