- The human heart is fully developed about eight weeks after conception, when the embryo is only about one inch long. The heart actually begins to beat even earlier - about four weeks after conception. In fact, the heart is the very first organ to begin functioning in the foetus.
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Did you know that the heart beats about 100,000 times each day? In an average 70 year lifetime, our heart beats an unbelievable 2.5 billion times.
- Three times, every minute, an amazing 5.6 litres (equal to 6 quarts) of blood circulates through the body. The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime.
- The blood travels a total of 19,000 km (12,000 miles) in one day. The blood vessels of the body - arteries, veins and capillaries - are over 60,000 miles long. Long enough to go all the way around the earth, more than twice!
- Blood takes about a blazing 20 seconds to circulate throughout the entire vascular system.
- Approximately 78% of your blood is actually water.
- The heart can produce enough pressure to squirt blood to a distance of 30 feet. Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. Believe it or not, you are using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to your body.
- The heart, which weighs 9 -11 ounces in an adult, consists chiefly of muscle and can perform enough work in one hour to lift 3,000 pounds, roughly the weight of a small car, about one foot off the ground.
- As a kid, your resting pulse might range from 90 to 120 beats per minute. But as you grown up, your heart slows down. As an adult, your pulse rate slows to an average of 72 beats per minute
- Clench your own fist and take a look at it. Yes, that's the size of your heart.
- The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is approximately the diameter of a garden hose. That's how thick your aorta is.
- Can you guess exactly how thin your capillaries are? Your capillaries are so thin that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.
- If you listen to your heart beat, you will hear two sounds � �Lub� and �DUB� - made by the heart valves as they open and close. �LUB� is the sound of the valve opening and �DUB� is the sound of the valve closing.
- Over a hundred years ago, in 1902, a Dutch physiologist, Willem Einthoven invented the electrocardiograph (ECG). This test is still an essential test used to evaluate the heart's electrical activity.
- Within a year of giving up smoking, the chance of having a heart attack drops by half because the heart becomes that much stronger. Hence, doctors advice to quit smoking. (Are all smokers reading?)
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