Why Is It Important That the Blood Travels From the Lungs to the Heart and Back Again

How Your Heart Works

Medically Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD on September 17, 2021

Learn How the Heart Works

Your heart is an amazing organ. It continuously pumps oxygen and nutrient-rich blood throughout your body to sustain life. This fist-sized powerhouse beats (expands and contracts) 100,000 times per twenty-four hour period, pumping five or six quarts of claret each minute, or most 2,000 gallons per twenty-four hour period.

How Does Blood Travel Through the Heart?

As the heart beats, it pumps blood through a system of claret vessels, called the circulatory arrangement. The vessels are rubberband, muscular tubes that carry blood to every function of the body.

Claret is essential. In addition to conveying fresh oxygen from the lungs and nutrients to your trunk's tissues, information technology also takes the body'southward waste products, including carbon dioxide, away from the tissues. This is necessary to sustain life and promote the health of all the body'southward tissues.

There are three main types of blood vessels:

• Arteries. Arteries comport oxygen-rich blood away from the heart to all of the torso's tissues. They co-operative several times, becoming smaller and smaller as they behave blood further from the heart and into organs.
• Capillaries. These are minor, sparse blood vessels that connect the arteries and the veins. Their thin walls permit oxygen, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and other waste matter products to pass to and from cells.
• Veins. These are blood vessels that take blood back to the heart; this blood contains less oxygen and is rich in waste matter products that are to be excreted or removed from the body. Veins go larger equally they go closer to the eye. The superior vena cava is the large vein that brings blood from the caput and artillery to the heart, and the inferior vena cava brings blood from the abdomen and legs into the heart.

This vast system of blood vessels -- arteries, veins, and capillaries -- is over 60,000 miles long. That'southward long plenty to go around the globe more than twice!

Claret flows continuously through your torso's claret vessels. Your heart is the pump that makes it all possible.

Where Is Your Heart and What Does It Look Like?

The center is located nether the rib cage, under and to the left of your breastbone (sternum), and between your lungs.

Looking at the outside of the eye, you can see that the heart is made of muscle. The strong muscular walls contract (squeeze), pumping claret to the arteries. The major blood vessels that are connected to the heart include the aorta, the superior vena cava, the inferior vena cava, the pulmonary artery (which takes oxygen-poor blood from the centre to the lungs, where it is oxygenated), the pulmonary veins (which bring oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the heart) and the coronary arteries (which supply blood to the heart muscle).

On the inside, the heart is a four-chambered, hollow organ. It is divided into the left and correct side by a muscular wall called the septum. The right and left sides of the heart are further divided into two top chambers chosen the atria, which receive blood from the veins, and two bottom chambers called ventricles, which pump blood into the arteries.

The atria and ventricles work together, contracting and relaxing to pump claret out of the heart in a coordinated and rhythmic fashion. As blood leaves each chamber of the middle, it passes through a valve. In that location are four heart valves within the heart:

• Mitral valve
• Tricuspid valve
• Aortic valve
• Pulmonic valve (also called pulmonary valve)

The tricuspid and mitral valves lie between the atria and ventricles. The aortic and pulmonic valves lie between the ventricles and the major blood vessels leaving the heart.

The heart valves work the same style as ane-way valves in the plumbing of your dwelling house. They prevent blood from flowing in the wrong direction.

Each valve has a set of flaps, called leaflets or cusps. The mitral valve has 2 leaflets; the others have three. The leaflets are attached to and supported by a band of tough, gristly tissue called the annulus. The annulus helps to maintain the proper shape of the valve.

The leaflets of the mitral and tricuspid valves are likewise supported by tough, fibrous strings chosen chordae tendineae. These are similar to the strings supporting a parachute. They extend from the valve leaflets to small muscles, called papillary muscles, which are function of the inside walls of the ventricles.

How Does Blood Menstruation Through the Center?

The right and left sides of the heart work together. The pattern described beneath is repeated over and over, causing blood to period continuously to the heart, lungs, and body.

Right side of the eye

• Blood enters the centre through two big veins, the inferior and superior vena cava, emptying oxygen-poor blood from the trunk into the right atrium.
• As the atrium contracts, blood flows from your right atrium into your correct ventricle through the open tricuspid valve.
• When the ventricle is full, the tricuspid valve shuts. This prevents blood from flowing backward into the right atrium while the ventricle contracts.
• As the ventricle contracts, blood leaves the heart through the pulmonic valve, into the pulmonary artery and to the lungs, where it is oxygenated. The oxygenated claret so returns to the heart through the pulmonary veins.

Left side of the middle

• The pulmonary veins empty oxygen-rich claret from the lungs into the left atrium.
• As the atrium contracts, blood flows from your left atrium into your left ventricle through the open mitral valve.
• When the ventricle is full, the mitral valve shuts. This prevents blood from flowing astern into the atrium while the ventricle contracts.
• As the ventricle contracts, blood leaves the heart through the aortic valve, into the aorta and to the body.

How Does Blood Flow Through Your Lungs?

Once claret travels through the pulmonic valve, it enters your lungs. This is called the pulmonary circulation. From your pulmonic valve, blood travels to the pulmonary arteries and eventually to tiny capillary vessels in the lungs.

Hither, oxygen travels from the tiny air sacs in the lungs, through the walls of the capillaries, into the blood. At the aforementioned time, carbon dioxide, a waste production of metabolism, passes from the blood into the air sacs. Carbon dioxide leaves the body when you lot exhale. Once the blood is oxygenated, information technology travels back to the left atrium through the pulmonary veins.

What Are the Coronary Arteries?

Like all organs, your middle is made of tissue that requires a supply of oxygen and nutrients. Although its chambers are full of claret, the heart receives no nourishment from this blood. The heart receives its own supply of blood from a network of arteries, chosen the coronary arteries.

Two major coronary arteries co-operative off from the aorta most the point where the aorta and the left ventricle meet:

• Right coronary avenue supplies the correct atrium and correct ventricle with blood. It branches into the posterior descending artery, which supplies the lesser portion of the left ventricle and back of the septum with blood.
• Left main coronary avenue branches into the circumflex artery and the left anterior descending artery. The circumflex artery supplies blood to the left atrium, every bit well as the side and back of the left ventricle. The left anterior descending artery supplies the front and bottom of the left ventricle and the forepart of the septum with blood.

These arteries and their branches supply all parts of the heart musculus with blood.

When the coronary arteries narrow to the signal that blood flow to the heart muscle is limited (coronary avenue illness), a network of tiny blood vessels in the heart that aren't usually open up (called collateral vessels) may enlarge and get active. This allows blood to flow around the blocked artery to the heart muscle, protecting the heart tissue from injury.

How Does the Heart Beat?

The atria and ventricles work together, alternately contracting and relaxing to pump blood through your heart. This is your heartbeat. The electrical system of your heart is the power source that makes this possible.

Your heartbeat is triggered past electric impulses that travel downward a special pathway through your heart.

• The impulse starts in a small bundle of specialized cells called the SA node (sinoatrial node), located in the right atrium. This node is known every bit the centre'south natural pacemaker. The electrical activity spreads through the walls of the atria and causes them to contract.
• A cluster of cells in the center of the heart betwixt the atria and ventricles, the AV node (atrioventricular node) is similar a gate that slows the electrical bespeak before it enters the ventricles. This delay gives the atria time to contract before the ventricles exercise.
• The His-Purkinje network is a pathway of fibers that sends the electrical impulse from the AV node to the muscular walls of the ventricles, causing them to contract.

At rest, a normal heart beats around 50 to xc times a minute. Exercise, emotions, anemia, an overactive thyroid, fever, and some medications can crusade your eye to beat faster, sometimes to well over 100 beats per minute.

Middle Wellness Resource

You lot can larn more about your eye and centre health from these organizations and resources:

American College of Cardiology

www.acc.org

American Heart Association

www.centre.org

Food and Drug Administration

www.fda.gov

National Centre, Lung and Blood Plant Health Information Heart

www.nhlbi.nih.gov

CardioSmart

world wide web.cardiosmart.org

The Middle.org

www.theheart.org

trevinosuntly1956.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/hypertension-working-heart

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