Human Body: The Excretory System

The word excretory means removal of waste substances from the body. The human body is like a large organization. If the organization doesn't run perfectly right then to make sure that it gets back on track someone has to fix the mistake. But, the human body doesn't make mistakes. Only our brain does. Our brain controls everything we do and if we do something wrong another part of our body has to fix our mistake. That part of the body is the excretory system.

The heart is like the president of this organization. If the heart stops working everything else stops working. The only way to get the heart working again is to get a machine in a hospital or another person to restart it. But before the heart stops working the excretory system has to try and get it back on track. The heart isn't part of the excretory system it is part of the circuitry system. So that is the problem the excretory system doesn't exist all over the body. It is located between the systems.

The Kidney is the main part of the excretory system. It filters all of the blood that comes from the heart. But problems with the body don't always travel though the blood. And some problems that do are too strong for the kidneys to fight. The kidney is made to fight small problems. The kidneys are like your garbage bins. Your garbage get sent to a large heap of rubbish (bladder) and them when the rubbish dump is full it get thrown under the ground (toilet). But if your have a lot of garbage it can not be taken to the dump the normal way, instead a special person has to come and get it. This special person is a granulation's, macrophage or dendritic. These cells are part of the immune system. Instead of trying to block waste and send it out of the body these cells travel all over the blood and attack and “eat” bad or infected cells.

The kidneys help regulate your bodies liquids. If you have too much of one liquid it will be in the blood and whatever flows in the blood goes past the kidneys 100's of times a day so if you drink too much water your kidneys will get it out of your blood in just over 10mins. This stops the build up of unwanted fluids. If you had just 20mls of alcohol a day then it would become very dangerous in days. Even if the kidneys stopped getting rid of water we would die.

Main Organs and Parts of the Excretory System

• Bladder - Storage place for waste.
• Kidneys - Blood filterer and fluid regulator
• Aorta - Starts on the left side of the heart and then sends blood to main parts of the body. Including the kidneys.
• Ureters - The tube which sends urine to the bladder from the kidneys.

Diseases and illnesses related to the excretory system

• Nephritis - an inflammation of the glomeruli. The glomeruli are the parts of the kidney that turn waste into urine. Plural of glomerulus. Symptoms are bloody urine, edema (swelling/puffiness). 1 way of it happening is the immune system trying to attack the glomeruli.
• Nephrosis - Also affects the glomeruli. (See picture at bottom) Symptoms are also puffiness except all over the body, mainly on the eyelids. This illness is caused by excretion of too much protein. Urine will turn foamy. This illness normally stops if you follow doctor's prescription and take the required drugs and because these peoples kidneys can't handle sodium properly follow a strict no-added salt diet.