What is angiogenesis?

Angiogenesis is the process in which the body grows blood vessels. William Li, MD explains why this process is so important to your overall health.

Transcript

00:00

So we call this the Goldilocks principle. Just like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," if the porridge is too hot or too cold, you have a problem.

00:09

You want it to be just right. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:17

Angiogenesis is the process our bodies use to grow blood vessels. It's actually a critical process because every cell and organ

00:26

in our body needs to have oxygen. And that's what blood vessels do. They bring the oxygen that we breathe in, and they deliver it to all of our cells

00:34

so we can stay alive and healthy. The process of blood vessel growth is really important because the average human body has 60,000

00:42

miles worth of blood vessels. That's so extensive that if you were to pull them out of the body, the blood vessels would

00:48

line up and form a thread that would encircle the Earth twice. Now, the smallest blood vessels are actually called capillaries.

00:55

These are finer than a single human hair. So if you've ever tried to look at a comb or a brush for a hair, there are 19 billion of those tiny little feeder

01:05

blood vessels that are in our body. So what angiogenesis is is a process of growing these feeder blood vessels to keep us alive.

01:14

Now what we've discovered is that this is a defense system in the body that allows us to stay healthy,

01:21

meaning that when we have just the right number of blood vessels, not too many and not too few, then the just right amount of blood vessels

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allows us to grow up, be healthy, develop our brains, go on to live healthy lives all the way through old age.

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On the other hand, when there are problems in balancing angiogenesis, we have either too many blood vessels or not enough.

01:46

So we call this the Goldilocks principle. Just like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," if you have-- if the porridge is too hot or too cold, you have a problem.

01:55

You want it to be just right. And when the angiogenesis system is either too many or too few,

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what winds up happening is that it causes chaos in the body. Too many blood vessels can bleed, destroy tissues,

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feed cancers, feed cells that cause fat to grow and cause obesity.

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Too few blood vessels and tissues won't survive, and they'll die. And so the important implication of angiogenesis

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is that this is a common denominator in not only health, but it's also a common denominator in disease.