What stops you from having excessive bleeding or blood loss? Coagulation. Coagulation is accomplished by way of platelets and clotting factors. This blurb explains what clotting factors are, how these factors help stop your bleeding and what can have an affect on them.
Clotting factors, aka coagulation factors, are substances that circulate in your blood in an inactive form. There are 13 different ones, each referenced by a Roman numeral. So your blood contains clotting factor I through factor XIII. When a blood vessel is injured, each coagulation factor is chemically activated in a specific order.
The orderly activation of clotting factors results in the formation of a fibrin. Fibrin forms a mesh over the vessel injury to hold a sticky platelet clot that plugs the hole. As a result of these two coagulation processes working together, vessel bleeding can be controlled in a relatively short time.
Anything that has an affect on either of these factors involved in coagulation can cause blood clotting or bleeding problems. Hemophilia is an inherited health condition marked by a deficiency of certain clotting factors, thus causing an issue with fibrin mesh creation for coagulation and bleeding continues for longer. And although von Willebrand disease is considered a platelet related disorder, it also influences the level of clotting factor VIII as well.
In addition, there are other circumstances that can have some sort of affect on the effectiveness of your coagulation factors, like:
- stress
- snake venom
- inflammation
- vitamin K deficiency
- liver function problems
- bone marrow disorders
- anticoagulant drugs ~ warfarin
If you suffer from a clotting factor deficiency, it can be identified and bolstered (e.g. plasma transfusion) to help prevent excessive bleeding.