Friday, February 18, 2011

Have A Heart

February is Heart Month, so you’re probably hearing a great deal about what to do to keep your heart healthy. Eat this and not that, exercise more, get more sleep and reduce your stress level. This amazing organ works hard to keep us alive, so let’s take a brief look at what the heart and the rest of the cardiovascular system does for us, and what we can do to keep it running smoothly.

The cardiovascular system consists of the heart, blood vessels, and blood. It nourishes each body cell by transporting nutrients throughout the body. In fact, “cardio” refers to the heart, and “vascular” refers to the blood vessels.

The heart’s function is to pump oxygen-rich blood throughout the blood vessels to every living cell in the body. The human heart is divided into four chambers - two on the right (right atrium and right ventricle) and two on the left (left atrium and left ventricle). Each chamber has a different function and each chamber of the heart has valves that close when the chambers push blood out. The sound of a valve closing is the sound of a “heartbeat”. Over a person’s entire lifespan, the heart must continuously beat by repeated, rhythmic contractions. If the heart stops beating, the body cannot function and will result in death. About the size of a person’s fist and weighing less than one pound, the heart is located between the lungs, slightly to the left side in the center of the chest. Depending on what you read, a healthy human heart beats on average 72 beats per minute, functions as a double muscular pump, pumps almost 2,000 gallons (approx. 7,500 liters) of blood every day, and during an average lifespan of 70 years, the human heart will beat more than two and a half billion times and will have pumped enough blood to fill over 100 full-sized swimming pools!