27 Amazing Facts About Your Heart
Take care of your heart. It’s an incredible organ. Here are 27 amazing facts about your heart from
Cleveland Clinic — celebrating 27 years as America’s No. 1 Heart Center!
1 - The more education you have, the lower your risk of heart disease.
2 - A normal heart valve is about the size of a half dollar.
3 - The first heart pacemakersplugged into a wall socket.
4 - Happiness and a strong sense of emotional vitality help lower your risk of heart disease.
5 - The number of heart attacks peaks on Christmas Day, followed by December 26th and New Year’s.
6 - People really can have a broken heart. Sometimes life situations can cause temporary heart failure.
7 - The first “study” showing benefits of a vegetarian diet appears in the Bible’s Book of Daniel (600 BCE).
8 - The blue whale has the largest heart — weighing over 1,500 pounds.
9 Modesty prompted the invention of the stethoscope. Before it existed, doctors had to press their ears directly to each patient’s chest.
10 - Heart disease has been found in 3,000-year-old mummies.
11 - Your heart is about the size of your two hands clasped together...
12 - It beats 100,000 times a day.
13 - Regular exercise is the single most important key to heart health. And it is FREE.
14- Heart disease is your greatest health threat (and is a greater danger than breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men).
15 - The beating sound is the clap of valve leaflets opening and closing.
16 - Each minute your heart pumps 1.5 gallons of blood.
17 - Your heart is a coordinated machine. The right side pumps blood into your lungs, while the left side pumps it back into your body.
18 -
Celebrities who’ve had open heart surgery in recent years include David Letterman, Bill Clinton, Barbara Walters, Jeff Green and Shaun White.
19 - You control your heart health through diet, exercise and managing stress.
20 - Heart cancer is very rare, because heart cells stop dividing early in life.
21 - A woman’s average heartbeat is faster than a man’s by almost 8 beats a minute.
22 - The heart has its ownelectrical supply and will continue to beat when separated from the body.
23 - Every cell in the bodygets blood from the heart, except for the corneas.
24 - The heart pumps blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels!
25 - A normal heart pumps approximately 4 tablespoons of blood with each beat.
26 - The 26.2-mile marathon can be now run in less than 2 hours, but runners of any speed have 45% lower risk of heart disease or stroke.
27 - 27 is the atomic weight of cobalt, which caused heart damage when it was used to make foamier beer. "Beer drinker's heart disease" is now only of historical interest.
© 2021 Cleveland Clinic
