The occasion of Valentine’s Day seems an appropriate time to think about your heart…the muscle that has the critical job of circulating blood around your body, not the status of your love life.
Here are a few heart facts that may surprise you:
- Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day, which equates to 35 million times a year and 2.5 billion times over the average lifetime.
- The force used by your heart to pump blood out to your body is equivalent to the amount of force you’d use to give a tennis ball a hard squeeze.
- Even at rest, your heart muscles work hard…twice as hard as the leg muscles of a sprinter.
- The six quarts of blood in your body circulate through it three times every minute, so in one day, your blood travels a total of 12,000 miles.
What are the takeaways from this? Your heart is arguably the most important muscle in your body…and you need to exercise it just like you would any other muscle. Are you aware that an inactive lifestyle is one of the top risk factors for heart disease? Regular exercise, particularly the aerobic variety, strengthens your heart and cardiovascular system, improves your circulation and heart failure symptoms, and lowers blood pressure…and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
The chocolates, flowers and other expressions of love you receive from your Valentine may make your heart go pitter-patter, but they’re no substitute for a good workout. Of course, you should check with your doctor before beginning any exercise regime, especially if you’ve been a “couch potato” for a while.