With the defibrillator challenge coming up on us rapidly, 25 June 22 – I thought I would talk about the heart and how it works.
Walnut Grove with the support of the Portishead Lions club is aiming to raise enough money to enable 2 defibrillators to be bought and fitted at both Walnut Grove Clinic on Slade Road and at Walnut Grove Studio / Functional Fitness providing what we believe is a much-needed service for the community and helping to create a network or access to life saving defibrillators for EVERYONE!
Alongside the crowdfunding page we are going to host an event whereby we get as many people involved as possible on the 25th June 2022 to accumulate the miles, in whichever way they can to be involved – run, cycle, walk, swim, row, windsurf (!) – that would take us on a journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats. By road, this distance would be 874 miles so we need as much support as we can!!
Click here to help us help the community in Portishead
So, what does the heart actually do?
The heart is an amazing organ it starts beating at around 22 days after conception and continuously pumps oxygenated, nutrient rich blood to all your tissues and organs.
- Its pumping power also pushes blood through organs like the lungs to remove waste products like CO2 and to fill the red blood cells with oxygen.
- This fist-sized powerhouse beats (expands and contracts) about 100,000 times per day, 72 beats per minute. A healthy heart pumps 70 millilitres of blood every time it beats. This means, it will pump somewhere around 5 litres for 72 beats per minute. And, in a day, the heart will pump around 7,200 litres of blood.
- In general, if the heart stops beating, in about 4-6 minutes of no blood flow, brain cells begin to die and after 10 minutes of no blood flow, the brain cells will cease to function and effectively be dead. There are a few exceptions to this.
- The heart works by a regulated series of events that cause this muscular organ to contract (squeeze to push blood) and then relax (refill with blood).
- The normal heart has 4 chambers that undergo the squeeze and relax cycle at specific time intervals that are regulated by a normal sequence of electrical signals that arise from specialised tissue.
- The 2 cycles are the Systolic phase where the ventricles contract and the diastolic phase, when the ventricles relax and the heart fills with blood. This is the higher and lower figure of your blood pressure.
- In addition, the normal sequence of electrical signals can be sped up or slowed down depending on the needs of the individual, for example, the heart will automatically speed up electrical signals to respond to a person running and will automatically slow down when a person takes a nap.
Blood accounts for 7-8 % of an adult’s body weight – approximately 5 litres (10.5 pints) on average.
The deoxygenated blood from the body, through the network of veins, comes back to the right atrium, one of the four chambers of the heart. From there it goes to the right ventricle and on to the lungs. 2 valves, tricuspid and the pulmonary valves prevent backflow as the chamber contracts – blood can only go forwards in a healthy heart.
In the lungs the haemoglobin in the red blood cells take on oxygen and waste products such as carbon dioxide are expelled. The blood moves into the left atrium, which is thick-walled as the force needs to be greater to push the blood into the aorta and on to the rest of the arterial system, to the rest of the body. The mitral valve and the aortic valve prevent backflow here.
The flow of blood into and out of the heart takes place simultaneously.
The heart has its own mini circulatory system with its own arteries and veins.
A healthy heart is essential for healthy living and as you can see there is a lot of potential for things to go wrong related to blood flow, how the heart pumps, heart rhythm or the valves. A defibrillator cannot save a life from all of these – but in the most common causes for the heart to suddenly stop it is likely to be a life saver.
Please help us at Walnut Grove, the Studio and Functional Fitness to help save lives in Portishead and support our fund-raising – Click here to find out more and donate.
