Red Blood Cells | Physiology | Biology

  I'm sure you know the blood is pretty important right I mean if you see that someone has lost lower blood it's not usually a good sign but why what is so important about blood well in the next few videos we will show you just how special this incredible red liquid is your blood is made up of plasma red blood cells white blood cells and platelets in this video we will look at the red blood cell are also known as erythrocytes and you have a lot of them in fact in just one drop of blood there are about five million red blood cells they only live for 120 days in your bloodstream and every second your body makes 2.5 million new red blood cells to replace old dead cells okay I hear you say that's great we have lots of these cells what do they actually do

well they have one very important 

function and that is to transport oxygen 

around the body every cell in the body 

needs oxygen in order to carry out 

aerobic respiration and release energy  we take oxygen into our lungs every time we inhale but something has to pick up that oxygen and carry it to all the other cells in the body and that is the job of your red blood cells and you know what they do a very good job of it and that's because they have all the special adaptations needed to carry out this very important role firstly they have a biconcave disc shape this basically means they look like a jammed own actor that has been squashed in the middle, this gives them a large surface area to absorb oxygen very quickly another adaptation is that they have no nucleus think about it there would be no use in a red blood cell taking up extra space with a large nucleus when it could use that space to carry even more oxygen an amazing adaptation but the best adaptation of all is that they contain the transport protein hemoglobin in the lungs it binds with oxygen to become oxyhemoglobin as the red blood cells travel around the body they release this oxygen from the oxyhemoglobin to the respiring tissues but there is more oxyhemoglobin is also what gives the characteristic red color to the blood cells, you can see that red blood cells are very special cells 

did you know it is one of the world's  biggest killers the malaria parasite invade and destroy blood cells and that's why it's such a serious disease to get and yet although they are so important red blood cells make up just one part of your blood, of course, we've got more lessons for you on the other 

parts a quick question to see if you've 

been paying attention to how much red blood  

cells have your body.