AMAZING FACTS
- Approximately 8% of an adult's body weight is made up of blood.
- Females have around 4-5 liters, while males have around 5-6 litres. This difference is mainly due to the differences in body size between men and women.
- Its mean temperature is 38 degrees Celsius.
- It has a pH of 7.35-7.45; making it slightly basic (less than 7 is considered acidic).
- Whole blood is about 4.5-5.5 times as viscous as water, indicating that it is more resistant to flow than water. This viscosity is vital to the function of blood because if blood flows too easily or with too much resistance, it can strain the heart and lead to severe cardiovascular problems.
- Blood in the arteries is a brighter red than blood in the veins because of the higher levels of oxygen found in the arteries.
- An artificial substitute for human blood has not been found.
- Apheresis is a special kind of blood donation that allows a donor to give specific blood components, such as platelets.
- Forty-two days: how long most donated red blood cells can be stored.
- Five days: how long most donated platelets can be stored.
- One year: how long frozen plasma can be stored.
- Children being treated for cancer, premature infants and children having heart surgery need blood and platelets from donors of all types, especially type O.
- Anemic patients need blood transfusions to increase their red blood cell levels.
- Cancer, transplant and trauma patients, and patients undergoing open-heart surgery may require platelet transfusions to survive.
- Sickle cell disease is an inherited disease that affects more than 80,000 people in the United States, 98 percent of whom are of African descent.
- 46.5 gallons: amount of blood you could donate if you begin at age 17 and donate every 56 days until you reach 79 years old.
- A newborn baby has about one cup of blood in his body.
- Two million red blood cells die every second.
- There are approximately 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
- Each day 400 gallons of recycled blood are pumped through the kidneys.
- Blood is such a good stain that Native Americans used it for paint.
- The kidneys filter over 400 gallons of blood each day.
- Your blood takes a very long trip through your body. If you could stretch out all of a human's blood vessels, they would be about 60,000 miles long. That's enough to go around the world twice.
- Half your body’s red blood cells are replaced every seven days.
- 4.5 million Americans will a need blood transfusion each year.
- In the early nineteenth century some advertisements claimed that riding the carousel was good for the circulation of blood. For humans the normal pulse is 70 heartbeats per minute. Elephants have a slower pulse of 27 and for a canary it is 1000!
- If all the blood vessels in your body were laid end to end, they would reach about 60,000 miles.
- Abraham Lincoln probably had a medical condition called Marfans syndrome. Some of its symptoms are extremely long bones, curved spine, an arm span that is longer than the persons height, eye problems, heart problems and very little fat. It is a rare, inherited condition.
- In one day your heart beats 100,000 times.
- Half your body’s red blood cells are replaced every seven day.
- Around 85% of the UK population is RhD positive.