What do tonsils do? The tonsils contain a lot of white blood cells and they are one of the body’s first lines of defense against infection.
Firstly, do you know where your tonsils are? For the whole of my life, I thought the thing hanging down at the back of my throat, just behind the end of my tongue, was my tonsil. I had wondered why they were called tonsils when there was only one of them. Well, that fleshy ball that hangs down behind my tongue is called the uvula. The uvula has several functions. It releases saliva to moisten the mouth and to start digesting food before you swallow it. It protects the back of the throat and helps ensure that food and drink don’t go up the back of the nose or down the windpipe. It is partly responsible for the gag reflex that makes us throw up if something gets stuck in our throat. And it helps pronounce some of the sounds we use when speaking. So, if that isn’t my tonsil, where are they and what do they do?
There are four groups of tonsils and they are all in different places at the back of the throat. The pharyngeal tonsil is in the roof of the pharynx. The pharynx is at the back of the throat. Food passes over it on the way down the throat and air goes over it on the way down the windpipe. It is partly responsible for warming the air up as it passes. The pharyngeal tonsil is here. The pharyngeal tonsil is also called the adenoids, which you may have heard of. The tubal tonsils are higher up than the pharyngeal tonsil and there are two of them. The palatine tonsils are at the back of the mouth, behind the uvula, but on the sides. If you open your mouth wide, you can probably see them, behind the flap of skin that is behind your wisdom teeth. The last one is the lingual tonsil and this is right at the back of the tongue. All of the tonsils form a ring at the back of the throat, which is called Waldeyer’s ring, The ring was named after a German anatomist called Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz.
So, what do the tonsils do and why are they where they are? The tonsils are made of lymphatic tissue, which is tissue that contains lymphocytes. The tonsils are part of the lymphatic system, which runs throughout the whole body. The lymphatic system is a network that moves lymph fluid around the body. Lymph fluid is colorless and watery. It is basically made of plasma and is used to carry waste and bad things away from organs and other parts of the bodies. Blood contains plasma, red blood cells (which give it its color), white blood cells, and platelets. When blood reaches the place it is supposed to be, it travels down capillaries and deposits nutrients, white blood cells, oxygen, and proteins. The plasma oozes through tiny walls in the capillaries and heads into the tissue. From here on, the plasma is called lymph. Once there, it picks up bacteria, damaged cells, viruses, and other waste, before heading to the lymphatic capillaries, which carry it away. The lymph goes through the lymph nodes where the dangerous things are destroyed by white blood cells and carried out of the body. The lymph is filtered and heads back to become blood again. The tonsils are a part of this system.
The tonsils are positioned so that the air you breathe goes over them or hits them, and all the food you eat goes over them or hits them. If there are any bacteria or viruses in the air you breathe in or in the food you eat, there is a high chance that they will hit the tonsils and get stopped there. Then the lymph fluid will wash them away and the white blood cells will destroy them. It doesn’t always work and viruses and bacteria can obviously get past them, but it is a good first line of defense.
The tonsils can sometimes become infected by the viruses that they are trying to stop. When this happens they can become swollen and cause a sore throat. In some situations, the infections can happen again and again and the only solution is to have the tonsils removed. This is called a tonsillectomy. Having your tonsils removed doesn’t have any negative effects really. In fact, it has been shown that people who have their tonsils removed have an increased immune response in their body. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Picas Joe: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-woman-touching-her-tonsils-11352535/
Sources
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/15605-tonsillectomy
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/tonsillectomy/about/pac-20395141
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/25209-lymph
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21199-lymphatic-system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Wilhelm_Gottfried_von_Waldeyer-Hartz
https://teachmeanatomy.info/neck/misc/tonsils-and-adenoids
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22674-uvula