The heart - the organ you surely cannot manage without!
From the bygone times men and women understood that human heart is such an important spring of life, no man or woman could be without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something completely dear and necessary for the very survival of any man or woman. No wonder our head is full of word-combinations mentioning the heart.
People used to guess that the power of any man or woman is in the heart. Some communities were certain human soul is fidden in the heart, others we certain every wish, either light or evil, is born in the heart, that is why they guessed that a bad person 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 able of interesting everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something stressful happens to our beloved ones we always try to persuade them not “to take it all to heart”. A savagedreadful and careless man is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys food we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. Doubtlessly you can continue this list with your own examples demonstrating how important is the heart for humans!
Now having every part of knowledge modern science provides us with we do realize that the heart is nothing but an organ, but it keeps counting throbs in joy when we are happy and continues grieving when we have bad periods of our lives. God only knows, maybe that is the reason why dangerous failures in the functioning of human hearts are responsible for 25% of the total deaths all over the world! Let us get important tips about the heart to recognize the first symptoms of any heart disease and to be able to keep your personal biological ticker safe and sound!
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 blood vessels. Its steady 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 grownup individual is about 60-80 a minute, i.e. about 4 500 contractions an hour or 100 000 - 108 000 daily! Sounds stunning, doesn’t it! Medical people 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 functioning of the heart and various heart trouble 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 doctors speak about the right heart (right atrium and right ventricle together) and the left heart (the left atrium and left ventricle together).
Usually 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.
As it has been mentioned before, the basic task of the heart is pumping blood, but this job is a very difficult affair! The heart always pushes our blood in one direction. It goes 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 flowing backwards. It is vital because the heart simultaneously 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 directly 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 moving it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you have already guessed, a much greater strength is needed to move the blood through the large systemic circulation. That explains 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 bulk of humans recklessly think their personal biological engine 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. Sorry to say, people start taking care of 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 activities, ways of life and behavior hurt your personal biological ticker? First of all, stressful jobs and family relations make your heart beat at a crazy speed. Lack of sleep and rest, a stream of wicked emotions and the feeling of hopelessness 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 necessary for its flawless work. Lack of physical exercise make your heart muscles weaker, as a result your motor 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 disorders you ever had or have now affect your heart, too. To guarantee your soon recovery your tireless motor 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! Obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol considerably increase the risk of getting a heart illness, 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, contact your doc immediately 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 notion for a number of troubles with the heart. Medical people use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart disease means that the biological engine does not work properly.
The short classification of heart troubles counts congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart problems a baby is born with. Acquired heart diseases are those troubles that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The main part of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists tell there are three usual sorts 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 develops 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 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 weak 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 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 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! Day by day contemporary pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of humans suffering from different heart troubles.
If you remember exactly what sort of heart trouble you experience, you can avoid standing in line in the waiting room and order your drugs without a prescription in any trusted internet drugstore. You will be pleasantly surprised by the perfect service and the promptness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good internet drugstore is a discount online pharmacy. Actually is no usual pharmacy can offer you the discounts available online. Raise the quality of your life right now! A great number of highly effective meds are able of bringing you back your usual lifestyles.