12 Facts About Interstitial fluid

Extracellular Interstitial fluid is the internal environment of all multicellular animals, and in those animals with a blood circulatory system, a proportion of this Interstitial fluid is blood plasma.

Main component of the extracellular fluid is the interstitial fluid, or tissue fluid, which surrounds the cells in the body.

Interstitial fluid is the body fluid between blood vessels and cells, containing nutrients from capillaries by diffusion and holding waste products discharged by cells due to metabolism.

Plasma and interstitial fluid are very similar because water, ions, and small solutes are continuously exchanged between them across the walls of capillaries, through pores and capillary clefts.

The composition of interstitial fluid depends upon the exchanges between the cells in the biological tissue and the blood.

Once the extracellular Interstitial fluid collects into small vessels it is considered to be lymph, and the vessels that carry it back to the blood are called the lymphatic vessels.

Transcellular Interstitial fluid is formed from the transport activities of cells, and is the smallest component of extracellular Interstitial fluid.

Some electrolytes present in the transcellular Interstitial fluid are sodium ions, chloride ions, and bicarbonate ions.

Extracellular Interstitial fluid provides the medium for the exchange of substances between the ECF and the cells, and this can take place through dissolving, mixing and transporting in the Interstitial fluid medium.

One of the main roles of extracellular Interstitial fluid is to facilitate the exchange of molecular oxygen from blood to tissue cells and for carbon dioxide, CO2, produced in cell mitochondria, back to the blood.

Extracellular Interstitial fluid is constantly "stirred" by the circulatory system, which ensures that the watery environment which bathes the body's cells is virtually identical throughout the body.

Since the capillary Interstitial fluid is constantly and rapidly renewed by the flow of the blood, its composition dominates the equilibrium concentration that is achieved in the capillary bed.