By Verhonda Wiltz
I know, you have never thought about your body in this way. Most of us don’t know how our body works or even care…. Until it stops working as it should! Most of the time, when it’s not working at its best, it’s hard to get it repaired and back on track. So, it’s best to maintain it and keep it in good shape. In order to do that, you need to understand how it works. Let’s start now with your blood.
Blood is the trucking company of your body. Think of it as a fleet of trucks and trailers. The blood cell is the truck/tractor, and the iron that is attached to the cell is the trailer. It carries fuel, gases and other chemicals to your whole body and removes wastes from your body too. Blood travels along a superhighway of blood vessels called arteries, mainly used for deliveries, and veins for pickup. There are also streets off the highway called arterioles and capillaries. Your body has over 60,000 miles of highway inside you.
The main business office for the blood trucking company is in the bone marrow. Bone marrow is deep in the center of your bones. This is where your blood is made and released/dispatched onto the highway.
The kidneys are the truck wash for the blood/truck. They clean the blood of all wastes and inspect and work with the spleen on removing old worn out blood cells/trucks from the highway. When it’s time to replace the blood cells/trucks, the kidneys dispatch a message to the bones/business office and new blood cells/trucks are released on the highway.
The spleen is the blood recycling center for old, worn out blood cells. The spleen has a highway maintenance crew that repairs the highway when it gets holes, burns and scrapes in it. The highway must be kept smooth at all times to prevent traffic jams and multi-truck accidents. It also has a hazardous material crew that it sends out when infections occur.
Now that you have the main operation procedure down, we will now follow a normal route of a red blood cell. We will start with a new blood cell/truck.
Red Blood Cell with iron = Truck with Trailer
The first assignment for the blood cell is to take the highway from the bones to the lungs for oxygen/air. Traffic should flow smoothly because the highway only flows in one direction. The blood cell/truck must first pass through a highway roundabout exit called the heart that leads the blood cell/ truck to the lungs. When the blood cell reaches the lungs, it turns onto one of many of the veins/streets and loads the oxygen/air into its trailer. Then it leaves the lungs by turning onto the arterioles/streets, goes back to the highway roundabout entrance at the heart and begins its trip to deliver the oxygen/air to one of the many other cells and organs of the body. These blood cells/trucks are very fast! They do this in less than one minute when you are resting, and much faster if you are running or scared!
The next stop is to deliver this oxygen/air to the digestive system organs. The food processing center! The first stop is to deliver the oxygen/air to the stomach cells. That really doesn’t take much time at all. Then it is sent to the liver/sorting warehouse of the body to pick up some fuel called glycogen and deliver it to the leg muscle cells. The blood cell/truck passes through an inspection weight station before leaving the liver to be sure the truck is running well and can deliver the fuel. If it is running well, it will take the glycogen to the leg muscle cells. Don’t forget that there are millions of these red blood cells/trucks on the highways of your body making deliveries and pickups all the time. They even work when you are sleeping!
Now the blood cell/truck has made it to the leg muscle cells and delivered the glycogen, it must pick up some waste/carbon dioxide. There are other types of waste that your body makes, but for the sake of time, we will take the carbon dioxide and deliver it to the lungs to be dumped outside the body. The blood cell/truck gets back on the highway and follows it south until it turns onto the veins and then heads north back to the heart. It makes its exit at the highway roundabout again inside the heart, to the arterioles and delivers its load of carbon dioxide to the lungs where it is pushed out of the lungs, through the nose into the air.
Every so often it makes a delivery to the kidneys for waste dumping and gets an inspection at the spleen for best highway function.
If it doesn’t pass inspection, usually every 20 days, it gets removed from the highway and sent to the spleen for recycling.
Remember when I mentioned that the highway had to be kept smooth and the spleen was in charge of the maintenance crew? We are now going to talk about that maintenance team/crew.
The team consists of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets-small round shield shaped cells. This team patrols the highway and the streets to keep them smooth. If they find an area that needs repairing, they close the damaged area off and narrow the area while they work. The white blood cells clean the area of dirt, germs and anything that is not a red blood cell, white blood cell or platelet. Some red blood cells bring fibrinogen, a special chemical that combines with the platelets to make a patch. The team stays there until the patch is dry. Then the crew moves down the highway where they are needed next.
Now we will get to the big part about this trucking company. What do you have to do to keep this company going? How do you keep your fleet of trucks at their best?
This company needs lots of water! It keeps the highway smooth and free of traffic jams, and the kidneys need water to wash the trucks inside and out.
Kidneys = Truck wash
Water is also needed for highway and street repairs. So start by drinking lots of water every day.
It is also important to eat foods with lots of iron. Spinach, collard, turnip, mustard greens, broccoli, fish, nuts, grapes, raisins, eggs and some red meat- beef, pork, lamb, chicken, sweet potatoes, turkey, quinoa and oats to name a few. You must remember that these foods are great, but you cannot eat them with cheese or drink tea or milk while you eat them. The iron washes out of your body if you do.
Sleep is when most of the inspections and repairs happen, so allow enough time for these processes to be done. Exercise keeps the blood cells/trucks moving on the highway and prevents traffic jams and accidents. It’s important to keep moving!
Now that you know about your blood, the trucking company of your body, it’s time to get it in top shape!
References
https://babyfoode.com/blog/iron-rich-foods-babies-toddlers-kids/#best-baby
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/how-wounds-heal
https://www.lornelabs.com/news-events/blog/the-journey-of-a-red-blood-cell
https://reverehealth.com/live-better/how-body-systems-connected/
Images
http://clipart-library.com/clipart/415438.htm
Image by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/clker-free-vector-images-3736/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=24360″>Clker-Free-Vector-Images</a> from <a href=”https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=24360“>Pixabay</a>
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/red-blood-cell-rbc-erythrocyte-1861640/
<a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/truck-wash”>Truck Wash Vectors by Vecteezy</a>
<a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/human”>Human Vectors by Vecteezy</a>
<a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/spleen”>Spleen Vectors by Vecteezy</a>
<a href=”https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/recycling”>Recycling Vectors by Vecteezy</a>
https://www.healthylittlefoodies.com/iron-rich-foods-for-kids/
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