The Circulatory System

Introduction
The heart is an amazing muscle that pumps blood around your body. It is located a little to the left of the chest, and its about the size of your fist. The heart sends blood around to the whole body providing nutrients and oxygen for parts of the body. It also carries away waste. Arteries take oxygen all around the body. The veins bring the deoxygenated blood back to the heart which gets oxygenated by the lungs to start again. The pulse is made by blood forced into arteries by your heart. Before each beat, your heart fills with blood. Then hearts muscle contracts to squirt the blood.

History:
The circulatory system was named by an English physician, William Harvey. He described its systematic values correctly.

Descriptions
The circulatory system involves two major organs, heart and lungs. It can be divided into two major systems, the cardiovascular system and pulmonary system. The pulmonary circulation is the movement of blood from the heart, to the lungs, and back to the heart again. The blue blood (deoxygenated blood) that comes from the heart gets oxygen from the lungs and return to the heart again as red blood (oxygenated blood). The cardiovascular system spreads red blood throughout the body and it gives away oxygen, nutrients and minerals to parts of the body. Then the red blood returns to the heart as blue blood. The heart then pumps the blue blood (deoxygenated blood) to the lungs to be oxygenated.

The Heart:
The heart is made up of four chambers and there are two chambers on each side of the heart. The top two chambers are called the atria which fill with blood. The two chambers at the bottom of the heart are called ventricles. Their job is to squirt out the blood. In the middle of the heart there is a thick muscle called the septum that separates the left and the right side of the heart. The atria and ventricles work together. The atria fill with blood, and when they are full, they let the blood flow into the ventricles which then pumps the blood out of the heart. The atria fill up again and the whole process starts again. There are valves in the heart that make sure that the blood is pumped in the right direction. The valves are the tricuspid valve, the pulmonic valve, the mitral valve and the aortic valve

The vena cava brings blood to the heart. Arteries and veins deliver the blood to the vena cava. When the heart contracts, it pumps blood from its chambers into the body. Then the heart muscle then relaxes and lets the chambers fill up.

Coronary Arteries:
The coronary arteries take blood to the heart muscle. Blockage in these coronary arteries causes a heart attack.

Arteries:
Arteries deliver blood full of oxygen from the heart to the rest of the body. Blood in arteries are bright red because it is full of oxygen. The force of the heartbeat means that blood in the arteries is under high pressure. When you cut an artery, the blood spurts out fast and is bright red. The further an artery is from the heart, the smaller it is. These tiny arteries join up with the capillaries.

Veins
Veins collect blood from the capillaries and take it back to the heart and lungs to get more oxygen. The blood in veins is dark red because of low oxygen levels. Blood in the veins is only at low pressure, so if you cut a vein, you get a slow bleed of dark red blood.

Capillaries:
The capillaries are the tiny blood vessels that deliver oxygen to the tissues. They also take carbon dioxide from the tissues.

BLOOD
Your blood is an amazing soup of red and white blood cells, clotting cells and thousands of different molecules that carry oxygen, food and chemical messages around the body. It also defends you against bugs and infection. Your blood pressure is the pressure your heart makes as it squeezes blood into arteries to circulate around the body. If your blood pressure is too low, blood does not circulate and no oxygen gets to the body. If the blood pressure is too high, it can damage vital organs like the kidney and brain. Without blood, we could not survive.

Problems If someone has a problem in their heart, doctors listen to their heartbeat through a
stethoscope and they hear a murmur, extra heartbeats or a swishing sound. A few newborns have congenital heart defects ranging from mild to severe. These defects occur while the

fetus is developing in the mother's uterus and it is not usually known why they occur. Some congenital heart defects are caused by abnormal or incomplete development of the heart.

Future:
If you had a damaged artery, you could live for many years as long as it isnt a vital artery like the coronary artery.

Care:
To keep your heart healthy, keep fit, do not eat a junky diet, do not smoke and avoid stress. Lots of vitamins help the circulatory system, particularly vitamin B.