Now this is a term that most of you have probably never heard of before.

I hadn't heard of it until, honestly, I started in teaching anatomy.

Really it's something that we are all familiar with though.

Integumentary system stands for the skin, as well as the underlying fat,

which we all know in different areas varies considerably.

So the anatomy faculty and I really decided that we wanted to start with

this potion of the course first.

Because this is the area that most people are familiar with.

It's something that we interact with on a daily basis.

And also, it's very clinically relevant.

If you think about a little kid that's been in the pool and their lips turn blue,

that's giving you an indication that something is going wrong inside.

So, a very clinically relevant area of the body.

Well the Integumentary System is composed of three different layers.

Like I was saying before, it's composed of the skin.

The skin is the epidermis and the dermis.

These are the two most superficial layers.

Epidermis is what you see when you're looking at another individual.

You've probably heard the joke, your epidermis is showing.

Right underneath is the subcutaneous layer.

This is composed of variable amounts of fat.

In the abdomen you have considerable more fat than you would have

in the neck region.

So very dependent on the individual as well as the area of the body.

So not only are we gonna discuss the different layers of the integumentary

system, we are gonna discuss the components within.

In particularly withing the dermal layer.

It's actually fairly complex both in terms of vasculature

as well as other components.

Specifically we have different glands.

We have sweat glands as well as oily glands.

We're going to have sensory receptors.

So this would give indications from the external environment.

If something is tickling you or something is causing pain, these sensory receptors

will be will be utilized to get that information back

to the central nervous system.

And lastly you're going to have hair roots within that are going to extend through

the epidermis.

So we're going to continue this discussion throughout the different layers of the skin

and the next section we're going to discuss the

functions of the integumentary system.