Whatever else it can manage without, your body needs a good, steady and consistent supply of blood in order to survive and function properly.
It is the blood circulating round your body that provides your muscles with necessary supplies of food and oxygen. It is the blood that takes away the waste materials. It is the blood that ensures that such essential organs as your brain and kidneys are kept well fed. And it is the blood that ensures that chemicals and hormones travel round the body quickly, efficiently and reliably.
If for any reason the pump that circulates your blood stops working, or the supply of blood fails, then you will survive no more than a matter of minutes.
Naturally, the fact that the blood itself is a fluid and can easily be lost if the vessels which carry it are damaged, means that the body has to have an effective and efficient system of ensuring that damage to the circulatory system does not result in a heavy leakage. There needs to be some sort of self-healing system.
And that is exactly what your body has.
Circulating in your blood, alongside the oxygen, the sugar, the vitamins, the hormones and the waste materials are some special proteins which, should they pass into damaged blood vessels, will automatically form a protective net. This net will catch blood cells and quickly form a clot which will seal the wound.
Not, of course, that the clotting mechanism which protects the blood supply is as simple as that.
There are a whole host of fail-safe mechanisms which are designed to ensure that the system isn’t accidentally triggered in to action when there is no leak and which ensure that the clotting system doesn’t begin to operate until enough blood has flown through an injury site to wash away any dirt and bacteria which might be present.
Before a clot can form more than a dozen separate criteria must be satisfied.
The human body’s self-healing mechanisms are comprehensive and impressive.
Adapted from Bodypower by Vernon Coleman. Bodypower is available as a paperback and an eBook.