Skeletal

 

Most people think skeletons are just dead people in scary movies, but they are wrong. When you are alive your skeleton holds you up, it protects your organs, it helps you move, and it gives humans our unique shape. All your bones, tendons, joints, and ligaments make up your skeletal system. One of your bones can be shaped way different than another, from the oval shaped skull to the flattened marshmallow shaped vertebrates. Bones move in unique ways, although today we have used those movements for the most basic of our possessions. The places where bones are connected are called joints. 

**Cartilage** The ends of our bones are covered in a dense layer of tissue, can you guess, cartilage. Cartilage is very necessary because it lets our joints move without wearing away. If we didn't have cartilage our bones would wear away like two pieces of chalk rubbing together, after a while they will reshape and not be able to support the movement of joints causing sharp pain in a disease called Osteoarthritis. Miniature blood vessels inside the periosteum carry nutrients inside the bones.

**Bone Marrow** Bone marrow is the bendable tissue in the interior of your bones. It is the body's leading producer of red blood cells. It makes up an estimated 4% of the human body weight. There are two kinds of marrow, red and yellow. Although, this is not true when you are born. Then, all of your bone marrow is the red kind. Then, your body converts it to the yellow kind as you age. Yellow marrow is filled with fat cells, that's the main difference. The marrow makes red blood cells. This is very helpful to every system in your body.

**Kinds of Bones** There are two kinds of bone; Spongy and compact. The spongy bone is found near the corners of your long bones for example the bones in your though and upper arms. Your compact bone is right below the periosteum. Your compact bone presents your bones with the gifts of strength. Compact bone has a frame work that holds deposits of calcium phosphate. These deposits create a harder surface of bone. Cells of the bones and blood vessels are found in the compact bone.

**Tendons** Tendons are tough pieces fibrous connective tissue that connect you muscles to you bones. Tendons have a higher percent of collagen, a group of naturally occurring fibers, than ligaments but a lower percent of ground substance, a group of non-cellular components from a extracellular matrix.

**Vertebral Column** The [|Vertebral Column] is one of the main things that gives support to your body and helps it function. There are on﻿ average, about 33 vertebrae in a human being. There are several different types of vertebrae in the vertebral column; such types of vertebrae are called thoracic vertebrae, lumbar vertebrae, sacral vertebrae, and coccygeal vertebrae. The coccygeal vertebrae usually has about four of these and they have no intervertebral discs. The sacral vertebrae have 5 vertebrae and get fused overtime. The lumbar vertebrae have 5 vertebrae and this section has to support most of the weight. The thoracic part of the vertebral column has 12 vertebrae that help with the rotation of the ribs.

**Ribs** There are two kinds of ribs. They are classified by their connection to the sternum. True ribs connect with the sternum by coastal cartilage. Coastal cartilage is made of hyaline cartilage structured in bars. False ribs are the eight through tenth ribs that connect to the coastal cartilage of your seventh rib. The last kind of rib, deemed floating rib for their failure to connect with anything but the vertibre. The rib cage is also a big part of your respiratory system (and many others). When you breathe various muscles move your ribcage to help you get "more breath" in you. They house the lungs as well as many other necessary organs.

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<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">**Major Bones of the Body** <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The biggest bone in your body is the femur. It is located in the upper leg/thigh area. It runs from your hip to knee joint. Another main bone in your body is the tibia. It is the second largest bone in your body, located in your lower leg. It is the larger of the two bones running from your knee to your ankle, the other being the fibula. The tibia and femur, along with the fibula, work with your muscles, ligaments, and tendons to help your leg function.The third major bone in your body (besides previously mentioned ones in other paragraphs) is the humerus. It does basically the same thing as the femur in the leg, but in the arm. It connects the scapula and the lower arm. The humerus, radius and ulna help your arm function properly. A major bone idea we need to look at is the slight but important differences in our bone structure between the genders. Men have slightly thicker phalanges and limbs. Women have narrower ribs. Also, female pelvises are larger to help, well, let the baby come out. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"> ** Breaking Bones ** <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">All the bones in your body are alive. That’s the reason you feel pain whenever you hurt yourself, as in <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">fracture or break a bone. Breaking bones is when you put so much pressure or weight on a bone and it snaps or fractures. There are many different types of fractures such as Complete fractures, Incomplete fractures, Linear fractures, Transverse fractures, Oblique fractures, Spiral fractures, Comminuted fractures, Stress Fractures and Impacted fractures. You can’t just break a bone in one way; depending on how you do it depends on the type of fracture you get

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;"> The main job of ligaments is to connect bones, not muscles (job of tendons), together to form a joint and to control the rang e of motion of that joint. Ligaments are composed of collagen fibers. Ligaments are also needed to provide support for your joints and bones in your body. The two cruciate ligaments in your knee are the ACL and PCL. The two collateral ligaments in your knee are the MCL and the LCL. You have over 900 ligaments in your body. The other ligaments in your body connect almost all of your other bones. There are even ligaments in your spine! After being injured once, the ligament you injured is more likely to be injured again. Also, kids are more likely to rip the ligament of the bone rather than tear it. Adults, on the other hand, are more likely to tear the ligament.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; line-height: 115%;">Ligaments **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">There are a few connections between the skeletal system and other body systems. One of those is that tendons connect muscles to bones. Also, the skeletal system produces red blood cells for the circulatory system.
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">Connections **

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">6 Major Functions <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;"> There are actually 6 major functions of the human skeletal system, contrary to popular belief. The first and most basic is for support. Obviously, if you didn't have any ribs, your heart would literally collapse. This would end your circulatory system, which would end your life. Secondly, your bones, although they may be hollow, help with the movement of your body. This is achieved by your joints. If we didn't have our bones & joints, I couldn't be typing because my fingers wouldn't move. Third of all, your skeleton protects vital organs, as mentioned above, like your heart. It also protects your brain and without a brain, we'd have no intelligence. This would give us no Nervous System. Your skeletal system, particularly your ilium (in hip) and spine also protect your digestive track. Without protection, you could easily have your rectum pinched, and then things wouldn't smell that good and poo would come out of your belly button. As mentioned above, your bones make //a lot// of red blood cells. These give the heart and respiratory system a job so to speak because the heart is the reason we have lungs, so that we can pump blood through the body and oxygenate it. Another major function is your bone's ability to store calcium. The calcium production and absorption for the bones in neutral until help with calcium metabolism, or regulation, is needed. Lastly, your bones release a hormone called bone gamma-carboxyglutamic acid-containing protein or osteocalcin. This is a noncollagenous protein. It contributes to the control and regulation of glucose and fat decomposition.