101 Questions About Blood and Circulation: With Answers Straight from the Heart

Brynie, Faith Hickman

ISBN 10: 0761314555 ISBN 13: 9780761314554

Publisher: Twenty First Century Books, 2001

Synopsis

Presented in a question-and-answer format, a comprehensive guide to the circulatory system discusses blood poisoning, heartburn, and a wealth of other relevant topics and features tables, source notes, graphs, photographs, and black-and-white line art as well as a glossary and an index.

About this title

About the Author

Faith Hickman Brynie is the author of 14 books on science and health topics. Several of her books have won recognition as "Best of the Year" from the American Association for the Advancement of Science; as "Children's Choice Selection" from the International Reading Association; and inclusion on the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age" honor list.

From the Inside Flap

(from the Foreword):

Life is a continuous struggle against entropy. You know entropy. It s the natural state of things: the tendency of all systems to become increasingly disorganized over time unless energy is injected into them. Bedrooms do it. Left to their own devices, they get messier and messier until you clean them. Tanks of fuel that power a car do it. They run dry and must be refilled. Their energy is lost into the universe as the random molecular motion we call heat. Bodies do it. Without a fresh supply of food, water, and oxygen, they perish. In biological terms, life is the temporary reversal of disorder.

If you were a single-celled ameba oozing your way around a pond, your battle against entropy would be relatively simple. You would get your food and oxygen directly from the water, across your cell membrane. You could dump your waste materials into the water the same way. If, however, you happen to be more complex than an ameba, your battle against entropy is more complex too. Being made of more than one cell complicates things. Most of your cells are buried deep within many layers of millions of other cells. They live far from any source of food, water, and oxygen, and equally far from a convenient garbage dump. They need a circulatory to import raw materials and remove toxic wastes.

An engineer injects materials and energy into a mechanical system with pumps, pipes, and valves. Evolution has done the same for many-celled organisms. As blood circulates in the human body--pushed along by that powerful pump the heart--it picks up food and water from the small intestine and oxygen from the lungs. It gets rid of carbon dioxide through the lungs and waste products such as urea through the kidneys. The bloodstream is also a corridor for chemical communication between the brain and other parts of the body. Hormones carry messages back and forth. They "command the troops" in the war against entropy, whether speeding the heart rate when danger looms or storing energy for future skirmishes.

In this book, you ll learn how your circulatory system works. You ll get answers "straight from the heart" to some important questions you may have wondered about. Perhaps you will answer a few you never thought of before. Either way, you ll gain knowledge the best weapon of all in your successful battle against entropy.

Reviews

Gr 6-10-Brynie asked hundreds of students for their questions about blood and circulation, and has answered 101 of them in a straightforward, well-organized style. She explains the operation of the circulatory system, from how the heart pumps to where a single red blood cell can travel, and addresses such topics as palpitations, heart attacks, the role of diet and exercise in heart health, and various components in blood (platelets, albumin, etc.). The writing is brisk but informative. The diagrams are clear and easy to understand, and the black-and-white photos, while few, are well chosen-especially that of a plaque deposit taken from a clogged artery. The volume also includes three supplementary tables that cover the endocrine glands, the immune system, and the role of vitamins and minerals in cardiovascular health. A solid overview, written in an approachable style.-Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, NY

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Twenty First Century Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761314555
• ISBN 13: 9780761314554
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176