How are muscles supplied with oxygen during exercise?
In: Biology
Your blood, specifically the red blood cells inside of it, is what carries oxygen everywhere in your body (not just muscles). Your hear pumps blood into your lungs where the red blood cells are able to “pick up” oxygen molecules from the air you breathe. It then goes back into your heart to be pumped to the rest of your body. This is called “oxygenated” blood, what typically shown as red in textbooks or diagrams. Areas of your body that are working hard (like muscles) produce a lot of C02 which causes a change in the blood near that area. Specifically relevant to this case is that it makes the blood more acidic (decreases its pH). As oxygenated blood passes by your muscles and becomes more acidic, it can’t hold onto the oxygen as well and it get’s released. Which is great because that’s exactly what your muscles need! This called “de-oxygenated” blood and its typically shown as blue in diagrams. The red blood cells in the de-oxygenated blood can now pick up all this C02 that you don’t need and carry that back to the lungs when it gets released when you breathe out. And the whole cycle starts again.
The right ventricle of the heart pumps blood into the lungs, where it releases carbon dioxide and absorbs oxygen. And then goes back to the heart and is pumped out by the left ventricle enter the arteries, and from there into the capillary beds. These capillary beds run through everything that needs to be serviced, including muscles. Then the blood, depleted of oxygen and rich in carbon dioxide, flows from the capillary beds into the veins and back to the heart again.
So the muscles merely work, producing carbon dioxide that they released into the bloodstream through those capillary beds, and absorbing oxygen through those capillary beds.
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