Giving Thanks For Your Heart

The month of November is a good time to reflect back over the year with gratefulness.  It’s a season of thankfulness.  Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget one of your greatest gifts, your heart! Being grateful for your heart means honoring it by caring for it, so it can function at its maximum capacity.

Your heart is about the same size as a pear or a fist.  It is located behind your ribs on the left side of your body just next to your sternum.  It has four parts, the left ventricle and the right ventricle which are both at the bottom of the heart, and left atrium and the right atrium at the top.  A wall of muscle called the septum separates them. 

The walls of your heart are made of strong muscles that squeeze and relax to pump blood around the body.  It usually does this 90 times per minute for children and 70 times per minute for adults.

The main job of the heart is to pump blood to every part of your body.  The blood carries oxygen and all the food, vitamins and minerals that your body needs to move, think, grow and repair it.  While this is happening, the blood also identifies things in your body that it doesn’t need, and it delivers it to the parts of the body that gets rid of waste, such as your lungs, kidneys and liver.  All of this pumping of the blood through your body occurs in about one minute. 

The heart is complex.  It’s your body’s gift to you.  Take time each day to show it your thanks by exercising, eating well, and getting plenty of rest.  At Corrielus Cardiology, Dr. Sanul Corrielus wants to help you honor your heart as well.  

Posted on Behalf of Corrielus Cardiology