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Asked by JimRules to Adrian, Gaia, Jim, Scott, Vicky on 10 Mar 2016.
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Adrian Buzatu answered on 10 Mar 2016:
It’s brought by blood. Not just to muscles, but to all the cells in the body. There is a chemical component in the blood that is able to get the oxygen, transport it, release it, get CO2 instead, transport it, release it. This chemical component is damaged when we smoke and thus get CO instead, as once attached to the component, the CO is not released any more.
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Scott Lawrie answered on 10 Mar 2016:
The haemoglobin in your blood carries oxygen all over your body and into your muscles. Your muscles need oxygen to make energy. When you exercise, your body does all kinds of clever things to get more oxygen to the muscles such as increasing the amount of oxygen it takes from the haemoglobin and using up reserves.
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Gaia Andreoletti answered on 10 Mar 2016:
You breathe air in through your nose and mouth. It makes its way into your lungs and dissolves in the water lining of the alveoli. Oxygen then clings to red blood cells as they pass through the alveolar capillaries – now the oxygen is in the blood.
The oxygen molecules undergo a change once they are inside the body. They change from gas molecules, which circulate in the air, to dissolving into a solution within the blood’s plasma located within the capillaries of the alveoli.
Once those dissolved oxygen molecules are in the solution of the blood, 98% of the dissolved oxygen is taken-up by red blood cells which are passing by.
Red cells are great vehicles for transporting the dissolved oxygen. That’s because red blood cells contain a special oxygen-binding protein known as “hemoglobin.”
Each hemoglobin molecule contains something else which is important for transporting oxygen: Four molecules of “heme,” which is an iron-containing pigment capable of binding oxygen loosely and reversibly.
It is the “heme” in hemoglobin which makes it possible for red blood cells, which are passing by, to pick-up oxygen dissolved in the blood and then transport it. Combined with hemoglobin, the dissolved oxygen is then released back into the blood as oxygen in solution.
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