• You can clean your teeth every morning and every evening
• You can wash scratches and cuts of your skin with clean water and afterwards dress the wound daily with clean linen
• When you have caught a cold you should avoid coughing and sneezing, when you are close to other people
• You can clean vegetables thoroughly with clean water before eating it
• You can boil and fry meat thoroughly before eating it

• You can avoid mosquito bites by sleeping under a mosquito net
• You can remove still water pools close to your home so that the mosquitos can´t place their eggs there
• Make sure that help in relation to delivery is performed with clean hands and boiled water
• Use condom when you are having sex, unless you want to have children.

• By now you know how your body works,
• how you can make your body healthy and strong
• what happens if you get sick and
• how you avoid getting sick

All that´s left for you to do is to answer a few questions on the next page.

Before you do that, please answer this question:

Do you agree that your body is fantastic?

Hopefully you have – together with your friends – said hallo to your body and found the key to knowing your body better.

Thank you. Your Mr. Bean

Holes in your teeth

How to brush your teeth

How to cure a tooth ache

These are the ways we can catch a cold, get the flu, get tuberculosis and get diarrhea. Watch closely these videos:

• The food we eat and the water we drink might contain virus or harmful bacteria from the soil or from animal or human stools. In this way virus and harmful bacteria get directly into our stomach and intestines
• When we get a scratch from a piece of wood or a rusty nail, harmful bacteria are transferred into our blood
• While giving birth the mother loses blood and at the same time she is at risk for getting harmful bacteria into her blood veins
• We can get a bite from a mosquito by which a stream of bacteria is sent into our blood veins. The mosquito had the bacteria from another human being or an animal
• When we get close to someone who is sick and coughs and sneezes, tiny drops that contain virus or harmful bacteria may enter our mouth, nose or eyes
• When we shake hands with someone, who has caught a cold and has virus and harmful bacteria on his hand, we may get sick if later we rub our eyes or put a finger into our mouth

What happens in your body, when you get sick? 

When virus or harmful bacteria get into your body, they are immediately attacked by the body. White blood cells and lymph are directed to the virus and bacteria to destroy them. You can watch the attack, when the intrusion takes place in a scratch of your skin. It´s called inflammation and it is good for you, it repairs your skin.

No matter which parts of your body the virus and harmful bacteria have entered, the white blood cells will penetrate the walls of the blood veins find them and try to destroy them. Take a look below at how the immune system works.

How the immune system works
Throughout our body we have a network of lymphatic vessels, like we have blood veins. The network contains a liquid called lymph. The lymph helps the white blood cells kill the virus and harmful bacteria.

If the white blood cells and the lymph don´t immediately succeed in killing the virus and harmful bacteria, we get sick.

But our body has one more weapon for the fight: It can turn up the temperature of our body; we get a fever. This means we get a temperature above 38° C and our skin will be chilly and pale or quite the opposite, burning hot and we sweat. We can also get the chills, we can feel sick and we can have a head ache.

Bacteria and virus don´t like the fever, but the fever makes the white blood cells and the lymph work faster.

If our temperature exceeds 40° C our skin will be red.

If our temperature exceeds 42,6° C we can die, because the high temperature destroys important substances throughout our body.

FACTS

If your body is healthy and strong it will normally kill most of the virus and harmful bacteria, that enters your body. White blood cells and lymph do most of the job, but fever can assist as well

Click here to see the food pyramid

The food at the bottom of the pyramid should be the main part of your diet, while the things in the tiny triangle at the top you should only enjoy occasionally.

The food between the top and the bottom is healthy, but you should not eat too much of it.

By the way, a very important part of your everyday diet is missing in the pyramid. Which one? Take a guess and find afterwards the right answer by pressing this button.

Click here to see what’s missing

Your muscles like to be used to walking, running, cooking, cleaning, singing and dancing, but not too much. How do you know, when it is too much? It´s too much when the nerves send messages to your head, that tells you, that it hurts. You can feel it if you make too many push-ups.

If you don´t use your muscles they get weak. If you for instance break an arm, you will find that the muscles of the broken arm very soon are reduced until you are able to use them again.

Don´t harm your fine inner organs. If you smoke tobacco or drink too much alcohol your liver, your heart, your kidneys and your nerves are affected, so that they after a while make you sick. Look at these videos:
What happens after smoking 60 cigarettes?

Smoking is harmful

How do you know what to do and what not to do?

Listen to your body! It´s so wise!

What does your body tell you?

• When you need something to eat, your body gives you a hunger feeling or a stomach ache, that disappear as soon as you get something to eat
• When you need something to drink, your body gives you a thirsty feeling and perhaps a head ache, that disappear as soon as you get some water to drink
• When your muscles give you great pain, they are not happy, they want you to stop using them for a while. Otherwise they may break, so that you can´t use them for a week or two
• When you cough, your lungs or your throat are not happy, something prevents the lungs from having the necessary amount of oxygen
• When you have a stomach ache your stomach or your intestines are not happy, because the food you have eaten or the water you have been drinking was bad or because you are hungry
• When you have a head ache your head is not happy. A head ache can be caused by many things, for instance eating and drinking bad food and water.
• When you have a tooth ache your nerves tell you that you probably have a hole in a tooth because you haven’t brushed your teeth well enough
• When you have a fever, all your body is not happy, and you´ll must find out, what causes the fever

FACTS

Your body gives you all the information you need to know, it tells you whether you are well or not

Listen to your body and act on what it is telling you. That´s the key to your good health

WHAT`S NEXT

• Now you know how your body works when you want to walk, run, work, cook, sing and dance and
• you know how you can support your body so that it stays healthy.

But most people are not healthy all the time. They get sick. We now turn to how we get sick and how your body reacts to that. Go to chapter 3.

We have many of the same sort of muscles as the ones of the shoulder, the arm and the fingers, approximate 400 in fact. They are situated in the forehead, in the eyelids, around the mouth, in the stomach, in the thigh and in many other parts of your body. Look for yourself:

Click here to see the muscle system part 1 Click here to see the muscle system part 2

Sometimes your muscles will not do, what your head wants them to do. They are tired. The reason is, that they are short of energy. It´s like a fire. As long as there is wood to burn, you can have fire and be able to cook.

When the wood has burnt to ashes, there is no more fire and you will have to fetch some more wood. It´s the same with muscles; when they are tired they need new energy from food and oxygen, but they also should rest for a while. You and your friends can see it for yourselves by making some push-ups on the floor.

FACTS

To be able to walk, run work, cook, sing and dance we need muscles and nerves. And muscles and nerves need energy from food and from oxygen

The muscles and the rest of the body for that matter get energy from the blood. Within the blood there is oxygen and some of the food we have eaten, only it is broken down into very, very tiny parts, so that it can be transported inside the blood veins. Think of that next time you see a drop of blood.

It´s not just the muscles, that need energy from the blood. Every part of the body does. That’s why we have blood veins throughout our body, in our fingers, our legs, our ears, our stomach, our skin etc. etc. To make the blood circulate in the veins we have this incredible pump called the heart. The heart is itself a muscle, that works – without the head having to think about it at all – from the day we lie in our mother´s stomach till the day we die. Try to put the palm of your right hand to your stomach, where you think your heart is situated. Can you feel it pumping? And you don´t even need to ask it to do so.

But how does food and oxygen get into the blood veins?

Let´s start with the food:

Firstly, we put vegetables or rice or meat into our mouth

After chewing the food, we swallow it and it goes down a thin pipe called the gullet, which is 20-25 cm long. Try to measure 25 cm from your mouth downwards to your stomach.

At the end of the gullet the food lands in the stomach, where it – without us knowing about it – is mixed with acids, that the stomach produces itself. Then the stomach turns the food round and round for four hours, until it´s liquid.

Then the food enters a flexible pipe (called small intestine) through an opening in the stomach. The small intestine is six meters long. Think about how a six meters long intestine can be inside your body.

Four hours later the food has been dissolved into very, very tiny parts by means of insulin and juice from an organ called pancreas, yellowish-green juice from the liver and the small intestine´s own bacteria.

Then the very, very tiny parts of the dissolved food can pass through the wall of the small intestine into the blood veins

Some of the food cannot be dissolved this way. That goes for instance for cherry stones, plum stones, olive stones and grape seed and even pebbles accidently mixed up in a rice dish. Instead of passing into the blood, the rest of the food pass into the large intestine, where it stays for 7-16 hours, until it leaves your body as stools.

If you find this a bit difficult to understand, watch this video:

Now you know how the food gets into your blood. It´s time to find out how the oxygen gets into your blood. That´s not difficult.

Oxygen comes into our lungs through our mouth and nose. Try to breathe through your nose while closing your mouth and then through your mouth holding your nose. The air that we breathe mostly consists of oxygen. We need the oxygen, and we need it quite desperately. Try to see how long time you can close your mouth and hold your nose at the same time. Not for long, I guess. Your body must have new oxygen all the time. From your mouth and nose, the oxygen gets into your lungs.

Inside your lungs the oxygen gets into some very, very fine tiny sort of windpipes, that allows the oxygen into your blood. Look here:

Click here to see the bloodveins

The red veins contain oxygen from inhalation

The blue veins contain carbon dioxide from exhalation (we get back to that later)

If you want to check your understanding of how the oxygen gets into your blood, watch this video:

FACTS

Your muscles and the rest of your body gets energy from the blood. The energy gets into your blood when you have eaten food and when you have breathed oxygen.

FACTS

To be able to walk, run, work, cook, sing and dance, we need a lot of muscles, we need nerves throughout our body and we need our blood to circulate in our veins to make sure, that all parts of our body have the energy they need to perform. You already know that a minor part of what we eat pass into the large intestine, until it leaves your body as stools. But when your body uses energy, some more waste will occur. It´s the same as you can observe with a fire; when the wood is burnt, there is no more fire and all there is left is ashes.

The waste (the ashes) from our body is carbon dioxide and water. The waste gets out of our body by means of the blood streams. “How is that done?” you might think.

Well, do you remember this little fellow?

Click here to see the bloodveins

His red veins contain oxygen from inhalation.

His blue veins contain carbon dioxide for exhalation

When the blood filled with oxygen from the lungs comes back to the lungs from its journey throughout your body it´s filled with carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. We get rid of the carbon dioxide by exhaling from our lungs through our mouth and nose.

Your blood is purified when passing through your liver and your kidneys. From the liver and the kidneys, the waste (water) is directed to the urinary bladder. You empty your bladder when you pee, you can pee 1 to 1½ l a day. You also get rid of water when you sweat and when you exhale steam from your mouth and nose. Try to exhale on a mirror and you can see it.

FACTS

Our lungs clean our blood for carbon dioxide and we exhale the carbon dioxide through our mouth and nose.

Our liver and kidneys purify our blood for water. We get rid of the water by peeing, by sweating and by exhaling steam through our mouth and nose

 

• Now you know how your body works, when you want to walk, run, work, cook, sing and dance.

It´s time to think about how you can support your body, so that it stays healthy. Go to chapter 2