EASY READ The human body
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What are blood vessels?
Blood travels along thousands of tubes, called blood vessels. Blood vessels that take blood away from the heart are called arteries. Blood vessels that take blood towards the heart are called veins. The arteries and veins in your body are like a road network. There are “motorways” (the main blood vessels) as well as “lanes” and “tracks”, tiny vessels called capillaries that reach all the cells in the body. Altogether, your blood vessels are about 100,000 kilometres (60,000 miles) long, or more than twice the distance around the world.
Veins
Veins carry blood containing carbon dioxide and other wastes from the cells towards the heart. The larger veins have valves inside them. These are “doors” that open and close rather like canal locks. The valves ensure that blood cannot leak back.
Arteries
Bright red blood containing oxygen and nutrients flows from the heart to the body's cells through your arteries. Arteries have much thicker walls than veins because they carry blood pumped under high pressure from the heart.
You can feel the heart's pumping action by placing your fingers on the inside of the wrist, a point where a main artery lies close to the surface of your skin.
Capillaries
Each capillary is only one hundredth of a millimetre wide. The walls are extremely thin. These enable oxygen and nutrients in the blood to seep through to the cells and carbon dioxide and other waste to pass the other way into the capillaries.
Consultant: Kristina Routh
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