Bleeding gums - Why do my gums bleed when I brush my teeth? - Top 10 reasons

Bad oral hygiene

Gums (Gingiva) bleed when irritated and this happens mainly due to poor oral hygiene. A lot of people do not brush their teeth properly and this leads to the accumulation of dental plaque and tartar on teeth.
As a result of this gums become red and irritated, swollen and painful and bleed at the slightest provocation.

Teeth Misalignment, overlapping teeth or overcrowded teeth

Misaligned teeth can be a serious problem since teeth are inaccessible for cleaning and brushing. Due to this, the food is trapped between adjacent teeth, which causes inflammation of the gums.

Inflammation of the gums due to a hard toothbrush

This can happen due to fanatic brushing or use of a hard toothbrush. It is recommended to change the hard with a soft toothbrush every 3 months.

Bleeding gums due to lack of vitamin C

In medicine, this is characterized as a disease and happens when we do not include enough fruits and vegetables in our diet. This leads to swelling, pain, bleeding and bone loss in teeth.

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Read more about: Why do wisdom teeth cause so many problems?

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Bleeding gums due to lack of vitamin K

Vitamin K is an important factor in the blood clotting process of the body. Hence, when it is deficient, the bleeding of the gums increases. The main source of Vitamin K in our body is the intestinal microflora. The use of oral antibiotics which kill the abdominal microflora increases the tendency to bleeding gums.

Hormonal changes in women

Hormonal changes occur at different stages in a woman's life, such as puberty, pregnancy or postmenopausal.
These changes also occur regularly during stressful periods or during the use of oral contraceptive pills. These hormonal changes increase the chances of gingival bleeding.

Gingival bleeding  due to blood disorders

There is a whole range of blood disorders which increases our general tendency to bleeding. This first can be manifested by bleeding from the gums.

It is important to remember - never to ignore bleeding gums, as they could be a sign of some more serious problem.

Medications

Today it is quite common to encounter people living with chronic diseases who need to use drugs regularly. Certain medications such as aspirin, clopidogrel, etc. can cause gingival bleeding.

Bleeding gums due to Liver disease

The liver is the main organ that produces many factors and plays an important part of the coagulation process in our bodies. Any kind of liver disease or chronic alcoholism that disrupts the metabolism of the liver can lead to bleeding gingiva.

Bleeding gums due to cancer

Certain cancers, such as leukemia (blood cancer) or bone cancer can cause gingival bleeding.

Besides the reasons listed above, there can be also many other reasons as tobacco use, stress, radiation therapy, HIV etc., which can cause gingival bleeding.

Blood circulation in human body - What is the function of blood in the human body?

Blood is the fluid necessary for life. 

It flows through the arteries, capillaries and veins of our body, and consists of a liquid part, called plasma, and blood cells that float in the plasma.

Adult body has about 6.5 liters of blood.

The blood is the most perfect transfer system: it brings food and oxygen to each cell, and takes out the unnecessary products, delivers hormones and other substances, helps the body to fight infection and to adapt the body heat.

Types of Blood Cells

There are three types of blood cells.
They are:  Red blood cells, which give the red color to the blood and carry oxygen,
White blood cells, of which there are several types and whose task is to fight infection, and finally,
the blood plates (Platelets) which help the blood to clot, thus preventing excessive bleeding and blood loss from injured blood vessel.

All blood cells are created in the bone marrow. 

If you look at the open bone, you will see in it reddish-gray cavity spongy substance. Under the microscope we can see a network of blood vessels and connective tissue fibers, between which are numerous, large cells, where blood cells are formed.

What is Blood Plasma?

Of the total volume of blood, approximately 55 percent is plasma, a clear, pale yellow fluid.
After a meal, little balls of fat float in the plasma and it gets dairy look. Therefore, we should not eat before taking blood for examination.

Plasma is like a river that carries substances important for our life, digested nutrients from the walls of the small intestines to the body tissues, and also unnecessary substances from the tissues to the kidneys.

But this is only one part of the work, which is conducted by the plasma.

Plasma also conveys antibodies that create resistance to disease, hormones that regulate various functions of the body and part of the carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs.
Plasma contains several hundred different substances.

In addition to these substances, plasma also contains water - about 91 percent, proteins - 7 percent and mineral salt - 0.9 percent. Salts and proteins are very important for maintaining the necessary balance between the water in the tissues and blood. Mineral salts in plasma also perform other functions of vital importance.
The plasma obtains mineral salts from the food that we enter into the body.

Q&A

What do Red Blood cells do?

Red blood cells give the red color to the blood and carry oxygen

What do White Blood cells do?

There are several types of White Blood cells, and their main task is to fight infection

What do platelets do?

Blood plates (Platelets) help the blood to clot, thus preventing excessive bleeding and blood loss from injured blood vessel.

Can you eat before a blood test?

After a meal, little balls of fat float in the plasma and it gets dairy look. Therefore, we should not eat before taking blood for examination.

What are arteries, veins and capillaries - Human body for kids

Even in the most developed countries in the world, we can’t find a transport system, whose performance is comparable to the efficiency of the blood system in the human body.
Great “roads” and “highways” connect all kinds of big "cities", and food and other necessary supplies are delivered to them.

Such large pathways in the body are the arteries - vessels that carry blood from the heart and veins through which the blood returns to the heart.

However, in the “small towns” and “villages” there is also need for food and supplies. Small roads and streets (the capillaries) reach to the villages and houses in the human body, even to the smallest stations.

Circulatory system (Source: Wikipedia)

What are Arteries?

The arteries lie deep in the tissues, except in the area of the wrist, on the upper side of the foot, at the temples and on the sides of the neck.
From any of these places, we can feel the pulse, which is very important for the doctors.
Major arteries have valves at the places from where they come out from the heart.
These vessels are built from many elastic fibers and muscles that can expand and contract.
Arterial blood is bright red and moves through the arteries in waves.

What are Veins?

Veins lie near the surface of the skin and blood in them is darker and moves smoothly: they have valves at certain distances along their whole length.
Far from the heart, into all parts of the body, large blood vessels become tiny, thin as hairs, and there are called capillaries.

What are Capillaries?

Capillary is 50 times thinner than the thinnest of human hairs!
It is so thin that blood cells pass through the capillaries just one after the other, which means that the blood passes through the capillaries very slowly.
What happens when blood flows through a capillary? 
Blood leaves the capillary, but the capillary wall is thin and consists of a single layer of cells. Through the wall of the blood gives up its oxygen to the surrounding tissues, and on return it receives carbon dioxide which is released from the tissues around the capillaries. At the same time, the blood exchanges other substances that provide food to the tissue, and “unnecessary” products enter into the capillary.

Interesting facts about the human heart

• Adult heart is the size of a fist, and weighs about 300 grams, yet it for 24 hours can produce energy sufficient to lift about 70 tons (or one locomotive) to 33 centimeters above the ground!
• During the day, the heart tightens and relaxes approximately 100,000 times.
• The heart of adult men in 24 hours, can pump 16.5 liters of blood.

How can you find out what your blood type is?

All people do not have the same blood. It was only recently discovered, and until then, the blood, in emergency was given by immediate transfusion regardless of the so-called blood type.
This is why half of the patients were worse and many of them died.
To determine the blood groups, are needed the red blood cells of the donor and recipient's blood serum. Serum is one part of blood plasma.

What happens if we mix different blood groups?

If one drop of blood from one type is mixed with blood or serum from other blood type, red blood cells are glued to each other and this is called agglutination. In that case, the red blood cells usually fall apart and cause hemolysis of the blood.
This is why it is important to determine blood groups.

Using agglutination tests, it is showed that the people have four blood types: O, A, B and AB.

Red blood cells of O do not agglutinate with the serum of any group.
In other words, the blood group O can be given to anyone for the purposes of transfusion, regardless of their blood type.

That's why people with a group O are known as general blood donors.
In the group AB the serum does not agglutinate the red blood cells of any group, so that people with this blood type can receive blood of any group.

These are called “common” recipients of blood.

We all inherit our blood type, and we can’t change it in the course of our life.
An interesting observation is that across the planet there is a certain scheme of blood groups. From west toward east Europe the number of people with blood group A declines, while the number of people who have group B rises.
In England, 43 percent of people have group A, and 30 percent of the Russia, and Iran, only 15 percent.

How Does The Circulatory System Work?

Simply stated, the blood circulates because it is pushed by the hearth like a pump. 

Arteries and veins are tubes through which the blood is delivered. 

Blood flows and transports air from the lungs and nutrients from the digestive organs to other parts of the body and takes out carbon dioxide and other unnecessary substances from the tissues.

Blood Vessels

Blood vessels are actually two pipe systems, one of which is large and the other small.
We call them big and small circulation.
Both are connected with the heart, “the pump”, but these two systems are not connected.
Small blood stream leads from the heart to the lungs and back, and a large from the heart goes out to the various parts of the body and back again to the heart.

The three types of blood vessels are called arteries, veins and capillaries. 

Arteries take the blood out of the heart, and veins return it back there. Capillaries are the network of small blood vessels, which connect the arterial and venous circulation.

How the heart works ?

The hearth is comparable to a double floor building.
To the first floor correspond the right and left pre-chambers (left and right atrium), and the ground floors are the right and left ventricles (chambers).

There are "doors", called valves, between the floors on each side (house), but none between the two "houses".
Also, there are exit doors of both ventricles which lead to the arteries and entrance doors leading from the veins in the atriums.
In a healthy heart all the door close perfectly, because the blood, once pushed out of the heart, may not return the same hole.
Valves open and close with each heartbeat.
If we follow the path of blood through the entire body, we can note the following: the blood with oxygen from the lungs comes to the left atrium - " the floor". From there passes into the left ventricle “the ground floor", and then into a large artery called the aorta.
The aorta with its branches drains the blood to all organs and body parts.

Blood passes through the capillaries trough the smallest arteries and veins. From there it flows into larger and larger veins, and from the intestines, spleen and stomach first passes through the liver, and finally, all blood is collected in the right atrium of the heart.
From there, it goes into the right chamber, and then to the arteries leading to the lungs.

There, it releases the carbon dioxide and certain parts of water, and instead takes oxygen. Then it is ready to return to the left pre-chamber and the whole process starts over again.

Interesting facts about the human heart

• Adult heart is the size of a fist, and weighs about 300 grams, yet it for 24 hours can produce energy sufficient to lift about 70 tons (or one locomotive) to 33 centimeters above the ground!

• During the day, the heart tightens and relaxes approximately 100,000 times. 

• The heart of adult men in 24 hours, can pump 16.5 liters of blood.

Red Blood Cell Diseases

One of the most common blood diseases worldwide is anemia, which is characterized by an abnormally low number of red blood cells or low levels of hemoglobin. One of the major symptoms of anemia is fatigue, due to the failure of the blood to carry enough oxygen to all of the tissues.

The most common type of anemia, iron-deficiency anemia, occurs because the marrow fails to produce sufficient red blood cells. When insufficient iron is available to the bone marrow, it slows down its production of hemoglobin and red blood cells.
In the United States, iron deficiency occurs most commonly due to poor nutrition.
In other areas of the world, however, the most common causes of iron-deficiency anemia are certain infections that result in gastrointestinal blood loss and the consequent chronic loss of iron.
Adding supplemental iron to the diet is often sufficient to cure iron-deficiency anemia.

Some anemias are the result of increased destruction of red blood cells, as in the case of sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disease most common in persons of African ancestry.
The red blood cells of sickle-cell patients assume an unusual crescent shape, causing them to become trapped in some blood vessels, blocking the flow of other blood cells to tissues and depriving them of oxygen.

Where are white blood cells produced?

Blood is produced in the bone marrow, a tissue in the central cavity inside almost all of the bones in the body. In infants, the marrow in most of the bones is actively involved in blood cell formation. By later adult life, active blood cell formation gradually ceases in the bones of the arms and legs and concentrates in the skull, spine, ribs, and pelvis.
White blood cells, Red blood cells and platelets grow from a single precursor cell, known as a hematopoietic stem cell. Remarkably, experiments have suggested that as few as 10 stem cells can, in four weeks, multiply into 30 trillion red blood cells, 30 billion white blood cells, and 1.2 trillion platelets—enough to replace every blood cell in the body.
The majority of white blood cells have a relatively short life span. They may survive only 18 to 36 hours after being released from the marrow. However, some of the white blood cells are responsible for maintaining what is called immunologic memory. These memory cells retain knowledge of what infectious organisms the body has previously been exposed to. If one of those organisms returns, the memory cells initiate an extremely rapid response designed to kill the foreign invader. Memory cells may live for years or even decades before dying.

Memory cells make immunizations possible. An immunization, also called a vaccination or an inoculation, is a method of using a vaccine to make the human body immune to certain diseases. A vaccine consists of an infectious agent that has been weakened or killed in the laboratory so that it cannot produce disease when injected into a person, but can spark the immune system to generate memory cells and antibodies specific for the infectious agent. If the infectious agent should ever invade that vaccinated person in the future, these memory cells will direct the cells of the immune system to target the invader before it has the opportunity to cause harm.
Platelets have a life span of seven to ten days in the blood. They either participate in clot formation during that time or, when they have reached the end of their lifetime, are eliminated by the spleen and, to a lesser extent, by the liver.

Where are Red Blood Cells Produced?

Blood is produced in the bone marrow, a tissue in the central cavity inside almost all of the bones in the body.
In infants, the marrow in most of the bones is actively involved in blood cell formation.
By later adult life, active blood cell formation gradually ceases in the bones of the arms and legs and concentrates in the skull, spine, ribs, and pelvis.
Red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets grow from a single precursor cell, known as a hematopoietic stem cell. Remarkably, experiments have suggested that as few as 10 stem cells can, in four weeks, multiply into 30 trillion red blood cells, 30 billion white blood cells, and 1.2 trillion platelets—enough to replace every blood cell in the body.
Red blood cells have the longest average life span of any of the cellular elements of blood.
A red blood cell lives 100 to 120 days after being released from the marrow into the blood.
Over that period of time, red blood cells gradually age.

Spent cells are removed by the spleen and, to a lesser extent, by the liver. The spleen and the liver also remove any red blood cells that become damaged, regardless of their age.
The body efficiently recycles many components of the damaged cells, including parts of the hemoglobin molecule, especially the iron contained within it.

What is the Function of Blood Plasma?

What is Blood Plasma?

Plasma consists predominantly of water and salts. The kidneys carefully maintain the salt concentration in plasma because small changes in its concentration will cause cells in the body to function improperly.
In extreme conditions this can result in seizures, coma, or even death.
The pH of plasma, the common measurement of the plasma’s acidity, is also carefully controlled by the kidneys within the neutral range of 6.8 to 7.7. Plasma also contains other small molecules, including vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and waste products.
The concentrations of all of these molecules must be carefully regulated.

Plasma is usually yellow in color due to proteins dissolved in it. However, after a person eats a fatty meal, that person’s plasma temporarily develops a milky color as the blood carries the ingested fats from the intestines to other organs of the body.

Plasma carries a large number of important proteins, including albumin, gamma globulin, and clotting factors.
Albumin is the main protein in blood. It helps regulate the water content of tissues and blood. Gamma globulin is composed of tens of thousands of unique antibody molecules. Antibodies neutralize or help destroy infectious organisms.
Each antibody is designed to target one specific invading organism. For example, chicken pox antibody will target chicken pox virus, but will leave an influenza virus unharmed.
Clotting factors, such as fibrinogen, are involved in forming blood clots that seal leaks after an injury. Plasma that has had the clotting factors removed is called serum.
Both serum and plasma are easy to store and have many medical uses.

What are white blood cells and what is their function in the human body?

White blood cells are almost 900 times less than the red blood cells, there are several types of it, whose primary task is to fight infection.
Small red cells are much more numerous in the blood and give it its color. But white blood cells also play an important role. White blood cells are also called leukocytes.
The most numerous white blood cells are granulocytes.
These cells go in and out in the blood at the point where germs are collected or where is injured tissue. Some of them, which we call Neutrophils, take the bacteria within and destroy them. Leukocytes produce substances that soften and digest dead tissue and produce pus.
Other white blood cells are called lymphocytes.
Their number is often increased when the body for a longer time is exposed to an infection. They are an integral part of the mechanized body, and as we can see, their role is very important.
The third type of white blood cells are Monocytes.
These cells, together with other cells in tissues, have the ability to accept parts of dead matter.  They can also surround some substance such as dust, and prevent it to come into contact with healthy tissue cells.
Although the white blood cells are needed by the body, it is not so good when there are too many.

 

Basophil White Blood Cells

 

Eosinophil White Blood Cells

 

Lymphocytes White Blood Cells

 

Monocyte White Blood Cells

 

Neutrophil White Blood Cells

Images: Blausen.com staff. "Blausen gallery 2014". Wikiversity Journal of Medicine. DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 20018762. (Own work) 

What are red blood cells - what do red blood cells do?

What are red blood cells?

Red blood cells (also called erythrocytes) provide a blood red color. There are so many red blood cells in the blood (about 25 billion) which makes them responsible for the red color of the blood.
These tiny, round and flattened discs, all at the same time circulate through our bodies and are always found in the blood vessels.
It is almost impossible to imagine such a large number, but this may help you to understand it:
Each blood cell is so small that it can be seen only under a microscope.
If we can connect these microscopic cells into a series, than we could encircle the globe four times!
However, during blood tests, only blood cells from one spatial millimeter of blood are counted, not from the whole body.
Although these cells are very small, together they cover a huge area.
For example, if you have woven them into the carpet, its total area would amount to 4,500 square meters. Given that at any moment one-fourth of blood is in the lungs, an area of about 1,100 square meters of red blood cells is constantly exposed to the air.

What do red blood cells do?

When in the bone marrow, a red blood cell grows and becomes mature, it loses its nucleus and contains more hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin is red pigment or color and it contains iron in combination with proteins.
When blood passes through the lungs, oxygen binds to the hemoglobin of red blood cells.
Red blood cells carry oxygen through the arteries and capillaries to all cells of the body.
Carbon dioxide from the cells of the body goes through the veins to the lungs in the same way, usually combined with hemoglobin.

From where originate these blood cells? 

Apparently, the "factory" in which is created such enormous amount of cells “the bone marrow” must have such amazing productivity - especially when we take into account that, sooner or later, each of these cells dissolves and it is replaced by a new one!
Red blood cells live only about four months and then fall apart, mostly in the spleen.
Human bone marrow is adapted to their need for oxygen.
At high altitudes it produces more red blood cells, and at low altitudes less. People who live on mountain tops may have nearly double the number of red blood cells than people who live on the coast!
The number and size of red blood cells, in a human being depends on one's need for oxygen.
Worms do not have blood cells.
Cold-blooded animals - reptiles – are have relatively large and numerous blood cells in their blood.
Small, warm-blooded animals, which live in mountainous areas, have the highest number of red blood cells.