The Skin

The skin is a part of your body that helps to keep your body safe. Even though some people do not know this, the skin is actually an organ. The skin is the largest organ of your body.

Functions of the Skin

The skin helps to do many functions for the body such as protect the body, helps to regulate the temperature of the body, and it helps to keep the organs and bones inside the body.

Layers of the Skin

There are three layers of skin in the skin organ. The first layer is the epidermis, and this is the thinnest layer of your skin.

This layer is on the outmost part of your body and it consists of dead skin cells and water.

The second layer of the skin is the dermis. The dermis is made up of fibers, collagen, glycoprotein gel and water. The dermis is around 80% water.

The last layer is the fatty layer. The fatty layer of the skin helps to keep your body warm and also will absorb the shock if you fall down or bang in to something.

Epidermis

The epidermis does not have any nerve or blood vessels and it is part of the skin that produces the melanin and gives color to the skin. This is the outer layer of the skin.

Dermis

The dermis is the lower layer and this layer has blood vessels, nerves, pores which are openings in the skin, hairs that grow in follicles and sweat glands.

Functions of the Skin

The skin helps to make sure that your body has enough water and that water that is needed is not lost out of the body.

It helps to make sure that the body has protection from different types of injury and keeps infection on the outside of the body.

The skin helps to keep us warm, but it also can help to keep us cool and it helps to eliminate waste through sweating.

The skin helps us to know what the weather is like. We can feel rain on our skin or sweat because it is so hot out.

Our body also shivers when it is cold. The skin produces vitamin D so that it can be healthy.

Melanin

Skin can come in different colors based on the melanin. Melanin is a pigment in the skin and the more melanin that a person has, the darker your skin is, the less melanin a person has, the lighter the skin is.

When a person is in the sun, the skin produces more melanin and that is why we can get a suntan.

Keeping Skin Healthy

Even though the skin is the largest organ, who would have known that an adult could have up to 20 square feet of skin, around the size of a blanket?

In order to keep the skin healthy, it is important that we drink plenty of water, eat healthy foods, keep the skin dry and clean, limit the amount of time in the sun, use sunscreen to protect the skin, and moisturize if necessary.

Facts About Skin:

The skin helps to keep germs and bacteria out of the body.
There are over 30,000 dead skin cells that fall off of your skin every minute.
Melanoma is a skin cancer and it is considered the most dangerous form of skin cancer.
Adult skin accounts for around 16% of your total body weight.
People shed more than 40 pounds of skin in their life.
The sun can cause skin cancer because of the harmful UV rays.
Too much oil in the skin causes acne.

What Did You Learn?

What is the largest organ on the body? The skin is the largest organ that the body has.
How many parts are there of the skin? The skin has three parts, the epidermis, the dermis and the fatty layer.
What is one thing that the skin does that is important? The skin protects us from bacteria and helps to regulate our body temperature.
What is dangerous for the skin? Getting too much sun or laying in a tanning bed can be dangerous for the skin. This can cause skin cancer.
What is interesting about the outer layer of the skin? The interesting thing about the epidermis is that it sheds dead skin cells and has no nerves.
What is the deadliest form of skin cancer? Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer.

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