February is American Heart Month! We’ll be celebrating by focusing on your heart and heart health all month long here at Montana Moves & Montana Meals. After all, exercising, eating well, and managing your stress like a champ are some of the best ways to keep your ticker going strong for years to come!
Today, we’re going to stop and simply appreciate our hearts for the miraculous, wondrous machines that they are with some good ‘ole fun facts. After all, our hearts are constantly working for us, so the least we can do is show a little appreciation. Here goes:
- Your heart beats around 100,000 times every day.
- That adds up to over 2.5 billion times in an average life-span. That’s a lot of reps.
- The heart continues this constant work rate for the duration of your life despite getting to rest for just over half a second between contractions (much less when you exercise). You’re welcome.
- Weighing in at a whopping 11 ounces, this super organ pumps around 2000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels every day.
- The embryonic cells that morph into the heart begin “pulsing” four weeks after conception. The mechanism for this initiation is not fully understood.
- At rest, the heart pumps about 5 liters of blood every minute. During exercise, this cardiac output can triple, or even more than quadruple for fit athletes.
- At rest, it takes a deoxygenated blood cell six seconds to travel from the heart, pick up oxygen, and return to the heart. After being ejected from the left ventricle, a blood cell can travel to the brain, deliver oxygen, and return to the heart in eight seconds. It takes 16 seconds for a similar round trip to your toes. Now that’s a fast delivery system!
Let’s be good to our hearts this month (and every month). They certainly are good to us!
Montana Moves 