How Your Body Works
Decode the daily signals, glitches, and mechanics of the machine you live in. Learn what cramps, breath, and posture actually tell you so you can work with your biology instead of fighting it.
Like Duolingo, but for How Your Body Works. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Decoding Daily Body Signals and Managing the Living Machine. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Your Body Works
- Goosebumps happen when tiny muscles pull hair follicles upright, tightening the skin around them
- In hairy animals, standing fur fluffs up an insulating layer of warm air against the cold and makes the creature look larger to potential predators
- Because humans have lost dense body fur, the reflex still triggers but no longer keeps us warm
- A hiccup starts when the diaphragm—the flat muscle under your lungs—suddenly and involuntarily twitches or spasms downward
- The sudden downward pull sucks air into your throat faster than normal
- The vocal cords snap closed to block the sudden inrush of air, producing the characteristic 'hic' sound
- Extreme cold against the roof of the mouth causes nearby blood vessels to rapidly constrict and then swell wide to warm back up
- Nerves in the palate pick up this sudden shift and share a major pain pathway (the trigeminal nerve) with the forehead and eyes
- The brain struggles to pinpoint the exact source of the pain along this shared pathway, creating 'referred pain' in the front of your head
- Explaining the original evolutionary purpose of goosebumps
- As you drift into sleep, your brain winds down motor control, causing your muscles to suddenly go limp
- If the transition happens abruptly, the brain can misread that sudden loss of muscle tension as falling through the air
- The brain instantly fires a survival signal to jerk the limbs awake to catch yourself
- Deep inhalation during a yawn brings cooler air into the mouth and nasal passages, helping regulate brain temperature
- Catching a yawn from someone else is a social-mirroring reflex linked to empathy and group bonding, not air quality
- Studies show yawning does not significantly change blood oxygen levels compared to normal breathing
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Your Body Works the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
How does standing fur help a furry animal in the wild?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Your Body Works takes you
- 1
Decoding Daily Body Signals
- Making Sense of Everyday Glitches
- Reading Muscle Fatigue, Cramps, and Soreness
- 2
Managing the Living Machine
- Using Breath and Heart Rate Under Pressure
- Moving Without Breaking: Everyday Biomechanics
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Your Body Works is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Your Body Works today.
Download Tomo, search How Your Body Works, and play your first lesson in under a minute.