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The Top 10 Things You Need To Know About Your Heart

You can’t do much without a healthy heart. Yet many folks still don’t know much about this vital organ or how to take good care of it. Below are some important facts that everyone should know about their heart.

Top Ten Things to Know About Your Heart

1. It is a muscle. The heart is the one muscle that is most active throughout your life. It needs care in the form of exercise and good nutrition.
2. It can break. You can have a heart attack as a result of extreme physical exhaustion, depression, or stress. Loss of loved ones can increase the risk of heart attacks, especially among adults.
3. Cancer. The likelihood of getting heart cancer is extremely low because the heart cells stop dividing early in life.
4. The heart is at the center of the chest, behind the sternum. The left side is slightly larger than the right, and because the aorta is also on that side, the great pressure it produces leads to the illusion that it is located on the left side.
5. The heart’s pumping motion is triggered by electric signals. The heart’s electrical system is composed of the sinoatrial (SA) node, the atrioventricular (AV) node and the His-Purkinje system.
6. The heart is composed of 4 chambers: the upper right and left atria and the lower right and left ventricles. It also has four valves: the aortic, tricuspid, pulmonary, and mitral valves.
7. The heart rate increases with increased exercise, tension, fear, and ingestion of stimulants and drugs. Women also have a higher heart rate, 78 beats per minute to men’s 70/72. Babies’ hearts, while in the womb, beat at twice the rate of an adults, about 150 beats per minute
8. The heart never stops beating; it starts at around 3 weeks after conception and stops when we die.
9. The heart also needs nutrition and about five percent of the body’s blood supplies the heart.
10. Electric shock can cause the heart to stop beating; drugs like cocaine can disrupt the electrical activity of the heart, causing the arteries to spasm and thus lead to heart attacks and strokes in otherwise healthy people.

Dr. Seldon, a Heart Doctor and Cardiologist in New York City, offers same day appointments and all testing is done on site.  Call us on 888.474.9351.