We often forget how important our hearts are, how they work in silence, keeping us alive, while we neglect them and put them in peril. Science thought it knew everything about this small, rather simple organ, while focusing on the brain, this amazing computer responsible for everything that we are. But recent studies, in surgery, imagery techniques, physiology and pathology showed there is more to our hearts than we know. So today we take a look on ten of the less-known wonderful facts about our hearts.
1. Electricity
The electrical impulse produced by a heart is 40 – 60 times stronger than the one emitted by the brain, making it the most powerful electrical impulse in the organism.
2. Information
The heart transmits more information to the brain than the brain transmits to the heart. Why is that? Well, wait and find out.
3. Together but apart
The heart can work for itself without the brain’s help. It can function independently, just as the case of a heart transplant, while the brain can’t function without its engine pumping up blood. Also, a little while after a person died, the brain is dead and the heart still have some beatings of its own.
4. Energy
The heart is an engine indeed. The energy it creates can be quantified as follows: in an hour, our heart can produce enough energy to fuel a machine to lift almost a ton of material to a height of almost 1000 meters.
5. The Network
The heart’s vascular system measures 60.000 miles in length, being able to circle planet Earth twice.
6. Soul mates
The myocardial cells taken from different people and put together may have the potential to accommodate to each others, adapting to each others and becoming a full functional system. Talking about matching souls?
7. Magnetism
As we said before, the heart can function independently from the brain, being like a computer component that self-fuels it. Thus, this power source generates 50 times more energy and 5000 times more magnetism than the brain.
8. Motherhood
All mothers know that when it comes to their unborn children, a connection between them is developing slowly, only to become more powerful. Among other things that contribute to that connection is the fact that a mother’s brain waves connect to her baby’s heart beats.
9. New life
In the womb, the fetus first develops a heart and then a brain.
10. Keep beating
On an average scale, a heart beats around 100.000 times a day, around 40 million times a year and around 3.5 billion times during an average life span.
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