Are there veins inside the bones that drop nutrients into it or is it the blood from the skin/meat laying on top of the bone that gives it nutrition?
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Bones are porous. They’re not solid, dead bone. They receive blood, just like other tissues. The marrow inside them manufacture stem cells, which make platelets and red and white blood cells.
They have cavities that essentially receive nutrition from nearby arteries, to put it simply, through diffusion.
Bones have different types of cells, osteoblasts build bone by pulling calcium (and other minerals) out of blood and making little “bricks” from them. Osteoblasts essentially wall themselves into little rooms.there are pores (holes) through which the osteoblasts receive nutrients.
The bones are richly supplied with blood vessels and nerves. Sometimes if medical professionals cannot get an IV line, in an emergency we drill into a bone and give IV meds through that.
Sometimes we need more calcium in our blood because it’s essential for making our muscles work. Hormones are released from our parathyroid and other bone cells called osteoclasts break down the little bricks. Osteoclasts and osteoblasts work together to clean up and rebuild bone due to the microscopic stress fractures we put in our bones daily. And when there’s constant stress on a particular area more osteoblasts go there so the bone will be stronger in that area. This is why we tell people to build muscle mass in order to gain bone strength and fight osteoporosis.
Sometimes we even get extra tiny bones called sesamoid bones in areas of high stress, usually between layers of tendons. Fun fact knee caps aka patellas are sesamoid bones and we are born without any.
In adults the long bones in our legs and arms are filled with yellow marrow which is mostly fat. Red marrow in our flat bones such as ribs and hips are where blood cells are formed.
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