Fetal circulation/Cardiac Output

There are 3 vessels located in the Umbilical Cord. 1 Vein and 2 arteries. The cool thing about the arteries is that they wrap around the vein. The works of the vein and artery are reversed compared to an adult. The vein pumps oxygen rich blood from the placenta and the deoxygenated blood comes back out through the arteries. Another thing is that you can bank your babies cord blood. The story that was told in anatomy about the boy really made me think and I am surely going to bank my babies blood when I have one just in case something happens in the future. The cord blood are indiffentriated = p cells. These cord blood cells can be turned into both red and white blood cells. This is very expensive to do costing $2000 the first year and about $150 a year after that.

Cardiac output is the heart rate times the stroke volume. CO is the amount of blood (volume) pumped out by ventricles every 1 minute, which is about 5 to 6 liters. we have about 5 liters in our body so every minute our heart pumps all the blood in our bodies. Crazy!! The stroke volume is the blood being ejected from the ventricles.

The Heart

In lecture class we discussed the HEART! The heart is quiet amazing. It pumps blood all through our entire body and keeps us alive. There are many parts to the heart. It is made up of muscles, veins and artery's.

Coronary Circulatory Pathways. These artery's wrap themselves around the entire heart. The first two branches are the left and right coronary artery's.

An interesting fact is that the top of the heart is the base. Usually when things are referred to as the base it means this bottom. But the base of the heart is actually the top. Kinda cool!

The artery's also have valves. Valves are flaps of fibrous connective tissue. when the weight/volume of the blood becomes great it pushes the valves open and blood is pumped through our body.

There are also tiny white chords in our heart. The chords tighten to help the valves close. We just did the heart dissection in lab and saw these chords. It is pretty cool to think that those are actually in our heart. Also 10% of people have a Mitral Valve Disorder.

I always wanted to know what a bi-pass

surgery was. And in lecture I finally found out what it was! It is when a vein from the leg is taken and placed in the heart. It is placed as a bridge over part of the that is blocked. This can be single, double or a triple if needed.

The heart also has an electrical conduction.

The Electrocardium is simple squamous cells.

The Myocardium is cardiac muscle cells.

The Epicardium is also known as the "Peri-Cardium"

Blood, Bone Marrow and Blood Types

This was a jammed pack full chapter as I am looking over my notes and see that I took 10 pages of notes. Wicked!!! In class this past week we talked about the blood, bone marrow and blood types.

In the picture below the blood cells look like cheerios....Dont they?

I learned that blood is made up of Red Blood Cells - Erythrocytes, White Blood Cells - Leukocytes and Platelets - Thrombocytes. This was funny. The way to remember the 5 categories of white blood cells is this saying: never let monkeys eat banana's.

N= Neurophils (70-80%) they are phagocytic cells which destroy foreign material and digest it
L= Lymphocytes (20-30%)
M= Monocytes (less than 10%) capable of many phagocytic events E= Eosinophil (3-8%) B= Basophil (less than 0.1%) releases Histamine, which is a blood vessel dilator

Above, L to R, a Erythrocyte, a Thrombocyte and a Leukocyte.

BONE MARROW:
Bone marrow is found and is easily taken out of the flat bones in our body. The flat bones are the sternum, scapula's and the flat bone in the pelvis. The most common place for Red Bone marrow to be taken out is in the hips because there is less muscle and adipose tissue there.

If I could be a cell in the body I would want to be a Totiponent cell because these cells have the capability to become any cell that it wants to in the human body. On the other hand Pluripotent cells are already specialized in what they are going to be. That must be boring.

Its crazy to think that our body is capable of doing so many things at once. You would think that we would crash from overloads like computers do but we don't. It is amazing to think that we make millions of new red blood cells everyday. that is EVERYDAY! But you would think we would become plugged up with so many red blood cells, but the old red blood cells make there way to the spleen where they die and get eaten by the Macrophages. Don't worry though, because if you do not have your spleen due to it being removed, then Your liver is doing all the work now. The life of a blood cell is 90-120 days.

BLOOD TYPES:
I just donated blood at the blood drive that was held here at EMCC. It was my very first time giving blood. I was not able to give too much because I started to think about it too much and was going to pass out. I can at least say that I did it and helped someone else. I do not know what type of blood that I have circulating in me. Which is should probably know. There are 4 types: A, B, AB and type Rh factor. It was interesting to see how it was possible to have a different blood type than a member of your family.

Steriod Hormones

Ok well we had a couple weeks off from lecture class...
when we came back this week we talked about steriod hormones....
I really remember the estrogen hormone...cause well duh, I am a girl....lol
Estrogens diffuse easily across the cell membranes and when they are inside the cell body the interact with estrogen receptors.
Sex Hormones consist of androgens, estrogens & progestagens.
Corticosteriods consist of glucocorticiods and mineralcoritoids. Gluco controls metabolism & immune functions. Mineral controls blood volume.
Anabolic steriods increase bone and muscle synthesis.
steriod hormones are basically transported in the blood.
I will add more later....