How Do Belly Buttons Work?

We're not just navel gazing -- belly buttons are seriously fascinating. Learn how they work in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/parts/5-things-didnt-know-about-belly-button.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey Brainstuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here pop quiz. Do you think the
reason that you have an any or an outy belly
button has something to do with the way that your
bilical cord was cut and tied when you were born?
Come on, be honest. The persistence of the any outy

(00:22):
myth is exhibit a that we don't know jack about
our belly buttons. Your belly button is indeed the leftover
remnant of what was once the umbilical cord, the ropelike
connection between you and your birth parent, which supplied all
of your nutrients and oxygen when you were in the womb.
When you were born, someone helping with the birth likely

(00:43):
cut the umbilical cord a couple of inches away from
your belly and clamped off the remaining section. There's no
actual tying involved. Once it's clamped, the small section of
umbilical cord dries up and falls off in about a week.
What's left is the umbilicus, commonly no own as the
belly button, and the shape and size of the belly
button depends entirely on the way that your skin heals

(01:06):
after the cord falls off. If you have an audie,
it's likely due to a mild umbilical hernia or slight infection.
At the site, a roughly of people have anies and
it's a jungle in there. According to a delightfully odd
scientific initiative called the belly Button Diversity Project, belly buttons
are home to a startling diversity of bacteria. The project

(01:30):
started back inn at North Carolina State University when a
team of young researchers got the idea to explore the
microbiome of the belly button. Would the bacteria colonies the
navel be different from those found on the rest of
the body. Using RNA sequencing, the researchers identified two thousand,
three hundred and sixty eight different species of bacteria living

(01:53):
in the navels of sixty volunteers. For reference, there are
only half as many species of birds or ants in
North America. Although eight species of bacteria dominated the belly
button microbiome, accounting for of the total population, there was
still incredible diversity among individual subjects. For example, no single

(02:15):
bacteria were found in every belly button, and two thousand,
one and eighty eight of the species were only found
in ten percent of sampled belly buttons. But what about
what's behind your belly button. We're not talking about navel gazing,
what's literally back there. Because just as your belly button

(02:35):
is a leftover remnant of the external umbilical cord, there
are also internal vestiges of the prenatal connection with your
birth parent. Remember that the purpose of the umbilical cord
is basically to circulate the carrier's nutrient and oxygen rich
blood in and out of the growing fetus. To do this,
the umbilical cord contains two types of lifelines, an umbilical

(02:58):
vein that delivers blood to the baby and two umbilical
arteries that carry waste and carbon dioxide out of the
baby and back into the parent, whose body can then
dispose of them. Inside the growing fetus, those umbilical veins
and arteries connect to the circulatory system, the liver and
the bladder. When the baby is born takes its first

(03:19):
lungfull of air and the umbilical cord is cut, the
internal sections of the umbilical veins and arteries also dry
up and harden into a type of ligament, but those
ligaments are still attached to the inside of the belly button.
One of the ligaments connects and bisects the liver. Another
stretches down into the pelvis, where portions of it may

(03:40):
still function as part of the circulatory system near the bladder.
In some babies, the vestigial artery running from the bladder
to the navel doesn't close entirely, and urine may leak
out of the belly button. A simple surgery can close
it back up, and if the eyes are the windows
to the soul, then the belly button is the window
to the gall bladder. In the field of minimally invasive surgery,

(04:03):
more surgeons are performing major procedures without serious scarring by
going through the belly button. Laparoscopic surgery is a type
of minimally invasive surgical procedure where surgeons make a small
incision in the navel and insert a laparoscope, which is
a telescope like tool with a light on the end
that enables doctors to see what's going on inside the

(04:24):
gut without opening up a large incision if tissue needs
to be biopsied or removed. Traditionally, one or more additional
small incisions are made to allow access, but now there's
a growing interest in single port laparoscopic surgery, wherein both
the laparoscope and flexible surgical instruments are inserted through a

(04:45):
special port plugged into a single incision in the belly button.
Not only is scarring hardly visible, but a single incision
shortens recovery time and lowers the RISKOD infection. Today's episode
is based on the article five things you Didn't know
about your belly button on how stuff works dot com,

(05:07):
written by Dave Rouse. Brain Stuff is production of by
Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com
and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.