Montshire Minute: Blood and guts

Originally aired during the week of October 27, 2003

Monday

Blood has been called the river of life, and with good reason. Blood travels through the body's highways of arteries and veins and capillaries, delivering oxygen from our lungs to other cells, and dropping off carbon dioxide. It takes nutrients from the digestive tract to different parts of the body. It carries off waste products from other cells. Along the way, special cells in the blood are busy fighting off disease and infection. Blood carries important hormones, and blood flow helps us maintain a more or less constant body temperature. Blood that circulates through us comes in contact with every cell in our body! So blood is mobile. It picks up, and it delivers. It really gets around, man! Stay with us on the program this week as we delve into the secrets of what some people call the "liquid organ."

Tuesday

Blood really is thicker than water. That's because every milliliter of this liquid contains billions of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The five liters of blood flowing through your body make up about 8% of your total body weight. Heavy! Blood cells are transported through the circulatory system in a liquid called plasma. You could say this is the "watery" part of blood. In fact, plasma is 90% H2O. If you looked at plasma in a test tube, it would be a transparent, slightly yellowish-colored liquid. Red blood cells, the round, disk shaped ones, have the vital job of carrying oxygen from the lungs to body tissues. Meanwhile, the white blood cells attack germs that could cause disease or infection. A third type of blood cell, the platelets, are key to the blood clotting process.

Wednesday

The human heart is like a big pump, sending oxygen-rich blood through the arteries. Arterial blood is a bright red color due to the oxygen it picks up in the lungs. Venous blood, running back to the heart after leaving off the oxygen and picking up carbon dioxide, is a darker color. Blood cells - red cells, white cells, and platelets - are all produced in bone marrow, a jelly-like substance inside our bones. In children, marrow of most bones can produce blood cells. In adults, only the marrow of big bones - like the spine, ribs, pelvis, and some others - do the job. All blood cells come from the same kind of stem cell, which has the potential to turn into any kind of blood cell. Join us at the Montshire on Sunday, November 9 for our family "Blood and Guts" workshop, where you can find out how your circulation works.

Thursday

Give me an "A!" Give me a "B!" Give me an "O!" What have you got? ABO?! Hmm . . . it could be the name of a Scandinavian rock group. Or it could be a typo. Or perhaps, it means "type O", as in a blood type. See, doctors were long puzzled by why transfusions caused blood clotting in certain patients. In 1901 Karl Landsteiner figured out that red blood cells have certain inherited characteristics including an antigen labeled A or B. Some people have both antigens. About half of human beings have neither, and they are said to have blood type O. They cannot safely accept donated blood of another type, but their blood can be used safely by all people. That's why people with type O blood are called "universal donors." Join us at the Montshire on Sunday, November 9 for our family "Blood and Guts" workshop, where you Can find out how your circulation works.

Friday

Doctors in ancient Greece believed medicine boiled down to a sense of humor. By that I mean, they believed sickness was due to an imbalance among the four humors - phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood. To keep patients healthy, doctors prescribed draining the digestive tract--or blood. Bloodletting remained a popular technique for centuries. Fever? Back pain? Headaches? The prescription was often the same. During the Middle Ages, the Pope banned clergymen from performing bloodletting, and physicians were not inclined to practice it for fear of retribution from feudal lords. Back then, the penalty for malpractice was execution! So bloodletting was taken over by a group known as barber-surgeons. They advertised by using a symbol that endures to this day--a red and white striped pole. The white stripes represent the bandages and the red stripes represent blood.