Thinking Citizen Blog —Have You Thanked Your Pancreas Lately? Should You? For What?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Have You Thanked Your Pancreas Lately? Should You? For What?
Health matters. It’s so easy to take for granted all those trillions of little living creatures called cells that are busy working 24/7 to keep you doing what you are doing all day long. Take the pancreas. Without it you’d be dead meat. What do you know about the pancreas? What should you know? What should every 5th grader know? 8th grader? 12th grader? Harvard graduate? Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
GEOGRAPHY — where is your pancreas? how big is it? what does it look like?
1. The pancreas lies behind the stomach and below the liver with its head to the right of the body’s midline and its tail stretching toward the back and to the left.
2. It is retro-peritoneal which means it lies outside the “peritoneal cavity” (which includes the stomach and the liver) and is not covered with “visceral peritoneum.” In this, the ‘pancreas is like other “retro-peritoneal organs” like the kidneys and the rectum.
3. The “head” of the pancreas is nestled in the “C curve” of the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). The “tail” of the pancreas touches the spleen. It is about 6 to 10 inches long in an adult and about two inches wide. (The range of dimensions attributed to this organ by experts is ridiculously wide, if anyone out there has a plausible explanation as to why this is so, please share.)
NB: In one website, the organ was described as “leaf-shaped” — that is not what it looks like to me.
WHAT DOES THE PANCREAS DO? TWO ORGANS IN ONE — EXOCRINE AND ENDOCRINE
1. 99% of the mass of the pancreas is devoted to manufacturing digestive juices, most notably, amylase (for breaking down carbohydrates), tripsin and chymotripsin (for digesting proteins), and lipase (for fats). This is its “exocrine” function — with enzymes transferred through “ducts” to the “lumen” of the duodenum. A “lumen” is the inside space of a tubular structure. (Not to be confused with the “lumen” of physics — a measure of luminosity.)
2. Its “endocrine” function relates to the hormones the pancreas injects into the blood stream. Only 1% of the pancreas is devoted to this but one could argue it is even more vital than the “exocrine” function. The key hormones produced by the pancreas are insulin and glucagon for the regulation of blood sugar.
3. The cells that produce the digestive juices are called “aciinar” cells. And those that produce insulin and glucagon are called “islets of Langerhans.” See below.
MORE DETAILS ON THE ENDOCRINE FUNCTION — five types of cells
1. The Beta Cells (70% of islet total) produce insulin which promotes the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream into cells.
2. The Alpha Cells (20%) produce glucagon which does the reverse of glucose — increasing blood glucose levels to maintain an optimal level.
3. Delta cells (10%) produce somatostatin which limits excess secretion of hormones in the pancreas, hypothalamus, pituitary and gastrointestinal tract.
NB: Epsilon cells (1%) produce ghrelin (“the hunger hormone”). PP cells (pancreatic polypeptides) regulate the secretion of pancreatic enzymes.
PATHOLOGIES — PANCREATITIS, PANCREATIC CANCER, VICTIMS
1. Pancreatic cancer is even worse than lung cancer. The 5 year cure rate is only 2%. The exact cause is unknown.
2. Pancreatitis — inflammation of the pancreas, either acute or chronic. Causes of acute pancreatitis: a.) gallstone blocking the pile duct causing backup of bile into the pancreas, b.) excessive alcohol use, c.) other.
3. Victims of pancreatic cancer include: Steve Jobs (56), Aretha Franklin (76), and Luciano Pavarotti (71).
What Is The Pancreas — Functions Of The Pancreas — What Does The Pancreas Do
The Role and Anatomy of the Pancreas
Pancreas Clinical Anatomy and Physiology
List of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
For the last four years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history…. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
