The Circulatory System

The heart is a muscle that pumps blood through your lungs, your brain and the rest of your body. The blood circulates around the body to transport nutrients and fuel / energy to the cells while removing waste products – this is called “the circulatory system”.

There are two halves of the heart – the right and the left side. The used blood from the body returns to the right side of the heart through the reflux veins – they are also called “veins”.

From here, the blood is pumped out into the lungs through the pulmonary artery, where it is oxygenated with oxygen from the air we get into the lungs with each breath. The fresh, oxygenated, blood returns to the left side of the heart, first to the left atrium and then to the left ventricle, from where it is pumped out through the arteries (“aorta”, and then finer and finer branches) to all the tissues in the body.