Part 1: Your Amazing Heart
February is American Heart Month, a great time to learn about your heart. Remember, heart disease can happen at any age.
To review a list of risk factors and discover things you can do now to take control of your heart health, visit Heart Disease: It Can Happen at Any Age.
Your Beating Heart
For a muscle the size of a fist, the heart gets a lot done in a day.
In less than a minute, your heart will supply nutrient-rich blood to every cell in your body.
In a day your heart will beat about 100,000 times shuttling 2,000 gallons of oxygen-saturated blood throughout your body.
The beating heart is strong enough to push all that blood through 60,000 miles of branching, twisting blood vessels that link cells, tissues, organs, and body parts. And it continues to push that 2,000 gallons of blood through your body over and over and over and over . . . day after day after day after day.
The heart is an amazing, hardworking muscle that often goes unnoticed unless we wear it on our sleeve.
Your Broken Heart
A broken heart is real. Studies have shown that breakups, news of death, and even depression can lead to broken hearts in the form of increasing the risk for a heart attack.
Here’s why. When the body experiences trauma, including emotional trauma, it triggers the release of stress hormones into the bloodstream that temporarily “stun” the heart causing symptoms that can mimic a heart attack — shortness of breath or chest pain.
The good news is, that this type of broken heart can bounce back when the stressful situation is addressed and begins to abate. With a bit of rest and TLC, the heart muscle is strong enough to overcome the setback.
Click here for Part 2: Loving Your Heart and here for Part 3: The Desires of Your Heart.
Here’s to your heart health!
Joolz
