Why do bleeding wounds heal on their own?

Author: Fei Dao Duan Yu

You must have had the experience of bleeding after being injured, right? If you accidentally cut your finger, a lot of blood will flow out. However, this kind of bleeding will often stop on its own very quickly. You may know that this is the credit of platelets. How do platelets work specifically?

This requires understanding the human blood circulation system. There are countless blood vessels in the human body, and blood flows rapidly in the blood vessels. Every part of the body needs blood to transport nutrients. When we are injured, the blood vessels are damaged and blood will leak out of the blood vessels. Blood is very important, and the body cannot allow it to leak too much, so it launches many plans to prevent blood from continuing to leak out.

First, the broken blood vessels will shrink and become thinner. If the wound on the blood vessel is small, the blood vessel shrinks and closes the wound directly. If the wound is large and cannot be completely closed, the blood vessel shrinks and becomes thinner to make the wound smaller first. At the same time, the blood flow in the thinned blood vessels will also slow down, so that the bleeding will naturally be slower.

In addition to reducing bleeding, blood vessels can also repair wounds themselves. This is when cells such as platelets come into play. These cells are small, but there are many of them. Platelets usually stay in the blood and do nothing, they just run around with the blood flow. The inside of the blood vessels is usually very smooth, but now it is broken and not smooth. When the platelets flow with the blood, they will be attracted by the rough area and stick to it. After a platelet is stuck, more platelets will be retained. In this way, the broken blood vessel will slowly be blocked by a large group of platelets, and blood will not leak out.

However, the platelets that block the wound are like a pile of bricks, which are very unstable. In order to prevent the wound in the blood vessel from breaking again, the body will extract some special proteins from the blood. These proteins are like ropes that can firmly fix the platelets together, so that the wound is completely healed.

This is the secret of why the bleeding stops on its own.