Take a deep breath. Oxygen in the air you just breathed entered your lungs, passed into the tiny blood vessels that line them, and then went on a wild ride through the creeks, rivers, and cascades of your bloodstream. Thanks to your rich network of blood vessels, oxygen gets carried to every cell in every corner of your body. Once delivered to a cell, oxygen heads for the mitochondria, where it slurps up the electrons coming off the end of the energy-production assembly line. Mitochondria need oxygen to generate cellular energy, and humans need a constant supply of that energy to survive. That's why people die within a few minutes if deprived of oxygen.
Springer Milan / 978-88-470-0288-3 (Print) 978-88-470-0351-4 (Online)Anaesthesia, Pain, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine — A.P.I.C.E. Proceedings of the 19th Postgraduate Course in Critical Care Medicine Trieste, Italy — November 12–15, 2004 J. Creteur2
(2) Department of Intensive Care, Erasme University Hospital, Free University of Brussels, Belgium
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Charles L. Webber, Jr., Ph.D.