Wow. A three-dimensional body where you can check out lots of different body systems.
It’s called Google Body. I highly encourage exploring – if you’re anything like me, you’ll be entranced, trying all different combinations of body systems to see where things are in relation to each other. They even have the lymph system – a system that parallels the circulatory system and is extremely important for your overall health. Check out my post “Lymphatic System 101.”
The automatic settings are for a “single slider” where you look at the body in layers, as if pealing an onion. It’s not as gross as it sounds since it’s all animated and these are not photographic images. I would suggest clicking the bottom button on the left side to set it for “many sliders” allowing you to add and subtract systems at will. I like to leave the skeleton slider on as to have a reference point for everything else I’m looking at.
Using Google Body you can see which muscles are most superficial and which are deeper – this shows visually how neck pain or back pain can have many culprits – not necessarily the ones that are right on the surface. Did you know that most places in your body have 3 or more layers of muscle?
If you then turn off the muscles in Google Body, and turn on the lymph system (just above the brain), you can see the path our bodies use to collect and dispose of cellular waste. The green spots are lymph nodes, and the lines are the lymph vessels. Of course these images don’t include the small initial lymph vessels the same way they do not include capillaries in the circulatory system – there are so many that we wouldn’t be able to see anything else.
What’s your favorite part of Google Body?