Blood Pressure Change Demonstration

Video Transcript

"Okay so now we want to talk a little bit about how blood pressure changes with activity and how exactly what's going on there. The function of the heart is to deliver blood to the tissues of the body. In that blood there are nutrients and oxygen. When you're exercising you need to deliver more blood to the tissues, because you've now activated tons of muscle fibers that need more oxygen because they're exercising. They're activated vs when they're at rest the muscles aren't activated, they don't have to create energy so they don't need oxygen. So the harder you work the more blood you need, and the more blood you need means the harder the heart has to work. So we're going to use a little demonstration of some cups and a water faucet. The water faucet is going to be the heart itself. The water is the blood, the small cup is the heart or the body at rest. This represents the tissues, and this represents the tissues during exercise. Very simple, and we'll just keep the intensity the same, but you can see if you're working out, the harder you work out the harder your heart has to work. So it has to both contract harder to deliver that blood to the tissues, and it has to contract quicker to deliver that blood to tissues. So next we want to look at, a little bit, at how the role of oxygen, in this process of delivering oxygen molecules, and how that changes with exercise, and why that's important in cardiovascular function."