How do people paralysed from the neck down still retain the ability to breathe, pump blood, metabolise food etc., even though their muscles are paralysed?

Question

How do people paralysed from the neck down still retain the ability to breathe, pump blood, metabolise food etc., even though their muscles are paralysed?

In: Biology

Answer 1

If you are paralyzed the reason tends to be damage to the spinal code.

In it the nerves that control your skeletal muscles, that you use to move around, are located. This is the peripheral nervous system (PNS)

But you have other nerves too that do not pass through the spinal cord. The Autonomic nervous system (ANS) where nerves that control breathing and other internal organs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system#/media/File:1503_Connections_of_the_Parasympathetic_Nervous_System.jpg

If your spinal cord is broken to high up where a nerve in this system exist it the damage will kill you. This is the type of damage that kills you if you are hanged.

Your heart and intestine system do not need stimuli from the brain to work, the heart can beat by itself. The brain needs to control breathing and if those nerves are damage you die.