Skin

The human body is a marvel of complexity, organization and fine tuning. It is astounding that every part works in harmony with, and support of, all the other parts. A creation that ingenious and precious needs to be guarded against negative influences or dangers. That is why we have skin. In fact, the skin does that and much, much more.

What does it do and how does it do that?

1. The 20 square feet of skin covers everything with the exception of openings for speech, breathing, eating, hearing, seeing, and elimination. It serves as a barrier between the body and the environment by preventing infections. It is estimated that we could have 50 million tiny bacteria, pathogens, or microbes per square inch on our skin, all fitting into one pea.
2. One postage stamp sized part of the skin may contain 6 million cells, 100 sweat glands, 15 sebaceous glands, 5000 sensory corpuscles, 25 pressure points, 12 cold sensors 2 heat sensors.
3. The epidermis is the thin outer layer of the skin that is washable and renewable. We continuously shed dead skin from the epidermis. It surely is a good thing that it is washable and water-resistant. It also uses sunlight to make vitamin D and provides us with skin tone.
4. The second, somewhat thicker layer, is the dermis. This provides us with the sense of touch while housing hair follicles and up to 200 million sweat glands to maintain body temperature.
5. The subcutaneous layer houses the roots of our hair, circulation of the bloodstream, nerve connections, glands and other sensory receptors.
6. Our skin is flexible and elastic, otherwise it couldn’t function at all.
7. It is able to heal and repair itself.
8. Some of the glands secrete sebum to provide lubricants for the skin.
9. Places subject to the most wear, like the sole of the foot or the palm of the hand, have thicker layers than other places. Eyelids and armpits have the thinnest layer. Places that get used more develop callouses.

How did all this get into place with just the right abilities needed? All this, plus mountains of instructions for building the whole body, was programmed into the DNA of the egg cell in the mother’s womb upon conception. That blueprint, in a cell the size of the period at the end of this sentence, is estimated to fill a 500 volume encyclopedia if the instructions were written out in detail. That requires creative genius beyond our comprehension. There is a Creator who gave us all these benefits and much more. We are accountable for how we respond.

Our skin can teach us a lot. (Sources: “The Wonder of Man” by Werner Gitt, Wikipedia and various websites.)

Henry Wiebe