Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey Brainstuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here pop quiz. Do you think the
Speaker 1: reason that you have an any or an outy belly
Speaker 1: button has something to do with the way that your
Speaker 1: bilical cord was cut and tied when you were born?
Speaker 1: Come on, be honest. The persistence of the any outy
Speaker 1: myth is exhibit a that we don't know jack about
Speaker 1: our belly buttons. Your belly button is indeed the leftover
Speaker 1: remnant of what was once the umbilical cord, the ropelike
Speaker 1: connection between you and your birth parent, which supplied all
Speaker 1: of your nutrients and oxygen when you were in the womb.
Speaker 1: When you were born, someone helping with the birth likely
Speaker 1: cut the umbilical cord a couple of inches away from
Speaker 1: your belly and clamped off the remaining section. There's no
Speaker 1: actual tying involved. Once it's clamped, the small section of
Speaker 1: umbilical cord dries up and falls off in about a week.
Speaker 1: What's left is the umbilicus, commonly no own as the
Speaker 1: belly button, and the shape and size of the belly
Speaker 1: button depends entirely on the way that your skin heals
Speaker 1: after the cord falls off. If you have an audie,
Speaker 1: it's likely due to a mild umbilical hernia or slight infection.
Speaker 1: At the site, a roughly of people have anies and
Speaker 1: it's a jungle in there. According to a delightfully odd
Speaker 1: scientific initiative called the belly Button Diversity Project, belly buttons
Speaker 1: are home to a startling diversity of bacteria. The project
Speaker 1: started back inn at North Carolina State University when a
Speaker 1: team of young researchers got the idea to explore the
Speaker 1: microbiome of the belly button. Would the bacteria colonies the
Speaker 1: navel be different from those found on the rest of
Speaker 1: the body. Using RNA sequencing, the researchers identified two thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty eight different species of bacteria living
Speaker 1: in the navels of sixty volunteers. For reference, there are
Speaker 1: only half as many species of birds or ants in
Speaker 1: North America. Although eight species of bacteria dominated the belly
Speaker 1: button microbiome, accounting for of the total population, there was
Speaker 1: still incredible diversity among individual subjects. For example, no single
Speaker 1: bacteria were found in every belly button, and two thousand,
Speaker 1: one and eighty eight of the species were only found
Speaker 1: in ten percent of sampled belly buttons. But what about
Speaker 1: what's behind your belly button. We're not talking about navel gazing,
Speaker 1: what's literally back there. Because just as your belly button
Speaker 1: is a leftover remnant of the external umbilical cord, there
Speaker 1: are also internal vestiges of the prenatal connection with your
Speaker 1: birth parent. Remember that the purpose of the umbilical cord
Speaker 1: is basically to circulate the carrier's nutrient and oxygen rich
Speaker 1: blood in and out of the growing fetus. To do this,
Speaker 1: the umbilical cord contains two types of lifelines, an umbilical
Speaker 1: vein that delivers blood to the baby and two umbilical
Speaker 1: arteries that carry waste and carbon dioxide out of the
Speaker 1: baby and back into the parent, whose body can then
Speaker 1: dispose of them. Inside the growing fetus, those umbilical veins
Speaker 1: and arteries connect to the circulatory system, the liver and
Speaker 1: the bladder. When the baby is born takes its first
Speaker 1: lungfull of air and the umbilical cord is cut, the
Speaker 1: internal sections of the umbilical veins and arteries also dry
Speaker 1: up and harden into a type of ligament, but those
Speaker 1: ligaments are still attached to the inside of the belly button.
Speaker 1: One of the ligaments connects and bisects the liver. Another
Speaker 1: stretches down into the pelvis, where portions of it may
Speaker 1: still function as part of the circulatory system near the bladder.
Speaker 1: In some babies, the vestigial artery running from the bladder
Speaker 1: to the navel doesn't close entirely, and urine may leak
Speaker 1: out of the belly button. A simple surgery can close
Speaker 1: it back up, and if the eyes are the windows
Speaker 1: to the soul, then the belly button is the window
Speaker 1: to the gall bladder. In the field of minimally invasive surgery,
Speaker 1: more surgeons are performing major procedures without serious scarring by
Speaker 1: going through the belly button. Laparoscopic surgery is a type
Speaker 1: of minimally invasive surgical procedure where surgeons make a small
Speaker 1: incision in the navel and insert a laparoscope, which is
Speaker 1: a telescope like tool with a light on the end
Speaker 1: that enables doctors to see what's going on inside the
Speaker 1: gut without opening up a large incision if tissue needs
Speaker 1: to be biopsied or removed. Traditionally, one or more additional
Speaker 1: small incisions are made to allow access, but now there's
Speaker 1: a growing interest in single port laparoscopic surgery, wherein both
Speaker 1: the laparoscope and flexible surgical instruments are inserted through a
Speaker 1: special port plugged into a single incision in the belly button.
Speaker 1: Not only is scarring hardly visible, but a single incision
Speaker 1: shortens recovery time and lowers the RISKOD infection. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article five things you Didn't know
Speaker 1: about your belly button on how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Dave Rouse. Brain Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.