People have tied the heart with many things that it isn’t really related to like our emotions, the fact that we touch the left side of our chest while taking an oath, or that the heart feels love. All of that for once is not true. The size of our heart is mostly the size of our fist although it may depend on age, weight, height and some other factors too. It’s the great engine of our body because you can live without a brain (though that won’t be very fun) but not without a heart. I am here to educate y’all about the great engine of our body, OUR HEART!
For instance, this is how the heart looks like along with some labeled parts:
Not very cheerful, I know but it’s the truth, please don’t tell me you expected it to be like the heart symbol. The heart is located in the middle of the chest, slightly to the left and its kind of like squished between our lungs.
So, the heart consists as the major organ of the circulatory system which also contains arteries and veins. Now if you didn’t already know this, the arteries carry oxygenated blood away (A) from the heart and the veins bring back deoxygenated blood to the heart. But there is a catch here! The only artery which carries deoxygenated blood is the pulmonary artery, and the only vein which carries oxygenated blood is the pulmonary vein.
Now, the heart also consists of many chambers and valves. There are 4 chambers in the heart:
1. Right Atrium
2. Left Atrium
3. Right Ventricle
4. Left Ventricle
The Right and Left Atrium in plural are called Atria. Now, the heart consists of 2 types of valves, Atrioventricular valves and Semilunar Valves. The Atrioventricular valves consist of:
1. Mitral (or Bicuspid) Valve
2. Tricuspid Valve
The Mitral valve is located between the left atrium and the left ventricle. The Tricuspid valve whereas is located in between the Right Atrium and Right Ventricle.
The Semilunar valves consist of:
1. Aortic Valve
2. Pulmonary Valve
Before going to the functions of each part, the heart also consists of the Aorta or Aortic artery which is the largest artery in the body. The Superior and Inferior Vena Cava are the largest veins in the body. Now the heart also consists of a pulmonary trunk which consists of pulmonary arteries which carry deoxygenated blood to the lungs.
What the atrioventricular valves do is that they open to let the blood go to the ventricle, and when all the blood reaches the ventricle, they close so that the blood cannot go back into the atrium. The Semilunar Valves on the other hand, let blood go to the aorta through the left ventricle and then close, so that blood cannot go back. That was what the Aortic valve does. The Pulmonary valve although opens to let blood flow from left ventricle to the pulmonary artery and the closes so that the blood cannot come back in.
Now, basically what happens is the deoxygenated blood comes to the heart through Superior and Inferior Vena Cava where it enters the right atrium, through the tricuspid valve, it enters the right ventricle, the right ventricle pushes the deoxygenated blood into the pulmonary artery, through the pulmonary valve, which carries it into the lungs, where the lung oxygenates the blood and then the blood goes back to the left atrium and then through the mitral valve, it enters the left ventricle, which pushes the oxygenated blood into the aorta, through the Aortic valve, and then the aorta branches out into 3 arteries which carry the blood to the whole body.
The circulation of blood from the right atrium (where the blood is deoxygenated) to the left ventricle (where now the blood is oxygenated) is known as the Pulmonary Circulation Loop.
And the circulation of blood from the left ventricle to the other organs of the body is known as Systemic Loop.
Now, the LUB-DUB LUB-DUB sound we hear when we attach our ear to someone’s chest is caused when the valves close, the LUB comes from when the valves close and the DUB comes from when the ventricles contract to push the blood out of the body. The high pressure caused by ventricular contraction is known as Systole. When the atria are filled with blood and the ventricles are relaxing, its known as Diastole. Also the fact that when there is no contraction in the ventricles, its known as Asystole. When you are measuring blood pressure, there are 2 numbers like 120 over 80, so what does that mean? 120 is your systolic blood pressure which means the peak pressure produced by ventricular contraction and 80 is your diastolic blood pressure which is the pressure produced by your arteries when your ventricles are relaxed.
The heart is made up of a layer of muscles to help it contract without any danger. The rib cage obviously protects our heart with a lot of skin. The heart itself is covered by a double-walled sac called the pericardium. The pericardium contains of:
1.Fibrous pericardium (outermost)
2. Parietal pericardium (middle)
3. Visceral Pericardium (innermost)
The fibrous pericardium helps the heart so that it doesn’t bounce all over the place while its beating. Meanwhile, the parietal pericardium and the Visceral pericardium are separated by a liquid providing a slippery environment so that the beating heart does not cause any friction. Moreover, after that the heart contains of 3 layers of muscle:
1.Epicardium (outermost)
2.Myocardium (middle)
3.Endocardium (innermost)
The Myocardium mostly contains of cardiac muscle and does most of the work contracting while the Epicardium just works as another shield, the endocardium consists of a white epithelial tissue.
Now that you know all about the heart, let’s get ready to know about all the diseases about the heart!
So, there are a number of diseases situated with the heart, let’s take a deep dive into them:
• Congestive Heart Failure: It occurs when the heart is not able to pump enough blood because its ventricles cannot contract.
• Arrythmia: It occurs when your heart has an irregular beating pattern.
• Aortic Aneurysm: It occurs when there is an aneurysm (means a swelling of an artery) in the Aorta.
• Hypertension: It occurs because of high diastolic blood pressure.
• Hypotension: It occurs because of low systolic blood pressure.
• Heart Attack: It occurs when there is a clot in an artery and blood cannot be supplied to the heart.
In order to keep your heart healthy, here are some tips:
o Eat a healthy diet
o Stay at a healthy weight, obesity can cause problems
o Quit smoking and stay away from second hand smoke
o Control your sugar and cholesterol.
o Manage stress
o Get enough sleep
o Stay active
That is it for this blog! Stay healthy and keep your heart safe! One thing to mention is that if your heart gets too damaged, it would need a heart transplant in which the doctors replace your heart with someone else’s heart but to do that, they would have to find a donor with the matching antigens and blood group in your body and also that the donor should have a healthy heart. See you in the next blog!
By,
Deeparsh Bhanot
Lovely....keep writing and inspiring people with your blogs.
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