Skin
Something that we all have learnt, remember and feel everyday is our five senses namely sight through our eyes, touch through skin, taste trough tongue, smell through our nose and hear through our ears. Watching a soccer match, listening to songs, tasting good food, smelling the beautiful scented flowers and feeling the touch of our loved ones is all made possible due to these five senses of our body. Each of these senses is unique and important in its own way and cannot be replaced or compared with one another.
Skin is one of our five sensory organs which is the outer living tissue covering of our body as well as that in all animals. A small fact about skin is that it is the largest organ of the protective system of our body which is made of multiple layers of tissues, muscles, ligaments, bones and fats. The skin acts as the interface between our body and the outer environment and so is one of the most parts of our body. It protects our body from the numerous pathogens and infections. Skin also performs many other fuctions such as, being an insulator for our body, regulating the temperature, synthesizing vitamin D, provides protection to the vitamin B folates in our body.
The skin in our body is has melanin pigments which are caused due to the melanocytes in the cells which absorbs the harmful radiations such as the ultra violet rays emitted from the sun. These cells also contain certain enzymes which help to repair the DNA and also help to reverse the damage caused due to the ultra violet rays of the sunlight. People lacking this gene have possibilities to be affected by skin cancer. Pigmentation in the skin mainly occurs due to the improper functioning of the endocrine glands and the liver in our body. Some of the main functions the skin performs in our body include the following:
-
Protection from the pathogens and the external harmful particles such as dust etc
-
The skin has blood supplies which help to control the loss of energy caused due to convection, conduction and radiations.
-
The skin layer on our body helps by acting as an impermeable membrane thus stopping the excess loss of fluids and water from our body, thus controls evaporation.
-
The sweat that is excreted from our body contains urea which is much lower in concentration in comparison to the quantity of urea in the urine. Thus acts as a secondary excretory organ for our body.
Our skin should be properly cared by us as we age. With the increasing age our skin begins to get thinner and thus gets easily damaged and takes a long time to heal. Thus, you should take proper care of your skin as a glowing skin is a sign of a healthy body.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.