2nd of October
Summary
Total number of tomatoes: 3
- Human Physiology: 3 [Heart as a Pump; Circulatory System; Cardiac Performance] = There are some points that need review but as time goes by and I insist in understanding things are falling into place.
Today I felt tired for the most part of the day. The most difficult thing about working night is to shift your normal routine into day again. Since my study time was not very effective, I decided to do some housework. Therefore I won’t need to think about it when my brain gets ready to do some serious study sessions.
A piece of advice if you ever consider taking Human Physiology on Coursera: read the lecture notes first and then watch the videos. Things make so much more sense this way! The last time I took the course I didn’t do this. No wonder the lectures were so much harder to follow and understand!
A couple of things that I learned today about the human body:
- Blood is not delivered in the same amount to all the organs. There is a hierarchy and the organs which need more blood in a given moment will get more, while the others will get less (example: while we are digesting food the GI tract gets more blood than for example skeletal muscle). The two organs that always get 100% the blood they need no matter what goes wrong are the brain and the heart. They want blood, they get blood!
- We have about 5L of blood in our bodies.
- I finally understand what the lymph and the lymphatic system are. Basically, our hearts pump blood which carries oxygen and nutrients to the organs and tissues of the body (through arteries, arterioles, and capillaries). The capillaries are the ones responsible for exchanging the oxygen and nutrients for cellular waste. The thing is: the input from the capillaries is not equal to the output of the cells. Therefore, the cells are not able to give back to the capillaries all their ‘waste’. This extra fluid or ‘waste’ is called lymph and the lymphatic system is designed to take this ‘waste’ back into blood circulation so that it can be further transported to our lungs and expelled from our system.
- We produce about 3L of lymph a day.
Sorry for the lack of a more sophisticated vocabulary but this is all I can reason for now.
Some hours ago I watched a TED video that I think it’s worth to share.
