The heart - the part of your body you definitely cannot do without!
From the bygone times persons realized that human heart is such an important focus of life, no personality could exists without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something totally important and necessary for the very survival of any personality. That is probably why our head is full of utterances mentioning the heart.
Persons used to believe that the power of any man is in the heart. Some tribes were sure human soul is fidden in the heart, others we sure every idea, either kind or dark, is born in the heart, that is why they guessed that a bad individual has a black heart beating in the chest!
“You are my heart” - so we say about the most important personality in our life. The individual able of fascinating everybody gets the nickname of “the heart of the company”. When something stressful happens to our nearest and dearest we always convince them not “to take it all to heart”. A savagedreadful and careless personality is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys eating we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. Certainly you can expand this list with your own examples showing how important is the heart for human beings!
Now having every fracture of knowledge modern science provides us with we do understand that the heart is a mere organ, but it keeps counting throbs in joy when we are happy and continues crying when we have nasty periods of our lives. Who 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 find out general tips about the heart to recognize the first symptoms of any heart disease and to be able to keep your unique biological engine intact!
Your 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 constant 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 shocking, doesn’t it! Doctors ofter refer heart diseases 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 numerous heart illness called cardiopathies are thoroughly 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 the size of a fist, it occupies the major 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 basic work of the heart is pumping blood, but this activity is a very complicated thing! 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 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 collecting de-oxygenated blood in its atrium and pushing it through the ventricle directly into the lungs, where carbon dioxide is dropped off (when we breathe out) and oxygen picked up (when we breathe in). 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 pumping it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you have already guessed, a much greater force is needed to pump 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 pushing the blood right into the lungs.
The majority of men and women irresponsibly think their personal biological motor will always be there for them and they never do a thing to guard it. As some cardiologists remind, 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, individuals 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 activities, lifestyles and behavior destroy your unique biological engine? First of all, stressful jobs and family brawls make your heart tick at a crazy speed. Lack of sleep and leisure, a stream of vicious emotions and the feeling of hopelessness make the situation worse. Bad ecology, insufficient recreations add 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 permanently 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 are running high temperature, when you are intoxicated or when you have to fight some infection! Excess weight, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol considerably increase the risk of getting a heart trouble, 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, make an appointment with your MD 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 first symptoms of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a umbrella notion for a number of troubles with the heart. Doctors use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart problem means that the biological motor does not work properly.
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 troubles that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The majority of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists report there are three usual types 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 rush 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 develops if a man smokes or drinks too much alcohol, has a history of diabetes, high cholesterol or hypertension.
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 additional work, the heart gets tired or fatigued and its muscle becomes too worn out to cope with any serious strain.
3. The problem with electrical activity in the heart is known as Bad Heart Rhythms. The heart can beat too fast or too slow without any obvious cause. 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 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 ticker can become the cause of your immediate death! But in reality the things are not as bad as that! Every day modern pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of individuals experiencing numerous heart diseases.
If you know exactly what sort of heart disease you suffer from, you can avoid standing in line in the waiting room and order your prescription pills without a rx in any trusted online drugstore. You will be pleasantly stunned by the immaculate service and the promptness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good online pharmacy is a cheapest pharmacy. The truth is no usual drugstore is able of offering you the discounts available online. Raise the quality of your life right now! A great number of highly effective medicines are able of returning you to your usual lifestyles.