Pulsing Secrets:

If you lined up all the blood vessels in your body, they would be 95,000 kilometers long, equivalent to over 7,500 liters of blood transported every day, but in reality, the same 4 to 5 liters are recycled over and over again.

Again, delivers oxygen and valuable nutrients such as glucose and amino acids to body tissues.

All blood exerts a force on the muscular walls of blood vessels.

This force is called blood pressure, and it rises and falls with the phase of the heartbeat.

This value is highest during systole, when the heart contracts and pumps blood into the arteries.

This is your systolic blood pressure.

When the heart rests between beats, blood pressure drops to its lowest value, diastolic blood pressure.

In a typical healthy person, systolic blood pressure is 90 to 120 millimeters of mercury, and diastolic blood pressure is up to 60 to 80 millimeters of mercury.

Putting these together, the normal value is over 80, just under 120.

A view of the body through the pipes of the circulatory system.

In any piping system, several factors can increase the forces on the pipe walls, such as fluid properties, additional fluid, or thinner pipes and many other contributing factors at play.

Therefore, when the blood thickens, higher pressure is needed to drive the blood so that the heart pumps harder.

A diet high in salt has similar results, causing blood level increment.

Salt promotes water retention, and additional fluid increases blood volume and blood pressure, increases stress, such as the fight-or-flight response, releases hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline, constricts important blood vessels, and increases resistance.

Resulting in an increase volume and increase in upstream flow and pressure.

Blood vessels can usually cope with these fluctuations without difficulty.

It is resilient due to the elastic fibers embedded in its walls, but it can cause serious problems if blood pressure regularly rises above about 140 and 90 and maintains a so-called hypertensive state.

This is because additional stress on the artery wall can cause small tears. Not good.

When the injured tissue swells, white blood cells and other inflammatory substances collect around the tear.

Fats and cholesterol floating in the blood also accumulate, eventually forming plaques that harden and thicken the inner walls of arteries.

This condition is called arteriosclerosis and can have dangerous consequences.

When the plaque ruptures, a blood clot forms over the tear and blocks the already narrowed canal.

If the clot is large enough, it can completely block the flow of oxygen and nutrients to downstream cells.

When heart muscle cells begin to die from lack of oxygen, causing a heart attack, in the blood vessels that feed the heart.

When a blood clot blocks blood flow to the brain, it causes a stroke.

Dangerously blocked blood vessels can be widened through a procedure called angioplasty.

The physician then guides the wire through the blood vessel to the occluded area and places a deflated balloon catheter over the wire.

Inflate the balloon and the passage will reopen.

In some cases, hard tubes called stents are inserted into blood vessels to keep them open, allowing blood to flow freely and to replenish oxygen-depleted cells downstream.

Maintaining flexibility under pressure is a tough job for arteries.

The fluid pumps pump out is made up of substances that can become sticky and clog, and a normal healthy heart beats about three times per second, or at least 2.

5 billion times over the course of an average lifetime. Pump it up. This may sound like an insurmountable pressure, but don't worry.

Your arteries are well suited for this task.