3 BIGGEST Weaknesses of the Human Body

this video is sponsored by brilliant find a link for 20 off your annual subscription below we humans like to think that we're pretty awesome and honestly i agree i mean this channel is called the institute of human anatomy it would be very weird if i didn't think humans were incredible but that doesn't mean we're perfect fact is we're very far from perfect in today's video i want to talk about three of the biggest weaknesses or liabilities however you want to describe it that we have as human beings but these are far from the only ones but in my eyes it actually helps to make us more unique and if i've done my job by the end of the video you will agree with me so let's do this first and foremost it needs to be said that context matters immensely in this discussion these weaknesses and liabilities might actually be strengths in a completely separate scenario i mean are you fighting a brown bear in the forest or are you swimming and trying to fend off a white shark are you being attacked by 10 000 fire ants or are you wandering aimlessly and protectionless in the sahara desert each of these scenarios may highlight a different part of your anatomy and in that instance it becomes a weakness but in a completely different scenario it might actually be a strength so this conversation is a bit tongue-in-cheek but even so the regions i want to talk about today we actually share with most other creatures on this planet yet they present differently in the human being than they do in those creatures and it's that presentation that makes them a unique liability in us and so that's what i think is going to make it interesting for you and help explain just more about what it means to be human so let's go ahead and look at the very first one you are looking at a left hip that's been cut in the mid-sagittal plane dividing it from left to right as well as the horizontal or transverse plane separating it into a superior and then there would be an inferior portion down there in fact if i lift it up you can even see that cut femur uh just kind of making itself available to us on the inferior aspect this is going to be the anterior side of the hip and then this over here you can see that gigantic gluteus maximus is going to be that posterior side of the hip so obviously if i'm showing you the hip here you're probably understanding the liability i'm about to discuss it's probably the least surprising to you it's going to be the groin now obviously it's going to be a little more of a liability for males than it is for females but it's still going to be a very big liability for females too but that male liability comes down to this thing right here which is a testy or testicle or testis and as we all know these are going to be hypersensitive and when you actually think about why they're so hypersensitive it makes complete sense from a purely biological reproductive standpoint the purpose the meaning of life is to make babies you may not want to make babies and since there's like eight billion of us on the planet i'm not upset if you don't want to have any children but you have to understand just from a biological perspective the purpose of all life whether that's a bacteria a daisy or you as a human being it's to procreate and then have those babies live long enough that they get of age that they can then procreate themselves that's just the purpose of it so with males the gonads are actually going to be outside if i can get this a little more in frame outside of the body right they're going to be hanging into the squirtle sack that's not the case for females for females obviously the ovaries are going to be about right here and the reason why the teste is outside of the male's body and the ovaries are inside is because for testes in order to produce sperm it needs to be lower than body temperature so body temperature around 97.5 to 98.6 degrees or so but for sperm production it needs to be about a few degrees lower than body temperature so the testes are outside of the body but that's the problem right because they are now exposed and let's say that i don't know you experience some kind of damage right say these get i don't know in some horrific accident where they get destroyed again from a biological perspective the male is now reproductively useless and that's a big problem so nature did this really cool thing i guess you could say and made him so sensitive that he would protect them at all costs it's actually pretty brilliant when you think about it but i want you to understand that for females this area is still going to be sensitive and that's just because there is a ton of nerve endings all around this entire area in that groin but obviously there is going to be more sensitivity for the male than the female but that's not where it actually ends in terms of liabilities for the groinal region in fact this next area is the area i really want to talk about with the groin and it's going to be right here it's what's known as the femoral triangle this is obviously a triangle and it's going to be bordered by several muscles as well as what's known as the inguinal ligament right here and as you can see there are going to be as i scoot this muscle to the side several different structures inside of it including this massive one here which is known as the femoral artery but we have the femoral artery the femoral vein the femoral nerve all traveling in this area and the only thing that's really protecting it which we've obviously dissected away is going to be soft tissue it's a bunch of connective tissue and adipose is the only thing protecting this area this is an enormous liability because look at how massive this artery is i'm going to kind of pull it up like this and actually i'll put my probe to the side hopefully you're going to be able to see the diameter of this tube this is a massive tube and what's happening is this is splitting from the iliac arteries which are going to be more located inside that pelvic bowl which is going to have split right here from the aorta so you have a massive amount of oxygenated blood being pushed from the heart through this system and it's just going to the entirety of the leg that's where this artery is going to continually split and go all the way down to the feet let's say this gets cut if this gets cut you're going to have a massive massive volume of blood just flying out which is obviously a big problem now if you were to leave this completely unattended you are going to be going unconscious and dying in just a couple of minutes now obviously most people aren't just gonna sit there and be like huh well i'm bleeding out i might as well leave it right you're gonna start putting pressure you're gonna do whatever you can to stop that bleeding but still the fact remains it has no real protection other than connective tissue and is bordered by these muscles this is a huge liability now this exists in other creatures but the difference is that they are quadrupedal meaning that their hips are in a flexed state and that flexed state helps to protect it but not you as a human you are just open walking around just kind of exposing your groin and genitals and this femoral triangle to the entirety of the world it's it's a very strange thing because again if this thing gets cut you are going to be in a world of trouble the next big weakness is going to be the abdomen and you're going to notice right off the bat that we've removed a good deal of soft tissue here in fact it's the entire integumentary system so there's no epidermis or dermis or hypodermis so all the skin all the fat it's all gone and you can see the connective tissue underneath in fact all this white tissue you're looking at is what's known as the rectus sheath and it's just going to overlay and help protect the rectus abdominis muscle which is running right down the center you're also going to notice that we've made an incision running from the right obliques following the inguinal ligament down around the pubis and then following that same path on the left side which allows us to reflect the muscles back and we get to see this piece of tissue that i really want to talk about here kind of like tilt this as best i can this is what's known as the greater omentum and this is going to be a fat apron that is loaded with blood vessels loaded with immune cells this is a really cool piece of tissue that not a lot of people know about or talk about which is kind of an injustice in my opinion but the reason why the abdomen is such a liability actually before i say that the abdomen is not just a liability in you as a human being in fact quadrupeds it doesn't matter what it is say it's like a horse or a dog or a hippopotamus they're going to have a greater momentum too because this is a liability for them as well so let's say you're running and you have a stick puncture so you're a quadruped that is you're running and maybe some stick jets out and punctures you or maybe you are prey and you're running from a predator and they get a hold and they claw into your abdomen well that puncture wound can there be an attempt by the greater momentum to try and seal it up from the inside it's not going to be a perfect seal i mean in all honesty you've been stabbed right so that's a pretty big problem but that still is really cool to me that the greater momentum is going to attempt to seal it off from the inside really really cool and i mean the greater momentum can help localize infections so if you get appendicitis it can actually start to migrate over there and try to localize it twist it off and keep the infection from spreading can do the same thing for cancerous tumors the greater momentum is really really cool but if i take that omentum and reflect it back you're going to see that there is a lot of other soft structures in here this is all the small intestine surrounding it is going to be the large intestine and you can't really see it on this camera but down here is going to be the uterus and the reproductive organs there's a lot of soft gooey things here in the abdomen which is why it's such a liability now the thing is though it's protected for quadrupeds by the fact that they aim it at the ground right so they understanding this with the quadrupedal form they protect they push it they say hey like i'm not doing a good job of this but they kind of pointed at the ground and making it more difficult there's less exposure and less opportunities for objects or predators or anything like that to actually cause a problem now you may be wondering then well why don't we have say if i put this back a rib cage like we do surrounding the thoracic region around our abdominal region and it's a great question well this comes down to kind of like a an important thing to understand in pretty much all of biology and that is sacrifices have to be made if i want to have stability and security i have to sacrifice mobility and the inverse is also going to be true so in terms of thoracic region in that rib cage the ribs and the sternum exist to help protect the heart and the lungs as well as they're vitally important for the function of the lungs but that means you don't have really any movement in that area or very subtle movement in fact i have an activity you can do there at home so what i want to do is don't move your shoulders don't move your neck don't move your low back i want you to try and flex your thoracic region try and fold your thoracic region forward you're not going to be able to do it and there's a lot of things at play here including the ribs the sternum but the actual the major player is actually going to be all the way in the back on the spinal column there's going gonna be just the way the bone is formed that's gonna help prevent it but the point is to create all that security and stability in the region you had to sacrifice mobility so in terms of the abdomen to make all of this mobile which is so important to be able to crunch and move and twist and do everything you can do whether you're quadripedal or bipedal a sacrifice had to be made and the sacrifice was stability and security making this a big liability but again like i just said with quadrupeds well they have a way to at least try and limit how big of a liability this is by pointing at the ground but not you you as a human you just walk around you're like look at my belly look at it isn't it glorious look at my bed it's it's it's it's strange when you think about it because we don't have any kind of extra protection we are just hey how's it going and there's actually even more than just this in terms of liability but in order to see that we need to jump over to a different cadaver this gigantic thing right here is the liver and this is a normal sized liver although it is diseased if you look closely you might be able to see some discolorations here this is going to be cancerous nodules because this individual passed away from colorectal cancer that metastasized to his liver now the reason why i'm talking about the liver is because of liver punches if you're not aware getting punched in the liver is enough to just drop you no matter how tough you are and you'll see this with combat sports all the time whether that's mma or boxing anything of the sorts literally getting hit in the liver doesn't matter again how well trained you are can just drop you instantly and in fact the force if it's sufficient enough can even shear and start to break and tear the liver and you may be asking why what makes the liver like that how does it experience so much pain and it's interesting because the liver is exposed so if i grab this right here this is a chest plate that we've removed right so to kind of give you an understanding here i'm going to try and put it in as good a best position as it normally was you can see the umbilicus or that belly button here you can see this right here is known as the xiphoid process this is the bottom of the sternum and then you can see the bottom of the ribs right here so this is going to be that seventh or eighth rib and then you can see the muscles so if you're getting punched so like let's say someone hits you right in there if i reflect this up you can see that you can directly punch the liver here right so again in creating that mobility in this area and the liver being so massive it's exposed to the point that if someone properly locates it and hits it it can drop you and you may be wondering well why is that though why is the liver so sensitive and it's interesting because a liver punch the liver itself maybe i should say it this way really doesn't have nocceptors which are going to be pain receptors right the the function of the liver is going to be to create things and build things like bile as well as filter your blood the liver is a really cool organ but it doesn't really have any need for all these pain receptors to be located inside so there are going to be some pain receptors in the surrounding tissues though but what's happening is you get punched in the liver right as soon as you hit that liver and it's exposed it's moving around and putting different pressures on all these different organs and structures and that's what creates a massive amount of pain and it also creates shock to the body right the body recognizes especially if it's enough of a force and you cause the liver to start breaking apart i mean it can literally split and rupture if you get hit hard enough and that can definitely kill you but the body can even go into shock and protective mode so it hits it and your body just you just kind of grab it drop fall to the ground and you're in pure protective mode this is like reflexive because this is such a it could be such a traumatic injury but the thing to understand is you could experience something similar if you got punched in the lungs if you got punched in the heart if you got punched i don't know if you're going to be able to see this all that well the spleen on the side here i'm trying to pull it out here's the spleen the spleen is also pretty susceptible not as susceptible as the liver but it is a little exposed at times but the kidneys it doesn't matter if you're able to hit any of these organs you can get a very similar thing to a liver punch the thing is the liver just happens to be more exposed due to the fact like we just discussed about that mobility versus stability so the abdomen is going to be a huge liability even in combat sports and as anyone who's ever been punched in the liver can tell you it is not a good time the third and final liability or weakness is also probably going to be pretty unsurprising to you it's going to be the neck now this is a busy area and i've actually reflected one of the muscles away this muscle here is called the sternocleidomastoid i reflected it away so we could see a lot of the busyness that's going to be in this lateral side of the neck but there's also going to be some important structures on the front side of the neck including if i if you listen closely let's see if we can hear this i am tapping what's known as the thyroid cartilage which in males can get larger due to testosterone and we call that the adam's apple but everybody has a thyroid cartilage and then underneath it there's another piece of cartilage which is probably not going to be as audible as i tap it i don't even know if you could hear that but that's called the cricoid cartilage there's actually a membrane just in between them and if you feel this with your finger on your own body i'm obviously not going to do it with my hands because i'm covered in phenoxyethanol but if you were to like feel your adam's apple and then you go below it there's going to be this soft spot they can actually go into there to actually restore the airway and perform what's called a tracheotomy kind of interesting but this is kind of highlighting a very important thing here that in your neck you're going to have your respiratory tract or part of your respiratory tract you're going to have the larynx so the thyroid oh by the way this little muscle right here called omohyoid i'm going to swing that out of the way but this whole area i was just talking about is called the larynx or your voice box and then it's going to turn in and transition into the trachea which is going to be down here so very important breathing i i think breathing is one of my favorite things to do honestly and just behind that you can't see it in this dissection is going to be the esophagus so your food tube so the throat is going to have both your breathing as well as your swallowing right tubes which is going to be fairly important then if we go to that lateral side you're going to see that there's actually some string attached to this vessel and you yourself do not come with string this is where the embalmer is elected to go into the cardiovascular system to administer the embalming preservatives to the cadaver this is the carotid artery or the right common carotid artery and this is going to be delivering oxygenated blood from the heart and start pumping it up into the neck and into the head to go to the brain and all the many many tissues inside of the head and this is a big this is a big thing because i mean first off if you actually feel your pulse in the neck you are feeling the carotid artery surging as the heart beats and pushes you're feeling the blood pressure against that blood vessel as it's going to your head and so but right next to it actually before i get there we can also see one of the jugular veins so the jugular is going to be running right alongside that carotid artery now in all those nature documentaries there's always some australian fella saying like going for the jugular i apologize to the entire country of australia for that terrible accent right now but they're not really going for the jugular they're really going for the carotid artery because by severing this artery right here you are going to interrupt blood flow directly to the brain and head and to bring it back to another combat sports analogy if you've ever experienced what's known as a blood choke a blood choke is going to be different than say a respiratory choke because if you're able to compress both sides and you can see this like if they get someone like in a headlock and start kind of squeezing between the forearm and the biceps and compressing both of those arteries you disrupt flow to the brain and the brain is anyone really surprised the brain needs blood because it needs oxygen and it will shut down very very quickly if you have never experienced a blood choke which i hope you've never experienced a blood choke it's a crazy experience because it's like you'll be feeling like you feel the pressure you but it's like you just pass out really quickly it's like i'm okay i'm ok and you're just gone that's why if you're watching like mma or something like that you'll see the referee or the umpire just making sure watching that the person doesn't pass out because it can happen very quickly if that gets cut you're gonna kill that prey very quickly this is why you see like predators do this all the time going for the neck is for twofold because if they also compress the airway then you're depriving oxygen from getting into lungs to oxygenate the blood if you sever the blood vessels the jugular and the carotid you're now disrupting blood flow going to the head and away from the head and you're going to have blood loss which is also going to be very very important to limit or will not limit to um well kill that creature right again this in this scenario it's going to be prey versus predator also on the side here we have a group of nerves right so even let's say that it's like a glancing blow this is what's known as the brachial plexus this is going to go down and innervate the entirety of the arm and right next to it you have another gigantic blood vessel this is called the subclavian artery which is going to turn into the axillary artery and run down to the arm providing blood to the entire arm so those are going to be pretty important and then i i totally forgot i just remembered right now inside of the larynx is a bone called the hyoid bone the hyoid bone is a floating bone and it's used there's several muscles that attach to it as well as embedded inside of the larynx so cartilages are attached to it it's vitally important for both speaking and swallowing again i'm not going to do this because i'm covered in phenoxy but if you feel your atoms apple your thyroid cartilage and swallow you can actually feel a bone that's the hyoid go up and then down as you swallow if that gets broken it can collapse the airway and it can kill you so a strike a hit it doesn't even have to be like claws or teeth or anything like that to hit the neck can be highly highly destructive just hitting the hyoid itself can completely collapse this area which just goes to show i mean we're talking everything breathing eating blood flow nerve supply sensation all of that is just in this area which is why you want to protect it and that's again why in high stress situations you can actually do this stress will cause you to help elevate your shoulders in some kind of instinctual uh effort to protect your neck super super important that this deck is not messed with so to bring it all together once again a quadruped would kind of like be pointing their neck at the ground it's still gonna be exposed don't get me wrong it's still gonna be exposed this is just the way it is but you can't have it be protected again by bones because then you wouldn't have all this awesome mobility that we have so you wanna you can't have that security and stability but quadrupeds are at least going to be able to point it at the ground a little bit more efficiently and it's just going to be angled it's going to be more difficult but here's you once again just walking around so to bring this all together the three areas i chose to talk about today the groin the abdomen and the neck you as a human being since you decided to stand up about six million or so years ago and just walk around you're showing them off it's so strange when you compare us to other animals because while we all have them you flaunt them you're just like hey look at my neck look at my abdomen look at my groin and it's such a weird thing at the same time though there is a again there's a bigger trade-off and this is a different episode that i would love to do in a future video um just how that makes you really cool because being bipedal also means you're burning less calories it also changed our mobility and our gait and allowed us to run so there's a lot of cool things that happened because of that shift from being quadrupedal to bipedal but as with everything there's a trade-off if you're going to have that mobility you've got to affect the stability it really is difficult to overstate just how important these functional trade-offs are quite literally your entire body is the end result of countless trade-offs being made over millions of years yet these trade-offs aren't unique to human biology in reality everything around you is the end result of these types of trade-offs whether that's your car your cell phone or maybe a ceiling fan that might be above your head the list goes on and on if you want to learn how to think critically and problem-solve around these trade-offs you'll definitely want to take a course from today's sponsor brilliant take this course on computer science algorithms for example every computer program uses algorithms but it's not always so simple as plugging it in and letting it run brilliant teaches you what algorithms are and how they work through these interactive algorithm building exercises where you can shift around blocks of code and get immediate feedback on your results that's just one of their over 60 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Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 1,119,188

Rating: 4.9449368 out of 5

Keywords: biggest weaknesses of the human body, human weaknesses, biggest human weaknesses, weakest spot on a human, femoral artery, fermoral vein, small intestine, greater omentum, whats the weakest spot on the human body, thyroid cartilage, adams apple, brachial plexus, carotid artery, jugular vein

Id: srypDSFVGh8

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021