Blood Flashcards
What is blood?
- circulating liquid tissue
- adult body contains 5-6L of blood
What are the 3 functions of blood?
- transport
- maintains
- protection
What does blood transport?
- brings oxygen and nutrients to the body
- carry waste products away from blood cells
- distributes hormones from the endocrine glands
What does blood maintain?
- maintains constant body temperature
- maintains constant PH and water
How does blood protect?
- distributes antibodies and cells that help the body to defend agains infection and disease
- provides substance that form blood clots in damaged blood vessels to protect the body against blood loss
What is plasma?
- liquid portion of the blood that holds the solid portion
- 55% of total blood amount is a transparent yellow fluid
What is plasma made of?
- 90% water
- 10% dissolved components (hormones, nutrients, glucose, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, cellular wastes
What are the 3 major blood proteins?
- albumin (maintains water levels in blood)
- fibrinogen (involved in blood clotting)
- globulin ( involved in body’s defense agains disease)
What are red blood cells for?
- transport oxygen from lungs to all the cells
- transport carbon dioxide from cells to lungs
What are red blood cells called?
Erythrocytes
What do red blood cells do?
- contain hemoglobin
- contain an iron containing respiratory pigment
How does hemoglobin work?
- contains iron and binds with oxygen, allowing RBC to carry oxygen
- hemoglobin is red, so that’s where RBC get name
What is anemia?
- a condition where a person is hemoglobin deficient or has too few red blood cells
- causes blood to not transport enough oxygen to the cells in the body
- can be from dietary (not enough iron intake) or hereditary (sickle cell anemia)
- causes you to feel tired and weak
What is RBC structure like?
- RBCs are biconcave disks with no nuclei
- no more surface area for more gas exchange (02 and CO2)
- more flexible for moving through small spaces
- short lived (100-120 days
Where do RBC move?
- through liver and spleen
- broken down iron is returned to bone marrow and recycled into new hemoglobin
- every second more than 2 million RBCs die and are replaced by new ones
What are white blood cells called?
leukocytes
What do WBC do?
- defend body agains infection, harmful bacteria, viruses adn other microorganisms
- may engulf a foreign substance
- may produce antibodies that stop foreign substances
- may eject chemicals that kill bacteria and viruses
- body can increase number of WBC during an infection
What do WBC look like?
- colourless
- change their shape
- larger than RBC
- contain nuclei
What is pus?
composed of WBC that have died after attacking bacteria
How long do WBC live for?
- short lifespan when fighting (1-4 hours)
- months to years when not fighting
What are platelets?
Thrombocytes
What do platelets look like?
- not whole cells
- fragments of cell with no nuclei
How are platelets formed?
- in the red bone marrow by pinching off cytoplasm of large cells
How long to platelets live?
average 10 days
What do platelets do?
- clot blood
What is hypertension
- narrowin gblood vessels
- leads to heart failure or stroke
- can be treated by: lifestlyle changes, low salt, weight control, exercise, diet
What is Arteriosclerosis?
- walls of the arteries thicken and harden
- heart must work harder than usual
- heart can’t supply blood to body
- obesity, smoking and high fat play a role
- causes blood clots
