Blood

 So if I didn't scare you off by the title of the post and by my handy-dandy iPhone photo then you are in for some fun facts!

First of all, you should know, that is MY blood in the cuvette shown above. In fact, from the bottom to the top of the yellow-clearish looking fluid you are looking at my blood.

The bottom portion is the formed elements of my blood. This includes all of the "heavier pieces of the blood". So that would be the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets(or little pieces of blood cells that are no longer whole cells). The yellowish colored fluid is my blood plasma. You have this too(actually you have all of these parts in your blood). But the yellow portions is basically the liquid portion of blood.

You may be wondering how I was able to get my blood in this cuvette and separate it out as I have. The short answer is in my anatomy and physiology class. Last night I had my first lab portion of the class for the quarter. We pricked our own fingers and drew our own blood and did a number of tests on it.

Since you are dying to know I have O negative blood type(more on blood types to follow in a different post).

In this picture you have illustrated for you a simple way to determine your hematocrit level. You literally draw blood in a cuvette as shown above. Then you put it in a machine called a centrifuge... this is similar to a ride you may have been on at the local fair where it spins you around and around and gravity pulls you against the wall as you spin(remember that Patch?)... this just spins all of the heavier parts to the bottom. You could also just hit the cuvette against a hard surface for a long time until it separates that way. The centrifuge is faster. 

What is hematocrit you ask? It is the percentage of formed elements(the actual cell parts of blood) divided by the total volume of blood.

amount of formed elements       x 100

amount of liquid

This is important because it helps indicate a number of health risks...If you have elevated hematocrit levels you might have an infection or if you have lower levels you might be hemorrhaging somewhere in your body. A normal range for most people is in between 38% and 46%. In men it is generally closer to 45% and women it is closer to 40%. A lot of factors influence this but one main factor is monthly menses of woman(in layman's terms- a girl's period).  

We also measured the amount of hemoglobin in our blood. That was cool!

More on this stuff later.  Just trying to be better at updating.  Eventually I'll relate this stuff to nutrition... for now just the raw facts. :)