What is Liver?
What is the largest and most vital organ in your body, and which grows to the size of a football when you become big like your parents? It is the liver. You can feel it below your rib cage. The liver you eat in restaurants tastes yucky, but your liver is very important for you and we will learn about its critical functions.
Function of the Liver
The liver purifies your body of its impurities and sanitizes your blood. Just like you wash your car to cleanse it of all the brown dirt particles that stick to the surface and tires; your liver acts like a cleaning manager and extracts the waste products that are later flushed out of your body.
When you eat milk products and meaty products like bacon, you consume fat. Fat is beneficial for building nerve tissues for the brain and acts as a gasoline to keep your body active. Fats also aid in absorbing important vitamins like A, D and E. The liver knows the fat is essential for the body; so it produces the liquid called bile which helps in soaking up fat into the blood. Fat is yellowish green in color and is stored in the gall bladder till the body needs it.
How about when you greedily eat a bowl full of delicious macaroni pasta mixed with herbs, mozzarella cheese and tomatoes? Your body consumes carbohydrates (laden with rich vitamins and minerals) which contains sugar (glucose) needed by the important and hard working cells, to make fuel for your body. The liver again stores these in the form of glycogen and disposes them as and when needed. The liver knows how busy you are with your badminton tournament and cannot eat all the time. So it acts as a sturdy and dependable storage bin.
And lastly our dear liver is helping us digest the medicines we take when our head throbs.
What is the Pancreas?
There is another yellow and spongy organ in our body; hiding behind our bulgy stomach; that aids is digesting food. This is called the pancreas and is shaped like a fish. Our deeply engrossed functioning cells have chemical reactions taking place within them.
Function of the Pancreas
The proteins (who help) inside the cells are called enzymes. They form amino acid chains in assorted shapes to conduct a multiplicity of specific functions. Now who manufactures these enzymes? The pancreas does it. Now these three dimensional proteins are very stubborn and naughty. They not only foster strong brotherhood by holding hands tightly, but breaking them down is also very complicated. Our stomach tries to help by producing an acid, but it is the pancreatic juices that ultimately help in breaking down these protein bonds. The protein bonds are also like savage crows who want to eat everything. The pancreas stops them from eating the ducts. The pancreas also helps in breaking down fats and carbohydrates. These functions are called the exocrine functions of the pancreas.
When you feel dizzy, your body craves for sugar needed for body fuel. The pancreas releases glucagon which frees the stored sugar. There are times when your body has too much sugar floating around. The pancreas then emits outs insulin (from its pancreatic cells called Islets of Langerhans) which asks the body to utilize the sugar and store the excess. These are scientifically called endocrine functions of the pancreas.
3 Fun Facts about Liver and Pancreas
- The word pancreas comes from the Greek word “pancreas”, which means only meat. Sweetbread is a flavorful dish prepared from the pancreas of lamb.
- The pancreas craves for sweets only.
- Human liver is the organ that produced blood in your body at first.