My+circulatory+story

By: Truman Greene
 * // The Circulatory System

Who loves blood? I do! Well, not when it oozes from a scrape on my knee. But when it’s flowing from my veins, arteries, and capillaries, of course I do! The whole process of blood flowing through my body is called the circulatory system. The main organ in the system, and maybe even the most important organ in the entire body, is the heart. The heart is made of Cardiac muscle, which allows it to relax and contract easily. You know the lub-dub sound your heart makes when it “beats”? Well, that’s really just your heart letting blood in, then pumping it out. The heart contains 4 unique chambers. One way of looking at the heart is that it is split in two. One group of chambers on top, one on the bottom. On top are the two Atria, which receive blood from the heart. After receiving the blood, the left and right Atria both squeeze the blood through the valves into the ventricles. The ventricles are two chambers on the bottom of the heart. Once the blood is in the ventricles, the ventricles contract, pushing the blood into the arteries. Whew, talk about hard work! Though the circulatory system is a needed and incredibly cool system, there are some diseases that involve the system. One of those diseases is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis occurs when fatty materials pile up in your arteries, thickening the artery walls. If the Artery walls in your coronary arteries thicken up too much, it stops the blood from flowing to the heart and many times causes a heart attack. Another disease that involves the circulatory system and can sometimes be very serious is hypertension. Hypertension is pretty much a fancy word people use to say “abnormally high blood pressure”. Hypertension heightens the blood pressure to uncomfortable levels, making the heart work harder and harder to pump blood. Eventually, this will lead to heart attacks and/or strokes. Though atherosclerosis and hypertension are some pretty intense diseases, it’s not too hard to keep your circulatory system healthy. First off, to keep almost ANY system healthy, you need to exercise. This burns off fatty materials to prevent atherosclerosis. Also along those lines, you have to watch what you eat. You should avoid eating foods with too much saturated or trans fat. You should also avoid having too much cholesterol and sodium. Last but not least, you should avoid smoking. Smoking increases your chances of having a heart attack, and that’s never a good thing! The circulatory system interacts with a few different systems. One of the systems it works with is the respiratory system. It does this by carrying waste products through the blood to the lungs. From the lungs, the waste (CO2) is exhaled. The circulatory system also interacts with the endocrine system by transporting hormones through the blood and into the rest of the body. Finally, the circulatory system works with the digestive system by transporting nutrients like oxygen to cells. The blood is kind of like the body’s messenger! Like all the systems, the circulatory system does many things. All in all though, the main purpose of the system is to carry needed materials to the cells in the body. Some of those needed materials are glucose, oxygen, and water. Another primary function of the circulatory system is to carry waste products away from cells and out of the body. Last but not least, it is important that platelets from blood clots to prevent blood loss. Hopefully, you won’t take it for granted the next time you get a scab (formed by platelets) after reading this!

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