Amazing Facts About Human Heart

1.     The heart is a pump, which moves the blood. The arteries and veins are the pipes through which the blood flows. The lungs provide a place to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. The heart is a hollow, muscular organ, which functions as a pump for the movement of blood through the body.

2.     The heart is located in the centre of the chest, usually pointing slightly left, due to which left lung is slightly located down than the right one.

3.     The average adult heart beats 72 times a minute; 100,000 times a day; 3,600,000 times a year; and 2.5 billion times during a lifetime.

4.     Though weighing only 250-300 grams on average, a healthy heart pumps 2,000 gallons (6000-7500 litres) of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels each day.

5.     Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back.

6.     Because the heart has its own electrical impulse, it can continue to beat even when separated from the body, as long as it has an adequate supply of oxygen.

7.     The heart pumps blood to almost all of the body’s 75 trillion cells. Only the corneas receive no blood supply.

8.     You heart is about the size of your two hands clasped together.

9.     During an average lifetime, the heart will pump nearly 1.5 million barrels of blood—enough to fill 200 train tank cars.

10.  The heart begins beating at four weeks after conception and does not stop until death.

11.  A new born baby has about one cup of blood in circulation. An adult human has about four to five quarts which the heart pumps to all the tissues and to and from the lungs in about one minute while beating 72 times.

12.  A woman’s heart typically beats faster than a man’s. The heart of an average man beats approximately 70 times a minute, whereas the average woman has a heart rate of 78 beats per minute.

13.  Blood is actually a tissue. When the body is at rest, it takes only six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only eight seconds for it to go the brain and back, and only 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart.

14.  Blue whale has the largest heart weighting around 1500 pounds.

15.  In 1903, physiologist Willem Einthoven (1860-1927) invented the electrocardiograph, which measures electric current in the heart.