Organ Systems

Hi. It's Mr. Andersen and welcome to biology essentials video 45. This podcast on organ systems. I grew up in the 1980s. So that was before cable television. And so if I was watching TV as a kid, I was watching PBS. And one of my favorite shows was Captain Kangaroo but I also loved watching Slim Good Body. I don't know if anybody else has seen that. Slim Good Body would wear a unitard suit. It had all the different organs, the organs systems put together. I got the trailer here for you. "The Adventures of Slim Good Body and Nutra City! Slim Good Body brave and true. A man of health. A hero who leads a team of body control. Nutrition's his mission. Good health's his goal." So sorry about that. You probably feel sorry for me for growing up in the 1980s. But I did learn all my organ systems. Slim taught us how to eat a healthy diet. He showed us when you'd eat an apple where it would go down the esophagus into the stomach, small, large intestine. And so he was very brave. And it was a good way for me to learn my organ systems. So this podcast is going to be relatively short. It basically shows us, or I'm going to talk about how organs will interact together. And as they all work together you create something called an organ system. An example would be the kidney and the bladder working hand in hand in the excretory system. And that's helping us get rid of or filter the blood is the best way to think about it. Organ systems then will interact together. And that creates an organism. So you're made up of just a few organ systems working together. And so an example of that would be the respiratory system, like the lungs. And they work hand in hand with vessels and the heart to move nutrients around and move oxygen around to all of the cells in your body. And so let's get started with the kidney. A lot of people don't really understand what the kidney does. They know that you've got two of them. They're like the size of the fist. They're in the back. But what do they do? Basically they filter your blood. And so if you look at the overall anatomy, so here's the overall anatomy of a kidney, you've got these blood vessels moving in. They move around the outside which is called the renal cortex. And then they move eventually down towards the renal medulla and then they move back out and then they move their way out. And so we've got blood coming in. But what's going on is that the blood will be moving really easily. And then it will eventually, let me kind of draw this. So it will eventually get down here so the blood is moving smaller, smaller and now it's almost almost at the level of the capillaries. So down here, it will eventually move in to the glomerulus. And the glomerulus is all of these capillaries kind of wadded up. But they don't go anywhere. So it's a good way to think about that is it's like a dead end for the capillaries. They move around like this. But there's nowhere to go except back out again. And so basically the blood is moving and it runs into a dead end. And as it does that, all the small things like water and little solutes and things like that will squirt out. And so that now moves into the urinary system. So it moves into the filtrate. Let me find a black color. So now it moves through the filtrate. Moves through the proximal distal tubule. Moves through the loop of Henle. But essentially what we've done is we've started to filter the blood. Now that filtrate will eventually move into the ureter. And so this is our kidney. What it's doing is it's filtering the blood. And if you don't have a kidney you have to do kidney dialysis where they actually filter the blood for you. So that kidney alone is not going to work. Because we're going to have all of this filtrate that's being produced but it has not place to go. And so eventually what happens is that's going to move down into the bladder. So the bladder is able to hold that filtrate. Hold that urine until we're ready to get rid of it. So it's not just coming out in little bits. It's coming out all at once. And so that would be two organs working together with a single purpose. And so those are part of the excretory system. In fact we would put the ureters, which is going to be this right here, as a part of the excretory system as well. And so this a organ system. We also have organ systems that work together. So the two ones that are super easy to understand, you probably understand, are the respiratory system and the circulatory system. So if we step through it, respiratory system basically you contract your diaphragm. It increases the volume inside here and you're going to get a flow of air down in through the trachea into the bronchia, bronchioles. And eventually to these things which are called alveoli. Alveoli is this very small thin wet moist layer of cells. And basically what it allows is the oxygen that breathed in to move into from a high concentration of oxygen to a low concentration within these little capillaries. And then the carbon dioxide to move back out. And so we get this flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide moving back and forth. Respiratory system by itself wouldn't do anything. If that was our entire surface, we would only get oxygen to the cells right around the lungs. And that's not going to help us. And so we have to work together. In other words, the respiratory system now passes that oxygen off to the circulatory system, where it's going to move it through aorta up towards the head. Down towards the lower end of the body. And it's going to move it all the way around our body. It's going to move that oxygen adjacent to cells, adjacent to the interstitial fluid next to cells. And so it can move that oxygen into cells and move the carbon dioxide out. Remember it's simply diffusion. Oxygen is always moving from an area of high to an area of low oxygen. And carbon dioxide is moving in the opposite direction. So we can eventually breathe that out. It'll adhere to the hemoglobin within the red blood cells. But if it weren't for these two systems working together, then we wouldn't have a functioning organism. And so all of the organ systems inside our body interact with one another. And here's a list of the major organ systems within our body. From digestive system all the way down to the muscular system. And so what you should do is before I move forward, you should pause the video right now. Can you go down, I mean you could think of it like this, could you add another column right here where you put all of the organs that are within that system. Could you list those mentally? And then you could talk about the function. So if you could do that and go through all of these, then you have a pretty good understanding, if I were to extend my table down a little bit, you have a good understanding of what those organ systems do. But I've got a little slide show, so let's move through it. So digestive system is going to be made up of, basically its function is to breakdown food. Get it small enough so we can absorb that. And then get rid of the waste. So it's going to be made up, it really starts with our eyes actually where we see the food. But it moves it all the way through the stomach. We mechanically break it down through the small intestine, large intestine. We reclaim water and then we move our way on. Circulatory system like I said is going to move blood around. So it's moving oxygen, carbon dioxide. It's moving it out of our body. It's also moving nutrients like sugar, food that we need. It's moving all of that hormones around our whole body. We've got the respiratory system. Basically what that is is it's an infolding of this respiratory surface where we can have a high surface area. We can also have a moist area where can exchange oxygen with our environment. Immune/lymphatic system, you probably know what it does but maybe not what the parts are. So big things we would have for the immune system would be, this would be the tonsils up here. This would be the spleen. But there would be lymph nodes and lymphatic vessels throughout your whole body. And basically what that's doing is it's returning the fluid back to your circulatory system. And it's also a great place where all of your white blood cells can hang out. And they can fight infections. Excretory system we've mentioned already. That's going to be like the kidneys and the bladder and the ureter. It's basically moving that, it's filtering the blood and moving materials out that we want. Secreting drugs, secreting things that we don't need anymore. Endocrine system is one that's pretty diverse. Endocrine system is made up of a number of different glands in our body. And those are secreting hormones. All they way up here at the top of our head, like with the pineal gland, the pituitary gland. We've got the thyroid gland. We've got the adrenal gland. We've got the *** and all of those are secreting hormones. And those hormones are moving slowly throughout the body. And they're having desired effects wherever they go. Reproductive system. It's going to be different in males and females. Basically males is to deliver ***. Females is to not only receive ***, but also fertilize that egg and then the baby will start to develop within the uterus. And eventually be delivered. Nervous system we've got a central nervous system which is basically made up of the brain and the spinal cord. And then we have a peripheral nervous system. These two work kind of in a similar fashion. The endocrine is slow movement of signals but nervous system is going to be fast movement of signals from one area to another. So if you touch a stove and you move your hand away, before you even realize you've touched the stove, you can thank your nervous system from that. Integumentary system is one that kids are sometimes confused with. That's going to be like the hair, the skin, the nails of your body. It's basically providing protection from our external environment. Skin, if I remember right ,is the largest organ that you have in your body. Skeletal system is going to be basically for support and protection. It holds us up. We have what's called an endoskeleton on the inside. We can also store ions and nutrients inside some of the long bone in our body. And then muscular system is attached to that skeletal system. So it gives us movement. But it also, part of the muscular system would be the heart, part of that circulatory system. So those are the organ systems. Remember it's just groups of organs that are working together with a similar cause. And I hope that's helpful.