35 facts of human heart

Heart is an essential part of the body that works throughout our life. As it stops working, the death of a person is certain. Its main work is to pump blood along with oxygen and other nutrients to all parts of the body. That is why it is very important to take care of it. So let's know about some heart facts:

• A person's heart beats at an average of 72 times in 1 minute. A newborn baby's heart beats 70 to 190 times. A man's heart beats 70 to 72 times in a minute, while a woman's heart beats 76 to 78 times. That is, the heart of women beats 8 times per minute more than that of men. This is because women's hearts are smaller than men's, so their heart has to pump more often to transport that much amount of blood throughout the body.

• If the heart of an adult human is beating 60 to 100 times per minute at rest, then his heart is completely healthy. If someone's heart beats more often than this for many years, then he has some kind of heart disease. Athletes who train hard every day have a heart rate of only 40 to 60 beats per minute at rest.

• So far, the lowest recorded human heartbeat is 26 beats per minute and the highest is 480 beats per minute.

• The weight of our heart is about 250-350 grams and it is about 12 cm long, 8 cm wide and 6 cm thick. The human heart is shaped like a clenched fist.
  
  
  

• It is believed that our heart is located on the left side of the body, but it is located right in the middle of the body. It just tilts slightly to the left that's why we feel on the left.

• Human heart has four chambers, 2 atriums and 2 ventricles. Blood enters into the heart from the atrium, and blood flows throughout the body from the ventricles.

• When the baby is 4 weeks old in the mother's womb, then his heart starts beating and from then till his death it continues to pump the blood in the body. The heart is the only muscle in the human body that works the most throughout life.

• Our heart pumps blood with so much pressure that if it is pumped out of the body, then the blood will jump up to 30 meters high.

• The heart has its own electrical waves, that is why if the heart is separated from the body, it will continue to do its work, that is, it will keep pumping. As long as it gets enough oxygen, he will keep on pumping. The electrical energy of the heart is about 1 to 5 watts.

• The blue whale has the largest heart in the world, the size of its entire heart is equal to that of a car and weighs about 590 kg. The smallest heart in animals is that of the Fairy Fly, the total length of its heart is only 0.02 centimeter.

• If we talk about the ratio of body to heart, then dogs have the largest heart, its heart is 0.8% of its body weight. Whereas the heart of other animals like elephant, ant and human is only 0.6% of the body weight.

• The heart of the Etruscan Shrew, found in Malaysia, beats with maximum frequency in the world. The size of its heart is only 2 grams and its heart beats about 1511 per minute. Whereas the hibernating groundhog (a squirrel-like creature) found in North America, has the shortest heart beats, only 5 times a minute.

• A scientific research has shown that most heart attacks occur on Mondays because after the Sunday holiday, work stress comes again on Monday morning. According to another research, most heart attacks in the year come on Christmas Day.

• Heart cancer is very rare in humans, because when the heart is fully developed, its cells stop dividing. Cancer is caused by the irregular division and irregular growth of cells. If the cells in the heart do not divide at all, the risk of cancer will be very low.

• Laughing keeps our heart healthy. Many researches have shown that when we laugh, our blood vessels relax due to which there is a lot of relaxation in the body, which causes 20% more blood to flow through those blood vessels. Due to this the heart does not need to work extra.

• People who eat non-vegetarian, more oily, non-digestible foods in the diet, they have 19-20% more chances of getting heart attack than people who take vegetarian diet. People who consume drugs like cigarettes, tobacco, alcohol they have increased risk of heart attack.

• Heart attack symptoms look very different in both men and women. Symptoms for women include sudden onset of abdominal pain or back pain and pain in the centre of the chest, along with fatigue and tension and the pain relives after some time. Whereas in men, the symptoms are chest pain, restlessness, shortness of breath and sweating.

• The shape of the human heart is completely different from the heart symbol, yet, since 1250, the "Heart Symbol" is being used to express love. There are many beliefs regarding the use of this symbol.

• French doctor René Laennec (1781–1826) invented the stethoscope. He had to listen to the heartbeat of people for their treatment, but he did not like to put his ears on women chest to hear their heartbeat. To get out of this situation, he was inspired to make a stethoscope.

• In 1968, a South African doctor Christian Bernard performed the first transplant of a heart in a human body. Although the patient only survived for 18 days, it is considered to be the first successful heart transplant.

• In 1982, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7, designed by a team of Willem Johann Kolff and Robert Jarvik .

• A pacemaker is an electrically operated medical instrument that is placed under the skin in a patient's chest to rectify irregular heartbeats. Modern pacemakers have two parts. The first part is the pulse generator, which consists of a battery and electronic equipment that send electrical signals to the heart. The second part, controls the heartbeat counts. The first pacemaker was designed and implanted for the first time in 1960 by two doctors Leon Abrams and Ray Lightwood in Birmingham, England.

• Take a tennis ball in your hand and press it with full force. Our heart pumps blood throughout the body with that much force.

• When we are listening to a song, our heart starts beating along with the rhythm of that song. When a man and a woman in love look into each other's eyes for 3 minutes, their hearts start beating simultaneously.

• Two types of sounds come from the heart, which are called S1 and S2. The first sound comes from S1, the closing of the valve between the right atrium and the ventricle, which is known as the 'Lub Lub' sound. The second sound comes from S2, the closing of the valve between the left atrium and the ventricle, which is heard as a 'dub dub' sound. We hear both voices about 78 times in a minute.

• Dogs, cats and horses understand the human heartbeat after touching them. Whether they touch any part of the person or even if the person touches them, they can understand the feelings of the person, whether the person is upset or happy. They feel the released hormones in humans when humans are stressed. That is the reason why these animals are considered to be human's best friends.

• In 1929, German surgeon Werner Forssmann inserted a catheter (a kind of needle) into a vein in his arm to test his heart and pushed it 20 inches into the heart. This method led to the discovery of cardiac catheterization, which is still used today in the heart-related diseases.

How does a heart attack come about?

• Due to bad lifestyle and food, fat starts accumulating in our body, and this fat also gets deposited around the heart. Sometimes this fat accumulates in excess around the atrium and blocks the atrial artery so that oxygen-rich blood cannot pass through the atrium to the heart. In this way, the heart is unable to pump blood throughout the body and this is the condition of heart attack.

• Deep feelings of tension, happiness or sadness can break a person's heart. Till now we have only heard this word, but scientifically it is true. This disease is called broken heart syndrome. It has similar symptoms as to a heart attack. The difference between the two is that, heart attack is caused by heart disease and broken heart syndrome is due to the release of more stress hormones in the body due to any emotional event.

• Some people are confused about the difference between blood pressure and heart beat rate. Both are different things, there is no direct relation between the two. Blood pressure is called the force that the blood exerts in our veins or the force with which the heart is sending blood to our body. Whereas heart beat rate is how many times our heart beats in a minute.

• Normal blood pressure in humans is 80/120 mmHg. That is, if your blood pressure is between 80 and 120 mmHg, then your heart is working properly. If the blood pressure is less than 80 then you have a low blood pressure problem and if it is more than 120 then you have the problem of high blood pressure.

• By running or exercising, our heart starts beating faster. The reason for this is that due to exercise, the muscles of the body have to work extra, due to which they need more oxygen. Due to the high demand for oxygen, the heart has to work more quickly to deliver more oxygen to the muscles faster. In doing excess work, the heart starts beating faster. The lungs also have to work more to deliver this oxygen to the heart in more quantity, that is why during that time we start panting and start breathing through the nose as well as the mouth.

• The heart of zebrafish found in water has a special feature when it is injured, it recovers immediately and starts doing its job smoothly. For this reason, scientists are doing a lot of research on the heart of zebrafish, so that by understanding its mechanism, heart diseases in humans can be treated efficiently.