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There are five types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the arterioles; the capillaries, where the exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and the tissues occurs; the venules; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back towards the heart.
Arteries branch into small passages called arterioles and then into the capillaries. [19] The capillaries merge to bring blood into the venous system. [20] The total length of muscle capillaries in a 70 kg human is estimated to be between 9,000 and 19,000 km. [21]
Herophilos was the first to describe anatomical differences between the two types of blood vessel. While Empedocles believed that the blood moved to and fro through the blood vessels, there was no concept of the capillary vessels that join arteries and veins, and there was no notion of circulation. [16]
In the mesentery, metarterioles form an additional stage between arterioles and capillaries. Individual capillaries are part of the capillary bed, an interweaving network of capillaries supplying tissues and organs. The more metabolically active a tissue is, the more capillaries are required to supply nutrients and carry away products of ...
The peripheral vascular system is the part of the circulatory system that consists of the veins and arteries not in the chest or abdomen (i.e. in the arms, hands, legs and feet). [1] [2] The peripheral arteries supply oxygenated blood to the body, and the peripheral veins lead deoxygenated blood from the capillaries in the extremities back to ...
The process depends on the difference of gradients between the interstitium and blood, with molecules moving to low concentrated spaces from high concentrated ones. [8] Glucose, amino acids, oxygen ( O 2 ) and other molecules exit capillaries by diffusion to reach the organism's tissues.
The smaller arteries and arterioles have higher resistance, and confer the main blood pressure drop across major arteries to capillaries in the circulatory system. Illustration demonstrating how vessel narrowing, or vasoconstriction, increases blood pressure. In the arterioles blood pressure is lower than in the major arteries.
In a healthy vascular system, the endothelium lines all blood-contacting surfaces, including arteries, arterioles, veins, venules, capillaries, and heart chambers. This healthy condition is promoted by the ample production of nitric oxide by the endothelium, which requires a biochemical reaction regulated by a complex balance of polyphenols, various nitric oxide synthase enzymes and L-arginine.