The effect of this energy loss is to progressively dampen the wave on its way down through the network hierarchy until it eventually loses its pulsatile character and turns into a steady flow. In other words, the nature of the flow makes a transition from being pulsatile in the larger vessels to being steady in the smaller ones. That’s why you feel a pulse only in your main arteries—there’s almost no vestige of it in your smaller vessels. In the language of electrical transmission, the nature of the blood flow changes from being AC to DC as it progresses down through the network.
