The journey of a red blood cell

Hi there! Can you guess what I am? I’ll give you a hint… I have a very important job inside your body and your heart helps me to do my job.

You are right! That’s me. I’m a red blood cell.

My job is so important that you’ll thank me for it later!But I can’t take all the credit. Without your heart I couldn´t do anything!

You see, I’m like a little delivery truck in your body.I pick up and drop things off all the time.

I ride the highways of something called the circulatory system.I like to call it the circle system because I keep going in circles!

This system is made of your heart and blood vessels that carry your blood to different areas of your body.Your blood vessels are like tiny tunnels that run all through your body.

They are made up of arteries that take oxygen to places in your body, and veins that take carbon dioxide from your body to your lungs.

veinsarteries

But I can´t move by myself. I move within your blood when it moves. How does your blood move? Your heart pumps it. Let me show you how.

Your heart is the most important muscle in your body.It moves by itself and even though you can hardly feel it, it keeps moving all the time, even when you are sleeping.

Do you want to feel your heart moving? Sit very still and put your hand on your chest.

If you were running hard or doing exercise you might find it easier to feel.

When your heart moves it is called a “heartbeat”. Your heart makes at least 100.000 hearbeats everyday.

When your heart beats it pulls blood into it and pushes it out again.

This helps the blood to move fast enough to go through your whole body and back. An it helps me to pick up my deliveries and take them to different places in your body.

I’m not alone. There are lots of red blood cells just like me doing the same thing in your body all the time. Even now, while I’m talking to you!.

Going through the heart is easy because it has special rooms and doors that only open one way.

Here’s me at the start of my little journey. I just got back from dropping off some things to some places in your body.

I need to get some more speed to do more deliveries so I ride your bloodstream into your heart.

Right now I ‘m entering the right side of the heart through the superior and inferior vena cava.

I go through the first room called the “right atrium”, through the first door called the “tricuspid valve” and through the second room called the “right ventricle” and through the second door called the pulmonary valve.

The heartbeat causes the heart to squeeze the blood on these rooms into the next area.It pushes the blood through it and into the arteries (like tunnels) that lead to other parts of the body. I go out of the heart through the pulmonary artery.

So, now I’m moving a little faster because the heart has given me push.Now I need to go and pick up the things I need to deliver.

My first stop is to the lungs. I need to pick up a little oxygen molecule to take to some place in the body.

Everybody needs oxygen. Our lungs bring it into our body, and then I pick it up and take it to where it is needed.

inhalation

It seems like it would be tricky to pick up the oxygen, but the lungs really help me with that job.Here in the body we all work together and co-operate to keep everything running smoothly.

When I get to the lungs and I get really close to the sides of my little tunnel … the oxygen that is sort of floating out of the walls nearby just jumps onto me for the ride.

While this is happening I also make another change. Carbon dioxide needs to be taken up to the lungs so that the body can get rid of it by breathing out. And I’m just the cell to do it!

When enough of oxygen has hopped on and I can’t hold any more I am ready to go back to the heart for another push.

I go through the first room called the “left atrium” through the “mitral valve” and into the “left ventricle” room to get my big push.

This time I need to go in the other side of the heart. This side is for all of us, red blood cells that are carrying oxygen. I enter the heart through the pulmonary veins.

The heart pushes us a little farther this time because some of us have a very long trip. We leave the left side through the aorta artery.

I like my job because I get to travel.

So that is my job! What do you think? Pretty important, isn’t it? The heart really helps me to do my job well!