The Cardiovascular System

The Cardiovascular System





The heart and circulatory system make up your cardiovascular system. Your heart works as a pump that pushes blood to the organs, tissues, and cells of your body. Blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to every cell and removes the carbon dioxide and waste products made by those cells. Blood is carried from your heart to the rest of your body through a complex network of arteries, arterioles, and capillaries. Blood is returned to your heart through venules and veins. If all the vessels of this network were laid end to end, they would extend for about 60,000 miles (more than 96,500 kilometers), which is far enough to circle the planet Earth more than twice!

The one-way system carries blood to all parts of your body. This process of blood flow within your body is called circulation. Arteries carry oxygen-rich blood away from your heart, and veins carry oxygen-poor blood back to your heart.

In pulmonary circulation, though, the roles are switched. It is the pulmonary artery that brings oxygen-poor blood into your lungs and the pulmonary vein that brings oxygen-rich blood back to your heart.

In the diagram, the vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood are colored red, and the vessels that carry oxygen-poor blood are colored blue.

Twenty major arteries make a path through your tissues, where they branch into smaller vessels called arterioles. Arterioles further branch into capillaries, the true deliverers of oxygen and nutrients to your cells. Most capillaries are thinner than a hair. In fact, many are so tiny, only one blood cell can move through them at a time. Once the capillaries deliver oxygen and nutrients and pick up carbon dioxide and other waste, they move the blood back through wider vessels called venules. Venules eventually join to form veins, which deliver the blood back to your heart to pick up oxygen.

Heart Health

"Dr. Adrian Le Preston is a cardiologist with Cardiovascular Specialists of Central Maryland and has privileges at Howard County General Hospital. Dr. Preston specializes in non-invasive cardiology, women's heart health, and nuclear cardiology."

Regular Excercise

In the U.S. alone there are over 250,000 deaths due to lack of excercise. The vast majority of Americans live a sedentary life style which contributes to the high number of cardiovascular events. In recent studies it coorelates that even starting a physcial activity routine in midlife has a positive health benefit in the overall well being of the individual. High blood pressure is one of the 5 major causes or risk factors(along with a abnormal blood lipids, being over weight and smoking) for causing cardiovascular events and/or disease. Regular excercise has proven to be a gateway for the reduction of blood pressure, normaliztion or reduced blood sugar levels, reduction in bad colesterol LDL and raise the good cholesteral HDL. Patients that have been diagnoised with heart disease and/or have had a cardiovascular event, have shown in studies that excercise can improve overall health and a sense of well being to those that begin a regular routine of physical activity. There is no question that excercise has its health benefits, however along with a regular excercise routine, diet also plays a major role in providing the body, the essential nutrients and building blocks that it needs. The following video describes the little known secret to cardio health. In conclusion, when considering working out one must consider the shape they are currently in such as: being over weight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and if they have a sedentary life style. When these factors are considered always consult your physician prior to taking on a potentially strenous routine. If one has not been very active in a while it's always best to start out slow and build up a tolerance for the activities. Proper nutrition is also a must when starting a new routine. So make sure yu get plenty of fruit, grains and nuts as well as vegatables.

Cardio-Health

Cardio-Health

One of the suriest way to maintain a healthy heart and cardiovascular system, is to eat whole foods , excercise aerobically and stay as far away from unhealthy fats and oils as possible.

By just staying aware of a few tips, I will be giving you in this blog, you can live a long an fullfilling healthy quality of life.

Cardio Benefits

First, by just working out aerobically you will benefit in several ways,, one of which is weight maintenience. Excercise can help you to maintain your weight or loose depending on your goals. If your interested in loosing weight, first ensure that your eating appropriatly to meet this goal. Secondly, make sure that you are medically qualified to begin a rigoris training routine, check with your physcian, on the state of your health.

Cardio-Health: New Beginning

Start by making minor changes in your routine. For example take the stairs instead of the elevator, park a little farther away from the store your going in and finally change one thing in your diet that you know in your heart, is not working for you. Start looking to see if the oil your using is a healthy oil. Try staying away from GMO crops like soybean, canola oils and and corn.

Another benefit of keeping cardio and heart health through excercise and proper nutrition is the reduction and maintaince of high blood pressue Through excercise high density lipoprotein (HDL) or good cholesterol is produced and the unhealthy triglycerides is reduced, keeping blood flow at a more optimun level. Thus reducing a potential host of cardivasculer health issues, such as certain types of cancers, arthritis, stroke, diabetes type 2 and depression.



There are many more health benefits of proper diet, Cardio and health, but I will reserve that for the next installment on this blog! Thank you for your time!