The average adult has about 4.5 to 5.5 liters of blood circulating within their body. To distribute it, the heart beats at a rate of 70 times per minute. In each of these dilations and contractions, the heart muscle pumps 90 milliliters of blood, which travel through the body in just one minute at a speed of two kilometers per hour. In the event of an accident, bleeding of up to 10% of the vital fluid can be tolerated. Losing 30% of blood volume is dangerous, and when 50% escapes, we are facing certain death.
If it had no blood, a body would weigh 8-10% less. (Of course, you wouldn’t be alive either.) Thus, in a person weighing 54 kilograms, the blood occupies about 4.4 to 5.4 kg. Curious, right?
In the smallest
Regarding the smallest, when children are 5 or 6 years old, they have approximately the same amount of blood as adults, but because children are smaller and their bones, muscles and organs do not weigh as much, their blood represents a higher percentage of their body weight than in adults.
In comparison, newborns have hardly any blood. A newborn baby weighing between 2.3 and 3.6 kg) has only 0.2 liters of blood in his body. This is about the same amount of blood that a cat can have in its body. Dogs have slightly more blood (around 86 milliliters per kilogram, compared to around 55 milliliters per kilogram in cats), which means that if a dog weighs 36 kg, it has about 3 liters of blood in its body .
Blood donations
When adults donate blood, healthcare workers draw approximately half a liter of blood from each donor. Let’s remember that blood cells have a lifespan of about 120 days, and the body constantly produces new red blood cells in the bone marrow, but it still takes time to regenerate these cells, so it is not possible to donate blood every day. You have to wait for the blood to recover and this usually takes between four and six weeks.
In adults, the blood contains approximately 3 liters of plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Vitamins, electrolytes, and other nutrients dissolve in the blood and are transported to the cells and organs of the body.
Nutrients
As a curiosity, gold makes up approximately 0.02% of human blood . Iron, on the other hand, is much more abundant in the blood. This element helps red blood cells maintain their circular shape, which explains why we adults have around 3 to 4 grams of iron floating in our blood.
In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km and the heart pumps around 1 million barrels of blood during an average life , which is enough to fill more than three super tanks.
