Only very recently did I begin to study the linkages across the various systems of the human body and also the various pieces of our brains / nervous systems.
Do you know how many primary systems you have in your body?
Do you know how best to care for each of the systems?
I am willing to bet that you know more about your vehicle maintenance and iPhone updates than you do about the various systems within your body.
Well there are 11 primary systems within your body, let’s run through these very briefly, as summarized over at Wikipedia:
- Circulatory system
- Circulates blood around the body via the heart, arteries and veins, delivering oxygen and nutrients to organs and cells and carrying their waste products away.
- Equalizes temperature in the body
- Digestive system / Excretory system:
- Mechanical and chemical processes that provide nutrients via the mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines.
- Eliminates waste from the body.
- Endocrine system:
- Provides chemical communications within the body using hormones.
- The endocrine system is something that I’ll be digging into quite a bit more, as it underpins so many other systems – yet many, still do not understand the linkages that this system has across your body.
- I’ve experienced a ton of stress in this system over the past few years due to stress and due to altering my diet to avoid fats. I have since learned that fats are crucial to proper creation of so many hormones due the level of energy required to make these chemicals within the body.
- Integumentary system/ Exocrine system:
- Skin, hair, nails, sweat and other exocrine glands.
- This system is among the first to begin showing signs of underlying stress originating from other parts of your body.
- Lymphatic system / Immune system:
- The system comprising a network of lymphatic vessels that carry a clear fluid called lymph.
- Defends the body against pathogenic viruses that may endanger the body .
- The lymphatic system is effectively the garbage collection system of your body, and it works in concert with the excretory system.
- Muscular system
- Enables the body to move using muscles.
- Protein synthesis is a big time power source for your muscle growth.
- Nervous system:
- Collects and processes information from the senses via nerves and the brain and tells the muscles to contract to cause physical actions.
- The human brain is 70% water and much of it is made up of fat. This is why drinking MCT oil such as the Brain Octane Oil from Bulletproof is so amazing. It is also unique in that it passes right through the blood brain barrier and requires no digestion.
- Renal system / Urinary system:
- The system where the kidneys filter blood.
- Reproductive system:
- The sex organs required for the production of offspring.
- This is heavily tied to the nervous, circulatory, and endocrine systems.
- Respiratory system
- The lungs and the trachea that bring air into and out of the body.
- Skeletal system
- Bones supporting the body and its organs.
Now there are other subsystems and a few other topics I will introduce as this is a summary type of post to begin to get you familiarized with your own body.
Our day to day experience is unbelievably dependent upon the quality and amount of that quality of food. Our ability to think clearly, crush the daily responsibilities that we have, and to generate the outcomes we most want in life are exceptionally linked to the food we eat.
A few years ago, I began to learn about sensory related issues and how the nervous system has specialized sub systems that for some – pose unique challenges – particularly in school settings. When I retained a whole health nutritionist about two years ago, she began my education on how these nervous systems worked relative to chemicals produced by our body from the food we eat. My initial conversation with her is worth a future post – she was the first to tell me that my adrenals were fried back in 2017.
There are two primary classes of nerves within the nervous system, and I’ll blow those out here:
Autonomic
The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates involuntary bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal. The vaunted fight or flight response is also a component of this portion of our nervous system.
Now within the autonomic nerves – you have ‘a gas and a brake pedal’ as my nutritionist/wellness coach informed me over a year ago.
The Gas Pedal – The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for intense physical activity and is often referred to as the fight-or-flight response.
The Brake Pedal – The parasympathetic nervous system has almost the exact opposite effect and relaxes the body and inhibits or slows many high energy functions. This is also referred to as the ‘rest and digest’ system too.
Why am I spending so much time on the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems? Well, you will see in some following posts where I will explain how chronic stressors can truly cause a myriad of health related issues spanning multiple systems. In particular, the sympathetic system being triggered during your childhood has been demonstrated scientifically to result in long term damage to one’s health. More on this in a future post.
Also, I’m hitting these two bits right now because I have experienced the perpetual excitement of both the gas and brake pedals to my own detriment. I see many in my life today burning both ends of the candle, and not giving themselves any downtime to handle the constantly ‘on’ pace of their lives. We do so much damage to ourselves, unknowingly…
It is possible to get control of your sympathetic fight/flight response with increased mindfulness, better diet, more sleep, and a few other things that are seemingly common sense that many no longer listen to. I was one of these folks for the longest time, and even today – I still tend to cut corners on some of these basics. Getting greater control of this system is something I’ll hit up later as well.
Somatic Nervous System
This is the nervous system that many of us laymen are familiar with and it can be categorized into the sensory somatosensory sub systems.
The sensory system is focused on processing information from our senses involving vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and balance. A lot of our perception of reality flows through these pathways.
The somatosensory system is where the typical ‘sensory issues’ diagnosis lands, and this subsystem is among the least understood unless you have someone in your life that has sensory issues. This system processes changes at the surface of the body or to the inside of the body.
There are sensors in play that vary on the outside of the body. There are four main receptors for the exterior of the body:
Merkel cell nerve endings are found in the skin and hair follicles; they react to low vibrations (5–15 Hz) and deep static touch such as shapes and edges. Due to a small receptive field (extremely detailed info) they are used in areas like fingertips the most; they are not covered (shelled) and thus respond to pressures over long periods.
Tactile corpuscles react to moderate vibration (10–50 Hz) and light touch. They are primarily located in fingertips and lips. They respond in quick action potentials – they are responsible for the ability to read Braille and feel gentle stimuli.
Lamellar corpuscles determine gross touch and distinguish rough and soft substances. They are the most sensitive to vibrations, and have large receptor fields. These receptors react only to sudden stimuli so pressures like clothes that are always compressing their shape are quickly ignored.
Bulbous corpuscles react slowly and respond to sustained skin stretch. They are responsible for the feeling of object slippage and play a major role in the kinesthetic sense and control of finger position and movement.
These receptors are always first processed by the spinal cord, and many times the stimulus is ignored by the conscious mind. For those that have sensory-related challenges, the stimulus can become problematic as the brain and spinal cord do not have the resources to process the stimulus – thus the person becomes overloaded. Conversely, and this is true for someone very close to me – they need MORE stimulus then they typically receive on a day to day basis. For each of us – it will vary.
Understanding that there are so many systems in play within your own body is the beginning of a new level of consciousness about yourself on a physical level.
Speaking personally, I have had a couple people in my life over the last couple of years educate me on the linkages of these systems. I have been educated on some of the finer points of my particular makeup – in the context of these systems – to better understand my own limitations, and how to work with myself. This increased knowledge has also directly informed me with a couple of very close people in my life when things would previously been viewed as a mystery by myself.
The increased understanding of these systems, and how some of us have to operate with compensating approaches has enabled me to be much more compassionate to those in my life. It has also helped me to avoid the self judgement of ‘doing something wrong’ with at least one of these people in my life.
Harsh self ridicule is what I was resorting to previously without this lower level knowledge of these systems. Now I know the facts, and I can help those as best I can with the knowledge that I now have – without judgement – thereby reducing the stress level for everyone involved.
More to come on stressors, fight/flight, workplace conduct, and familial impacts now that we have hit upon a few systems and subsystems in our bodies.