Human heart - something you surely cannot survive without!
From the immemorial times personalities had a pretty good idea that human heart is such an important source of life, no person could live without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something absolutely dear and necessary for the very survival of any person. That is probably why our discourse is full of sentences mentioning the heart.
People used to consider that the power of any personality is in the heart. Some communities were certain human soul is fidden in the heart, others we certain every wish, either kind or evil, is born in the heart, that is why they guessed that a bad individual has a black heart beating in the chest!
“You are my heart” - so we say about the most important person in our life. The man or woman able of enchanting everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something bad happens to our beloved ones we always convince them not “to take it all to heart”. A cruel and indifferent man or woman is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys meals we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. No doubt you can enlarge this list with your own examples demonstrating how important is the heart for people!
These days having every part of knowledge up-to-date science provides us with we do realize that the heart is nothing but an organ, but it keeps counting throbs in ecstasy when we are happy and continues crying when we have nasty periods of our lives. Who knows, maybe that is the reason why any failures in the work of human hearts are responsible for 25% of the total deaths all over the world! Let us learn general tips about the heart to recognize the first symptoms of any heart trouble and to be able to keep your unique biological engine safe and sound!
Your heart just as hearts of all animals, is a hollow muscular organ of the body’s circulatory system. It keeps pumping blood throughout the veins. Its non-stop rhythmic contractions pump as much as 5-6 liters of blood every minute, about 360 liters of blood every hour and 8 000 - 10 000 liters of blood daily! Normal contraction rate of any healthy adult man or woman is about 60-80 a minute, i.e. about 4 500 contractions an hour or 100 000 - 108 000 daily! Sounds unbelivable, doesn’t it! MDs ofter refer heart troubles to cardiac affairs. The point is term cardiac comes from the Greek “kardia” meaning “related to the heart”. Our hearts are very complicated. Normal work of the heart and numerous heart trouble called cardiopathies are carefully studied by cardiology.
Human heart is divided into four chambers. The two upper chambers are called the left and right atria, while the two lower chambers are called the right and left ventricles. Sometimes medical people speak about the right heart (right atrium and right ventricle together) and the left heart (the left atrium and left ventricle together).
In the majority of cases human heart is as large as a fist, it takes up the major part of the chest, it is slightly shifted to the left and it weighs as much as 250 and 350 grams.
We have already mentioned it above that, the main function of the heart is pumping blood, but this activity is a very complicated affair! The heart always pushes our blood in one direction. It flows from the atria to the ventricles and moves on through arteries. Powerful triscupid, mitral, aortic and pulmonary valves in the heart prevent the blood from getting backwards. It is extremely important because the heart at the same time sends de-oxygenated blood towards the lungs and oxygenated blood to every system and organ of our body!
The right heart is responsible for gathering de-oxygenated blood in its atrium and sending it through the ventricle straight into the lungs, where carbon dioxide is dropped off (when we breathe out) and oxygen picked up (when we inhale). This happens with the help of red blood cells taking part in the process of diffusion.
The left heart is responsible for gathering oxygenated blood from the lungs in its atrium and moving it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you have already guessed, a much greater force is needed to pump the blood through the large systemic circulation. that is exactly why the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is much thicker than that of the right ventricle moving the blood directly into the lungs.
The main part of individuals recklessly think their unique biological motor will always be there for them and they never do a thing to help it. As some cardiologists say, you have a healthy heart if it never reminds you of the fact it is there, in your chest and keeps working 24/7. It is a pity, people start thinking about the heart only when it fails them for the first time when it is to late to prevent a disaster.
Are you aware of the fact what habits, ways of life and behavior ruin your unique biological motor? First of all, stressful jobs and family relations make your heart tick at a dangerous speed. Lack of sleep and leisure, a stream of vicious emotions and the feeling of helplessness make the situation worse. Bad ecology, irregular recreations give some strain to your heart, too. Junk and fast food, irregular meals and wrong diets do not provide your heart with elements important for its flawless functioning. Lack of physical exercise make your heart muscles weaker, as a result your engine is not always able of managing extra strain. Try not to forget that extra heavy physical activity constantly forces your heart to work at the top of its abilities making it wear out.
Any health problems you ever experienced or have now affect your heart, too. To guarantee your soon recovery your tireless ticker doubles and triples its efforts and keeps pushing blood through your vessels when you have a fever, when you are intoxicated or when you have to struggle with some infection! Excess weight, hypertension, and high cholesterol greatly increase the risk of developing a heart trouble, too.
To help your heart remain healthy:
- avoid mental stress and strain;
- try to obtain stable position in life;
- think positive, be optimistic, avoid overreacting;
- walk a lot, go in for some sport;
- choose a well-balanced diet;
- control your body weight and blood pressure.
Please, see your doctor without any delay if:
- you feel your heart working in your chest;
- you are short of breath without considerable physical activity;
- you have trouble breathing (blood may back up into the lungs);
- you have pain in the chest (meaning the heart muscle is not getting enough blood flow);
- your heart feels unusually big;
- your legs and feet swell (blood is backing up from in the lower body);
- you feel weak (the body and brain do not get enough blood to supply them with oxygen);
- your skin and lips turn blue (too little oxygen is in the bloodstream to supply the cells in the body);
- your heart beats irregularly (palpitations).
Those could be the premonitory signs of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a general term for a wide range of problems with the heart. Physicians use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart disease means that the biological engine does not work normally.
The short classification of heart troubles consist of congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart problems a baby is born with. Acquired heart diseases are those problems that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The majority of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists warn there are three common kinds of acquired heart diseases:
1. The problem with the blood vessels carrying blood to the heart muscle - so called Coronary Artery Disease. The blood vessels in question get thinner, some of them can be blocked, that is why blood cannot get through them at normal speed, eventually the heart muscle cannot work as it should, it becomes weak and thin. In the most difficult cases the blood flow stops altogether and the heart muscle dies. Coronary Artery Disease is believed to be hereditary, but it shows itself if a man smokes or drinks too much alcohol, has a history of diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.
2. When the heart cannot pump blood at normal levels we face Congestive Heart Failure. In some cases the valves of the heart do not let through enough blood because they are too thin. They may as well let some blood get backwards in the wrong direction, i.e. inside the heart. Forced to do additional work, the heart gets tired or fatigued and its muscle becomes too worn out to cope with any serious strain.
3. The problem with electrical activity in the heart is known as Bad Heart Rhythms. The heart can beat too fast or too slow without any plausible reason. The trouble is our heart can pump the blood well only if it enjoys normal rhythm. Otherwise this task becomes next to impossible. With the fast rhythm the heart does not have enough time to let the right amount of blood into the chambers, as a result the engine pumps too little blood with each beat. With the slow rhythm the heart does not make enough contractions to supply the body with the proper quantity of blood. Extremely bad heart rhythms can prevent the heart from pumping any blood at all.
The irony is that your tireless engine can become the cause of your immediate death! But in reality the things are not as bad as that! Every day contemporary pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of persons suffering from different heart troubles.
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