In this informative article, you will learn what a human heart is, when it rests, how much blood it pumps and how much oxygen and energy it consumes per day.
Human heart
- This is an amazing organ, which Mother Nature has awarded with immense diligence and boundless endurance. The beating of the heart accompanies a person throughout his life. The heartbeat becomes more frequent when communicating with a loved one or during a joyful event. And in grief, our heart hurts along with our soul.
When the heart is resting
Many are accustomed to thinking that our heart works without rest throughout our entire life. However, this is not the case. If we compare the time interval required for one heartbeat with the time interval between beats, the first interesting fact becomes clear. The fact is that in order to push one portion of blood into the blood vessels of our body, the heart needs about 0.43 seconds. This time is the sum of the time the blood moves inside the organ itself (0.1 second) and the time it takes for the blood to be expelled into the aorta (0.33 seconds). During this short period of time, the heart is in a state of tension, it works. After one contraction, a rest period begins, which lasts approximately 0.57 seconds. At this time, the heart muscle is completely relaxed.
The heart of a healthy person beats at a frequency of about 70-75 beats per minute, or 100,000 times a day. If you add up all the intervals in one minute, when the heart is in a state of contraction, you get 25.8 seconds. In a relaxed state, the heart muscle is 34.2 seconds. When adding up the time of work and rest of the heart during the day, it turns out that it works only 10 hours 19 minutes and 12 seconds, the rest of the time (13 hours 40 minutes and 48 seconds) it rests.
These simple calculations reveal the secret of the unique performance of the human living motor: nature has allowed the heart to rest before it gets tired. It simply cannot be otherwise. After all, a prolonged rest of the heart, necessary to satisfy fatigue, would ruin a person.
How much blood does the human heart pump?
With one contraction, the heart throws 60-70 milliliters of blood into the aorta. Thus, in 1 minute the heart pumps about 5 liters of blood, in 1 hour - about 300 liters, over 7,000 liters per day. Over 70 years of human life, the heart pumps over 175 million liters of blood. This volume is enough to fill more than 4 thousand railway tank cars. The kitchen faucet needs to be turned on for 45 years to release the same volume of water.
Such a volume of blood is pumped with a calm heart. Under load, the minute volume of blood can increase up to 30 liters, but our heart cannot work for a long time at this rate.
The speed of movement of the blood ejected by the heart is 1.6 km / h, and the distance through which the heart drives blood per day is 90 thousand kilometers. To imagine such a distance, one can compare it with the length of the Earth's equator, which is approximately 40 thousand kilometers.
With one heartbeat, work is done, by completing which you can lift an object weighing 200 g to a height of 1 meter. In 1 month, the heart will do the work with which you can lift a person with an average weight to Mount Chomolungma. And this is the highest point of our planet.
How much energy and oxygen does the heart consume?
The energy that our living motor consumes during the day will be enough to travel 32 kilometers in a passenger car. If it were possible to collect the energy of the heart for the entire human life, then on such a car it would be possible to drive to the moon and return back.
To accomplish such "labor feats", our heart needs 90 milliliters of pure oxygen per minute (despite the fact that the needs of the whole organism need about 2.5 liters of oxygen per minute). The heart consumes about 130 liters of oxygen per day, and 47 thousand liters per year.
All these facts convincingly prove that our amazing living motor, which weighs only 300 grams, performs work beyond the strength of human hands.
