Look how hard your heart is working for you!
The heart is amazing and does a wonderful job keeping us alive and well, but it is very complex in the way it works using smooth muscle and electrical signals from the brain to pump blood around the body in a coordinated way.
What does the Heart Actually Do?
1. Pumping oxygenated blood into other body parts.
2. Distribute vital substances to different parts of the body.
3. Receiving deoxygenated blood and carrying metabolic waste products from the body and pumping it to the lungs for oxygenation.
4. Maintaining blood pressure.
Here are some interesting facts about the Heart:
1) Your heart beats: – 72 times a minute, 100.000 times a day, 36,000,000 times a year, In a lifetime,
approximately 3 billion times
2) 5% of the blood in your body goes to the heart, 20% to the brain and central nervous system
and 22% to the kidneys
3) 75 trillion cells receive blood pumped from the heart.
4) A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s: Woman: 78 beats per minute & Man: 70 beats per minute.
5) The average heart is the size of a fist in an adult.
6) When the body is at rest, it takes the blood:
– 6 seconds to go from the heart to the lungs and back.
– 8 seconds to go to the brain and back.16 seconds to reach the toes and travel back
7) The heart pumps blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels! Every cell in your body gets
blood from your heart, except for your corneas. Your heart also has its own electrical supply and
will continue to beat when separated from your body.
8) Your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood every day
Due to the complex nature of the Heart, heart disease can lead to many complications leading to unwanted cardiovascular events. Heart Disease can lead to many problems leading to unwanted cardiovascular events like a heart attack and stroke so it Is very important to look after the health of your heart.
Here are some tips to look after your Heart!
1 Take regular physical activity/exercise
2 Try to keep and manage your blood pressure in the normal range
3 Try to keep and manage your weight in the normal BMI range
4 Check/Manage your blood cholesterol & diabetes
5 Have a low-salt diet, & a low-fat Mediterranean diet
6 If you smoke – STOP!
7 Have good quality sleep
8 Have a “Healthy Heart Health Check” every year!
