The heart is one of the most important organs What do we have inside our body. It is located within our chest which is the thorax and it is located between the two lungs. Its size is approximately like our fist and usually weighs about 300 grams, that of an adult can reach up to 450 g.
The heart has a very important function and it is to continuously pump blood to all corners of our body and for it to do so we have to imagine that it has great resistance and durability. That is why we must take great care of your condition, with moderate exercise and a good diet.
What is the heart?
It is a hollow organ the size of a fist and shaped like a pear It is located between the two lungs, inside the rib cage. Its position is slightly tilted to the left with the pointed part down.
The main function of the heart is to continuously pump blood to every corner of our body. In this sending of blood it will do so through a contraction movement and it will be loaded with clean oxygen received from the lungs. This blood will travel through tubes called arteries and It will distribute this oxygen throughout all cells, tissues, and organs.
How the blood runs out of oxygen it has to go back to the lungs to get oxygen. It will reach the lungs and it will be cleaned first, since it is loaded with waste, and it will refill with oxygen to pass through the heart again and start its cycle again.
As an entry you have to know that the heart contracts between fifty and one hundred times per minute when we are at rest, without exercising. That's up to almost XNUMX times a day. Y It manages to pump about 10.000 liters of blood per day throughout the body. We have approximately 5 liters of blood in the body and they will be the ones that are constantly circulating from the heart to our body. There are so many times that the blood will circulate through our heart that those 5 liters translate into those 10.000 liters per day.
Its functions in more detail
With this drawing that we show you, it will be much easier to know how our heart works step by step.
- The part colored red is the blood that will be loaded with oxygen. Therefore, the blood coming from the lungs with its oxygen enter the heart through the right and left pulmonary veins.
- They will enter the left atrium and travel to the left ventricleFrom there it will be propelled through the aorta so that the blood is distributed to all corners of the body.
- The blood on its return will return without oxygen through the superior vena cava and inferior vena cava entering through the right atrium, passing towards the right ventricle and leaving distributed by the left pulmonary artery and the right pulmonary artery.
- This blood returns to the lungs to be charged with oxygen and start the same cycle again.
Curiosities of the heart
- The heart make a sound when beating, something like "ducta-duc".
- As we have said the heart can beat between 50 and 100 beats per minute and in each beat it propels 80 milliliters of blood. When we exercise, the heart beats much faster and the blood runs much faster throughout the body.
- The heart beats on a grand scale until 30 million times a year.
- The first heart transplant was on December 3, 1967 by South African surgeon Christian Barnard.
- The longest surviving transplanted heart was 22 years, 10 months and 24 days.
- The left lung is much smaller than the right. This is because it leaves room for the heart.