Male Reproductive System: Structure & Function

Male Reproductive Anatomy

What’s the male reproductive system?

The male reproductive system is a grouping of organs that make up a man’s reproductive and urinary systems. These organs do the following jobs within your body:

• They produce, maintain and transport sperm (the male reproductive cells) and semen (the protective fluid around the sperm).
• They discharge sperm into the female reproductive tract.
• They produce and secrete male sex hormones.

The male reproductive system is made up of internal (inside your body) and external (outside your body) parts. Together, these organs help you urinate (rid your body of liquid waste materials), have sexual intercourse and make children.

What are the external male reproductive structures?

Most of the male reproductive system is located outside of your abdominal cavity or pelvis. The external parts of the male reproductive system include the penis, the scrotum and the testicles.

Penis

The penis is the male organ for sexual intercourse. It has three parts:

• The root: This is the part of the penis that attaches to the wall of your abdomen.
• The body or shaft: Shaped like a tube or cylinder, the body of the penis is made up of three internal chambers. Inside these chambers there’s a special, sponge-like erectile tissue that contains thousands of large spaces that fill with blood when you’re sexually aroused. As the penis fills with blood, it becomes rigid and erect, which allows for penetration during sex. The skin of the penis is loose and elastic, allowing for changes in penis size during an erection.
• The glans: This is the cone-shaped end of the penis. The glans, which is also called the head of the penis, is covered with a loose layer of skin called foreskin. This skin is sometimes removed in a procedure called circumcision.

The opening of the urethra — the tube that transports both semen and urine out of the body — is located at the tip of the glans penis. The penis also contains many sensitive nerve endings.

Semen, which contains sperm, is expelled (ejaculated) through the end of the penis when a man reaches sexual climax (orgasm). When the penis is erect, the flow of urine is blocked from the urethra, allowing only semen to be ejaculated at orgasm.

Scrotum

The scrotum is the loose pouch-like sac of skin that hangs behind the penis. It holds the testicles (also called testes), as well as many nerves and blood vessels. The scrotum protects your testes, as well as providing a sort of climate control system. For normal sperm development, the testes must be at a temperature slightly cooler than the body temperature. Special muscles in the wall of the scrotum allow it to contract (tighten) and relax, moving the testicles closer to the body for warmth and protection or farther away from the body to cool the temperature.

Testicles (testes)

The testes are oval organs about the size of very large olives that lie in the scrotum, secured at either end by a structure called the spermatic cord. Most men have two testes. The testes are responsible for making testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, and for producing sperm. Within the testes are coiled masses of tubes called seminiferous tubules. These tubules are responsible for producing the sperm cells through a process called spermatogenesis.

Epididymis

The epididymis is a long, coiled tube that rests on the backside of each testicle. It carries and stores sperm cells that are created in the testes. It’s also the job of the epididymis to bring the sperm to maturity — the sperm that emerge from the testes are immature and incapable of fertilization. During sexual arousal, contractions force the sperm into the vas deferens.

What are the internal male reproductive organs?

You have several internal organs — also called accessory organs — that play a big part in the male reproductive system. These organs include:

• Vas deferens: The vas deferens is a long, muscular tube that travels from the epididymis into the pelvic cavity, to just behind the bladder. The vas deferens transports mature sperm to the urethra in preparation for ejaculation.
• Ejaculatory ducts: These ducts are formed by the fusion of the vas deferens and the seminal vesicles. The ejaculatory ducts empty into the urethra.
• Urethra: The urethra is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to outside of your body. In males, it has the additional function of expelling (ejaculating) semen when you reach orgasm. When the penis is erect during sex, the flow of urine is blocked from the urethra, allowing only semen to be ejaculated at orgasm.
• Seminal vesicles: The seminal vesicles are sac-like pouches that attach to the vas deferens near the base of the bladder. The seminal vesicles make a sugar-rich fluid (fructose) that provides sperm with a source of energy and helps with the sperms’ ability to move (motility). The fluid of the seminal vesicles makes up most of the volume of your ejaculatory fluid, or ejaculate.
• Prostate gland: The prostate gland is a walnut-sized structure that’s located below the urinary bladder in front of the rectum. The prostate gland contributes additional fluid to the ejaculate. Prostate fluids also help to nourish the sperm. The urethra, which carries the ejaculate to be expelled during orgasm, runs through the center of the prostate gland.
• Bulbourethral glands: The bulbourethral glands, or Cowper’s glands, are pea-sized structures located on the sides of the urethra, just below the prostate gland. These glands produce a clear, slippery fluid that empties directly into the urethra. This fluid serves to lubricate the urethra and to neutralize any acidity that may be present due to residual drops of urine in the urethra.

How does the male reproductive system function?

The entire male reproductive system is dependent on hormones. These are chemicals that stimulate or regulate the activity of your cells or organs. The primary hormones involved in the functioning of the male reproductive system are follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) and testosterone.

FSH and LH are produced by the pituitary gland. It’s located at the base of the brain and it’s responsible for many functions in your body. FSH is necessary for sperm production (spermatogenesis). LH stimulates the production of testosterone, which is necessary to continue the process of spermatogenesis. Testosterone is also important in the development of male characteristics, including muscle mass and strength, fat distribution, bone mass and sex drive.

Can a man go through menopause?

Menopause is a term used to describe the end of a woman’s normal menstrual function. In women, this is marked by changes in hormone production. One of the biggest changes for a woman after menopause is that she can no longer have children. The testes, unlike the ovaries, do not lose the ability to make hormones. If a man is healthy, he may be able to make sperm well into his 80s or longer.

On the other hand, subtle changes in the function of the testes can happen as early as 45 to 50 years of age, and more dramatically after the age of 70. For many men, hormone production may remain normal into old age, while others may have declining hormone production earlier on. This can sometimes be a result of an illness, such as diabetes.

It’s unclear whether decreasing testicular function contributes to symptoms like fatigue, weakness, depression or impotence.

Can “male menopause” be treated?

If your testosterone levels are low, hormone replacement therapy may help relieve symptoms, such as the loss of interest in sex, depression and fatigue. However, replacing male hormones can make prostate cancer worse, and may make atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) worse, also.

You should receive a complete physical examination and laboratory tests should be performed before starting hormone replacement therapy. There are still many unanswered questions about how many middle-aged men could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. Talk to your healthcare provider about all the pros and cons of this treatment and what the best option is for you.

The man who revolutionized our knowledge of the human body

December 31, 2014 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important figures in the history of medicine. He authored one of the most elegant and influential books in scientific history. His investigations revolutionized our understanding of the interior of the human body and the methods physicians use to study and teach about it, reverberating throughout medicine down to the present day.

Andreas Vesalius.
Everett Historical/Shutterstock

His name was Andreas Vesalius. He was born into a medical family in what is now Belgium. As a boy he showed a great interest in the dissection of animals, a predilection that disgusted his contemporaries. Yet he persevered, going on to study medicine at both Paris and Padua, then two of the great centers for anatomic research. When he graduated, he was immediately offered a teaching position. Unlike those who taught him, he insisted on performing the dissections himself and encouraged his students to do likewise.

Comparing what his dissections revealed with what he read in the textbooks of the day, Vesalius asserted that the flesh itself is a more reliable guide than the written word. He contradicted more than 200 of the teachings of perhaps the most towering figure in the history of anatomy, the 2nd century Roman physician and anatomist Galen. For example, Vesalius pointed out that Galen erred in asserting that the human jaw consists of two bones.

How could a man whose teachings withstood the scrutiny of 1,300 years make such a seemingly elementary mistake? Some of the authorities of Vesalius’s day defended Galen by suggesting that the anatomy of the human body itself must have changed over the generations since. But Vesalius knew the real answer: Roman custom had prevented Galen from dissecting the bodies of humans, forcing him to rely on those of other creatures, such as pigs, apes and dogs. And when it came to the jaw of a dog, Galen was right.

Vesalius insisted teachers and students learn anatomy directly. Image of brain from On the Fabric of the Human Body.
Wikimedia Commons

Of course, Vesalius himself knew that Galen was far more often right than he was wrong, and he frequently marveled at the depth of his ancient predecessor’s knowledge. For example, Galen had experimented on the spinal cords of pigs, demonstrating that when he cut the cord near the tail end, the animal first lost the use of its hind limbs. When another cut was made closer to the head, the forelimbs ceased moving. And when he cut still higher, the animal would cease breathing – a truly extraordinary experimental linkage of neurological structure and function.

In insisting that teachers and students study anatomy directly instead of memorizing what they found in the textbooks, Vesalius was in a sense rekindling the flames of Galen’s own passion for direct
observation. But he was also elevating them to levels not equaled for well over a millennium. In the process, he was creating truly remarkable anatomic specimens. His 1543 public dissection of a famous criminal’s body produced the world’s oldest surviving complete anatomic skeleton. It’s still on display today in Basel, Switzerland.

On the Fabric of the Human Body frontispiece.
Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps Vesalius’s most remarkable achievement of all was his publication, On the Fabric of the Human Body. It consists of seven volumes describing the bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, digestive system, heart, and brain. The works contains over 200 illustrations, many of which are recognized today as among the most exquisite anatomic images ever produced. Produced by artists he retained, the drawings were engraved on wood blocks for reproduction, and they represent a quantum leap beyond their predecessors in anatomic detail and sophistication.

Vesalius’ masterpiece stands as one of the greatest books ever produced. It is simply beautiful, reflecting an unparalleled degree of both scientific erudition and aesthetic sensitivity. It showed the body not as inert flesh but enlivened and in motion, emphasizing the correlation of form and function. It also established vastly higher standards for anatomical research and teaching, setting biology and medicine on new paths of discovery. And finally, it is one of the greatest marriages of science, art, and humanism ever achieved.

Woodcut from On the Fabric of the Human Body.
Wikimedia Commons

Equally impressive is the fact that Vesalius published his magnum opus at the incredibly young age of 28, in an era when most authorities in medicine were a generation or two his senior. But he was no enfant terrible. In presenting this new anatomic vision to the world, he was not so much tearing down idols as reestablishing the primacy of the human form itself as medicine’s most important text. Those who would know the human form, he said, must devote themselves to studying it for themselves, rather than delegating the responsibility to others.

Our understanding of human anatomy has advanced quite far since Vesalius. The introduction of the microscope opened up a world of cells that Vesalius could scarcely have dreamt of, and the invention of CT and MRI scanners has made it possible to inspect the interior of the human form in life and without the use of a scalpel. Yet even these more recent innovations bear the spirit of Vesalius, who insisted that those who wish to understand the body must see it for themselves.

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This article has been updated to correct information about jaw bones in apes.

Male Reproductive System

Male Reproductive System

Reproduction

All living things reproduce. Reproduction — the process by which organisms make more organisms like themselves — is one of the things that sets living things apart from nonliving things. But even though the reproductive system is essential to keeping a species alive, unlike other body systems it’s not essential to keeping an individual alive.

In the human reproductive process, two kinds of sex cells, or gametes, are involved. The male gamete, or sperm, and the female gamete, the egg or ovum, meet in the female’s reproductive system to create a baby. Both the male and female reproductive systems are essential for reproduction.

Humans pass certain characteristics of themselves to the next generation through their genes, the special carriers of human traits. The genes parents pass along to their offspring are what make kids similar to others in their family, but they’re also what make each child unique. These genes come from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg, which are produced by the male and female reproductive systems.

Understanding the male reproductive system, what it does, and the problems that can affect it can help you better understand your son’s reproductive health.

About the Male Reproductive System

Most species have two sexes: male and female. Each sex has its own unique reproductive system. They are different in shape and structure, but both are specifically designed to produce, nourish, and transport either the egg or sperm.

Unlike the female, whose sex organs are located entirely within the pelvis, the male has reproductive organs, or genitals, that are both inside and outside the pelvis. The male genitals include:

• the testicles
• the duct system, which is made up of the epididymis and the vas deferens
• the accessory glands, which include the seminal vesicles and prostate gland
• the penis

In a guy who has reached sexual maturity, the two testicles (or testes) produce and store millions of tiny sperm cells. The testicles are oval-shaped and grow to be about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in length and 1 inch (3 centimeters) in diameter. The testicles are also part of the endocrine system because they produce hormones, including testosterone. Testosterone is a major part of puberty in boys, and as a guy makes his way through puberty, his testicles produce more and more of it. Testosterone is the hormone that causes boys to develop deeper voices, bigger muscles, and body and facial hair, and it also stimulates the production of sperm.

Alongside the testicles are the epididymis and the vas deferens, which make up the duct system of the male reproductive organs. The vas deferens is a muscular tube that passes upward alongside the testicles and transports the sperm-containing fluid called semen. The epididymis is a set of coiled tubes (one for each testicle) that connects to the vas deferens.

The epididymis and the testicles hang in a pouch-like structure outside the pelvis called the scrotum. This bag of skin helps to regulate the temperature of testicles, which need to be kept cooler than body temperature to produce sperm. The scrotum changes size to maintain the right temperature. When the body is cold, the scrotum shrinks and becomes tighter to hold in body heat. When it’s warm, the scrotum becomes larger and more floppy to get rid of extra heat. This happens without a guy ever having to think about it. The brain and the nervous system give the scrotum the cue to change size.

The accessory glands, including the seminal vesicles and the prostate gland, provide fluids that lubricate the duct system and nourish the sperm. The seminal vesicles are sac-like structures attached to the vas deferens to the side of the bladder. The prostate gland, which produces some of the parts of semen, surrounds the ejaculatory ducts at the base of the urethra, just below the bladder. The urethra is the channel that carries the semen to the outside of the body through the penis. The urethra is also part of the urinary system because it is also the channel through which urine passes as it leaves the bladder and exits the body.

The penis is actually made up of two parts: the shaft and the glans. The shaft is the main part of the penis and the glans is the tip (sometimes called the head). At the end of the glans is a small slit or opening, which is where semen and urine exit the body through the urethra. The inside of the penis is made of a spongy tissue that can expand and contract.

All boys are born with a foreskin, a fold of skin at the end of the penis covering the glans. Some boys are circumcised, which means that a doctor or clergy member cuts away the foreskin. Circumcision is usually done during a baby boy’s first few days of life. Although circumcision is not medically necessary, parents who choose to have their sons circumcised often do so based on religious beliefs, concerns about hygiene, or cultural or social reasons. Boys who have circumcised penises and those who don’t are no different: All penises work and feel the same, regardless of whether the foreskin has been removed.

What the Male Reproductive System Does

The male sex organs work together to produce and release semen into the reproductive system of the female during sexual intercourse. The male reproductive system also produces sex hormones, which help a boy develop into a sexually mature man during puberty.

When a baby boy is born, he has all the parts of his reproductive system in place, but it isn’t until puberty that he is able to reproduce. When puberty begins, usually between the ages of 9 and 15, the pituitary gland — which is located near the brain — secretes hormones that stimulate the testicles to produce testosterone. The production of testosterone brings about many physical changes. Although the timing of these changes is different for every guy, the stages of puberty generally follow a set sequence:

• During the first stage of male puberty, the scrotum and testes grow larger.
• Next, the penis becomes longer and the seminal vesicles and prostate gland grow.
• Hair begins to grow in the pubic area and later on the face and underarms. During this time, a boy’s voice also deepens.
• Boys also have a growth spurt during puberty as they reach their adult height and weight.

Sperm

A male who has reached puberty will produce millions of sperm cells every day. Each sperm is extremely small: only 1/600 of an inch (0.05 millimeters long). Sperm develop in the testicles within a system of tiny tubes called the seminiferous tubules. At birth, these tubules contain simple round cells, but during puberty, testosterone and other hormones cause these cells to transform into sperm cells. The cells divide and change until they have a head and short tail, like tadpoles. The head contains genetic material (genes). The sperm use their tails to push themselves into the epididymis, where they complete their development. It takes sperm about 4 to 6 weeks to travel through the epididymis.

The sperm then move to the vas deferens, or sperm duct. The seminal vesicles and prostate gland produce a whitish fluid called seminal fluid, which mixes with sperm to form semen when a male is sexually stimulated. The penis, which usually hangs limp, becomes hard when a male is sexually excited. Tissues in the penis fill with blood and it becomes stiff and erect (an erection). The rigidity of the erect penis makes it easier to insert into the female’s vagina during sexual intercourse. When the erect penis is stimulated, muscles around the reproductive organs contract and force the semen through the duct system and urethra. Semen is pushed out of the male’s body through his urethra — this process is called ejaculation. Each time a guy ejaculates, it can contain up to 500 million sperm.

When the male ejaculates during intercourse, semen is deposited into the female’s vagina. From the vagina, the sperm make their way up through the cervix and move through the uterus with help from uterine contractions. If a mature egg is in one of the female’s fallopian tubes, a single sperm may penetrate it, and fertilization, or conception, occurs.

This fertilized egg is now called a zygote and contains 46 chromosomes — half from the egg and half from the sperm. The genetic material from the male and female has combined so that a new individual can be created. The zygote divides again and again as it grows in the female’s uterus, maturing over the course of the pregnancy into an embryo, a fetus, and finally a newborn baby.

Things That Can Go Wrong With the Male Reproductive System

Boys may sometimes experience reproductive system problems, including:

Disorders of the Scrotum, Testicles, or Epididymis
Conditions affecting the scrotal contents may involve the testicles, epididymis, or the scrotum itself.

• Testicular trauma. Even a mild injury to the testicles can cause severe pain, bruising, or swelling. Most testicular injuries happen when the testicles are struck, hit, kicked, or crushed, usually during sports or other trauma. Testicular torsion, when one of the testicles twists around, cutting off its blood supply, is also a medical emergency that, thankfully, is not common. Surgery is needed to untwist the cord and save the testicle.
• Varicocele. This is a varicose vein (an abnormally swollen vein) in the network of veins that run from the testicles. Varicoceles often develop while a boy is going through puberty. A varicocele is usually not harmful, but can damage the testicle or decrease sperm production. Take your son to see his doctor if he is concerned about changes in his testicles.
• Testicular cancer. This is one of the most common cancers in men younger than 40. It occurs when cells in the testicle divide abnormally and form a tumor. Testicular cancer can spread to other parts of the body, but if it’s detected early, the cure rate is excellent. Teen boys should be encouraged to learn to perform testicular self-examinations.
• Epididymitis is inflammation of the epididymis, the coiled tubes that connect the testes with the vas deferens. It is usually caused by an infection, such as the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, and results in pain and swelling next to one of the testicles.
• Hydrocele. A hydrocele is when fluid collects in the membranes surrounding the testes. Hydroceles may cause swelling in the scrotum around the testicle but are usually painless. In some cases, surgery may be needed to correct the condition.
• Inguinal hernia. When a portion of the intestines pushes through an abnormal opening or weakening of the abdominal wall and into the groin or scrotum, it is known as an inguinal hernia. The hernia may look like a bulge or swelling in the groin area. It is treated with surgery.

Disorders of the Penis

Disorders affecting the penis include:

• Inflammation of the penis. Symptoms of penile inflammation include redness, itching, swelling, and pain. Balanitis is when the glans (the head of the penis) becomes inflamed. Posthitis is foreskin inflammation, usually due to a yeast or bacterial infection.
• Hypospadias. In this disorder, the urethra opens on the underside of the penis, not at the tip.
• Phimosis. This is a tightness of the foreskin of the penis and is common in newborns and young boys. It usually eases without treatment. If it interferes with urination, circumcision (removal of the foreskin) might be recommended.
• Paraphimosis. This may develop when the foreskin of a boy’s uncircumcised penis is retracted (pulled down to expose the glans) and becomes trapped so it can’t be returned to the unretracted position. As a result, blood flow to the head of the penis can be affected, and a boy may have pain and swelling. A doctor may use lubricant to make a small incision so the foreskin can be pulled forward. If that doesn’t work, circumcision might be recommended.
• Ambiguous genitalia. This is when a child is born with genitals that aren’t clearly male or female. In most boys born with this disorder, the penis may be very small or nonexistent, but testicular tissue is present. In a small number of cases, the child may have both testicular and ovarian tissue.
• Micropenis. This is a disorder in which the penis, although normally formed, is well below the average size, as determined by standard measurements.

If your son has symptoms of a problem with his reproductive system, talk with your doctor — many problems with the male reproductive system can be treated. The doctor is also a good resource for your son if he has questions about growth and sexual development.

Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD
Date reviewed: October 2012

Structure of the Male Reproductive System – Men’s Health Issues

The male reproductive system includes the penis, scrotum, testes, epididymis, vas deferens, prostate, and seminal vesicles.

• The penis and the urethra are part of the urinary and reproductive systems.

• The scrotum, testes (testicles), epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, and prostate comprise the rest of the reproductive system.

The penis consists of the root (which is attached to the lower abdominal structures and pelvic bones), the visible part of the shaft, and the glans penis (the cone-shaped end). The opening of the urethra (the channel that transports semen and urine) is located at the tip of the glans penis. The base of the glans penis is called the corona. In uncircumcised males, the foreskin (prepuce) extends from the corona to cover the glans penis.

The penis includes three cylindrical spaces (blood-filled sinuses) of erectile tissue. The two larger ones, the corpora cavernosa, lie side by side. The third sinus, the corpus spongiosum, surrounds most of the urethra. When these spaces fill with blood, the penis becomes large and rigid (erect).

The scrotum is the thick-skinned sac that surrounds and protects the testes. The scrotum also acts as a climate-control system for the testes because they need to be slightly cooler than body temperature for normal sperm development. The cremaster muscles in the wall of the scrotum relax to allow the testes to hang farther from the body to cool or contract to pull the testes closer to the body for warmth or protection.

The testes are oval bodies that average about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 7 centimeters) in length and 2 to 3 teaspoons (20 to 25 milliliters) in volume. Usually the left testis hangs slightly lower than the right one. The testes have two primary functions:

• Producing sperm (which carry the man’s genes)

• Producing testosterone (the primary male sex hormone)

The epididymis consists of a single coiled microscopic tube that measures almost 20 feet (6 meters) in length. The epididymis collects sperm from the testis and provides the environment for sperm to mature and acquire the ability to move through the female reproductive system and fertilize an ovum. One epididymis lies against each testis.

The vas deferens is a firm tube (the size of a strand of spaghetti) that transports sperm from the epididymis. One such duct travels from each epididymis to the back of the prostate and joins with one of the two seminal vesicles. In the scrotum, other structures, such as muscle fibers, blood vessels, and nerves, also travel along with each vas deferens and together form an intertwined structure, the spermatic cord.

The urethra serves a dual function in males. This channel is the part of the urinary tract that transports urine from the bladder and the part of the reproductive system through which semen is ejaculated.

The prostate lies just under the bladder and surrounds the urethra. Walnut-sized in young men, the prostate enlarges with age. When the prostate enlarges too much, it can block urine flow through the urethra and cause bothersome urinary symptoms.

The seminal vesicles, located above the prostate, join with the vas deferens to form the ejaculatory ducts, which travel through the prostate. The prostate and the seminal vesicles produce fluid that nourishes the sperm. This fluid provides most of the volume of semen, the fluid in which the sperm is expelled during ejaculation. Other fluid that makes up a very small amount of the semen comes from the vas deferens and from Cowper glands in the urethra.

Prostate Picture, Definition, Function, Conditions, Tests, and Treatments

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Side View of the Prostate

The prostate is a walnut-sized gland located between the bladder and the penis. The prostate is just in front of the rectum. The urethra runs through the center of the prostate, from the bladder to the penis, letting urine flow out of the body.

The prostate secretes fluid that nourishes and protects sperm. During ejaculation, the prostate squeezes this fluid into the urethra, and it’s expelled with sperm as semen.

The vasa deferentia (singular: vas deferens) bring sperm from the testes to the seminal vesicles. The seminal vesicles contribute fluid to semen during ejaculation.

Prostate Conditions

• Prostatitis: Inflammation of the prostate, sometimes caused by infection. It is typically treated with antibiotics.
• Enlarged prostate: Called benign prostatic hypertrophy or BPH, prostate growth affects virtually all men over 50. Symptoms of difficult urination tend to increase with age. Medicines or surgery can treat BPH.
• Prostate cancer: It’s the most common form of cancer in men (besides skin cancer), but only one in 41 men die from prostate cancer. Surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy can be used to treat prostate cancer. Some men choose to delay treatment, which is called watchful waiting.

Prostate Tests

• Digital rectal examination (DRE): A doctor inserts a lubricated, gloved finger into the rectum and feels the prostate. A DRE can sometimes detect an enlarged prostate, lumps or nodules of prostate cancer, or tenderness from prostatitis.
• Prostate-specific antigen (PSA): The prostate makes a protein called PSA, which can be measured by a blood test. If PSA is high, prostate cancer is more likely, but an enlarged prostate can also cause a high PSA. Recommendations about whether or not a man should be screened and at what age differ. Talk with your doctor about whether you need testing and the potential benefits and risks. 
• Prostate ultrasound (transrectal ultrasound): An ultrasound probe is inserted into the rectum, bringing it close to the prostate. Ultrasound is often done with a biopsy to test for prostate cancer.
• Prostate biopsy: A needle is inserted into the prostate to take tissue out to check for prostate cancer. This is usually done through the rectum.

Prostate Treatments

Enlarged Prostate Treatment

• Alpha-blockers: Alpha-blockers relax the muscles around the urethra in men with symptoms from an enlarged prostate. Urine then flows more freely.
• 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors: These medications reduce the level of a certain form of testosterone (DHT). The prostate shrinks when less DHT is present, improving urine flow.
• Surgery for an enlarged prostate: Usually, medications resolve symptoms of an enlarged prostate, but some men require surgery to improve symptoms and prevent complications.

Continued

Prostate Cancer Treatment

• Prostatectomy: Surgery for prostate cancer, called a prostatectomy, removes the prostate with the goal of removing all the cancer.
• Radiation therapy: Radiation kills prostate cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy cells.
• Radioactive seed implants: Instead of radiation pointed at the prostate from outside the body, radioactive seeds can be implanted into the prostate to kill cancer cells.
• Cryotherapy: Cryotherapy involves killing prostate cancer cells by freezing them.
• Hormone therapy: Prostate cancer cells grow in response to hormones. Hormone therapy helps block that effect.
• Chemotherapy: When prostate cancer is advanced, chemotherapy may help reduce the cancer’s spread.
• Watchful waiting: Since prostate cancer is often slow growing, some older men and their doctors hold off on treatment and wait to see if the cancer appears to be growing.
• Clinical trials: Through prostate cancer clinical trials, researchers test the effects of new medications on a group of volunteers with prostate cancer.

Prostatitis Treatment

• Acute and chronic prostatitis: Depending on the type of prostatitis, treatment includes antibiotics, other medications, and/or surgery.

Overview of the Male Anatomy

The following is an overview of the male reproductive anatomy:

Scrotum. The bag of skin that holds and helps to protect the testicles. The testicles make sperm and, to do this, the temperature of the testicles needs to be cooler than the inside of the body. This is why the scrotum is located outside of the body.

Testes (testicles). The testes are 2 small organs that are found inside the scrotum. The testes are responsible for making sperm and are also involved in producing a hormone called testosterone. Testosterone is an important hormone during male development and maturation for developing muscles, deepening the voice, and growing body hair.

Epididymis. A long tube that is located near each testicle. The epididymis is the tube which moves the sperm from the testicles.

Vas deferens. This is a tube in which the sperm is stored and it carries the sperm out of the scrotal sac. The vas deferens is between the epididymis and the urethra and connects these together.

Seminal vesicles. The sac-like glands that lie behind the bladder and release a fluid that forms part of semen.

Prostate gland. It is about the size of a walnut, and surrounds the neck of the bladder and urethra—the tube that carries urine from the bladder. It is partly muscular and partly glandular with ducts opening into the prostatic portion of the urethra. It is made up of 3 lobes: a center lobe with 1 lobe on each side. The prostate gland secretes a slightly alkaline fluid that forms part of the seminal fluid, a fluid that carries sperm.

Urethra. This is a tube that allows urine to flow outside the body. It is also the channel for semen to pass during ejaculation. The brain signals the bladder muscles to tighten. This squeezes urine out of the bladder. At the same time, the brain signals the sphincter muscles to relax to let urine exit the bladder through the urethra. When all the signals happen in the correct order, normal urination happens.

Penis. The external reproductive organ of the male. The penis is made up of 2 parts, the shaft and the glans. The glans is the tip of the penis, while the shaft is the main part of the penis and contains the tube (urethra) that drains the bladder. All boys are born with a foreskin, or a covering over the tip of the penis. Some boys are circumcised. This means that this covering of skin is removed. Other boys are not circumcised and may have skin that covers the tip of the penis.

Human body diagrams – Wikimedia Commons

Male shadow/silhouette template.

The Wikimedia Human body diagrams is a collection of images whose main purpose is to provide a way of explaining medical conditions and other phenomena.

All images in the source collection are in the Public Domain, meaning that you can make derivatives without asking permission.

Diagrams[edit]

Human body diagrams[edit] Main article at: Human body diagrams Template location:Template:Human body diagrams How to derive an image[edit] Derive directly from raster image with organs[edit] The raster (.png format) images below have most commonly used organs already included, and text and lines can be added in almost any graphics editor. This is the easiest method, but does not leave any room for customizing what organs are shown. Adding text and lines: Derive “from scratch”[edit] By this method, body diagrams can be derived by pasting organs into one of the “plain” body images shown below. This method requires a graphics editor that can handle transparent images, in order to avoid white squares around the organs when pasting onto the body image. Pictures of organs are found on the project’s main page. These were originally adapted to fit the male shadow/silhouette. Organs: More organs are found at: Human body diagrams/Organs Derive by vector template[edit] The Vector templates below can be used to derive images with, for example, Inkscape. This is the method with the greatest potential. See Human body diagrams/Inkscape tutorial for a basic description in how to do this. Female shadow/silhouette. Examples of derived works[edit] More examples Licensing[edit]   This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse Donating organs[edit] Please leave a message if you have pictures of organs suitable for inclusion, preferably natural-looking ones rather than animated ones, and preferably be frontal view. All kind of organs are appreciated, but the following are especially wanted: Prostate Urinary system (preferably like the digital other version of the displayed, painted one, but with the proportions of the painted version) Reproductive system ( ovaries and testes) You must be prepared to give the image(s) a Public Domain license or equivalent. Think of it as a digital version of HLA-matching used in organ transplantation. Public Domain matches everything and can be used in any other derived work, regardless of its license. Organs in other formats[edit] Click the arrow at the right to view each format respectively. More versions of the organ may be available by clicking on each image.

What happens to the human body after death

• Mo Kostandi
• BBC Future

June 5, 2015

Photo author, Getty

The decay of the human body after death is a very interesting topic if you have the courage and take a closer look for details, says the correspondent

BBC Future .

“It takes a lot of work to unbend this,” says dissector Holly Williams, lifting John’s arm and gently flexing his fingers, elbow and wrist on it.“As a rule, the fresher the corpse, the easier it is for me to work with it.”

Williams speaks softly and behaves positively and lightly, contrary to the nature of her profession. She practically grew up in a family funeral home in the north American state of Texas, where she now works She has seen dead bodies almost daily since childhood. She is now 28 years old and estimates that she has already worked with about a thousand corpses.

She is engaged in collecting the bodies of recently deceased in the metropolis of Dallas-Fort Worth and cooking them to burial.

“Most of the people we follow die in nursing homes,” Williams says. “But sometimes there are victims of car accidents or shootings. It also happens that we are called to pick up the body of a person who died alone, lay for several days or weeks and has already begun to decompose. In such cases, my work is greatly complicated. ”

By the time John arrived at the funeral home, he had been dead for about four hours. During his lifetime, he was relatively healthy.He worked all his life in the Texas oil fields and therefore was physically active and in good shape. He quit smoking several decades ago and drank alcohol in moderation. But one cold January morning with him at home had an acute heart attack (caused by some other, unknown reasons), he fell to the floor and died almost immediately. He was 57 years old.

John is now lying on Williams’s metal table, his body wrapped in a white sheet, cold and hard.His skin is a purple-gray hue, suggesting that the early stages of decomposition have already begun.

Self-Absorption

A dead body is actually nowhere near as dead as it seems – it is teeming with life. More and more scientists are inclined to view the rotting corpse as the cornerstone of a huge and complex ecosystem that arises soon after death, thrives and evolves through decay.

Decomposition begins a few minutes after death – a process called autolysis, or self-absorption, starts.Soon after the heart stops beating, the cells become oxygen deprived, and as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions accumulate in the cells, the acidity rises. Enzymes begin to engulf cell membranes and leak out when cells are destroyed. Usually, this process begins in the enzyme-rich liver and in the brain, which contains a lot of water. Gradually, all other tissues and organs also begin to disintegrate in a similar way. The damaged blood cells begin to flow out of the destroyed vessels and, under the influence of gravity, move into the capillaries and small veins, as a result of which the skin loses its color.

Photo author, Getty

Photo caption,

Decomposition begins within a few minutes after death

Body temperature begins to decline and eventually equals with the ambient temperature. Then rigor mortis sets in – it begins with the muscles of the eyelids, jaw and neck and gradually reaches the trunk and then to the extremities. During life, muscle cells contract and relax as a result of the interaction of two filamentous proteins, actin and myosin, which move along each other.After death, cells lose their energy sources, and filamentous proteins freeze in one position. As a result, muscles become numb and joints are blocked.

In these early posthumous stages, the ecosystem of the corpse is composed mainly of bacteria that also inhabit the living human body. A huge number of bacteria live in our bodies, various nooks and crannies of the human body serve as a haven for specialized colonies of microbes. The most numerous of these colonies live in the intestines: trillions of bacteria are collected there – hundreds, if not thousands of different species.

The gut microcosm is one of the most popular research areas in biology, associated with general human health and a wide range of different diseases and conditions, from autism and depression to disturbing intestinal syndrome and obesity. But we still know quite a bit about what these microscopic passengers do in our lifetime. We know even less about what happens to them after we die.

Immune collapse

In August 2014, forensic expert Gulnaz Zhavan and colleagues from the University of Alabama in the American city of Montgomery published the first ever study of the thanatomicrobiome – bacteria that live in the human body after death.Scientists have derived this name from the Greek word “thanatos”, death.

“Many of these samples came to us from criminal investigation materials,” says Javan. “When someone dies as a result of suicide, murder, drug overdose or car accident, I take samples of their tissues. moments, because we need the consent of the relatives. ”

Photo author, Science Photo Library

Photo caption,

Soon after death, the immune system stops working, and nothing prevents bacteria from spreading freely throughout the body

Most of our internal organs do not contain germs during life.However, soon after death, the immune system stops working, and thus nothing prevents it from spreading freely throughout the body. Usually, this process begins in the intestines, at the border of the small and large intestines. The bacteria living there begin to absorb the intestines from the inside, and then the surrounding tissues, feeding on the chemical mixture that flows from the decaying cells. Then these bacteria invade the blood capillaries of the digestive system and the lymph nodes, spreading first to the liver and spleen, and then to the heart and brain.

Zhavan and her colleagues took samples of liver, spleen, brain, heart and blood from 11 corpses. This was done between 20 and 240 hours after death. To analyze and compare the bacterial composition of the samples, the researchers used two state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technologies in combination with bioinformatics.

Samples taken from different organs of the same corpse turned out to be very similar to each other, but very different from samples taken from the same organs in other dead bodies.Perhaps, to some extent, this is due to the difference in the composition of the microbiomes (sets of microbes) of these bodies, but it may also be in the time elapsed since death. Previous research on decaying mouse carcasses has shown that the microbiome changes dramatically after death, but the process is consistent and measurable. Scientists were eventually able to determine the time of death with an accuracy of three days within an almost two-month period.

Unappetizing Experiment

Results from Zhavan’s research suggest that a similar “microbial clock” seems to work in the human body.Scientists have found that bacteria get to the liver about 20 hours after death, and it takes them at least 58 hours to get into all organs from which tissue samples were taken. Apparently, bacteria spread systematically in a dead body, and counting the time after which they enter a particular organ may be another new way to establish the exact moment of death.

Photo author, Science Photo Library

Photo caption,

Anaerobic bacteria convert hemoglobin molecules to sulfhemoglobin

“After death, the bacterial composition changes,” notes Zhavan.“They get to the heart, brain and reproductive organs last. ” In 2014, a team of scientists under her leadership received a $ 200,000 grant from the US National Science Foundation to conduct further research. “We will resort to next-generation genome sequencing and methods bioinformatics to find out which organ allows the most accurate determination of the time of death – we do not know yet, “says the researcher.

However, it is already clear that different sets of bacteria correspond to different stages of decomposition.

But what does the process of doing such a study look like?

Near Huntsville, Texas, in a pine forest, half a dozen corpses lie in various stages of decomposition. The two freshest, with limbs spread apart, are laid out closer to the center of a small fenced enclosure. Much of their sagging, blue-gray skin is still intact, ribs and the ends of their pelvic bones protruding from slowly decaying flesh. A few meters away from them lies another corpse, which has essentially turned into a skeleton – its black, hardened skin wraps around the bones, as if it were dressed in a shiny latex suit from head to toe.Farther away, behind the remains scattered by the vultures, lies a third body, protected by a cage of wooden planks and wire. It is approaching the end of its posthumous cycle and has already been partially mummified. Where his belly once was, several large brown mushrooms grow.

Natural Decay

For most people, the sight of a rotting corpse is at least unpleasant, but more often it is repulsive and frightening, like a nightmare. But for the Southeast Texas Applied Forensics Science Laboratory, these are business as usual.This institution opened in 2009 and is located in 100 hectares of forest owned by Sam University of Houston. In this forest, a plot of approximately three and a half hectares has been allocated for research. It is fenced off by a three-meter-high green metal fence with barbed wire running on top, and inside it is subdivided into several smaller sections.

At the end of 2011, University staffers Sybil Bucheli and Aaron Lynn and their colleagues left two fresh cadavers there to decompose in natural conditions.

Photo author, Getty

Photo caption,

Bacteria reach the liver approximately 20 hours after death, and it takes them at least 58 hours to get into all other organs

When bacteria begin to spread from the digestive tract , starting the process of self-absorption of the body, decay begins. This is death at the molecular level: further decay of soft tissues, their transformation into gases, liquids and salts. It also goes away in the early stages of decomposition, but gains full steam when anaerobic bacteria come into play.

Putrefactive decomposition is the stage in which the relay is passed from aerobic bacteria (which require oxygen to grow) to anaerobic bacteria – that is, those that do not need oxygen.

During this process, the body becomes even more discolored. Damaged blood cells continue to drain from the disintegrating vessels, and anaerobic bacteria convert hemoglobin molecules (with the help of which oxygen is transported through the body) into sulfhemoglobin. The presence of its molecules in stagnant blood gives the skin a marbled, greenish-black appearance, characteristic of a corpse in the stage of active decay.

Special habitat

As the pressure of gases builds up in the body, abscesses appear over the entire surface of the skin, after which large areas of the skin separate and sag, barely holding onto the disintegrating base. In the end, gases and liquefied tissue leave the corpse, usually leaving and flowing from the anus and other openings of the body, and often through torn skin on other parts of it. Sometimes the gas pressure is so high that the abdominal cavity bursts.

Photo Credit, Science Photo Library

Photo Caption,

Different sets of bacteria correspond to different stages of decomposition

Cadaveric bloating is usually considered a sign of a transition from early to late stages of decomposition. Another recent study showed that this transition is characterized by marked changes in the recruitment of cadaveric bacteria.

Bucheli and Lynn collected bacteria samples from various parts of the body at the beginning and end of the bloating stage. Then they extracted the microbial DNA and sequenced it.

Bucheli is an entomologist, so she is primarily interested in insects that inhabit the corpse. She considers the dead body as a special habitat for various types of necrophagous insects (corpse eaters), and for some of them the entire life cycle passes entirely inside the corpse, on it, and nearby.

When liquids and gases begin to leave a decaying organism, it becomes completely open to the environment. At this stage, the ecosystem of the corpse begins to manifest itself especially violently: it turns into the epicenter of the vital activity of microbes, insects and scavengers.

Larval stage

Two types of insects are closely associated with decomposition: carrion flies and gray meat flies, as well as their larvae. Corpses give off an unpleasant, sickeningly sweet odor, caused by a complex cocktail of volatile compounds, the composition of which is constantly changing as it decomposes.Carrion flies sense this smell through the receptors located on their antennae, land on the body and lay eggs in holes in the skin and in open wounds.

Each female fly lays about 250 eggs, from which small larvae hatch in a day. They feed on rotting meat and molt into larger larvae, which continue to eat and molt again after a few hours. After eating for some more time, these already large larvae crawl away from the body, after which they pupate and eventually transform into adult flies.The cycle is repeated until the larvae have no more food left.

Photo author, Science Photo Library

Photo caption,

Each female fly lays about 250 eggs

Under favorable conditions, the actively decaying organism serves as a haven for a large number of third stage fly larvae. The mass of their bodies produces a lot of heat, causing their internal temperature to rise by more than 10 degrees. Like flocks of penguins around the South Pole, the larvae in this mass are in constant motion.But if penguins resort to this method to keep warm, then the larvae, on the contrary, tend to cool down.

“This is a double-edged sword,” explains Bucheli, sitting in his university office, surrounded by large toy insects and cute monster dolls. time in the center – they can just cook. Therefore, they constantly move from the center to the edges and back. ”

Flies attract predators – beetles, ticks, ants, wasps and spiders that feed on fly eggs and larvae.Vultures and other scavengers, as well as other large meat-eating animals, can also come to feast on.

Unique composition

However, in the absence of scavengers, fly larvae consume soft tissue. In 1767, the Swedish naturalist Karl Linnaeus (who developed a unified classification system for flora and fauna) noted that “three flies are capable of swallowing the carcass of a horse as fast as a lion.” The larvae of the third stage crawl away from the corpse en masse, often along the same trajectories.Their activity is so high that at the end of decomposition, their migration routes can be observed as deep grooves on the soil surface, diverging in different directions from the corpse.

Each species that visits a dead body has its own unique set of digestive microbes, and different types of soil contain different colonies of bacteria – their exact composition seems to be determined by factors such as temperature, moisture, soil type and structure.

Photo author, Science Photo Library

Photo caption,

The fly larvae absorb soft tissues

All these microbes are mixed with each other in the cadaveric ecosystem.Arriving flies not only lay eggs, but also bring their own bacteria with them, and carry away strangers. The liquefied tissue flowing out allows bacterial exchange between the dead organism and the soil on which it lies.

When Bucheli and Lynn take samples of bacteria from dead bodies, they find microbes that originally lived on the skin, as well as others brought in by flies and scavengers, as well as from the soil. “When liquids and gases leave the body, bacteria that have lived in the intestines leave with them – more and more of them begin to be found in the surrounding soil,” explains Lynn.

Thus, each cadaver appears to have unique microbiological characteristics that can change over time according to the conditions of its particular location. By understanding the makeup of these bacterial colonies, the relationships between them, and how they interact with each other as they decompose, forensic scientists may one day be able to obtain much more information about where, when, and how the subject died.

Pieces of the Mosaic

For example, identifying DNA sequences in a corpse that are specific to certain organisms or soil types can help forensic scientists to associate a murder victim with a specific geographic location or even further narrow the search for evidence – down to a specific field in some area.

“There have been several trials in which criminal entomology has proven itself to provide the missing pieces of the puzzle,” says Bucheli. She believes that bacteria can provide additional information and serve as a new tool for determining the time of death. “I hope that in five years we will be able to apply bacteriological data in court,” she says.

Photo by Science Photo Library

Photo caption,

Carrion flies are closely associated with decomposition

To this end, scientists are carefully cataloging the types of bacteria that inhabit the human body and outside it, and study how the composition of the microbiome varies from person to person …”It would be great to have a dataset from birth to death,” says Bucheli. “I would like to meet a donor that would allow me to take bacterial samples during life, after death and during decay.”

“We’re looking at the fluid that leaks out of decaying bodies,” says Daniel Wescot, director of the Center for Criminal Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Marcos.

Wescot’s area of ​​interest is the study of skull structure. Using computed tomography, he analyzes the microscopic structures of the bones of corpses.He works with entomologists and microbiologists, including Javan (who, in turn, examines soil samples taken from the experimental site in San Marcos, where the corpses lie), with computer engineers and with the operator who controls the drone – with his aerial pictures of the site are taken.

“I have read an article about drones used to study agricultural land in order to understand which ones are the most fertile. Their cameras work in the near infrared range, which shows that soil rich in organic compounds is darker in color. than others.I thought that since such a technology exists, then perhaps it can be useful for us too – to find these small brown spots, “he says.

Rich soil

The” brown spots “that the scientist says are areas where corpses have decomposed.The rotting body significantly changes the chemical composition of the soil on which it lies, and these changes can be noticeable over the next several years.The pouring of liquefied tissue from the dead remains enriches the soil with nutrients, and the migration of larvae transfers a significant part of the body’s energy the environment around him.

Over time, as a result of this entire process, a “corpse decay island” appears – an area with a high concentration of soil rich in organic matter. In addition to nutrient compounds released into the ecosystem from the cadaver, there are also dead insects, scavenger manure, and so on.

Photo author, Getty

Photo caption,

UAV cameras operate in the near infrared range, which, according to scientists, will help find places where corpses were lying

According to some estimates, the human body is 50-75% water , and each kilogram of lean body weight, when decomposed, releases 32 grams of nitrogen, 10 grams of phosphorus, four grams of potassium and one gram of magnesium into the environment.At first, this kills the vegetation below and around – perhaps due to nitrogen toxicity or due to antibiotics contained in the body, which are secreted into the soil by insect larvae that eat the corpse. Ultimately, however, decomposition has a beneficial effect on the local ecosystem.

The microbial biomass on the decaying island of the corpse is significantly higher than on the surrounding territory. Roundworms, attracted by the secreted nutrients, begin to multiply in this area, and its flora also becomes richer.Further research into exactly how rotting cadavers are changing their environment may help more effectively detect murder victims whose bodies were buried in shallow graves.

Another possible clue to determining the exact date of death may be provided by soil analysis from the grave. A 2008 study of the biochemical changes occurring on the decomposition island of the corpse showed that the concentration of phospholipids in the fluid flowing out of the body reaches its maximum approximately 40 days after death, and nitrogen and extractable phosphorus – 72 and 100 days, respectively.With a more detailed study of these processes, perhaps in the future, using the analysis of the biochemistry of the soil from the burial, we can accurately determine when the body was placed in a hidden grave.

7 Wonders of the Human Body

If you love different miracles and unusual things, you should look at your own body. It contains countless mysteries that you would not even guess about. We will tell you about the seven wonders of our body.

Strange weakness

If you shave a chimpanzee and take a photograph of its body from neck to waist, you can hardly distinguish the body from the human.The structure of the muscles in both is almost identical. But for some reason chimpanzees are two or even three times stronger than humans. And this weakness of ours still remains a mystery to scientists.

One-armed

Nine out of ten people are right-handed. And the question here is not even so much why there are so few left-handers in the world, but why is there a difference at all? Why is it only one hand that has perfect motor skills, and not both? The most popular theory is that the reason for this is the uneven development of the cerebral hemispheres.

The left hemisphere, which is responsible for speech and governs the right half of our body, is usually better developed than the right hemisphere. Therefore, there are more right-handers in the world. But the paradox is that not all right-handers have a speech center in the left hemisphere. Try to figure it out here.

Mysterious Breast

Like monkeys, human females breastfeed their babies. However, in women, the breasts remain enlarged before and after the feeding period. Scientists still cannot come to a consensus about why a person needs this enlarged breast.Some believe that in this way females attracted males, since they thought that the enlarged breasts were full of milk.

Other scientists refer to many peoples who do not find large breasts attractive. They believe that fats and hormones located in a woman’s breast make milk more nutritious, which is necessary for the formation and development of a small human brain.

Hair

Many theories have been put forward when it comes to pubic hair. Some believe that they act as a marker of puberty, attracting a mating partner using pheromones.Others are convinced that the hairline is necessary to maintain the right temperature. Still others think that hair protects the skin from chafing during sex. Be that as it may, modern people often want to get rid of them.

Our clinics in St. Petersburg

Unexpected neighbors

Imagine that 1-3% of your weight is made up of germs residing inside your body. This is not to say that they are useless. Some microbes cleanse the skin, others help to digest food, but the effects of most of them have not yet been studied.In the body of a healthy person, you can find even a small number of pathogens of dangerous viruses, which are clearly engaged in something else besides weakening the immune system.

Appendix

The poor appendix is ​​indiscriminately recorded in absolutely useless rudiments, for some reason left to us by evolution, such as wisdom teeth and muscles for wiggling our ears. The stupidity of this organ seems to be even proven by the fact that it can be removed without significant changes in the functioning of the body.

However, scientists continue to put forward theories that the appendix de helps the formation of immunity.Or even a place where the necessary supply of microbes is stored in case of dysbiosis. The very word “appendix” means an afterthought. But maybe he is still not so useless.

Why me?

How exactly do the 100 trillion nerve endings in our brains make us feel alive? The greatest minds of the past considered consciousness the greatest mystery not only of the human body, but of the entire universe.

Just imagine that every single brain, including yours, consists of atoms that were melted in the hearts of countless distant stars billions of years ago.These particles drifted in endless space until gravity accidentally brought them together.

And now these atoms form your brain, which is not only able to think about the very stars to which it owes its life, but is able to think about the very ability to think. It is said that with the advent of humans, the universe became aware of its own existence. And this is truly the greatest miracle of all.

Human Body Designer

Human Body Designer is a human empowerment specialist who uses his knowledge of design and bioengineering to help people model their ideal body, replace limb parts and improve their appearance.In the next 20 years, advances in bioengineering will increase the average life expectancy to 100 years, organs and tissues will be actively transplanted.

Technologies are developing at a rapid pace. Researchers suggest that tissue repair and organ replacement will become commonplace for humans of the future. Replacing a limb or internal organs for a person will be as simple as a broken part in a car. The human body gradually adapts to a foreign body and begins to perceive it as its part. Human Body Design Specialists will become assistants for those who find themselves in difficult life situations. They will be able to recreate, for example, an area of ​​burned skin, an arm or a leg.

Designers of the human body are specialists working at the intersection of science, technology and art. the individual “parts” are too complex and non-linear in their characteristics, so that when simply “glued” they often refuse to work together. “Over the next five years, design as a profession will continue to evolve into a hybrid industry that will be technical and creative,” says Dave Miller, recruiter at Artefact.“A new wave of designers will focus on the human, applying knowledge from science, human relationships, visual arts and programming, thus solving the very complex problems of the 21st century. Thus, these specialists will be in leading positions. ”

Requirements for the qualifications of a specialist, for the volume of work performed:

• creation of a design project;
• 3D-modeling, giving shape, volume to the given objects.
• work with clients, discussion of wishes and selection of the optimal solution;
• implantation of mechanisms or devices into the human body
• smart prosthetics, plastic surgery, using the achievements of regenerative medicine.

Important qualities:

• knowledge in the field of anatomy and bioengineering;
• possession of modern computer programs;
• developed aesthetic and artistic taste, a subtle sense of the beauty of the human body and the surrounding world;
• creativity, creative look.
• the ability to listen to the wishes of the client and translate them into reality;
• the ability to reasonably defend one’s point of view;
• ability to work in a team;
• desire to study new methods, technologies, tools

Based on materials: https: // www.ucheba.ru/, https://www.educationindex.ru/, http://buduguru.org/, https://geektimes.ru/.

51 facts about the human body | The world | Inosmi

1. The human heart, removed from the chest, as in the film about Indiana Jones, is actually capable of beating for a short period of time, since it has its own electrical system and will continue to receive electricity from the surrounding air.

2. Stomach acid is so strong that your body creates a completely new stomach lining every 3-4 days.

3. The human nose can recognize and remember 50 thousand unique smells, but this is completely incomparable with the capabilities of a dog in this area.

4. You sneeze at 160 kilometers per hour or more.

5. The length of your blood vessels is 96 thousand kilometers, and this is enough to round the equator about two and a half times.

6. Every day, your heart creates enough energy for a truck to travel 32 kilometers.Throughout a person’s life, the heart produces such an amount of energy that it would be enough for this truck to cover the distance from the Earth to the Moon and back.

7. On average, a person sheds about 50 kilograms of skin from birth to 70 years of age, which is comparable to the weight of a short person.

8. If you look at the sky on a clear night and can see Andromeda, it means that your eyes are so sensitive that they are able to distinguish a faint spot of light located in the nearest neighboring galaxy and distant from us at a distance of 2 , 5 million light years.

9. A person can snore while making a sound of about 80 decibels, which is comparable to sleeping next to a jackhammer working, destroying cement. Noise levels above 85 decibels are considered harmful to the human ear.

10. A person during his life produces enough saliva to fill approximately two pools, that is, about 24 thousand liters.

11. You are made up of 7000000000000000000000000000 (that’s 7 octillion) atoms.

12.And each of these 7 octillion atoms is billions of years old.

13. Neurons transmit signals at a speed of 240 kilometers per hour.

14. In addition to the five senses, you actually have a meta-sense called proprioception, which combines your brain’s knowledge of what your muscles are doing with a sense of the size and shape of your body, so you gain insight. about where the parts of your body are in relation to each other.Therefore, with your eyes closed, you can easily touch your nose with your finger.

15. Your heart rate and your facial expressions change depending on the music you are listening to.

16. When your brain is awake, it can produce enough electricity to power one light bulb.

17. When matched, your bones will be stronger than steel because a comparable steel bar will weigh four or five times as much. A cubic meter of bone, in principle, can withstand a weight of 10 thousand kilograms, which is approximately equal to the weight of five standard pickup trucks.

18. And although they are stronger than steel, your bones are 31% water.

19. If the human eye were a digital camera, it would have a resolution of 576 megapixels. By comparison, the Mamiya DSLR is the most powerful camera I can find, with a resolution of 80 megapixels at an impressive retail price of $ 34,000.

20. In addition, experts believe that the human eye can distinguish 10 million different colors.

21. If DNA could be untwisted, then its length, taking into account all the cells in your body, would be 16 billion kilometers, which is equal to the distance from Earth to Pluto and back.

22. During your lifetime, your brain’s long-term memory can store up to 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) individual bits of information.

23. The human brain, especially its prefrontal cortex, which helps us develop social skills and communication with others, continues to develop until the age of 40 and beyond.

24. During an average life span, the human heart pumps about 1.5 million barrels of blood – enough to fill 200 rail tank cars.

25. Your body produces 180 million red blood cells per hour.

26. A normal pregnancy lasts nine months, but the longest recorded pregnancy was 375 days, or 12.5 months.

27. During pregnancy, if the mother’s organs are damaged, the fetus in the womb sends stem cells to repair the damaged organ.

28. One step requires 200 muscles to work.

29. Researchers have discovered 1458 new types of bacteria in the navel.

30. Most astronauts in space get five centimeters taller.

31.6 billion steps of the DNA helix are contained in one cell.

32. For every fertilized egg, there are 200-500 million sperm trying to transfer their DNA.

33. By the time you die, you will have spent a third of your life asleep.

34. One study found that you can reset your internal sleep and wake hours in your brain (circadian rhythm) by shining a beam of light at the back of your knee.

35. A person can go without food for two months.

36. Your tongue is not the only place where your taste buds are located – they are also in the stomach, intestinal tract, pancreas, lungs, anus, testes and the brain.

37. New physical connections are created between neurons in the brain every time you remember something.

38. It has been scientifically proven that even a small dose of electricity changes the functioning of the brain, and usually there is a reduction in empathy.

39. You can hold out without oxygen for 5-10 minutes, but after that your brain cells will begin to die off.

40. Your brain is 60% fat.

41. The human brain will feed on itself, and this will be the last attempt to avoid starvation (the same happens during extreme dieting or undernutrition).

42. The vagina has the ability to cleanse itself.

43. Phobias can represent memory passed down in genes by ancestors.

44. Your automatically programmed response to certain stimuli is called emotion.

45. Long-term memory creates permanent physical changes in the brain.

46. If you try to convey a certain emotion through your facial expression, then you will actually begin to feel that emotion.

47. The human eye is able to see only a small part of the visual field at a time, and therefore the eye makes 2-3 saccades (abrupt automatic eye movements) per second in order to get a complete picture.

48. When you remember something, you are not referring to the original memory, but to the creative re-creation of certain representations, in which gaps are often found, as well as completely new constituent parts.

49. Your brain forgets information in order to protect itself from information overload and from unpleasant emotional experiences, which allows you to think faster and easier to absorb new information.

50. The brain is able to perform new tasks, including learning new pieces of music during REM sleep. REM sleep appears to enhance performance when performing tasks using procedural memory or subconscious knowledge of the order of the action.

51. Society has a canonical perspective, which means that we all see things the same way. Example: When researchers asked people in different parts of the world to draw a coffee cup, almost everyone drew a coffee cup by looking at it slightly from above and shifting the perspective slightly to the right or left, but no one was drawing it looking downward.

InoSMI materials contain estimates exclusively of foreign mass media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial board.

Lesson 18. the structure of the human body. if you want to be healthy – the world around – 2nd class

The world around us, grade 2

Lesson 18. The structure of the human body. If you want to be healthy.

List of questions considered in the lesson:

1. The structure of the human body.
2. Regime of the day

Glossary on the topic

The human body – the physical structure of a person, a human body.

Organism – any living creature, a living body with its coordinatedly acting organs.

Health – Correct, normal functioning of the body.

Keywords

Body structure; external and internal structure; organism; health; daily regime; food; regulations; personal hygiene.

Basic and additional literature on the topic of the lesson:

1. The world around us. Workbook. Grade 2.Textbook for educational organizations. At 2 pm / A. A. Pleshakov. – M .: Education, 2017.S. 3 – 7.
2. The world around us. Workbook. Grade 2. Textbook for general education. organizations. At 2 pm / A. A. Pleshakov. – M .: Education, 2017. P. 4 – 11.
3. Atlas-identifier “From earth to sky” P. 9, 15; twenty; 120; 208.

Theoretical material for independent study

Distinguish between the external and internal structure of the human body.All parts of the body of a healthy person work in concert, harmoniously. Everyone should know how his body works and works. This is necessary to maintain and improve health.

Head, neck, chest, abdomen, arms, legs – these are all parts of the human body and they relate to the external structure of a person.

The whole body obeys you and executes commands. You can sit down, get up, or you can run.

We can only see the appearance of a person.

And what is inside the human body?

Organism (from lat.organizo) – translated means “well arranged.”

We have various organs inside. They are called so – internal organs. Each of them has its own shape and structure, and each of them performs its own function.

The brain, stomach, intestines, lungs, liver, kidneys, heart are organs, they belong to the internal structure of a person.

The brain controls the work of the whole organism. You look around and see objects, people. You read, write. You are solving examples or a problem.You can easily remember where you were yesterday, and imagine the zoo you visited last summer. All this happens, as it were, by itself. But this is not the case. Your thoughts, movements, feelings are controlled by the brain – the most important organ of the body. The brain is the main command post of the body. Whatever a person does, the brain controls everything. It is located in the head. To protect the brain from damage, nature has placed it in the skull, and the skull is the strongest human bones. The brain controls all thoughts and feelings of a person.Knows the correct functioning of the main internal organs. It is he who monitors how we breathe.

A person needs to breathe in and out air all the time. Breathing occurs with the help of the lungs.

Each of us has two lungs – the right and the left. The lungs are like two sponges. When exhaling, they release air from themselves and decrease in size, when we inhale, the lungs fill with air and expand. They are located in the chest.

Tell me, how do they know if a person is alive or dead?

First of all, they listen to see if his heart is beating.Where is it located? (in the chest on the left side). Place your palm over your heart. You will hear your heart beating.

The heart is a special muscle. It contracts and relaxes automatically. In children, the heart beats 80 to 90 beats per minute. In adults, the heart beats slightly slower. Every day the heart makes 12 thousand beats, both when you sleep and when you are awake.

We must take care of our heart and take care of its condition. Here are some rules to keep your heart healthy:

• Exercise regularly, run and play outdoor games.
• Don’t eat too much to avoid getting fat.
• If you are sick, stay in bed as directed by your doctor.
• Try not to get too tired of fast games and do not overwork.
• Eat what your mother gives you, all these foods are good for you.
• Be sure to sleep eight to ten hours at night

Imagine that you have come home. Dinner time, and Mom is serving you a piece of raw meat and two raw potatoes on a plate. Will you eat this kind of lunch? Of course not! Likewise, our bodies need specially processed foods.Everything that got into the mouth: cutlet, porridge, bread, and candy must be digested and absorbed into the blood. The organs of the “internal kitchen” are engaged in this. The main compartment of the “inner kitchen” is the stomach.

The stomach resembles a bag. Without food, he is like a deflated balloon. If you blow it into the balloon, it will inflate a little. So is the stomach: when food enters it, it stretches. The more food we eat, the more our stomach stretches. But more than 2-3 liters of food does not fit in it.

The stomach is located in the upper abdomen, under the ribs.

But the stomach does not know how to digest all the food, so it pushes it further – into the intestines. It is a long, winding corridor that stretches for almost 8 meters, but in the body it is curled up so that it fits completely in the stomach.

In the intestines, food continues to be digested, and the liver helps it in this. It secretes a special fluid called bile, which aids in digestion. A person cannot live without a liver.

Now we’ll talk about how to stay healthy.

Health is the most valuable thing a person has, because you cannot buy it for any wealth in the world. Being sick and weak, a person will not be able to realize all his dreams, achieve great heights, live a long, happy, and most importantly, a full life.

To be strong, sturdy, resilient, it is very important to adhere to a healthy lifestyle from an early age. Every child should know what will harm his body and what will strengthen it.

A healthy lifestyle includes:

• compliance with the regime;
• proper nutrition;
• active sports;
• personal hygiene;
• good rest.

A correctly designed daily routine is one of the most faithful helpers in maintaining health. If you honestly adhere to it, you can forget about many problems with well-being, always be active, strong and efficient.

When drawing up a daily routine, it is very important that a person has time not only to devote a lot of time to study or work, but also to fully rest, eat, walk in the fresh air and play sports.

A mode is a routine of things, actions that you perform during the day.Here are the basic rules of the student’s daily routine:

• study should alternate with rest;
• meals should be regular and at the same time, at least 3 times a day;
• it is also necessary to wake up and go to bed at the same time;
• sleep duration – at least 8 hours;
• walks in the fresh air are obligatory for 1.5-2 hours a day;

Having got used to this daily routine, the body will always be strong and hardy, and study will be surprisingly easy.

Proper nutrition is a very important component of good health and longevity. Together with food, a person receives all the valuable substances that help him to work fully.

It is very important that the daily diet is varied and healthy. Only in this way the body will receive everything it needs: proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are the key to proper nutrition.

But it is worth giving up harmful products, since they will not bring anything useful to the body.These include various sweets, chips, croutons, carbonated drinks.

One of the most harmful products is the well-known Coca-Cola. The drink contains a lot of phosphoric acid, which is able to remove rust from a nail in just a few hours! Can you imagine what harm it does to the human body?

Complying with the rules of personal hygiene is the task of every student, because this is the only way to look clean and tidy, as well as to protect yourself from harmful microorganisms.

In order not to be reputed to be sloppy and dirty, you need to do the following:

• thoroughly brush your teeth in the morning and in the evening;
• take a shower or bath every day and wash thoroughly with soap;
• cut fingernails and toenails once a week;
• Wash hair 1-2 times a week;
• in the school cafeteria it is forbidden to use other people’s cutlery and drink from someone else’s cup;
• also do not share with classmates your removable shoes, hairbrush, bottle of water.

In order not to hurt your teeth, you need to clean them according to all the rules.

If you always adhere to the daily regimen, eat well and do not forget about personal hygiene, you can forget about health problems for a long time

Analysis of a typical training task

1. Text of the question: Fill in the table, sorting the external and internal structure of a person by columns.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

External

Internal

2.Text of the question: What are these parts of the human body called?

Correct answer:

906 9001 9064 9064 9064 9064 9064

nose

eye	arm	leg

Anthropologists found out how a person got his figure – Russian newspaper

Anthropologists re-examined the skeleton of a “boy from Turkana”, whose age is about , 5 million years, and came to the conclusion that the bodies of human ancestors were significantly different from the body of modern humans.Moreover, it turned out that the modern human body has evolved quite recently.

An international team of researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, and a short story about the discovery is described on the website of New York University. Research has shown that our distant ancestors had a leaner physique than previously thought. Moreover, it was very different from the modern human body.

“Our own body is a figure with a flat and high chest, narrow pelvis and rib cage,” says co-author Scott Williams of New York University.“It probably appeared only recently in the process of human evolution, in particular our species Homo sapiens.”

The authors of the study, led by Marcus Bastir from the National Museum of Madrid, suggest that the changes in our figure could be caused by the optimization of the respiratory system, which gave man the ability running long distances and other forms of endurance

To compare the modern body with the bodies of ancient people, scientists have created a three-dimensional model of the “boy from Turkana”.This skeleton was discovered in the 1980s west of Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is a member of the species Homo erectus and is approximately 1.5 million years old. It is one of the most complete fossil skeletons of human ancestors ever found.

The results of the analysis showed that Homo erectus was much less similar to modern humans, as we have imagined for years. He was not as slender as Homo sapiens, however, as scientists found, he also had the ability to run long distances.

This discovery surprised scientists, because until now it was believed that ancient people were powerful and stocky and could not run long and fast. As it turned out, Homo erectus differed in this respect from the Neanderthals, who were indeed bad stayers.

Representatives of this species had a more powerful, wider and shorter chest than modern humans. This suggests that Homo erectus had a leaner physique than is commonly believed. At the same time, it proves that the modern form of the human body evolved very recently, and not two million years ago, when Homo erectus first appeared.

“These results are changing the way we think about Homo erectus,” says Bastir. “His ribcage was much wider and larger than most people living today.”

It resembles the ribcage of more stocky human relatives, such as the Neanderthals, who may have inherited this shape from Homo erectus. Scientists note that the evolution of the modern shape of the human body is a fascinating transformation in light of how we and our ancestors adapted to the natural environment.

However, there is still no exact answer to the question of when exactly modern people got a relatively tall and slender body shape, which contrasts with the short, stocky and heavy bodies of Neanderthals.

The human body as a territory of collision between nature and culture Text of a scientific article in the specialty “Other social sciences”

UDC 130.2 GRNTI 13.11.21 VAK code 24.00.01

E.V.Bazhenov

Yekaterinburg

HUMAN BODY AS A COLLISION TERRITORY OF NATURE AND CULTURE

KEY WORDS: body techniques, nature and culture, disease and health, somatic jewelry, human body ecology.

ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the human body as a territory of collision of natural and cultural principles.When the “human-bodily” is included in the socio-cultural space, his body, in addition to its natural attributes, acquires properties and characteristics generated by social and cultural influences. Assessments of the relationship between the spiritual and the bodily in a person, the ideals of beauty, the perception of health and ill health in different cultures are not the same. The choice of “bodily behavior” for each person includes the awareness of socio-cultural influences on the body, as well as the purposeful formation of one’s physical image in accordance with the prevailing norms, traditions, or in spite of them.A modern man turns to the search for his “I”, including through “dismemberment, decomposition of the body,” which is clearly demonstrated by aggressive somatic jewelry, which is a symbolic attribute of our era. Another major problem of the modern cultural and historical stage is the measure of admissibility of artificial (cultural) interference in the biological nature of man. In these conditions, as never before, the discussion of the problem of the ecology of the human body is actualized.

E.V. Bazhenova

Yekaterinburg

HUMAN BODY AS A CLASH TERRITORY FOR NATURE AND CULTURE

KEY WORDS: Body techniques, nature and culture, disease and health, somatic decorations, ecology of human body.

ABSTRACT: In the article human body as a clash territory for nature and culture fundamentals is analyzed.By including “homo bodily” in sociocultural environment the body acquires – in addition to its own nature specified features – qualities and characteristics generated by social and cultural impacts. Correlation assessment of spiritual and bodily in a human being, beauty ideals, perception of health and unhealthiness are unequal in different cultures. Choice of “bodily behavior” for each person includes recognition of sociocultural impact upon the human body, as well as targeted forming of own physical image according to the prevalent norms, traditions or against them.A person of the present refers to searching for his “self’ through “body disintegration and decomposition” and this is visually demonstrated by aggressive somatic decorations which are symbolic attribute of our times. Another most important problem of the contemporary cultural and historic stage is a measure of acceptability of artificial (cultural) interference in the biological nature of a human being. In these circumstances discussions of human body ecology become topical as never before.

I was given a body – what should I do with it, So one and so mine?

O.Mandelstam

The first step in understanding culture is its recognition in the opposition “culture” / “nature”. Viewed from this perspective, culture is opposed to nature; it does not arise and is not deduced from the laws of nature. Culture describes everything that is connected with the existence of a person, with his activities. It is the border that separates natural being from social being. The second step is to realize that there is no impassable abyss between the natural world and the cultural world.Outside of nature, no culture as a “second nature” is possible; culture transforms what is given by nature. We are faced with the need to comprehend the entire gamut of complex, sometimes dramatic-tense interrelationships.

cultural and natural phenomena, in which the “point of intersection”, and often the “territory of collision” is a person.

Nature influences culture. It is the nature of nature that determines the type and forms of economic activity, which, in turn, determines the variety of tools and all objects of material culture.Nature in this sense is an active principle. The integrity of culture and its originality depend on the nature of the type of activity, which is clearly demonstrated by the differences in the culture of sedentary and nomadic peoples. Nature predetermines such aspects of culture as food, variety of clothes, types of diseases and methods of their treatment, home arrangement, traditions of hosting, and many others. etc. Thus, nature nourishes and reproduces that level of culture, which is called the culture of everyday life.

The aesthetic aspect of the relationship between nature and culture is important.Aesthetic ideas, the ideal of beauty, grace largely depend on the specific natural environment in which

man lives and acts. The history of art provides a rich material that allows you to feel the difference in the ideals of beauty, characteristic of national cultures that have developed in different natural and climatic zones.

Not only does nature influence culture, but culture has a powerful effect on nature.Man, by his activity, changes nature, fills it with spiritual meanings, nature loses its virgin purity and becomes a cultural entity itself. This is most clearly manifested in the formation of the cultural landscape, which is the result of the action of natural processes and the creative activity of people.

Culture also gives rise to symbolic meanings that are not characteristic of nature as such. In a philosophical context, nature appears as a symbol of eternity.The earth abides forever, and against the background of eternal nature, man experiences his being as a brief moment.

The “cradle” of the entire human race is in nature, and therefore nature realizes the connection between generations, acts as a form of “historical memory” of the people. “Kulikovo field”, “Borodino field” for the Russian self-awareness are not just names of places, they are significant cultural symbols that personify the victory of the Russian people over their enemies. Nature acts as a symbol of uniting people (“native land helps”, “mother earth will protect”).

However, the relationship between nature and culture, in which a person acts as a connecting link, are far from harmonious balance. The cultural and transformative activity of a person often violates the stability of his natural environment. The problem of nature management is one of the “eternal” issues of human existence on Earth.

The unity and contradiction of nature and culture comes from the inner duality and unity of man himself, which belongs at the same time

to both the natural world and the world of culture.And this duality is first of all revealed by his body.

The body is the border that separates a person from the world around him. And in this sense, each of us is alone in his body. Cutting the umbilical cord – gaining an independent existence – is the first act of the drama of loneliness, into which a person is immersed in the very fact of being in a separate, individual body.

The manifestation of one’s own body to a person also gives rise to a feeling of finiteness, mortality of a human being: “Between a subject experiencing presence in his own body, and his physical body, death is located,” writes Valery Podoroga [6].An attempt to overcome the laws of nature, to overcome the death of one’s body, finds expression in many religious systems (the bodily resurrection of Christ after Calvary), in the idea of ​​reincarnation, according to which the soul “disguises itself” into another flesh, changes its place of dwelling.

However, the body not only separates each of us from the surrounding world, but also connects with it. Through our senses we receive information about the world (we see, hear, touch, etc.). And, on the contrary, the human body “tells” others about it.Since a person is a unity of body and spirit, external and internal at all times in the human body, they tried to get an idea of ​​his soul, character, state of health. So the ancient art of physiognomy (that is, the ability to judge a person by facial features) from Heraclitus and Galen, through Lavater (author of the work “The Art of Knowing People and Making Them to Love Oneself”) at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries is preserved until the turn of the XXth century. XX1 centuries without losing its popularity. Among other things, a passion for physiognomy gave impetus to the development of the art of caricature and such a science as anthropometry.Palmistry (one of the most ancient systems of divination about

individual characteristics of a person in his palm), and phrenology (the theory that there is a connection between the mental, moral properties of a person and the structure of his skull).

Reflecting on your own body, its boundaries, structure serves as a source for describing space (span, elbow, foot as measures of length), perception of things around a person (“needle’s eye”, “teapot nose”), creating metaphors (we can talk about moral blindness and the deafness of a person, about his heartlessness, etc.P.).

The principles of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism apply to the surrounding world, which is thought of by analogy with the human body. This idea is most clearly expressed in the “Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo da Vinci. The Vitruvius-Leonardo formula, according to which the human body can be inscribed in a circle and a square in such a way that the centers of the figures turn out to be aligned, expressed the ultimate, cubed degree of a person’s perfection, since the exemplary harmony and proportionality of his body was multiplied by the corresponding properties of a circle and a square, as ideal figures symbolizing the heavenly and earthly spheres [4].

On the contrary, the properties of the world are transferred to the body. So G. Kabakova in the article “On sweet kisses and bitter tears: notes on body gastronomy” refers to the analysis of the “gustatory” description of the human body in Russian culture. Four basic tastes – sweet / salty, bitter / sour – were present in bodily characteristics. Sweet taste, for example, was a constant attribute of lips associated with food, speech, and eroticism. Both female and male lips in folklore were called “sugar”.Both the voice and speech, especially pleasant to the ear, could turn out to be sweet. Sweet kisses were considered the best remedy for bitterness. In addition to wedding traditions, which we can still observe (guests shout to the young “Bitter!”

kissed more and, accordingly, to make their life sweet and happy), this metaphor could also be used in this way: according to widespread beliefs, one should kiss when planting cucumbers and onions so that they do not taste bitter when they grow up [2].

The paradox is that the body in which we live, over the long years of being in it, which seems to have become so familiar, remains at the same time alien and unknown for its owner. It is no coincidence that the question of a person’s identity with his own body comes to the fore in philosophical reflection. While the body inseparably belongs to its bearer, a person does not know many of its features, cannot always “cope” with it.

The axiom is the fact that the inclusion of a “bodily man” in the socio-cultural space entails significant consequences for his body, which turns from a biological phenomenon into a sociocultural phenomenon and acquires, in addition to its naturally-assigned attributes, properties and characteristics, generated by social and cultural influences.

According to the conclusions of M. Moss, the sociocultural environment forms “body techniques”, i.e. “The traditional ways in which people in different societies use their bodies” [5]. There are techniques for swimming and running, digging and marching, postures and gaits. Each society has its own “habits”, and they can change throughout the life of almost one generation: “… Polynesians do not swim like we do, and my generation did not swim like the present…” [five]. The manifestation of “body techniques” is also associated with various stages of a person’s life: “When the child Buddha was born, his mother Maya kept upright, clinging to the branch of a tree; she gave birth while standing. Many women in India still give birth this way. What we consider to be normal, i.e., giving birth while lying on the back, is not

is more normal than others, such as the position on all fours. ” [five].

Needs for satisfying hunger and procreation, the need to endure pain, etc.etc. remain constant, but we see the variability of attitudes towards the body in different cultures. It is expressed in assessments of the relationship between the spiritual and the bodily in a person, in the ideals of beauty, in the perception of health and ill health, etc. As nature as a whole is endowed with symbolic meanings, as we wrote about above, so the human body acquires cultural meanings.

For example, “bodily top” and “bodily bottom” are unequal in the cultural hierarchy.The territory of the “bodily top”, presented in the European tradition as the dwelling place of the soul, dominates the territory of the “bodily bottom”, which personifies the natural, “animal” component of the human being [4]. Such a taboo of the “bodily bottom” is characteristic of the dominant official culture. In folk culture, which retained its ties with paganism, the body was perceived in its entirety, which is convincingly shown by M.M. Bakhtin in the work “Creativity of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.”

Disease and health appear in the history of culture as significant cultural metaphors, in which the language of biology is secondary to the language of culture. Susan Sontag (see also M. Foucault’s “The Birth of the Clinic” and “The History of Madness in the Classical Era”) in her article “Disease as a Metaphor” (1978) presented the history of tuberculosis and cancer as a history of metaphorization of disease in European culture: “Every disease if it is mysterious and creates fear, it will always be perceived as contagious, if not literally, but in a moral sense.Contact with a person suffering from a disease that they tend to consider mysterious and sinister is invariably perceived as a sin, worse, as a violation of a taboo. Magic Power

, even the names of such diseases are endowed, ”writes S. Sontag [7; P. 225]. And further: “Any serious disease with an unclear etiology and not amenable to treatment tends to be” significant. ” First of all, the objects of our deepest fears (decay, decay, pollution, moral decline, impotence) are thus identified with the disease.The disease itself becomes a metaphor. Our perception of evil is projected onto the disease. And the disease (enriched with semantic shades) is projected onto the world ”[7; P. 245].

Thus, culture sets the attitude towards the body and its various manifestations and formulates the norms of bodily behavior. Being included in the socio-cultural space, a person finds himself, on the one hand, under the forced influence of many socio-cultural factors that objectively affect his body, on its entire natural basis.On the other hand, in a situation of choosing one’s “bodily behavior”, which includes the awareness of the nature of various social influences on the body, the choice of a system of “protection” from them or, on the contrary, their cultivation, as well as the purposeful formation of one’s physical image in accordance with the prevailing norms and traditions or in spite of them [1; P. 249].

In the conditions of modern culture, the increasing dependence of the body on numerous factors of a socio-cultural nature is becoming a steady trend.The intensive process of transformation of the natural human body is intensified by the influence of mass media and advertising. The visual orientation of modern culture makes the body a cultural symbol of the era and a reflection of its contradictions.

The current stage is characterized by the intensive development of medical technologies, genetic engineering, in connection with which, the problem of the limits of admissibility of artificial (cultural) interference in the biological nature of the person himself is actualized.Abortion, eutana –

ziya, the death penalty, sterilization, genetic engineering, cloning experiments, sex change – all these are not only social issues, but also directly related to the correlation of nature and culture in humans [8].

“Medicalized body”, “consumer body”, “disappearing natural –

body ”- this is the terminology of modern research in the field of bodily practices.The human body is increasingly becoming a “civilized surrogate of the natural body” [3].

A modern man who is losing his own identity turns to the search for his “I”, including through relationships with his body:

“. A person ceases to know what his body means, the former solid way of signifying, interpreting his body disappears from him. He seeks to rediscover what his body means – and the obvious way to this is found in the dismemberment, disintegration of the body.” [nine].

Aggressive somatic jewelry, which is a symbolic attribute of our era, should be attributed to vivid illustrations of this position.

Body decoration belongs to the area of ​​cultural universals that characterize the life of humanity in general and each nation in particular. In its most general form, body decoration can reflect the nature / culture, we / them, male / female relationship.

The defining function of body decoration can be considered the function of acculturation. Decoration is one of the ways that a person turns to, transforming his biological body into a cultural one. All other functions of decoration are different manifestations of this basic function.

From the point of view of everyday consciousness, modern jewelry can be viewed as something directly opposite to the meaning originally put into this concept (the words “decoration” and “beauty” are etymologically related) – as disfigurement,

ugliness.A defiant disdain for one’s own body, decorating it with pieces of wire, bicycle knitting needles, razors, metal zippers, and scars is designed to actively and effectively expose aesthetic conventions. Such attempts to individualize your body initially refute this very desire, since they are largely dictated by fashion trends.

In conclusion, we emphasize that the problem of a person’s relationship to his own body is part of the general problem of the relationship between culture and nature.And if today we are talking about the relevance of the formation of ecological consciousness, about the need to form an ecological culture, then this forces us to discuss the problem of the ecology of the human body. And if in the ecology of the environment we begin to gradually realize how dangerous interference with the harmonious system of nature is, then the danger of interference with the natural in man is realized to a lesser extent.

REFERENCES

1.Bykhovskaya I. M. Corporeality as a sociocultural phenomenon / I. M. Bykhovskaya // Culturology. XX century: dictionary. M., 1996.S. 464-467.

2. Kabakova G. About sweet kisses and bitter tears: Notes on body gastronomy /

The body in Russian culture: collection of articles. articles. / Comp. G. Kabakov and F. Comte. M., 2005.S. 67-77.

3. Koretskaya L. F. Corporeality of a person as an object of socio-humanitarian knowledge.: http: //izvestiaлsea.m/pdf.asp? id = 3513

4. Leleko VD The space of everyday life in European culture / VD Leleko. SPb, 2002. [Electronic resource]. CC: http://medialib.pspu.ru/page.php?id=1220

5. Moss M. Body techniques / M. Moss // Society. Exchange. Personality. M., 1996. [Electronic resource]. CC: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcwmhwgh_13f3x6v3wn

6.: http://lib.ru/FILOSOF/PODOROGA_W/s_antropo.txt

7. Sontag S. Disease as a metaphor / S. Sontag // Foreign literature. 2003. No. 8.

8. Flier A. Ya. Nature and culture / A. Ya. Flier // Culturology. XX century: dictionary. M., 1996.S. 137-138.

9. Horuzhy S. S. Hermeneutics of corporality in spiritual traditions and modern

practices myself / S.S. Horuzhy. [Electronic resource]. CC: synergia-

sa.rU/./download/lib/004_Horuzhy_Germenevtika_Telesnosti.doc

Meanwhile, the ecology of the human body implies the responsibility of each of us for our own health, as well as responsibility in manipulating our bodies.