By Anna Patricia Jhocson
Poveda Learning Centre
While shopping for the best bargains in town during those busy midnight sales, there's always this time when we have to answer the call of nature. What call? It's certainly not the call of the wild, but rather that instinct which tells you its time to throw the body's wastes to where it belongs - the septic tank.
It's quite fascinating, imagine how the body takes in food, digests it, and removes it as wastes in different forms. Don't you think so too? That my dear readers, is the job of the excretory sytem. In a way or two, the excretory system is often associated with the digestive system. If you'd take a closer look into the body, you will see, that the digestive system and the excretory system are inseparable.
The excretory system is made up of different parts. They are the large intestines, the kidneys, the bladder, the ureter, and the anus. The lungs and the sweat glands are also part of this system, though they belong to other systems as well. All together, these organs make up the excretory system, which produces waste in many forms. I suppose a lot of you are trying to recall the different forms of waste our body produces. Are you ready to enumerate them? They are the urine, the feces, sweat, and carbon dioxide. How well did you rate?
The kidneys eliminate most of the body's excess waste and salts in the form of urine. A person eliminates close to 1.4 liters of urine consisting of water and certain solids daily. What kind of solids? While most waste products coming from digestion are removed by the large intestines in the form of feces, solids such as salts and urea, are contained in urine. Urea is a waste product coming from the use of proteins by our body. Other solids also include acid sodium phosphate, and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
The remainder of the body's excess salts and water is removed through the skin. Roughly about 0.95 liters of sweat are eliminated daily from us. But this amount varies because visible sweat allows the body to eliminate greater quantities. So, if there's a visible sweat, there must be an invisible sweat too, right? Correct. Perspiration is classified into two, one being the sensible perspiration, and the other being the insensible perspiration. To enlighten you if you're somehow lost, everyone sweats all the time. It is just a matter of quantity our glands in the skin produce. Believe it or not, the main purpose of sweat is not to eliminate waste, but rather to cool the body when sweat evaporates, giving off a cooling effect.
Respiration also helps in the elimination of wastes such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and some amounts of water. By exhaling, we remove 200 milliliters of CO2 each minute.
The excretory system play a major role in maintaining our health. Why do I say so? It is because its vital function prevents the build-up of wastes in the body which can be both toxic and lethal. Each year, a large number of people die from kidney failures, while numerous people undergo transplants to replace malfunctioning kidneys. Health is always important, and can never be ignored. I hope that by this article of mine, I was able to enlighten you a bit about how our body works, and why it is so important to take care of it.