In this video, Mikhail Varshavski, DO -- who goes by "Dr. Mike" on social media -- recruits 20 YouTube physicians to choose their favorite organs.
Let us know your favorite organ in the comments!
Following is a partial transcript of the video (note that errors are possible):
Varshavski: I asked 20 doctors from YouTube to tell me which organ in the body is their favorite. With 78 to choose from, there might be a few here that you didn't know had been inside you this entire time. My favorite organ is the mesentery, which is a singular organ located within the gut, which connects the stomach, the intestines, pancreas, spleen, and other internal organs to the abdomen. Just like the best of a friend group, it's the organ that holds it all together.
Shereene Idriss, MD, dermatologist: My favorite organ and why? Maybe the heart. Wait, what?! Obviously, the skin! Otherwise, I would not have spent 12 years of studying just the skin.
Anthony Youn, MD, plastic surgeon, and Dana Brems, DPM, podiatrist: My favorite organ is the skin...
Brems: ... because it's the largest organ in the body.
Youn: Our skin is also a magic mirror of our body, giving us clues to how healthy our body is on the inside as well.
Danielle Jones, MD, obstetrician/gynecologist: My favorite organ is obviously the placenta. It does the job of five separate adult organs, all packed into one. It can filter the entirety of a pregnant person's blood volume in 10 minutes, and it's 100% disposable and biodegradable when you're done with it.
Karan Rajan, MBBS, National Health Service surgeon: My favorite organ is probably -- drum roll -- the rectum. I know. It's a rogue choice, but hear me out. The rectum is responsible for one of the finest pieces of engineering in the human body, the anal sampling mechanism. Basically, this reflex helps your body tell the difference between feces and a fart to help keep you out of embarrassing and awkward situations -- most of the time.
Alok Patel, MD, pediatrician: It was a close call, but I'm going to go with the liver.
Michael Cellini, DO, radiologist: My favorite organ in the body has to be the liver.
Patel: It's humble, not flashy, and gets hundreds of jobs done without whining.
Cellini: It's always remarkable to me how much the liver can actually handle.
Patel: I mean, think about it. The liver is out there clearing toxins from all the crap we put in our body, helps with blood clotting, stores vitamins and minerals like iron and copper, removes bacteria, helps with digestion.
Cellini: You can actually take a chunk out of the liver and it'll regrow itself.
Patel: So many things! It's like your entire starting-five in one player.
Rena Malik, MD, urologist and pelvic surgeon: My favorite organ is the bladder. It expands like a balloon to hold urine, and when it reaches capacity, which for most people is about 16 to 20 ounces, it sends signals to your brain that you are ready to empty and that you should go to the bathroom. It's really an underrated organ because when it's working great, no one ever thinks twice about it. But if you're having bladder issues, you really appreciate the days when the bladder does what it's supposed to.
Dr. Glaucomflecken, ophthalmologist: My favorite organ, obviously, is the eyeball. Why would I choose anything else? But if I'm not allowed to choose the eye, I would have to go with the pituitary gland. I don't know if it's technically an organ, but it does a lot. It does a lot more than, say, the spleen. It's very small; it's underappreciated. It makes a lot of hormones and it tells all the other organs what to do.
Brian Sutterer, MD, physiatrist: My favorite organ is the brain...
Jessi Gold, MD, MS, psychiatrist: I think my favorite organ is the brain.
Sutterer: ... because of its role in helping to prevent sports injuries. We're learning more and more about the effect of our neuromuscular control, meaning how our brain recognizes what our body is doing and then tells our muscles to fire accordingly to help stabilize our joints and hopefully prevent injuries like ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] tears.
Gold: We're learning so much about it still and there's still so much that is unknown. That can be frustrating, but it's also really interesting and we have so much room to change things in fields that involve the brain.
Benjamin Winters, DDS, MS, orthodontist: My favorite organ is, you guessed it, the tooth. Or maybe you didn't because a lot of people don't understand that your tooth is actually an organ. It's an organ that has a full blood supply and nerve supply. Trust me, once you lose it, you're going to be very, very sad that you did. Make sure to brush your teeth and take care of the best organ around.
Cedric Rutland, MD, pulmonary and critical care specialist: Look, I'm a lung specialist, so of course my favorite organ is going to be the lung. But if I had to pick a second favorite organ, it would be the heart.
Rohin Francis, MBBS, cardiologist: There are many reasons the heart is the best -- not least because most people watching will have three billion heartbeats in their lifetime. If your heart -- which, of course, is the first organ to develop in the womb -- if your heart takes a break even for a few seconds, you die. I would say every other organ can take a seat because there is only one supreme champion. If you don't believe me, just have a look at which organ has the most emojis.
Rutland: The heart is associated with the lung because it actually takes the blood that's been used in your body and pumps it towards the lung so that your lung can extract the oxygen from the air that surrounds us and put it into your bloodstream to give you the energy you need to survive.
Dr. Ed Hope, emergency physician: My favorite organ? I'm going to go with the bones.
Dr. John Patton III, MD, MBA, anesthesiologist: I'm going to say bones.
Hope: They are so much more than just a framework that stops you from being an amorphous blob. Inside them is a highly active factory, the bone marrow, that produces your red blood cells and platelets, but also produces probably the coolest thing you'll ever own, your own highly specialized biological army, your white blood cells that are capable of killing viruses, bacteria, and parasites.
Patton: I work really closely with orthopedists. When they have fractured patients come in, they oftentimes will call us and ask us to help them with pain control and oftentimes we'll offer these patients nerve blocks. It ultimately reduces overall the amount of pain meds that they need, so they have less side effects. They are often able to go home and recover from home, and not have to be inpatient in a hospital, which there are many benefits for that as well.
Antonio Webb, MD, orthopedic spine surgeon: My favorite organ and also the best organ, the most important organ in your body, is your spinal cord. Without your spinal cord, there are a lot of everyday functions that we can't do: move around, digestive system, breathing, respiration. All those things are very important. Your spinal cord, that's what I love to do, and spine surgery is work around the spinal cord.
Mike Varshavski, DO, is a board-certified family physician and social media influencer with more than 10 million subscribers.