In this episode of Let's Dive In, your hosts Julie and Phil chat to paediatrician Dr Cilian Ó Maoldomhnaigh to find out how important your blood really is.
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Julie tells us more...
Phil and I speak ask Dr Cilian and we get him to answer this question from 10 year old Katrina: What is blood, and what is it good for?
To stay alive, to keep you healthy, really good for scabs and for functioning properly. Those are all fantastic guesses from the kids who came to visit the UCD Explore Lab last year.
It turns out blood is really, really busy! Here's what Dr Cilian said: "It does absolutely loads of things. So your blood is really important for transporting nutrients around your body."
The oxygen you breathe in, the food you eat, all the good stuff that you need to move and grow and live, that gets moved around your body by blood.
It’s also good for fighting infections, for clotting when you have a cut, and transporting your body’s waste around. It’s also got salts and hormones in it that need to be ferried around your body. That’s a lot of stuff.
The Degree students studying animation at Coláiste Dhúlaigh created a cartoon based on a previous episode of Let's Dive In. But it's ideal to recap now!
Jen Quinn, Tadhgh McGreevy, Rebe G Lope and Craig Hedderman worked with Phil and Julie on a guide to what's happening inside our veins. Press play below to watch it!
Adults and children have different amounts of blood. Kids have about 3 litres of blood. And as you get bigger and become an adult, you have about 5 litres of blood.
This sounds like a lot, but it’s hard to visualise. So, here’s something you could try: go to your local corner shop and buy some milk. At my local store the milk comes in 2 pint bottles, which is equivalent to 1 litre of milk.
So to see how much blood a child has, you need 3 bottles of milk. And for adults, 5. Seeing 5 bottles of milk in front of you - it’s a lot!
Now, what if you lose some blood, or like some people, donate blood, how can your body replace it? Thankfully we have an internal blood factory: the marrow in our bones. Our bodies have two types of marrow, red marrow and yellow marrow. And it’s the red marrow that you find in some of your bones that makes red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.
The cells in your blood are constantly being replenished. Each red blood cell lives for about 120 days before it dies and is replaced. Platelets every 5-10 days. That doesn’t mean all your red blood cells die at the same time and are replaced at the same time. It’s an ongoing, recurring process.
"One red cell gets into your blood...It has really hard work to do. It travels an awful lot going round your body. It goes hundreds of miles," says Dr Cilian. That’s right. 300 miles! For one red blood cell in your body. That’s like driving from Dublin to Kerry. Phoar!
But what about other animals? Do all living animals have red blood? Dr Cilian told us that almost all vertebrae, animals with backbones, have blood. But not all of them have red blood. "There’s one animal that I found called the icefish, that doesn’t have any haemoglobin in its blood. So supposedly the blood is colourless, like water!"
There are other animals on this planet that have completely different coloured blood. Some have blue blood, some purple, some green! Tune into the episode to find out more!
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