The Heart: The Anatomy Of The Heart

Billy Shuibi
Bio 100
Strauss
11 May 2016

 Heart
 The heart is one of the most unique organs in the human body. Its capabilities and functions truly are amazing. The heart 's function is to pump blood throughout the body supplying oxygen and nutrients to tissues. The heart is the size of your fist and weighs roughly 8-12 ounces depending if you’re male or female. The heart pumps through 100 kilometers of blood vessels for blood that is 3 to 4 times thicker than water at 60 to 80 times minute for a total volume of 5 million liters a year at rest. A basic diagram of the heart includes, right coronary, superior vena cava, aorta, pulmonary artery, pulmonary vein, right atrium, right ventricle, left atrium, left ventricle. There are more in

The ventricles send blood to the heart and are larger and stronger. Heart valves are another important aspect of the heart and body. We have atrioventricular and semilunar valves which help block regurgitation of blood. The heart has two states, it has a systole state where the heart is contracting to push blood out and diastole where the heart relaxes so the heart can fill back up with blood.
 Anatomy of the heart consists of the Atria, which is a collection of blood and not much pump force, Auricle which is attached to the atria to increase potential volume filling, Ventricles have thought myocardium and do the majority of pumping blood, Exterior is the coronary sulcus and the anterior and posterior sulci, the apex is inferior and only the larger left side, and then the base is the superior flattened top of the heart. As we know the heart does conduct electricity, the resting threshold of the heart is -90mV and has a fast and slow channel. Fast channels are transitory whereas slow channels are long lasting which allows for prolonged depolarization. The heart has different rates of depolarizations, it has a central node (SA) which “is the heart 's natural pacemaker”(Medicine Net) which has a BPM of

Atrioventricular node (AV) “serves as a gate that slows the electrical current before the signal is permitted to pass down through the ventricle” (Medicine Net) that has a BPM of 40-50. 
 There are multiple cardiovascular diseases that can occur in some people that can be moderate and some severe. A heart attack is one of them and it happens when blood is blocked by a clot, making the heart unable to pump blood throughout the body. Most of cardiovascular diseases are related to lifestyles and other non-preventable factors like ages. Coronary artery disease is a heart disease, that is caused by atherosclerosis, which is a buildup of plaque in the arteries which causes less blood flow to the heart. If plaque were to rupture it can block blood vessels which then leads to “unstable angina or a heart attack” (NHLBI). The heart also has different heart rhythms, people with bradycardia have a slow heart rate sometimes below 60. Some causes of bradycardia are increased vagal tone, SA disease, and digitoxin od. However, sometimes this can be normal in athletes who are very fit. On the opposite side we have tachycardia, which has a heart greater than 100 BPM. The causes for tachycardia usually are exercise, fever, anxiety, hypovolemia, anemia, pump failure, hypoxia, and high parathyroid