How the Heart Works

By Ronda Gates

Surprise! The heart has long been the seat and origin of many emotions, personality traits, and fanciful attributes including bravery (lionhearted), cruelty (cold-blooded), generosity (big-hearted), and sadness, (brokenhearted). However, since the 17th Century, when William Harvey, Court Physician to King Charles I of England, revealed the first formal scientific publication about the heart, and how it works, we learned your heart (and mine) bear little resemblance to the popular symbol of love on greeting cards, the Valentine.

Most of us have some understanding of how the heart does or doesn’t work. Interest was significantly heightened recently when 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player, Damar Hamlin collapsed from cardiac arrest on January 2nd soon after making a gamechanging tackle in a game in Cincinnati with the Cincinnati Bengals on January 2. Quick response by medical professionals saved Hamlin’s life despite a 2nd cardiac arrest before he reached the hospital. More astounding was the press release that revealed what many of us believe to be a significant recovery. Less than two weeks after the incident, Hamlin had been released from the hospital, returned to his home in Buffalo, and was soon seen smiling and greeting teammates at the Bills facility in NY.

Here’s a basic scoop on the heart and the heavy work it does 24 hours a day. Surprisingly, for its heavy workload, the human heart is not large. It’s about the size of a clenched fist. It is surrounded by a membranous sack, the pericardial sac, (peri means around; cadia is from the Greek word for heart, kardia). This sac contains a small amount of watery fluid that bathes the heart and protects if from contact with adjacent organs during it contractions.

The wall of the heart consists of three layers of tissue; the pericardium, a thin transparent layer covering the outside of the heart; a similar thin layer, the endocardium (endo means inner), lining the heart cavity; and a thick layer of cardiac muscle, the myocardium (myo means muscle) that is unlike other muscle in your body. The myocardium is unique to the heart and is responsible for its contractions.

Inside your heart are two thin-walled receiving (from your body) chambers: the left and right atria and two thick-walled pumping chambers, the ventricles. These parallel pumps work simultaneously. The right-side pump receives blood from your veins and then pumps it to your lungs where it is resupplied with oxygen. Simultaneously, the left-side pump receives the freshly reoxygenated blood from the lungs and sends it through the arteries (where a medical professional can do a “blood draw”) to the rest of the body. The blood flows thanks to a series of valves that carry signals from the brain and help the heart respond and adjust to internal and external factors, primarily by adjusting the rate at which the heart beats. it’s mandatory to provide and get help immediately. (Call 911.) For every minute that passes without CPR or gaining access to an AED (see LW locations below), the survival rate for cardiac arrest is very low. CPR is far less complex than the process you may have been taught earlier in life which included checking breaths and applying mouth-to-mouth actions. AEDs when opened offers easy step-by-step instructions for use. Instruction for both is offered periodically at Leisure World.

One can imagine the force Hamlin’s heart sustained, so seriously disrupting these basic actions that his heart stopped. Above I mentioned that medical professionals responded quickly to this heart-stopping action which, thanks to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and, quickly having the use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillator that can restore electrical impulses that can restore normal heart rhythm.

It would take months and years to fully understand all the aspects of heart disease. (Cardiologists spend up to 15 years (after high school) of training to become competent enough to gain specialization.

AED’s are located in LW at the following locations:

• Administration reception

• Fitness Center

• Pickleball Courts

• Tennis Courts (near “the kitchen”)

• Rec 2 lobby

• Rec 3 golfer’s lounge

• Patrol vehicles.

Meantime, although the heart shape on the beautiful Valentine greeting cards may not be realistic, ignore reality. Use them to remind friends/family/loved ones how much they mean to you.

WHAT

You

NEED

To

KNOW: if you become aware that someone has had a heart attack (the heart stops beating, and the person will fall over as if “dead”)

Ronda Gates, MS is a Leisure World resident who has an eclectic education in the fields of pharmacy, nutrition, fitness, and counseling. One of her many hobbies includes ferreting fact from fiction when it comes to health-related news.