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UPBEAT - HEART SUPPORT IN WEST SUFFOLK

How Your Heart Works.

1) The right side of the heart receives blood from the body and pumps it through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs. There it picks up fresh oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide.

2) The left side of the heart receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs, and pumps it through the aorta to the body.

The heart and circulatory system

Every organ in your body needs to be supplied continuously with blood to function properly. Fresh blood brings oxygen and food to the tissues and carries away unwanted carbon dioxide and other waste products.

The blood circulates around your body through a closed system of blood vessels. The heart is the pump, which pumps it around. It has four chambers and a one-way valve system. Each contraction, or heart beat, pumps blood forward into the arteries. The arteries divide off into smaller and smaller branches to supply a microscopic network of capillaries, distributing the blood to every part of your body.

Blood is collected from the capillaries by the veins. The branches of the veins join to form larger veins delivering blood back to your heart. Blood from your veins fills the heart as it relaxes during the interval between each contraction.

This total circulatory system is called the cardiovascular system. It contains about eight pints of blood, which your heart is continuously re-circulating. Each day, your heart beats about 100,000 times and pumps about 5,000 gallons of blood.

The heart is in fact two separate pumps, which work together. The right side of the heart receives dark, de-oxygenated blood, which has circulated around your body. It pumps this to your lungs, where it picks up a fresh supply of oxygen and becomes bright red again.

The left heart receives fresh blood from the lungs and pumps it into the arteries, which supply the rest of the body. Each side of the heart has a thin-walled ‘collecting reservoir’ (the atrium) which helps to fill the thick-walled major pump (the ventricle). The heart wall is made of a special sort of muscle called the myocardium.

Like every other living tissue, the myocardium itself needs to be continuously supplied with fresh blood. This supply of blood comes from the coronary arteries.

Source British Heart Foundation

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