14/02/2023
Humans are incredible and fascinating creatures, and one of our most amazing features is the human heart.
Not only is the heart essential for our survival, it also has some amazing scientific facts associated with it.
Here are some interesting scientific facts about the human heart that you may not have known about:
1) Your heart was the very first organ to develop in your body at around 4 weeks after conception.
2) Your heart is smaller than you might imagine and is about the size of your clenched fist.
3) On average, your heart beats about 100,000 times every day of your life and we cannot make a mechanical version that lasts as long even with all the technology we have available.
4) Your heart pumps around 2,000 gallons (8,400 litres ) of blood a day.
5) In a lifetime your heart will beat about 3 billion times.
6) Your heart actually has its own nervous system and we now know there are about 40,000 neurons in the heart and that it sends more signals to the brain than the other way around and so it could be argued that your heart rules your head.
7) Emotions can change the shape of your heart. There is a condition called Taketsubo cardiomyopathy where extreme emotional stress (e.g. from a relationship break-up) can quite literally stun part of the heart muscle so that it changes shape and doesn’t pump as well. This can lead to heart failure and so it is true that you can die from a broken heart.
8) Your heart actually produces hormones and so is not just a pump but is actually an endocrine organ. Research has shown that it produces at least 3 hormones that we know about.
9) The first pacemaker was inserted into a human in 1958, and the patient lived longer than the surgeon who inserted it.
10) A defibrillator works by actually STOPPING the heart momentarily by stunning it with an electrical shock causing it to stop beating.
Your heart has a natural pacemaker which then restarts the heart, hopefully back to its natural rhythm.
It is the heart that restarts itself.
