The heart - the organ you certainly cannot exist without!
From the ancient times people knew that human heart is such an important source of life, no personality could be without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something totally vital and necessary for the very survival of any man. That is probably why our head is full of sentences mentioning the heart.
Individuals used to consider that the power of any person is in the heart. Some nations were certain human soul is in the heart, others we sure every desire, either light or cruel, 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 man in our life. The man able of charming everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something bad happens to our beloved ones we always convince them not “to take it all to heart”. A violent and careless individual is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys eating we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. Doubtlessly you can continue this list with your own examples proving how important is the heart for people!
Today armed with every fracture 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 joy when we are happy and continues crying when we have nasty periods of our lives. God only knows, maybe that is the reason why different failures in the functioning of human hearts are responsible for 25% of the total deaths all over the world! Let us learn some tips about the heart to decipher the first symptoms of any heart problem and to be able to keep your personal biological ticker healthy!
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 repeated 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 unbelivable, doesn’t it! Docs 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 functioning of the heart and numerous heart disease called cardiopathies are carefully 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 medical people speak about the right heart (right atrium and right ventricle together) and the left heart (the left atrium and left ventricle together).
As a rule the 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.
We have already mentioned it above that, the major function of the heart is pumping blood, but this job is a very complicated thing! The heart always sends 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 keep the blood from getting backwards. It is very important because the heart simultaneously 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 sending it through the ventricle directly into the lungs, where carbon dioxide is dropped off (when we breathe out) and oxygen picked up (when we inhale). This happens 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 pushing it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you can see, a much greater might is needed to move 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 straight into the lungs.
The bulk of individuals recklessly think their personal biological motor 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, 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.
Are you aware of the fact what habits, lifestyles and behavior destroy your unique biological ticker? First of all, stressful jobs and family relations make your heart tick at a crazy speed. Lack of sleep and relaxation, a stream of dark emotions and the feeling of deprivation make the situation worse. Poor ecology, irregular 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 work. Lack of physical exercise make your heart muscles weaker, as a result your ticker is not always able of managing extra strain. Try not to forget that backbreaking physical activity permanently forces your heart to work at the top of its abilities making it wear out.
Any health disorders you ever experienced or have now affect your heart, too. To guarantee your soon recovery your tireless motor doubles and triples its efforts and keeps sending 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 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, see your medical man 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 first symptoms of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a general term for a wide range of troubles with the heart. MDs use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart problem means that the biological engine does not work properly.
The short classification of heart disorders counts congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart diseases 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 explain there are three common sorts 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, as a result the heart muscle cannot work properly, 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 hypertension.
2. When the heart cannot pump blood at normal levels we face Congestive Heart Failure. In some cases the valves of the heart do not let through enough blood because they are too thin. They may as well let some blood flow 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 disorder with electrical activity in the heart is known as Bad Heart Rhythms. The heart can beat too fast or too slow without any plausible cause. The trouble 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 irony is that your tireless ticker can become the reason of your immediate death! But in reality the things are not as bad as that! Day by day modern pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of persons having various heart problems.
If you remember exactly what type of heart disease you have, you can avoid standing in line in the waiting room and order your drugs no prescription required in any trusted web drugstore. You will be pleasantly stunned by the flawless service and the swiftness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good online drugstore is a discount online pharmacy. In fact 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 drugs are able of returning you to your usual lifestyles.