eli5, what fills up the space of a removed orgas like the lungs, or removed part of the brain.
In: 10
In the brain, it fills with cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid already surrounds your brain, and it’s there for a couple of reasons:
* To help soften impacts against your head so that your brain doesn’t hit the side of your skull hard enough to cause concussions from mild impacts.
* To make it so your brain doesn’t have to support its own weight, which would crush delicate neurons at the bottom of the brain.
* To flush waste products away from brain cells in a way that doesn’t require direct blood flow.
(among others).
In other parts of the body, it usually fills with serous fluid, which is the neutral fluid that naturally fills your body cavities. (It derives from your blood *serum*, which is blood minus the cells and clotting proteins floating in it, hence the name.) This fluid is basically just a neutral solution with a little salt, sugar, hormones, etc floating around in it.
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