Amazing Facts of Heart

Let's get straight to the heart of the matter. The heart's job is to move blood.

Day and night, the muscles of your heart contract and relax to pump blood throughout your body. When blood returns to the heart, it follows a complicated pathway. If you were in the bloodstream, you would follow the steps below one by one.

1. Oxygen-poor blood (shown in blue) flows from the body into the right atrium.
2. Blood flows through the right atrium into the right ventricle.
3. The right ventricle pumps the blood to the lungs, where the blood releases waste gases and picks up oxygen.
4. The newly oxygen-rich blood (shown in red) returns to the heart and enters the left atrium.
5. Blood flows through the left atrium into the left ventricle.
6. The left ventricle pumps the oxygen-rich blood to all parts of the body.

Do right and left seem backward? That's because you're looking at an illustration of somebody else's heart. To think about how your own heart works, imagine wearing this illustration on your chest.

Sure, you know how to steal hearts, win hearts, and break hearts. But how much do you really know about your heart and how it works? Read on to your heart's content.

Put your hand on your heart. Did you place your hand on the left side of your chest? Many people do, but the heart is actually located almost in the center of the chest, between the lungs. It's tipped slightly so that a part of it sticks out and taps against the left side of the chest, which is what makes it seem as though it is located there.

Hold out your hand and make a fist. If you're a kid, your heart is about the same size as your fist, and if you're an adult, it's about the same size as two fists.

Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times.

Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. You're using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to the body. Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard--twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting.

Feel your pulse by placing two fingers at pulse points on your neck or wrists. The pulse you feel is blood stopping and starting as it moves through your arteries. As a kid, your resting pulse might range from 90 to 120 beats per minute. As an adult, your pulse rate slows to an average of 72 beats per minute.

The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose. Capillaries, on the other hand, are so small that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.

Your body has about 5.6 liters (6 quarts) of blood. This 5.6 liters of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km (12,000 miles)-- that's four times the distance across the US from coast to coast.

The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime--that's enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.

Lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB. Sound familiar? If you listen to your heart beat, you'll hear two sounds. These "lub" and "DUB" sounds are made by the heart valves as they open and close.

Want More?
Would you like to be notified when new articles are added to our knowledgebase? Subscribe to our Feed and get instant notifications when new articles are added to the knowledgebase.

1. Things you must know about Swine Flu
2. Facts About Blood Donation
3. Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis - Diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis
4. Young Smokers Increase Risk For Multiple Sclerosis
5. New Medicine Prevents Multiple Sclerosis Relapse
6. Multiple Sclerosis (MS) - Multiple Sclerosis Causes & Treatment
7. 25 Things You Didn't Know About Your Body and Health
8. Heart Attack Symptoms - Warning Signs of a heart attack
9. Glands of the Human Body
10. Human Body - Anatomy and Physiology
11. Medical Discoveries and Important Vaccines
12. Identify your headache - Detect the type of headache
13. Ten Bad Sleeping Habits
14. A Chat with Heart Specialist - Doctor Devi Shetty
15. STROKE Symptoms and Signs - How to recognize Stroke?
16. Fasting for one day a month 'cuts the risk of heart attack'
17. Depression Symptoms & Signs
18. Powerful health benefits of Green Tea
19. Study Links Diet Soft Drinks With Cardiac Risk
20. Heart Care Tips from a Heart Specialist - Questions & answers
21. Japanese Green Tea - Health Benefits
22. HIV & AIDS - Symptoms and Transmission
23. Chemical Components of Cigarette Smoke
24. Sexually Transmitted Diseases
25. Hepatitis B
26. Gallstones Explained
27. Mesothelioma Causes - Symptoms & Treatment
28. Mesothelioma Cancer Information
29. Difference between Signs and Symptoms
30. Say No to Alcohol
31. Blood Donation - Information & Importance
32. Urinalysis
33. Thyroid Gland & Thyroid Hormones
34. Blood Groups Types Explained
35. Antioxidants
36. Importance of Vacations
37. Be Good to Your Liver
38. Blood Pressure Explained
39. How is Diabetes Diagnosed?
40. Diabetes Symptoms, Diagnosis & Treatment
41. Heartburn or Chest Pain: When is it heart attack?
42. Drink Water to your Health
43. What Causes Bad Breath?
44. The Benefits Of Vitamin E
45. Wash your hands
46. Have you ever performed CPR on yourself?
47. 10 Benefits Of Laughter
48. Disadvantages of Smoking
49. Heart Attacks and Drinking Warm Water
50. Wonderful Information about Eyes
51. 10 Biggest Brain Damaging Habits
52. HEALTH TIME - 7 Don'ts after a Meal
53. Exercise Melts Body Fat
54. Mobile Phone Risk During Storms
55. Provoking My Productivity Potential