Ask the doctor: Are some blood vessels more prone to blockages than others?
Ask the doctor
One of the most fascinating examples of this is the aorta, the main artery of the body. It emerges from the heart pointed up toward the head, then arches downward, following the spine. Where the spine gently curves inward near the pelvis, the aorta curves, too, just before it splits into two branches, one for each leg. This curve and split create a region of disturbed blood flow that makes this stretch particularly vulnerable to atherosclerosis. In fact, this is where most abdominal aortic aneurysms form. Think of the curve in a river, and how driftwood or a canoe gets trapped in the eddies on one side while water on the other side scrapes the banks clean — that's like the blood flow in your lower aorta. So standing on two legs gave humans more lower aortic disease in addition to low back pain.
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