In this video, I'm going to be giving you an introduction to the urinary system. So if you're looking to understand its structure and function, you're in the right place. Let's do this. (wind whooshing) (electronic music) (wind whooshing) What's up bio nerds! Leslie Samuel here from Interactive Biology TV. Where we're making biology fun. And I'm so excited to dive into the structure and function of the urinary system with you. But before we can do that, we have to set the scene. Last night, my wife and I went to an Indian restaurant and we had some amazing food. I had the Chicken Tikka Masala, and it tasted so good. Now, the food that I was eating went through my digestive system. Yes, I chewed it. It went down my esophagus and went into my stomach and went through the entire process, so that I can break that food down. Now, the different parts of my food was broken down in different ways. For example, I had some chicken. That chicken had protein in it, and that protein, when it gets broken down it gets broken down into amino acids, and that amino acids as they get broken down as well they get broken down and some of the products, some of the byproducts are carbon dioxide, water, and ammonia. Now I don't know about you, but ammonia is not something that I want inside my body. Not in high amounts, at least, because it's a very toxic. Now I had some rice and some other things and there was some carbs in there. And even some fats and those got broken down. And when they get broken down, it forms carbon dioxide and water. Now carbon dioxide, if you have that in high levels in your body, that can also be toxic. So we have ammonia, we have carbon dioxide, and there are other things that are produced in our body that we want to get rid of. Now, the bulk of the carbon dioxide that gets taken care of by the respiratory system. You breathe out some carbon dioxide, and that goes for the trees and the plants and all that good stuff. But there's some other stuff that happens. For example, the NH3, the ammonia, that gets converted into urea. And the urea leaves via the urine. That's good because we don't want a ton of ammonia in our body. That would be bad. In addition to that, some of the carbon dioxide that doesn't go out via your respiratory system, it gets converted into carbonic acid. If you have a lot of acid in your body that reduces the pH, making it more acidic. We don't want that. We want to get rid of this excess waste, this excess junk. And there are ways to do that. And that's where the urinary system comes in. The urinary system has some amazing functions. It cleans the blood. You want to clean the blood. You want to get rid of the junk so that it doesn't build up and you can maintain a good internal environment. It also regulates the pH. We spoke about the carbonic acid and how's that could reduce the pH. We want to get rid of some of that, and the urinary system helps with that. Another important function is that it regulates blood pressure. Obviously we don't want our blood pressure to get too high because that can cause damage. And we don't want it to get too low because that can also cause its own set of problems. And there are some other functions. And as we go through this series we're going to be going into these in detail. In other words, what the urinary system does is it helps us to maintain that lovely word, homeostasis. We want our internal environment to be in balance. And the urinary system plays a very important role with this. In fact, if you like balance in your life, especially when it comes to your internal environment, go ahead and hit that like button. Somehow that's going to help you get more balanced. And if you want even more homeostasis... ... this is weird. If you want even more homeostasis, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I can't speak, but tap that bell notification icon so that you can be notified whenever I provide more homeostasis? That didn't make sense. Anyhow, let's talk about the parts of the urinary system. First, we have our kidneys. Those kidneys play a very important role in the filtration process and creating and producing the urine. Producing? It sounds like it's in a recording studio, producing some urine. That sounds weird. Anyhow, we are forming urine in the kidneys. And from that we can go via the ureters. And you can see those ureters right here. Those two tubes, and that takes the urine down to the bladder. Yay! The bladder! (Samuel giggles) And as the bladder fills with urine, it stores it up for that very important occasion, when you go to the restroom and you pee. And the pee will then go via the urethra, hopefully, into the toilet or the urinal. Or, if you're out in the woods, in the bushes or something of that... ... it doesn't matter. This is where it all happens. Starts in the kidneys, goes down through the ureters, into the bladder, and then out through the urethra. It's a beautiful thing. Now, the bulk of the work is actually happening up here in the kidneys. So let's talk about the processes that happen in the kidneys to form the urine and get rid of all of that waste. There are four processes involved. The first is filtration. We got to filter the blood. Get the bad stuff out. But when we filter it some of the good stuff comes out with it. So we have to reabsorb that into the blood supply, so that it can go back to the rest of the body. Then, there's some secretion that happens. We're putting some more bad stuff into that, forming urine so that we can excrete. We can eliminate. We can get rid of that urine with all of that waste that we don't want in our precious bodies. So filtration, reabsorption, secretion, elimination. Now, since this is Interactive Biology TV, where we're making biology fun, I want to make it fun and easy for you to remember these processes. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to picture that there's a reptile, maybe a turtle, and this turtle has a guitar and they're playing this guitar and they don't just talk, they sing. This turtle sings everything. It is very annoying because every time you come home, there's a singing turtle, a singing reptile on the corner of the street. In fact, I don't want you to have to imagine it. Here is your funny reptile. He's kind of funny. He's hilarious, actually. And he just sings everything. Here's how we're going to remember these four processes. We have a funny reptile that sings everything. Funny reptile sings everything. F. R. S. E And that will help us to remember filtration... ... I almost said funny. Ha ha! Filtration, reabsorption, secretion, elimination. Funny reptile sings everything. Filtration, reabsorption, secretion, elimination. These processes are going to be happening in the kidneys. And in the next video, we're going to talk about the kidneys, but when these four processes combine, we finally get the production, the formation, the creation of pee! Come on, dude. Not right... ... I'm making a video. This is ugh. Ah that's just... ... Ah, that's nasty. It's hard to get good help around here. Anyhow, filtration, reabsorption, secretion, elimination. I'm scarred. I'll see you in the next video.