Peripheral Nervous System ( ESSAY )

When it comes to the nervous system, or just your body in general, let's face it; the brain get's all the praise. And it deserves those praise. It's a complicated, amazing, and awesome piece of God's work. But the brain, even with all it's "amazingness", would be pretty useless without a support team that kept it connected to the outside world. Without a constant flood of external information that the brain can process, the brain starts to confuse it's own thoughts for actual experiences, and many other abnormalities. So it really needs that support team. And when talking about that support team, the peripheral nervous system is the one who came up for the job. Our peripheral nervous system keeps our brain in contact with the outside world and allowing it to respond to those information. This networks snakes to just about every part of our body. When you look at a human body "transparently", the peripheral nervous system is those tiny little "strings" that is everywhere and runs everywhere in your body. It provides the central nervous system with information, ranging from temperature, to the touch on your shoulder, or a twisted ankle. The sensory nerve receptors spy on the outside world for the central nervous system, and each type responds to different kinds of stimuli. They allow the central nervous system to communicate and feel the outside world. Here are a list of sensory nerve receptors that you and I have, and their functions :

• Thermoreceptors : respond to changes in temperature
• Photoreceptors : react to light
• Chemoreceptors : pay attention to chemicals
• Mechanoreceptors : respond to pressure, touch, and vibration.

We also have specialized nerve receptors called Nociceptors, that fire only to indicate pain. Most people go to great lengths to avoid pain, but pain is really an incredibly useful sensation, because it helps protect us from ourselves, and the outside world. It also help us to better protect ourselves from life-threatening situations. If you're feeling physical pain, it probably means that your body is under stress, damaged, or in danger, and your nervous system is sending a cease and desist signal, that tells you to back away from bonfires, or to not step on a needle, or to seek medical attention, like, RIGHT NOW!! Pain is a pretty subjective feeling, but the fact is, we all have the same pain threshold. That is the point where a stimulus is strong enough to reach a certain threshold. But you and I might have different tolerances for pain and discomfort. It's not our toughness that makes us more tolerance to pain, but the "tolerance" itself is the thing that makes you and I different in responding to pain. Just like my mom and dad. My dad can eat a plate of noodles, still putting of steam, and not burning his tongue in the process, but my mom can't. Instead, my mom has a higher tolerance rate in tasting cold stuff. My dad, say, can eat 10 scopes of ice cream before he get brain freeze, but my mom can eat 15 scopes of ice cream before getting the dreaded brain freeze. So the pain tolerance is different, but the pain threshold is the same in all of us. So in that way, pain is actually good for us, and that is why pain exists in the first place. Most doctors think of pain, as the perception of pain, whatever your brain is telling you what pain is. I'm not saying you should enjoy and try to be in pain until you can't no longer endure it....that would be stupid. All I'm saying is that you should realized that pain is one of God's many creative and brilliant ways to protect you, or you to protect yourselves.

P.S. : I mostly gathered the information to create this post from Crash Course. If you don't know 'em, check out their youtube channel, it's awesome, I'll promise you that.