• Question: how do bodies repair itself?.

    Asked by anon-210517 to Tori, Titus, Stuart, Hannah, Gill on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Hannah Dalgleish

      Hannah Dalgleish answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      If I remember my biology from school, I think new and healthy cells divide to replace the old dead ones? Or something like that?

    • Photo: Stuart Higgins

      Stuart Higgins answered on 15 Mar 2019:

      When you get injured it sets off a whole lot of things inside the body. So let’s say you have a cut, after the bleeding has stopped, you can get inflammation (a swelling/redness) which is the body trying to respond to dying cells that were damaged, or maybe any bacteria cells that got into the cut.

      Different kinds of special cell move to the damaged area and try to help rebuild it. Depending on the injury and the cells, sometimes this repair goes well and everything is rebuilt, sometimes it goes a bit wrong, and you end up a scar. Understanding this a big part of the science called Regenerative Medicine. Lots of the people I work with are trying to make new treatments and materials that will help the body repair itself fully, rather than scarring.

      If you find this interesting you could look at bioengineering courses.

      UCAS Biomedical Engineer: https://www.ucas.com/ucas/after-gcses/find-career-ideas/explore-jobs/job-profile/biomedical-engineer

Comments