How To Care For Your Hard-Working Heart

The cardiovascular system is comprised of the hard-working heart, blood vessels, & about five liters of blood. You kind of knew that, didn’t you? And it’s more than that; it’s a transportation system of which blood vessels are the super highway. The hard-working heart, the most industrious working organ in the body, transports oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and cellular waste products throughout the body to the tissues. All this from something the size of a closed fist. At rest, every minute of every day, through sleeping and wakefulness, the heart is pumping about five liters of blood throughout the body. It’s an amazing process.

Arteries carry blood away from the heart. Arterial walls are thicker, more muscular, and more elastic because oxygenated blood is being forced away from the heart under great pressure.

Veins, on the other hand, are the return vessels for the blood. They bring blood back to the heart. Veins are more passive, and the pressure on them is less. The walls of veins are thinner, less elastic, and less muscular. They rely on gravity, inertia, and skeletal muscle contractions (read that: exercise and movement) to help push blood back to the heart to be oxygenated. As skeletal muscles contract, they push blood through valves closer to the heart. When the muscle relaxes, the valve traps blood until another contraction pushes it through another valve, always moving towards the heart.

This is why exercise and movement are necessary; they help to  move oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood through the body to the cells, and return the blood to the always hard-working heart.

How your heart works is not something to be taken lightly. The better and more often you move, the more you help your heart to work properly and efficiently.

That’s Aging Intelligently.