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What is this astonishing organ called the human heart? This organ which is the vital part of our being, without it our body will not function, what especially makes this organ so important that when mentioned in poetry, it warms us, but by mere mention of it by our doctors, alas! We're alarmed. So let's see what makes this organ the HEART of our being.
The heart in anatomy is a hollow muscular organ in the middle of the chest just to the left of the centre that pumps through the body. It's comprised of four chambers, the right and atrium (auricle), the upper part and the right and left ventricle, the lower part. It's weight around 10oz and beat on average of 50 -70 times per minute, 100,000 per day and a roughly 40 million times per year. At average lifetime of about 76years, it will beat for at least 3 billion times. it pumps around 500 gallons of blood every day.
The heart is the body system power house because every organ and tissues in the body needs a continuous supply of blood to function normally, especially the circulatory system, the brain and even the heart itself. If the heart does not pump blood for a few minutes, death will be the result. The heart is made primarily of muscle tissues that rhythmically contracts to pump blood to all parts of the body. This start from when you are born to entire lifetime.
The upper part, i.e. the atria or auricle acts as a collecting reservoir while the lower part, the ventricle contract to pump the blood on. The right side of the heart receives blood through vein coming from all over the body and pump the oxygen-poor blood that it has received to the lungs so that it can pick up oxygen form the air we breathe in, while the left side then collect the oxygen-rich blood from the lung and pumps it to all the tissues and organs in need of oxygen.
There are four valves that prevent blood from flowing back to the heart. They are the pulmonary, aortic, mitral and the tricuspid valves. The heart muscle medically known as myocardium requires a very good supply of oxygen in order to be able to pump blood different organs and tissues of the body. And this blood supply is provided by the coronary arteries and their branches. The heart is surrounded by a tough, double-layered sac known as the pericardium which has an inner layer called the epicardium. The outer layer of the epicardium helps to hold the heart in place and between these two layers is a tiny space filled with fluid them from rubbing against each other when the heart contracts.
The coronary arteries come off the aorta (the largest blood vessel in the body). The right coronary artery is usually smaller and supplies the down side of the heart. The left artery has two main branches called the Circumflex and the anterior descending. These coronary arteries are so special that blood can flow through them into the heart muscles between heart beat i.e. as it relaxes.
The Heartbeat: the right and left halve of the heart contracts in unison to produce a single heartbeat. The two phase of heartbeat are called the systole where the heart chambers contract to move blood and the diastole where the heart chambers are relaxing between a beat. Because of these two phases, the heart is able to pump much blood with each beat.
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