Understand the Physiology of your heart in relation to your B/P

The heart is one of the most vital organs of our body. It’s the organ in the middle of our circulation system, pumping blood around the body as it beats.

 The human heart keeps the body alive. It works like a pump sending blood around your body.

Your heart is a muscle and is about the size of your fist. Your heart is situated in the middle of your chest tilted slightly to the left.

What does your heart do?

Each day, your heart beats around 100,000 times. This continuously day and night pumps about five litres (eight pints) of blood around your body through a network of blood vessels called your circulatory system thereby delivering oxygen and nutrients to all parts of your body to help your organs and muscles work properly as well as carries away unwanted carbon dioxide and waste products.

The outlay of your heart.

Your heart has the left side and the right side,  these two sides are demarcated by a thin muscular wall called the Septum.

The right side of your heart:

The right side of your heart receives the deoxygenated blood that has just traveled around your body. It pumps the blood to your lungs to collect a fresh supply of oxygen.

The left side of your heart:

The left side of your heart pumps the re-oxygenated blood around your body again.

Both sides of your heart have an upper chamber and a lower chamber.

• the upper chambers are called the left atrium and the right atrium (or the atria)

• the lower chambers are called the left ventricle and the right ventricle.

Linking the heart and your blood pressure:

To adequately explain the physiology of the heart, we must first define essential terms. First, diastole and systole.

Diastole is the phase of the cardiac cycle that consists of relaxation and filling of the ventricles with blood.

 Systole is the phase of the cardiac cycle that consists of the contraction of the ventricles and the ejection of the blood.

 Preload is defined as the volume at which the heart is most filled with blood at the end of diastole; this value is equal to end-diastolic volume (EDV).

End Systolic Volume (ESV) is the volume of blood remaining in the ventricles after systole. Afterload is the pressure the left ventricle must overcome to eject blood into the Aorta during systole.

Heart rate (HR) is the number of beats of the heart per minute; normal values are accepted as 60 to 100 beats per minute (BPM).

Knowledge is wisdom. Take time to study and know your body.