Human heart - the organ you definitely cannot live without!
From the bygone times individuals had a pretty good idea that human heart is such an important spring of life, no personality could live without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something totally dear and necessary for the very survival of any individual. No wonder our discourse is full of word-combinations mentioning the heart.
Men and women used to think that the might of any man or woman is in the heart. Some nations were certain human soul is located in the heart, others we certain every wish, either kind or dark, is born in the heart, that is why they were certain that a bad man has a black heart beating in the chest!
“You are my heart” - so we say about the most dear individual in our life. The individual able of fascinating everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something awful happens to our beloved ones we always try to persuade them not “to take it all to heart”. A violent and indifferent man is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys meals we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. No doubt you can supplement this list with your own examples showing how important is the heart for people!
Now having every piece of knowledge up-to-date science provides us with we do understand that the heart is nothing but an organ, but it keeps counting throbs in delight when we are happy and continues crying when we have nasty periods of our lives. God only knows, maybe that is the reason why numerous failures in the functioning of human hearts are responsible for the quarter of the total deaths all over the world! Let us learn general tips about the heart to notice the first symptoms of any heart trouble and to be able to keep your unique biological engine in perfect health!
The 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 continuous 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 individual is about 60-80 a minute, i.e. about 4 500 contractions an hour or 100 000 - 108 000 daily! Sounds amazing, doesn’t it! Doctors ofter refer heart problems to cardiac affairs. The point is word cardiac comes from the Greek “kardia” meaning “related to the heart”. Our hearts are very complicated. Normal work of the heart and various heart disorder called cardiopathies are carefully studied by cardiology.
Your 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 MDs 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 the heart is as large as a fist, it takes up the main part of the chest, it is a little shifted to the left and it weighs as much as 250 and 350 grams.
As it has been mentioned before, the main function of the heart is pumping blood, but this activity is a very difficult thing! 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 keep the blood from getting backwards. It is very important because the heart at the same time pumps 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 right into the lungs, where carbon dioxide is dropped off (when we exhale) 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 gathering oxygenated blood from the lungs in its atrium and sending it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you have already guessed, a much greater power is needed to send the blood through the large systemic circulation. that is exactly why the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is considerable thicker than that of the right ventricle moving the blood straight into the lungs.
The main part of humans 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. Unfortunately, men and women start taking care of the heart only when it fails them for the first time when it is to late to prevent a trouble.
Do you know what habits, ways of life and behavior injure your personal biological motor? First of all, stressful jobs and family brawls make your heart beat at a dangerous speed. Lack of sleep and leisure, a stream of vicious emotions and the feeling of hopelessness make the situation worse. Bad ecology, insufficient recreations give some strain to your heart, too. Junk and fast food, irregular meals and wrong diets do not provide your heart with elements vital for its flawless work. Lack of physical exercise make your heart muscles weaker, as a result your engine is not always able of managing extra strain. Please, remember that 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 suffered from or have now affect your heart, too. To guarantee your soon recovery your tireless ticker doubles and triples its efforts and keeps moving blood through your vessels when you have a fever, when you are intoxicated or when you have to struggle with some infection! Excess weight, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol greatly increase the risk of developing a heart disease, 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, contact your physician 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 symptoms of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a general term for a number of troubles with the heart. MDs use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart trouble means that the biological engine does not work as it should.
The short classification of heart disorders consist of congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart troubles a baby is born with. Acquired heart diseases are those disorders that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The bulk of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists tell there are three common kinds of acquired heart diseases:
1. The trouble 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 flow through them at normal speed, as a result 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 narrow. They may as well let some blood flow 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 disorder with electrical activity in the heart is called Bad Heart Rhythms. The heart can beat too fast or too slow without any plausible cause. The point is our heart can pump the blood well only if it has 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 ticker 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 sad point is that your tireless motor can become the cause of your instant death! But in fact the things are not as bad as that! Every day modern pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of people experiencing various heart diseases.
If you know exactly what kind of heart disorder you have, you can avoid standing in line in the waiting room and order your prescription meds no prescription needed in any trusted internet pharmacy. You will be pleasantly stunned by the immaculate service and the swiftness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good internet drugstore is a discount online pharmacy. The truth is no usual drugstore can offer you the discounts available web. Raise the quality of your life right now! A great number of highly effective medications are able of returning you to your usual lifestyles.