The heart is like the engine to a car but for us it’s the “pump” for the human body; without the engine the car won’t run and without the pump we won’t live. The normal size of the heart is about the size of your fist, maybe a little bigger.

It pumps blood continuously through your entire circulatory system. The heart consists of four chambers, 2 on the right and 2 on the left. The right side only pumps high carbon dioxide levels of blood, after all the oxygen was used by the tissues and returns to the heart in the right upper chamber and leaves to the lung from the right lower chamber. From the lungs it than goes to the left side of the heart now, which is a very short distance as opposed to where the left side pumps the blood. The L side of the heart pumps blood to the feet, brain and all tissues in between with high oxygen levels of blood.   This is why the L side of the heart does more work than the R side since the blood leaving the L side has a longer distance in distributing oxygen. The heart pumps the blood with high oxygen blood levels to reach all your tissues and cells, going to the feet, brain, and to all other tissues in between returning home again to the right side of the heart (upper chamber) to get sent to the lungs again for more oxygen. This is why the muscle on the L side of the heart is larger than the right, it works harder. Every time your heart beats (the sound we call lub dub) the organ is sending out a cardiac output of blood either to the lungs for more oxygen or to the body tissues through the aorta to give oxygenated blood to your tissues and cells. This is the mechanics of how blood is pumped by the heart. It pumps in our body to deliver oxygenated blood to organs and remove the carbon dioxide from our organs in our body to stay alive.

What happens when the heart is diseased:

Let’s see what can occur if the heart is not functioning properly. If your heart is not pumping out a sufficient amount of blood in your cardiac output to either the body (from left side of the heart); or removing carbon dioxide from the tissues (from the right side of the heart) than it tries to work harder where it does ok at first but over time weakens. As this weak heart struggles to pump blood the muscle fibers of the heart stretch out which is particularly from the left lower chamber, the biggest muscle of the heart.  As the struggle for this organ progresses over time this stretching leaves the heart with larger, weaker chambers. The heart enlarges (called cardiomegaly).   If this continues to go on this could go into R or L sided heart sided failure. When this happens, blood that should be pumped out of the heart backs up in the lungs=L sided failure or backs up into the tissues=R sided failure.

The side the failure is on doesn’t allow proper filling of the chambers on that side and back up happens; so much like pipes work in backing up when problems occur like a blockage.  If this condition occurs that is on the L side the fluids back up in the lungs or the R the fluids first back up in the veins which can expand to hold extra blood but at some point dump the extra fluids in your tissues (What can occur over time is edema in feet first due to gravity).   This is all due to overloading of the blood not filling up in the chambers of the heart to make a good cardiac output of blood due to poor pumping of the heart and in time the fluid backs up (bad pumping=backup of blood=fluid overload in the lungs (pulmonary congestion) to fluid staying in the skin (In time to the lower extremities due to gravity=feet which we call edema trying to send the blood back to heart for more oxygen at the lungs going back up the legs when the oxygenated blood is used up.).

This condition in time with no treatment will definitely go into congestive heart failure (CHF) to first one side of the heart and if not controlled can go to both sides of the heart. CHF can range from mild to severe.

There is 670,000 cases that are diagnosed with this every year and is the leading cause of hospitalization in people over 65 y/o. Causes of CHF are: heart attack, CAD (coronary artery disease), cardiomyopathy, other conditions that overwork the heart like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity (These diseases can be completely preventable or at least well controlled).

There is many of us in this world with knowing how our activity/exercise, eating, and habits could be better for health but do little action or do nothing on their own to change it, which is a large part for certain diseases being so high in America (diabetes, stroke, cardiac diseases=high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis to CHF and more).

If people just were more healthy and more active regarding these diseases alone it would decrease in population creating a positive impact on how our health system with insurance presently (a disaster) with our economy (another disaster) for many which could get better with healthy people in the USA.

A healthy heart can pump to all parts of the body in a few seconds which is good cardiac output from the organ but when it gets hard for the heart to keep up with its regular routine it first compensates when healthy but if going into CHF, a unhealthy heart pump it will decompensate causing ischemia (lack of oxygen to the heart tissue). It’s like any tissue in the body, lack of oxygen=lack of nutrients to the body tissue=STARVATION and with lack of oxygen will come PAIN eventually to death if not treated. Take the heart, if it isn’t getting enough oxygen it can go into angina. That is reversible since it is heart pain due to not enough oxygen to the heart tissue=no damage but if left untreated what will occur is a heart attack=myocardial infarction (MI) and is permanent damage because scarring to the heart tissue takes place that is permanent damage to that area of the heart tissue where the MI occurred for life.

Learn more tomorrow about a what happens to a diseased heart.