Nerves

Today, I was torn between two topics to post about.  Because it is St. Patrick's Day, and almost everyone I saw was wearing green, I could not stop thinking, "Green is not a creative color."  If you don't know about this quote, it comes from an extremely creepy video called "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" by This Is It.  I would not suggest watching it if you have a problem with guts and organs, but it was made as a metaphor for an interesting topic.  If you decide to watch it, please look up the meaning afterward, and tell me what you think!  (Warning: This might scar you for life.)

Instead, I decided to explain how nerves work, since I have a test on this in Anatomy tomorrow.  It actually is quite interesting when you get deep down to the basic building blocks of a person.  Nerves revolves around a series of chemical and electrical pulses that set off each other, as a chain reaction traveling to your brain and back.  It's really complicated how it all fits together, but it's pretty cool if you can understand it.

First off, everything built in the nerves is made of atoms, which are called ions, because they have an off-balanced number of protons (+) and electrons (-).  Because of how the nerves try to balance this out, the insides of nerves have a slight negative charge.  When that charge balance becomes positive, it "depolarizes" to return to it's regular state.  Okay, get this, if charges are because of electron imbalance, then the electrons shift from atom to atom to 're-balance' everything.  What do you get when electrons start moving or jumping from atom to atom like that?  Electricity!  So cool, right?

It gets a little more complicated after that, with different ions being allowed to enter through channels that open and closed based on electrical changes or chemical receptors, but in it's essence, it is really beautiful.  The chemical changes set off the electrical changes (because they mess with that balance), and the electrical changes mess with the permeability* of the membrane to allow more chemicals in or out, again, domino affect.

Who knew that the body actually worked in such a logical way?  It makes sense, because it has produced such amazing creatures as ourselves, but who knew that we had such a fascinating system inside of us.  There are over seven trillion of these nerves in our body, working with each other in this fashion to complete every single task in your body.  On top of that, when we are born, we have at that point all of the nerves we will need in our life time.  Isn't that amazing?  You are a fascinating creature!


Em's Definitions:
Protons - Tiny positively charged particles (or bundles of energy, as some call them) that make up half of an atom's nucleus, along with neutrons, which have no charge.
Electrons - Tinier negatively charged particles that shoot wildly around the atom's nucleus in a 'cloud'.
Permeability - When a membrane allows water or substances in and out through it.  Compare running water over paper to plastic wrap. Yeah the paper is more "permeable."