Skin one of body's busiest parts

Purchased for a quarter at the last Portales Public Library book sale, my book-of-the-month summary for June is “How the Body Works: 100 Ways Parents and Kids Can Share the Miracle of the Human Body” by Steve Parker (Reader’s Digest Books, 1994, 192 pages).

The large, glossy book, packed with color photos, comes with easy-to-follow exercises using household products parents can use to help their kids understand the body’s processes.

Excerpts:

• The body is an incredible masterpiece of bioengineering. Under its skin lie muscles, bones, blood vessels, glands, etc., that work day and night as blood pulses through the arteries and veins, food passes through the intestines and electrical signals flash along nerves.

• Organs themselves are made of body tissues, which are made of microscopic cells. Every second millions of cells are being born and dying as the body maintains and repairs itself.

• The human body we know today was made by millions of years of evolution. Like the 4,000 other mammals, we have warm blood, hairy skin and a bony skeleton. We belong to the group of mammals called primates, which includes lemurs, monkeys and apes. Our DNA is over 98 percent identical to a chimpanzee’s.

• Two-thirds of the body is water. Proteins, which form a living framework in and around cells, are plentiful in meat, fish and cheese. Carbohydrates produce energy and are abundant in sweet or starchy foods such as flour, bread, rice and sugar.

• Minerals play many specialized roles and include copper, iron, sulfur and zinc. Lipids (fats and oils) make up the thin microscopic sheets known as membranes that form the “outer” skin of each cell. Lipids are similar to the fats and oils used in cooking and butter.

• Almost everything on the outside of a body is dead. The outer skin, hair and nails are composed of cells that died weeks ago. Yet, just beneath this layer, millions of cells are multiplying, making skin one of the body’s busiest parts.

• Pound for pound, bone is stronger than wood, concrete or steel. If the human skeleton was made of enough steel to equal the strength of bone, it would weigh five times as much.

• An individual muscle moves its part of the body by contracting and pulling on the bone it is attached to. Muscles are usually arranged in pairs, one on each side of the bone.

• There is no device in the world of animals or machines that is as versatile as a hand.

• The body can store most of the substances it needs, but only a few minutes of oxygen. When you exercise strenuously, the heart rate increases so more oxygen and energy carried in the blood can reach muscles. You breathe faster and deeper to get extra oxygen from the air into your blood.

• The kidneys receive up to 440 gallons of blood a day and extract its wastes through a million-plus filtering units, storing the resulting urine in the bladder before expelling it from the body.

• When you hear a recording of your voice, it may sound unfamiliar because you detect the recording’s vibrations only through the air — not through your neck and head, too.

Contact Wendel Sloan at:

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