14 DAY TRIAL // 1.All the blood vessels of the human body have a total length of 100,000 km (62,000 mi): they could encompass the Earth by 2.5 times.
2.The blood forms 8% of your body mass. For a man of 70kg (155 pounds), this means about 5.6 litters of blood.
3.The heart has the size of a fist and pumps daily about 9,500 litters of blood throughout the body. This is like lifting a weight of 10 tons to a height of 10 m (33 ft) every day!
4.The right part of the heart has to pump the blood throughout the body, to the extremities, while the left part has to pump the blood to the lungs in order to be oxygenated. That's why the right part of the heart is thicker and six times more powerful than the left part.
5.The arteries have a systolic pressure (when the heart contracts) of 100-140 mm Hg (in the case of a young person), and a diastolic pressure (when the heart is relaxed) of 60-90 mm Hg. The pressure varies from person to person, depending on the age, sex, physical or mental stress, and exhaustion level. The arterial pressure tends to be lower in women and children, and higher in elderly. When the blood enters the smallest arteries, called arterioles, the pressure is 35 mm Hg. Their diameter varies between 1 cm and 3 mm.
6.The smallest vessels, the capillaries, have a diameter of 8-10 microns, so that the red blood cells have to pass in Indian file.
7.Atherosclerosis is a main cause of death in western countries. It is caused by fatty deposits (called atheromas), resembling oat flour, in the inner part of the arteries. These deposits narrow the inner caliber of the arteries predisposing them to a total blockage when the atheroma plate breaks off. The blockage can be caused by blood clots too or by the muscular spasms of the arterial wall.
When atheroma plates accumulate on the walls of the coronary vessels that irrigate the heart muscle, the pectoral angina installs, characterized by sensations of choking or suffocating, especially after physical effort. When a coronary artery is totally blocked, the heart muscle dies, and that's the heart attack. A severe heart attack means the stop of the heart activity.
Risk factors for atherosclerosis are smoking, emotional stress, diabetes, obesity, sedentary life, hypertension, fatty diet and genetics.