An impressive vital organ

HEALTH

By GELINDE NAREKINE
HAVE you ever wondered about your skin – what it really is, its importance, and the significant role it plays in making you truly human?
Most likely, many of us take for granted that we have a covering on the outside that keeps our insides in. We probably see it as a simple external covering, a parchment, a canvas, or a barrier – between us and all other things that surround us. Or, should there be another structure that does better at that, then our skin would pretty much be redundant and unnecessary.
Rather, our skin is not simply a mere ordinary covering all around our outside. It is an impressive organ that has vital functions. It is a permeable and changeable membrane, a defining boundary, and a site of communication.
As such, it is an ideal vehicle through which we engage with and examine questions of beauty, the self, revelation and concealment, materiality, culture and technology.
Unique to an individual
Our skin is unique to each of us – not even identical twins will share the same fingerprint. The pattern of twists, ridges, and lines found on the tips of the fingers are peculiar to every individual, and can be used to identify us or determine where we have been and that which we have touched.
The skin fixes the boundaries of our physical selves and separates us from the rest of the world. It is the wrapping on the package of flesh, blood, and bone. Soft, elastic, able to heal itself – it is where we end and the rest of the cosmos begins. As such, the skin should be an entity of envy, wonder, and fascination. It is something quite spiritual and somewhat, mystical. And thus, it is where an individual journey of a lifetime begins, and that is where it must surely end.
In the daily routine of human dealings, small or large, our skin is the interface between us and every other thing that goes on around us. Not only through our skin that the mind is brought into relation with external objects. But, on a deeper level, it is through our skin that we connect to our world and others with whom we share the planet.
Our skin is an amazing organ and is more complex than we may realise. It protects us from stresses that could hurt our bodies, helps us to detect our environment, and produces important chemicals to our advantage. We notice changes in our skin’s appearance when we are injured, or as we age.
But many of us don’t stop to realise what a marvelous and hard-working structure skin really is. It has an interesting composition and is much more than a simple barrier between our body and the outside world.
It acts as an enclosure that stops water from entering the body, reduces the loss of water, and protects the body from infection. Some of our skin pores allow water to leave the body during perspiration. This process helps regulate and maintain a stable body temperature. In addition, it also produces precursor to an important vitamin called Vitamin D, protects us from damage by ultraviolet light, and detects information in the environment.

A barrier
The skin envelops us, acting as a barrier against invading microbes and chemical irritants. It protects the underlying tissue from injury and infection, helps to regulate the body’s temperature, and alerts the body to environmental factors through its nerve endings: too hot, too cold, too toxic, too sharp – the skin alerts us to the dangers, and the comforts that surround us.
The sensory receptors in our skin are exquisitely sensitive and highly specific. As such, we are able to register the faintest traces of atmospheric change. Our skin lays us bare to a constant bombardment of sensation. Through our skin we contact the world. With it, we touch and are touched. The skin alerts us to texture, temperature, pressure, pain, and pleasure.
It is scratched, kneaded, rubbed, and pinched, and in response is soothed, stung, and irritated, along with our emotions. Demanding to be stroked and massaged, it flushes and blushes, tickles and tingles, itches and burns.
Exterior stimuli prompt it to exude sweat and other fluids from its pores and glands. Freckles, dimples, wrinkles, scars, stretch marks, and moles occur like features on a landscape. The skin itself can range in colour from the milkiest white to an intense blue-black.
Eruptions of boils, shingles, or pimples may damage its surface, causing pain and embarrassment. Blistering and flaking, wrinkling and stretching, always feeling – the skin is in a constant state of response, alerting the body to the conditions that surround it.
Surprisingly tough yet vulnerable, the skin is a frail and all-too-penetrable veil – blades can slice it, fire can burn it, and toxic substances can be absorbed through it. The loss of a substantial amount of our elastic armour will kill us, rendering us unable to regulate our temperature or block bacteria intent on colonising the warm and wet recesses of our susceptible body. Breach it and we bleed.
The skin emits information upon which we are judged on the basis of our morals, the depth of our intelligence, and the degree of our worth. In addition, the skin portrays, depicts, and displays our beauty, our youth, our aging, and our vulnerability.
indicator of age
Our skin is the most outwardly reliable indicator of our age. As we grow older, our collagen fibres gradually lose their ability to bind water – a property that gives the skin its elasticity. As a result, wrinkles begin to proliferate. The skin also thins, and often lesions develop as a result of exposure to the sun. We can all look forward to the papery skin of old age, sagging and bagging, more prone to tears and breaches.
It betrays sometimes
Yet our skin is not always a reliable ally – it can betray us, sending signals that call into question our words, actions, or attitude. Apprehension, stress, or sexual attraction may cause our sweat glands to leak a watery fluid containing urea, minerals and amino acids. Glands in our armpits, on our faces, the mons pubis, nipples, and the scrotum ooze a milky, viscous liquid in response to emotional stimulus.
A rush of blood to the face can signal our shame, arousal, embarrassment, or the fact that we have just told a lie. The cold sweat of fear, and the accompanying odours that spring unbidden from our pores, may alert a foe to our terror and give courage to their assault.
Apart from its most obvious purpose of keeping the body whole and integrated, the skin’s primary function is that of a sense organ. It is here, in the soft, vulnerable, and elastic skin, that our sense of touch is located. Known as the mother of all our senses, touch is the first to develop and the last to leave us. While our other senses – sight, smell, taste, and hearing are located in discrete organs, touch is dispersed throughout the surface of our body in the skin.
When we touch another person, no matter how fleeting the contact, a bond is established or modulated to some degree – a fleeting kiss between spouses, a passionate, full-body embrace by lovers in the pre-dawn, an overwhelming rush of love as a parent nuzzles their child’s neck, or a press of the hand from a trusted friend.
Other, more casual contacts also occur – a pat on the shoulder, a shake of the hand, a touching of palms as coins are exchanged or a credit card is given. All these activities, whether subdued or intimate, are transpired through and by our skin.
In all of creation and evolution, creativity and adaptation, what we have to have is skin in order to keep all other organs and structures of our body in. The only thing that separates us from the rest of the universe, thus, making us truly human is our – skin.
It is therefore, an organ that is worthy of our understanding, respect, and utmost care.
Source of information
– Guyton and Hall 2016, Textbook of Medical Physiology, 13th Edition, Chapter 74, viewed 30 March 2022, http://www.medicostimes.com
– Linda Crampton 2022, Human skin: structure, functions, and interesting facts, viewed 24 March 2022, https://www.owlcation.com
– Maryrose Cuskelly 2011, Original Skin – exploring the marvels of human hide, viewed 24 March 2022, https://www.Ebook777.com

• Gelinde Narekine is a technical officer at the UPNG School of Medicine and Health Sciences.