MessageToEagle.com – Your blood vessels may be tiny but they cover a lot of ground and could circle the globe. The network of blood vessels is startlingly very long, though they are relatively small.
The smallest blood vessels measure only five micrometers. To give you some perspective, a strand of human hair measures about 17 micrometers.
But if you took all the blood vessels out of an average child and laid them out in one line, the line would stretch over 60,000 miles.
An adult’s would be closer to 100,000 miles long.
Considering that the circumference of the Earth is 24,873.6 miles, according to NASA, that means your blood vessels could circle the earth about 2.5 times!
Working as a team, blood vessels carry a million barrels of blood in a lifetime. The blood in your body is continuously flowing. Every day, your heart pumps about 1,800 gallons of blood through your blood vessels. Over the course of a lifetime, this vast system carries about a million barrels of blood throughout the body.
This great blood vessel mechanism consists of arteries, veins, and capillaries and they all work together.
Arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart and their strong, muscular middle layer helps pump blood through the body.
Capillaries (the smallest of the blood vessels) connect the arteries to veins. The arteries deliver the oxygen-rich blood to the capillaries, where the actual exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide occurs. The capillaries then deliver the waste-rich blood to the veins for transport back to the lungs and heart.
Veins carry the blood back to the heart. They’re similar to arteries but not as strong or as thick. Unlike arteries, veins contain valves that ensure blood flows in only one direction.
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