Your blood is carried throughout your body by your vascular system.
Your heart is carried away by oxygen-rich blood through your arteries. Veins bring oxygen-poor blood back into your heart. Your blood leaves the left-side of your heart and is pumped into the rest of the body.
The main artery that runs from your heart to your brain is the “aorta.”Your blood travels through your body in smaller and smaller vessels. This allows it to reach every cell and drop off nutrients. It also picks up carbon dioxide and other waste products. The blood travels back through your veins, reaching larger and larger vessels as it goes. It then passes through your liver and kidneys to drop waste products. The blood finally returns to your right side, where it can start the entire journey again.
The Society for Vascular Surgery would like you to know that with age, our arteries tends to thicken, become stiffer, and then narrow down when plaque builds up, cholesterol accumulates in large and medium-sized vessels. The buildup of plaque in the arteries can cause narrowing and heart attacks. Stroke can also be caused by the same problem in the arteries that lead to the brain. Peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, is a condition where the arteries become narrower in other parts of your body, such as your legs. PAD can cause sores, pain when walking and eventually gangrene. It is known as “PAD” when the smaller arteries become affected. “arteriosclerosis.”
It is crucial to consult a vascular specialist if your doctor has diagnosed you with vascular diseases. They are specialists in vascular disease, and can only treat it with minimally invasive procedures and open surgery. Learn more about your vascular condition. www.VascularWeb.org.
