The Heart and Circulatory System

The Heart and Circulatory System:

Our heart is an amazing pump, which is made of a special type of muscles to work tirelessly. With a few moving part, it is surprisingly efficient and durable than any man made pump. Our heart may beat about 70 times a minute when we are sitting quietly. But it may beat more than 150 times a minute, when we are active, in order to supply more oxygen and nutrients (through the medium of blood) to our cells. In an average life time, our heart beats more than two and half billion times without stopping. Each heart beat that we fell in our chest is one complete contraction and relaxation of our heart. Though modern technology has uncovered much of the mysteries of the heart, scientists are still curious to learn more about it.

Blood is pump around the body by the heart through the vessels called arteries and veins. So, the heart, arteries, veins and blood make our circulatory system. The right side of the heart collects the blood (through the veins) carrying waste carbon dioxide (deoxygenated blood) from the various parts of our body, and pumps it to our lungs. The left side collects the blood with fresh oxygen (oxygenated blood) from the lungs and pumps it around our body through the arteries. So, our heart (circulatory system), lungs (respiratory system: http://fine4fit.blogspot.com/2012/05/respiratory-system.html), and kidneys (urinary system: http://fine4fit.blogspot.com/2012/05/kidneys-and-bladder.html) work hand in hand to purify our blood.

Moreover, when the heart pumps blood throughout the body, the blood can pick up nutrients from various parts of our body and carry these nutrients to most cells in the body. For example, our blood can get oxygen while in lungs, digested food (nutrients) from the intestine etc. On the other hand, our blood can carry toxins to various organs (such as liver, kidneys, lungs, skin etc) where these toxins can be detoxified or removed from our body.

If our heart weakens, we may have poor blood circulation throughout our body, and not enough nutrients and too many toxins in our blood. We may get very tired quickly when doing physical activities because of the less supply of nutrients to the muscles. We may also have pains in the heart area of the chest and abnormal heart heartbeats etc. Also, there can be other symptoms too.

Here I would like to mention that although the heart has become a very expensive, time-consuming and serious concern for many people all over the world nowadays, the health-conscious and confident yoga practitioner simply have a “smiling heart” at no extra cost and trouble.