anatomy

Your Tongue – Episode 105

 in Podcasts  tagged anatomy / eat / extrinsic / glossus / intrinsic / muscles / organ / skin / speech / swallow / tongue by

Tongue Basics

Your tongue is made up of eight muscles.  This is why it is called a muscular organ.  It is the most important articulator in speech production. (A brief word dissection:  articulate means to communicate something clearly.  In medicine, articulate means to make a connection.  It all makes sense!)

The tip is called the apex.  The crease down the middle is called the median lingual sulcus.  There is another crease at the back of your tongue and it is called the sulcus terminalis.

Tongue Muscles

The tongue has two types of muscles.  Extrinsic muscles attach to bones boarding the mouth.  Intrinsic muscles are completely contained inside the tongue borders.

Extrinsic Muscles

These muscles are responsible for moving your tongue front to back and side to side.  There are four of them and they are named for the facial bones that they are anchored to.

  • The genioglossus muscle moves it forward so you can stick it out of your mouth.
  • The Hyoglossus muscle pulls it back and presses it down.
  • The Styloglossus muscle raises the sides of it during swallowing.
  • The Palatoglossus muscle raises the back of it during swallowing.  It also presses the soft palate down and squeezes the palatoglossal arch inward during that same step of swallowing.

Intrinsic Muscles

These muscles are responsible for all the shapes and movements your tongue makes when you talk and eat.

  • The superior longitudinal muscle covers the top side.
  • The inferior longitudinal muscle covers the bottom side.
  • The vertical muscle fibers are in the middle and connect the superior to the inferior muscles.
  • The transverse muscle fibers start at the median sulcus and connect to the outer edges.

The Tongue Has Skin?!

The surface of your tongue is known as the masticatory mucosa, which basically means it’s the surface that food comes in contact with.  The surface is made up of epithelial cells just like your skin.  The cells are keratinized (or filled with a toughening protein) so it is tough and does not get damaged by the wide variety of things we eat.

Call Backs

Wrinkly Brain

Skin 101

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Nose Anatomy [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged anatomy / athletics / breathing / cartilage / episode / mouth-breathing / nose / sinuses / Sleep / smell by

Nose Basics

Your nose is responsible for breathing and smelling.  These things work better when it isn’t stopped up.

The part of your nose that you can see and touch is cartilage covered in skin.  There is bone above it, beside your nose, below it, and right in the middle (inside your head).  Part of the cartilage is stiff and hold shape, other parts of cartilage are soft for flexibility.

The nasal root (the bone that extends between your eyes) connected to the bridge of your nose (which is made of cartilage).  The tip is also called the lobe.  The wings are on each side of your nose that you can flare.  The nostrils is actually the holes.

There are 4 main sinus cavities

  1. Frontal sinuses = in your forehead, between your eyebrows
  2. Maxillary sinuses = run under your eyes, behind your cheeks
  3. Ethmoid sinus = right between your eyes, in the middle of your head, connected to your tear ducts
  4. Sphenoid sinus = under your sphenoid bone (in the middle of your head)

The sinus cavities are lined with mucous membranes that keep them moist and have lots of blood flow to them.  Their job is to warm and moisten the air you breathe in your nose before it goes into the lungs.  Your lungs don’t like cold air.

Mouth breathing is not very efficient. This is true in athletics as well as sleep.   But breathing out through your mouth can be useful because you can get a large amount of air out rather quickly and the lungs empty better.

You have a fast-flow and a slow-flow nostril – this has to help you perceive smell.  Sometimes almost as good as dogs.

The cartilage of your ears and nose never stop growing through your life.

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Eye Anatomy [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged anatomy / camera / color / episode / eyes / lens / light / vision by

Eyes

Your eyes are more complex than any camera on the planet!

Cornea:  a concave lens on the front of your eye that focuses light
Iris:  the colored part, a diaphragm that controls how much light comes in (the pupil is the hole the light enters = equivalent to the aperture of a camera)
Lens:  the “focuser”, uses a process called accommodation to focus near to far and make the image as sharp and clear as possible
Retina:  the sensor, and sends signals to the brain to translate light into an images

The retina has 2 types of sensors:

  • Rods – detect light intensity
  • Cones – color differentiation

Two special areas of the retina:

  • Macula – right in the middle of the retina, they place that detects the most detail (that’s why the center of your vision field is a clearer picture than the periphery)
  • Fovea – the center of the macula, it contains cones (color sensors) only to aid in the translation of very fine details

Support structures

  • Extra-ocular muscles – allows your eyes to move around in their holes
  • There are chambers of fluid that are between each structure of the eye, and that fluid helps hold nutrients that feed those parts, and remove waste
  • Choroid:  the layer that holds all the blood vessels that feed the eyes
  • Sclera:  the whites of your eyes, an outer coating that hold everything inside
  • Conjuntiva:  the mucus membrane that attaches the sclera to the eyelids; produces liquid for lubrication and trapping invaders

PSA

Please don’t vigorously rub or scratch your eyes, you could hurt them!

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

How to Become a Pharmacist

 in Blog  tagged anatomy / board exam / chemistry / license / math / pharmacist / pharmacy school by

How did you become a pharmacist?  How many years did you have to go to school?  Was it hard?  Do you have to be good at math? I get asked all the time, whether at the pharmacy counter, on Facebook, or just out and about in town.

What does it take to be a Pharmacist?

  1. Decide you want to be a pharmacist.
  2. Go to college and make Pre-Pharmacy your area of focus.
  3. Take lots of chemistry, biology, anatomy, and physics. Take a little history, literature, and speech communications, and probably some PE…
  4. Research and apply to Pharmacy Schools.
  5. Take the PCAT (only after taking Organic Chemistry).
  6. Get invited for an interview.  Dress nice, comb your hair, practice good eye contact, and not saying “um, like” so much.
  7. Get accepted! *You don’t have to graduate with a degree before starting Pharmacy School*
  8. Start Pharmacy school. Move across town or across the country, if necessary.
  9. Study your brains out.
  10. Gain experience in different pharmacy settings through practical rotations and getting a job in a pharmacy.
  11. Pass all your classes (even if just barely).
  12. Graduate and get called Doctor.
  13. Study your brains out some more.
  14. Take a 3-hour test called the NAPLEX (North American Pharmacy Licensure Examination).
  15. Take a slightly shorter test called the MPJE (Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Exam) – aka Pharmacy Law.
  16. Pass your board exams and become a licensed Pharmacist.
  17. Start work.  *Somewhere between your last year of school and passing your exams you should have applied for and accepted a job*

This is not the only path to becoming a pharmacist.  It is just one option, the straightest option.  You can take many other paths to become a pharmacist, and any path you choose is going to give you personalized experiences and a unique story.

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Location of Important Organs

 in Blog  tagged anatomy / brain / heart / location / lungs / organs / stomach by
Ever have a twinge and wonder what organs or body parts are in that area?  When the next step is to run a Google symptom search, you will find yourself faced with a potentially deadly diagnosis in approximately 3.2 seconds!
To avoid the unnecessary stress and anxiety of appointments with Dr. Google, help yourself make wise health decisions by knowing the approximate location of your organs.

Important Organs

Brain:  It’s in your head (obviously).  Interesting tidbit: your main is made of nerves but they are not sensory neurons, so your brain doesn’t feel.  The other things around your brain feel, like membranes and connective tissue inside and outside the skull.
Thyroid:  It is on the front of your neck right above the middle dip between your collar bones.
Heart:  Ball of your fist and put it right in the middle of your chest (yes ladies, right between your boobs).
Lungs:  They actually start way up high right below your collarbones and extend down and stop right about your last complete rib.
Stomach:  It starts in the middle, right under your sternum (or breastbone) and curves to the left. Interesting tidbit: laying on your left side causes gastric emptying, which is when the stomach dumps its contents into the top of the small intestines.
Liver:  It is shaped like a triangle on your right side, starts under your ribs. The long side of the triangle crosses over what you might call “the pit of your stomach”, the short side extends down about even with your belly button.
Gallbladder:  It’s located under the liver, a little to the right of “the pit of your stomach”.
Small intestine:  It snakes its way left and right across your abdominal region
Kidneys:  They are towards your back, under the bottom few ribs.
Colon:   It is right above your tailbone.  Interesting tidbit: this is why constipation can cause back pain.
Appendix:  It is on your right side, above your hip bone.
Bladder:  It is right above the pubic bone (the middle bone that connects the two sides of the pelvis). I mean, we all know what it feels like to have to pee, right?
So this is a list of the major things that you can’t see but you might be able to feel if something isn’t quite right.