As any plastic surgeon can tell you, blood is essential to life and to healing. This crimson elixir was recently reviewed in an article by Natalie Angier in the New York Times. She explained that humans are born with about a pint of blood and that this grows to about four or five quarts by adulthood. The stuff is precious: if at any point someone suddenly loses about a third of their blood volume, they must get a transfusion or risk meeting their maker.
A variety of magical powers have been attributed to blood, which is mentioned more than 400 times in the Bible and almost 700 times by Shakespeare. Blood nourishes the 100 trillion cells in our body with oxygen and other nutrients and carries away carbon dioxide, ammonia, and other cellular waste as it travels our 60,000 miles worth of arteries, veins, and capillaries. It comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, helping our organs communicate with one another and behave in a coordinated fashion.
Our eight pints of blood circulate through our bodies about 60 times an hour, absorbing recently inhaled oxygen from the lungs and then proceeding to the muscular heart, which pumps the enriched fluid outward. Meanwhile, our bone marrow is constantly making new blood cells to replace the aged and battered cells removed by the spleen and liver.
Delivering oxygen is the task of the red blood cells, which uniquely among body cells shed their nucleus to accommodate their supply of the oxygen carrying protein hemoglobin, which gives blood its red hue. Red cells are tiny to begin with, you could line up more than 1,000 on the head of a pin, yet they must squeeze through capillaries less than half their width to reach their most remote delivery points.
White blood cells are the warriors of the immune system, constantly on the lookout for bacteria and other foreign invaders. Other tiny cells called platelets plug minute leaks that crop up in blood vessels or call in blood-clotting proteins to help stem larger cuts. Of course, an overzealous clot response can have adverse consequences, such as when a clot shuts off blood supply to the brain or lungs.
Whether you’re a red-blooded American soldier or a blue-blooded English aristocrat, the biochemical, evolutionary and engineering marvels of blood are a cause for amazement.
For more information, please call Edward Pechter, MD, at 661-255-2151, e-mail drpechter@aol.com or visit www.drpechter.com . Located at 25880 Tournament Road Suite 217 in Valencia.