The heart - the organ you surely cannot survive without!

From the immemorial times men and women understood that human heart is such an important source of life, no individual could do without it. From those times the heart has become a symbol of something totally important and necessary for the very survival of any man or woman. That is probably why our communication is full of utterances mentioning the heart.

People used to think that the power of any individual is in the heart. Some tribes were sure human soul is in the heart, others we sure every idea, either kind 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 dear individual in our life. The individual able of fascinating everybody gets the title of “the heart of the company”. When something bad happens to our nearest and dearest we always try to persuade them not “to take it all to heart”. A savagedreadful and indifferent man is called “heartless”. And if someone really enjoys food we refer him or her to “hearty eaters”. Of course you can expand this list with your own examples proving how important is the heart for people!

Now armed with every part of knowledge up-to-date science provides us with we do realize that the heart is nothing but an organ, but it keeps counting throbs in elation when we are happy and continues sobbing when we have bad periods of our lives. God only knows, maybe that is the reason why numerous failures in the functioning of human hearts are responsible for 25% of the total deaths all over the world! Let us find out some information about the heart to notice the first symptoms of any heart disorder and to be able to keep your personal biological engine in perfect health!

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 incredible, doesn’t it! Physicians 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 disease 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 physicians 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 your heart is the size of a fist, it takes up the middle 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 main function of the heart is pumping blood, but this activity is a very complicated affair! 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 prevent the blood from getting backwards. It is extremely important because the heart at the same time 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 pumping it through the ventricle right 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 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 sending it through the ventricle and via the aorta out to the body. As you have already guessed, a much greater strength is needed to send the blood through the large systemic circulation. No wonder the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is considerable thicker than that of the right ventricle moving the blood directly into the lungs.

The main part of humans irresponsibly think their personal biological motor will always serve them and they never do a thing to guard 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 trouble.

Do you know what habits, lifestyles and behavior injure your personal biological engine? First of all, stressful jobs and family rows make your heart tick at a dangerous speed. Lack of sleep and rest, a stream of vicious emotions and the feeling of helplessness 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 important 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 backbreaking physical activity constantly 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 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 fight some infection! Excess weight, hypertension, and high cholesterol greatly increase the risk of developing a heart illness, 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 physician at once 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. MDs use the word cardiopathy. Irrestective of the term, any heart trouble means that the biological ticker does not work normally.

The short classification of heart troubles 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 troubles that are developed by people in the course of their lives. The bulk of heart diseases are acquired ones.

Cardiologists warn there are three common 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 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 shows itself 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 thin. They can 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 weak to cope with any serious strain.
3. The trouble 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 fact 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 motor 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 engine can become the cause of your immediate death! But in fact the things are not as bad as that! Day by day modern pharmacology keeps saving hundreds of lives of men and women having various heart disorders.

If you remember exactly what type of heart trouble you experience, you can avoid queuing up in the waiting room and order your meds without a rx in any trusted online drugstore. You will be pleasantly stunned by the perfect service and the promptness of delivery of your order. What is more, a good internet drugstore is a cheap online pharmacy. Actually 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 returning you to your usual lifestyles.

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