why and how does blood matter, and could there be a possible substitute?
In: Biology
Blood is the primary mass transit system in the body. Imagine a city without roads or highways, sure you can communicate with others (nerves) but you need to be able to transport stuff too.
Blood is what carries oxygen and nutrients to our cells and carries waste away. It’s essential for us to survive. Blood is actually made up of several components. There’s plasma, the liquid part, which is mostly water. Then there are red blood cells which carry oxygen, white blood cells which are cells of the immune system, and platelets, which stop wounds from bleeding.
We can replace lost blood plasma with fluids called volume expanders to maintain adequate blood pressure and volume, but we don’t have any good artificial replacements for the other blood components yet (although we’re experimenting with some that), so we have to rely on transfusions of real blood or blood components.
Blood carries oxygen to every tissue in the body except the cornea of the eye (which is oxygenated directly from air). There’s no good substitute for whole blood with current technology, but the water in coconuts has been known and used as a substitute for blood plasma since around WWII.
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