Inside My Body

Inside My Body Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered what’s underneath your skin? It’s your organs! Your skin, your heart, your brain, your lungs and many other things are all organs.

So lets have a look inside... This picture shows the main organs of your body. Let’s see if you know what they are called.

Let’s have a look at them in more detail. brain lungs heart stomach liver small intestine large intestine skin Let’s have a look at them in more detail.

The Brain Your brain is about the size of a small cauliflower. It sends messages to the rest of your body using the spinal cord. It is a bit like your body’s own control centre! Your brain is protected by your skull and is surrounded by fluid to cushion it if you fall over. Your brain needs oxygen from blood to work properly. 3,500 pints of blood flow through the brain every day!

The brain has two sides that control different things in our body. The right side of the brain is the creative side. The left side of the brain is the logical side. There are areas of the brain that help with all of our senses, our behaviour, our speech, our memory and our movements.

The Lungs Your body needs oxygen to stay alive. When you breathe in, oxygen enters your lungs. The oxygen goes into your bloodstream through your lungs and is carried to the parts of the body that need it.

Your lungs take up most of the space in your chest. They are protected by your ribcage. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung so that there is enough space for your heart. Your lungs allow you to take in fresh air and get rid of stale air.

The Heart Your heart is like a pump but it is really a muscle. It's located a little to the left of the middle of your chest, and it's about the size of your fist. The heart sends blood around your body. The blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs.

The right side of your heart receives blood from the body and pumps it to the lungs. The left side of the heart does the exact opposite: It receives blood from the lungs and pumps it out to the body.

The Liver The liver is the largest organ inside your body. When you are fully grown your liver will weigh 1.5 kilograms, but by the time you are 60 years old it will have shrunk to 0.8 kilograms! Don’t worry – it will still do its job! The liver helps the body store energy and gets rid of toxins.

Your stomach muscles squash the food until it is a creamy pulp. The Stomach When you eat food passes into your stomach and stays there for two-and-a-half to three hours. Your stomach muscles squash the food until it is a creamy pulp. Your stomach produces juices to break down the food and kill germs you may have swallowed.

Your intestines are in two parts. The Intestines The large intestine The small intestine

Your small intestine is a narrow coiled tube that is about 6 or 7 metres long. When food leaves your stomach it comes here so that nutrients can be absorbed back into the body. Water and food that cannot be digested pass into your large intestine and come out of your body as waste.

The Skin Your skin is the body’s biggest organ! Your skin is very important. It covers and protects everything inside your body. Skin: protects our bodies helps keep our bodies at just the right temperature allows us to have the sense of touch 

The skin is tough and strong, just right for covering your body and protecting it. Skin is always renewing itself . Though you can't see it happening, every minute of the day we lose about 30,000 to 40,000 dead skin cells off the surface of our skin.

What about the other organs in our body? Our diagram looked showed only some of the organs in our body. There are many others, too many for us to look at now. Let’s just look at a couple more that are important.

Kidneys come in pairs. If you've ever seen a kidney bean, then you have a pretty good idea what the kidneys look like. Each kidney 13 centimeters long and about 8 centimeters wide - about the size of a computer mouse. The Kidneys The kidneys are every bit as important as the heart. You need at least one kidney to live!

One of the main jobs of the kidneys is to filter the waste out of the blood. Most of the waste is just stuff your body doesn't need because it already has enough. The waste has to go somewhere; this is where the kidneys come in. The waste that is collected combines with water (which is also filtered out of the kidneys) to make urine. This travels to the bladder.

The bladder is a bag that collects the urine that leaves the kidneys The bladder is a bag that collects the urine that leaves the kidneys. When your bladder is about half full it sends message to your brain and you go to the toilet. The Bladder The bladder Drinking plenty of water and avoiding rich food helps keep your bladder and kidneys in good condition.

brain lungs heart liver stomach kidneys large intestine I hope you have enjoyed looking at some of your body’s organs. Let’s see how many you remember. brain lungs heart liver stomach kidneys large intestine small intestine bladder skin

Produced by Bev Evans 2006