What Are Nerves and Arteries?
Your heart and your brain are the two most important organs in your body. They hold everything together and keep you alive. These two are the reason you are breathing and fully functioning as a human being.
– Your heart, for one, pumps all the blood you need that supply you with oxygen and nutrients that keep all your cells alive and functioning.
– And your brain, on the other hand, works so much like the machine on your car or the microprocessor on your computer that controls all the bodily functions of human beings. The brain controls all the actions of the other parts of the human body by producing activity patterns and secreting hormones.
Basically, your heart and brain makes you human.
However, in order for your heart and brain to interconnect with the other parts of the body, these organs need pathways wherein the blood from the heart and the information and activity patterns from the brain can be sent to the other parts of your body, thus, the presence of nerves and arteries.
Nerves are a bunch of fibres that carry and send electrochemical signals to and from the brain in order for your body to express motion, sensations, reflexes, and other bodily functions and activities. Nerves are classified into four parts: cranial, autonomic, central, and peripheral.
- Cranial nerves are the ones that connect your brain to your sensory organs namely, your eyes, nose, ears, and mouth.
- Autonomic nerves, on the other hand, send messages and information from your brain to your different internal organs such as your heart, intestines, blood, vessels, stomach, among others.
- Central nerves, conversely, are the ones responsible for connecting your brain within the other parts of the nervous system such as to your spine.
- Peripheral nerves are responsible for your brain and limbs connection.
On the other hand, your arteries are the pathways of blood from the time the blood is pumped from the heart to travel all the way to the whole body and back to the heart again. The dorsal aorta, which is the main artery where the blood first enters from the heart is branched to hundreds of smaller arteries that lead to the different parts of your body. Arteries are made up of three layers, the outer layer which is made up of tissues, the middle layer which is elastic and very tough, and the innermost layer which is very smooth in texture to allow the blood to travel easily. These arteries are the ones responsible for delivering the blood rich in oxygen and nutrients to the whole body for our cells to be kept alive.
Without the nerves and the arteries, the information produced by the brain and the blood produced by the heart would not be able to flow properly to the whole body. Because of the nerves and arteries, we are able to live, breathe and function.
