Okay. I don’t know how this thought came to me. I really really really have no idea. But since this question hit me, I can’t get it outta my head, and the only place to come to feed-that-need is to ask my good and trusted friends, The TM’s.
So, here it is:
What are the average human insides like. That is, is it wet and mushy, or dry and in order. If you were able to get inside without making any blood spill all over the place, is the area surrounding my lungs, liver, stomach, etc… humid or dry? Is there water that drips from these organs and down my body? Should I drill a hole in my foot to help drainage?
Just what is the climate of my internal self whose space is not occupied by organs and bones?
They’re not floating in fluid, but they’re not dry, either. Nearly every surface in the body is covered by a mucus membrane, which, as the name implies, secretes mucus. Everything is covered with the stuff, which prevents sticking and chafing and lets everything slide around smoothly.
IANA doctor but I’ve dissected a few fresh-killed animals.
Unlike a machine, there is no empty space inside an animal, including inside a person.
Each organ is flush up against the others, like a bunch of jelly-lumps inside a plastic bag. The whole thing is sorta wet & slimy, with lubricating goo between the parts. And it’s all fairly floppy & squishy.
If you’ve ever peeled the skin off a non-frozen chicken breast, you’ve got some idea of what’s going on in there. There are thin membranes separating the various organs, most of which are mushier, more like a beef liver, rather than firm like meat.
Even lungs, which lay people think of as bags full of air, are really more like sponges than bags. Like sponges, you can squeeze them and they shrink & spring back. They’re not like a bag you can squeeze flat.
I expcet an expert will be along shortly, but this is the rough-cut laymen’s perspective on innards.
For a long time, especially when I was a kid, I had the idea that we had big empty air spaces inside us, and that our organs were just sitting in there like parts inside a machine. And the same thing inside the organs: the bladder, for instance, I pictured as a big balloon that was inflated all the time, but that urine filled up slowly from the bottom up, and that when you urinated, it drained out the bottom of the balloon and left an air-filled bag of roughly the same size and shape behind.
Or the vagina – being male, I had no experience with it, but having seen diagrams in books and the like I assumed that it was a big semi-rigid cylindrical tube that kept its shape up to the cervix and uterus.
Now, though, I gather this is highly incorrect. I mean, being married now, I know that vaginas (or at least the one I have experience with) are not rigid cylindrical tubes full of air, but that things are basically all closed up and there’s not really any airspace in there unless you deliberately open things up with a speculum or something. So I assume that things are similar elsewhere and that my intuitive thinking about body parts is wrong.
This may be a slight hijack, but it’s kind of related, so I’ll ask it here instead of starting a new thread – one thing I still don’t understand is how the esophagus and intestines can move liquids and gases against gravity. I know about the rhythmic muscular contractions of peristalsis and all, but … I’ve seen some video of my dad’s intestines when they sent a camera in there to look for polyps, and it sure looked like a big ridged cylinder with airspace in there; how can peristalsis move liquids and gases through that kind of thing? Do the muscular contractions squeeze the tube entirely shut and move things along like a tube of toothpaste? Or is it not normally opened up like that – do they just inflate the colon for visibility during that procedure or something – and normally the intestines are completely closed up, with pockets of solids or liquids or gases in there that move along like little bubbles thanks to peristalsis? Or what?
The smooth muscle lining the walls of intestines and esphagus are very good at moving things along. Gravity is not that strong. And yes, during a colonostomy, they DO inflate the colon a little bit. The camera has a small inseffulator attached to it that pumps a small amount of air into the colon to expand the walls right around the area of the camera head.
Well, what I mean is, it’s easy to see how that works with solids – all you have to do is squeeze and push. But unless peristalsis squeezes the intestines shut completely (or unless they normally have no air space inside) and pushes things along with an airtight seal, even a small hole would allow liquids and gases to flow right back down to the lowest point and you wouldn’t be able to move things against gravity. So how does it work? Are the intestines and esophagus normally completely collapsed with no airspace, making it possible to push liquids and gases uphill?
In this column, Cecil makes the following statement about esophageal peristalsis:
That makes it sound like there must be an open space for liquids to fall through – so how does peristalsis avoid having liquids drain back up into your mouth (or sinuses) if you’re not sitting up? Do the contractions actually seal things completely? Do the intestines work the same way?
Ah, so that explains why my dad said it felt like the worst gas pains he’d ever had, eh?
Uh, I think that’s a colonoscopy. As for the esophagus and intestines moving things along, that’s called peristalsis. Ring-like bands of muscles around the esophagus or intestine contract and push food ahead, always in the correct direction. IIRC, there is one contraction that travels the length of the intestine (from duodenum to at least the ileus) once a minute when it is empty. When full, they occur more often.
Slightly, but not as much as you’re probably thinking. Most of the organs have some freedom of movement, but they’re attached in various ways to the viscera around them. If you’ve ever dissected an animal in science class, you’ll notice that when you take one organ out, the others don’t just flop around but mostly stay in their places.
Heh, reminds me of a Robin Williams routine I saw on TV talking about getting a colonoscopy. Said something to the effect of how they inflate you to 120PSI, then once that camera comes out, so does the pressurized air
