 The human body is made up of many organs such as bones, the brain, the lungs, the muscles, the skin and the stomach and many others. And all of these organs are also made up of tissues. Now something has to hold these things together, the organs and the tissues, they have to be held together by some sort of a glue. What is this glue? It turns out that we have a specialized tissue just for this action, for holding things, binding things together in our body. And that's called the areolar connective tissue. So what does the areolar connective tissue do? It binds the different organs and tissues together. For example, it is present between the skin and the muscles underneath. It is present around the blood vessels. It's present inside organs even, that is in between the different tissues that are there inside organs such as the stomach. So how does this tissue keep the organs together and what else does it do? Let's take a look. So any tissue as you know has to have some cells, right? So one of the cells that areolar connective tissue has is the fibroblast. So the fibroblast as the name suggests has something to do with fibres. So the fibroblast makes different types of fibres made of protein like collagen fibres, elastic fibres known as elastin and then there are reticular fibres. So all of these are fibres and they provide some strength to the connective tissue. Not just strength, they also provide the stickiness as I was telling you. It's an areolar connective tissue that binds tissues and organs together. So there has to be some kind of gluey or sticky action that is provided by these fibres which are kind of sticky. So they are the ones that bind together different organs or different tissues. So they provide strength and the stickiness. Okay, what else does a connective tissue have to have? Connective tissue is a jelly like material. So the fibres provide the strength to that jelly like material. But since it's a jelly, it has to have a lot of water, right? So the intercellular matrix, the substance that is there between cells in the connective tissue. So this contains fluid between cells. Intercellular means between cells. So what does it do? It provides the slightly fluid nature to the connective tissue. So we have the fibres, we have the intercellular matrix. What else? The cells, right? A tissue is made of cells. So far we have looked at only one type of cells, the fibroblasts, which are very important, sure. But are there any other type of cells? Yes, there are. The majority of cells that are present in connected tissues are actually WBCs, white blood cells. There are several types of them. There are the lymphocytes. There are macrophages. And then there are the mast cells. So all of these are different types of WBCs, which, as you know, provide defense against microorganisms. So connective tissues are susceptible to attack by microorganisms, especially the connective tissues which are present beneath any type of epithelium. So you must know the epithelium is present near surfaces, be it the skin or the surface of the gut or the surface of the respiratory tract. All these surfaces are prone to attack from different microorganisms. As you know, your respiratory tract is always susceptible to attack from viruses like the cold viruses. Your gut lining is susceptible to the attack from bacteria, from the food that you eat. And the skin is always exposed to different types of microorganisms, of course. And if they turn out to be harmful, our WBCs are always there to take care of them. So the connective tissues that are there, they are the ones that hold a lot of these WBCs and they come into effect whenever there is any invasion by any harmful microorganism. So we have seen what areolar connective tissue is. We have seen where they are found. We have looked at the different types of cells and other things that are found inside the areolar connective tissue and explored what their different functions are.