Human heart - the part of your body you certainly cannot exist without!
From the old times individuals understood that human heart is such an important focus of life, no individual could exists without it. From those times the heart is a symbol of something entirely vital and necessary for the very survival of any man. That is probably why our communication is full of word-combinations mentioning the heart.
Men and women used to think that the power of any personality is in the heart. Some tribes were certain human soul resides in the heart, others we certain every thought, either kind or cruel, is born in the heart, that is why they were certain that a bad person has a black heart beating in the chest!
“You are my heart” - so we say about the most important personality in our life. The person able of fascinating everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something disappointing happens to our beloved ones we always try to persuade them not “to take it all to heart”. A brutal and indifferent individual is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys meals we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. Doubtlessly you can enlarge this list with your own examples demonstrating how important is the heart for human beings!
Now 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 elation when we are happy and continues crying when we have dark periods of our lives. Who knows, maybe that is the reason why any failures in the work of human hearts are responsible for the quarter of the total deaths all over the world! Let us learn important information about the heart to decipher the first symptoms of any heart problem and to be able to keep your unique biological motor intact!
Human 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 permanent 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 shocking, doesn’t it! Docs ofter refer heart troubles to cardiac affairs. The point is word cardiac comes from the Greek “kardia” meaning “related to the heart”. Our hearts are very complicated. Normal functioning of the heart and various heart trouble called cardiopathies are thoroughly studied by cardiology.
The 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 doctors 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 your 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 basic function of the heart is pumping blood, but this job is a very complicated affair! The heart always pumps our blood in one direction. It gets from the atria to the ventricles and moves on through arteries. Powerful triscupid, mitral, aortic and pulmonary valves in the heart keep the blood from flowing backwards. It is vital because the heart at the same time moves 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 pushing 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 occurs with the help of erythrocytes taking part in the process of diffusion.
The left heart is responsible for collecting oxygenated blood from the lungs in its atrium and pushing it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you can see, a much greater might is needed to send the blood through the large systemic circulation. That explains why the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is considerable thicker than that of the right ventricle pumping the blood directly into the lungs.
The majority of people irresponsibly think their personal biological engine will always serve them and they never do a thing to help it. As some cardiologists state, you have a healthy heart if it never reminds you of the fact it is there, in your chest and keeps working 24/7. Sorry to say, men and women start thinking about the heart only when it fails them for the first time when it is to late to prevent a problem.
Are you aware of the fact what habits, ways of life and behavior damage your unique biological engine? First of all, stressful jobs and family scandals make your heart beat at a crazy speed. Lack of sleep and relaxation, a stream of dark emotions and the feeling of helplessness make the situation worse. Bad ecology, scanty recreations add 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 ticker is not always able of managing extra strain. Bear in mind that backbreaking physical activity permanently forces your heart to work at the top of its abilities making it wear out.
Any health problems you ever survived or have now affect your heart, too. To guarantee your soon recovery your tireless motor 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! Obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol greatly increase the risk of getting a heart problem, too.
To help your heart be 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, make an appointment with your MD at once 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 first symptoms of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a umbrella term for a number of problems with the heart. Medical people use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart problem means that the biological ticker does not work as it should.
The short classification of heart disorders includes congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart disorders a baby is born with. Acquired heart diseases are those disorders that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The majority of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists tell there are three usual kinds of acquired heart diseases:
1. The trouble with the blood vessels delivering 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 flow 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 manifests 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 speak of Congestive Heart Failure. In some cases the valves of the heart do not let through enough blood because they are too thin. They can let some blood get backwards in the wrong direction, i.e. inside the heart. Forced to do extra work, the heart gets tired or fatigued and its muscle becomes too worn out to cope with any serious strain.
3. The trouble with electrical activity in the heart is called 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 motor 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 ticker can become the cause of your immediate death! But in reality the things are not as bad as that! Day by day contemporary pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of people suffering from various heart problems.
If you know exactly what sort of heart disorder you suffer from, you can avoid standing in line in the waiting room and order your prescription meds no rx necessary in any reliable web drugstore. You will be pleasantly stunned by the immaculate service and the promptness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good internet drugstore is a cheap pharmacy. Actually is no usual drugstore is able of offering you the discounts available web. Raise the quality of your life right now! A great number of highly effective meds are able of bringing you back your usual lifestyles.