The heart - something you definitely cannot do without!
From the immemorial times men and women understood that human heart is such an important focus of life, no individual could do without it. From those times the heart is a symbol of something completely important and necessary for the very survival of any individual. No wonder our head is full of utterances mentioning the heart.
Personalities used to guess that the power of any personality is in the heart. Some tribes were certain human soul lives 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 man or woman has a black heart beating in the chest!
“You are my heart” - so we say about the most dear individual in our life. The man or woman able of fascinating everybody gets the name 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 individual is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys meals we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. No doubt you can enlarge this list with your own examples proving how important is the heart for people!
These days armed with every piece of knowledge modern science provides us with we do realize that the heart is nothing but an organ, but it keeps counting throbs in delight when we are happy and continues sobbing when we have nasty periods of our lives. God only knows, maybe that is the reason why any failures in the work of human hearts are responsible for 25% of the total deaths all over the world! Let us get some information about the heart to decipher the first symptoms of any heart illness and to be able to keep your unique biological engine safe and sound!
The heart just as hearts of all animals, is a hollow muscular organ of the body’s circulatory system. Its function is 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 person 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! Physicians ofter refer heart troubles to cardiac affairs. The point is term cardiac comes from the Greek “kardia” meaning “related to the heart”. Our hearts are very complicated. Normal functioning of the heart and various heart illness 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 physicians 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 your heart is as large as a fist, it occupies the major part of the chest, it is slightly shifted to the left and it weighs as much as 250 and 350 grams.
We have already mentioned it above that, the basic work of the heart is pumping blood, but this job is a very complicated thing! The heart always moves 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 sends 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 pumping it through the ventricle directly into the lungs, where carbon dioxide is dropped off (when we exhale) and oxygen picked up (when we breathe in). This occurs with the help of red blood cells taking part in the process of diffusion.
The left heart is responsible for collecting oxygenated blood from the lungs in its atrium and moving it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you can see, a much greater might is needed to send the blood through the large systemic circulation. No wonder the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is much thicker than that of the right ventricle pumping the blood straight into the lungs.
The main part of humans irresponsibly think their unique biological ticker will always be there for them and they never do a thing to support 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. It is a pity, people start taking care of the heart only when it fails them for the first time when it is to late to prevent a disorder.
Do you know what activities, ways of life and behavior damage your personal biological ticker? First of all, stressful jobs and family brawls make your heart beat at a crazy speed. Lack of sleep and rest, a stream of dark emotions and the feeling of deprivation make the situation worse. Poor ecology, scanty 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 motor is not always able of managing extra strain. Bear in mind 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 pushing blood through your vessels when you are running high temperature, when you are intoxicated or when you have to struggle with some infection! Obesity, hypertension, and high cholesterol greatly increase the risk of developing a heart trouble, 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, 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 premonitory symptoms of a heart disease!
Heart disease is a umbrella term for a number of problems with the heart. Docs use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart disorder means that the biological motor does not work properly.
The short classification of heart diseases counts congenital heart diseases and acquired heart diseases. Congenital heart diseases are the heart disorders a baby is born with. Acquired heart diseases are those disorders that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The majority of heart diseases are acquired ones.
Cardiologists state there are three usual kinds 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, finally 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 thin. 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 disorder with electrical activity in the heart is called Bad Heart Rhythms. The heart can beat too fast or too slow without any obvious reason. The point 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 engine can become the cause of your instant death! But in reality the things are not as bad as that! Day by day contemporary pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of people experiencing different heart disorders.
If you remember exactly what sort of heart trouble you suffer from, you can avoid queuing up in the waiting room and order your prescription pills without a rx in any reliable online drugstore. You will be agreeably surprised by the flawless service and the swiftness 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 medications are able of bringing you back your usual lifestyles.