Every day, your heart creates enough energy to drive a truck for 20 miles (32 km).

 

1. Your system of blood vessels -- arteries, veins and capillaries -- is over 60,000 miles long. That's long enough to go around the world more than twice!
2. When attempting to locate their heart, most people place their hand on their left chest. Actually, your heart is located in the center of your chest between your lungs. The bottom of the heart is tipped to the left, so you feel more of your heart on your left side of your chest.
3. Heart has its own electrical impulse, it can continue to beat even when separated from the body, as long as it has an adequate supply of oxygen.
4. The “thump-thump”, “lubb-dubb” of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves of the heart closing.
5. The heart begins beating at four weeks after conception and does not stop until death
6. The heart does the most physical work of any muscle during a lifetime. The power output of the heart ranges from 1-5 watts. While the quadriceps can produce 100 watts for a few minutes, an output of one watt for 80 years is equal to 2.5 gigajoules
7. The heart beats about 100,000 times each day. 35 million times in a year and in a 70-year lifetime, the average human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times
8. As a kid your heart rate (number of times the heart beats in a minute) ranges between 90-120. As you become an adult heart beat ranges between 60-72 beats a minute. The heart rate should be calculated at resting stage (when you are relaxed and taking rest).
9. A small mass of specialized muscle on the back wall of the right atrium called the sino-atrial(SA) node, also known as the pacemaker sends out electrical impulses to generate the heartbeat at regular intervals. This is the one that regulates your heart beat.
10. Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back
11. An adult woman's heart weighs about 8 ounces, a man's about 10 ounces
12. A child's heart is about the size of a clenched fist; an adult's heart is about the size of two fists.
13. Blood is about 78 percent water.
14. Aorta is the largest artery in the body which helps carries the blood from the heart to various organs in the body.
15. The heart pumps oxygenated blood through the aorta (the largest artery) at about 1 mile (1.6 km) per hour. By the time blood reaches the capillaries, it is moving at around 43 inches (109 cm) per hour
16. Blood flows through the heart in this order: right atrium, right ventricle, pulmonary circuit, left atrium, left ventricle and into aorta that delivers blood to various organs in the body
17. Blood takes about 20 seconds to circulate throughout the entire vascular system.
18. Drugs such as cocaine, marijuana can affects the heart’s electrical activity and causes spasm of the arteries, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke, even in healthy people.
19. Some heavy snorers may have a condition called obtrusive sleep apnea (OSA), which can negatively affect the heart
20. Your body has on an average 5.6 litres of blood. 5.6 litres of blood circulates through the body 3 times every minute. In one day blood travels around 12,000 miles every day.
21. The heart pumps blood to almost all of the body’s 75 trillion cells. Only the corneas receive no blood supply.
22. 5% percent of blood supplies the heart, 15-20% goes to the brain and central nervous system, and 22% goes to the kidneys.
23. When one goes on for a vigorous exercise programme you should learn about your Target heart rate.
24. Prolonged lack of sleep can cause irregular jumping heartbeats called premature ventricular contractions (PVCs).
25. “Atrium” is Latin for “entrance hall,” and “ventricle” is Latin for “little belly.”
26. The right atrium holds about 3.5 tablespoons of blood. The right ventricle holds slightly more than a quarter cup of blood. The left atrium holds the same amount of blood as the right, but its walls are three times thicker
27. Grab a tennis ball and squeeze it tightly: that’s how hard the beating heart works to pump blood.
28. The heart works harder than any other muscle in the body, it needs a much richer blood supply. The coronary arteries, which leave the aorta about a 1/2 inch above the aortic valve run along the outside of the heart. After giving off the oxygen to its capillaries, the blood then drains directly into the right atrium.
29. Blood is actually a tissue. When the body is at rest, it takes only six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only eight seconds for it to go the brain and back, and only 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart.
30. Coronary artery disease is due to atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which is a slow progressive build-up of cholesterol plaque in the arteries of the heart. Most patients find out that they have heart disease when it is quite advanced. This is due to lack of understanding about how heart disease develops. 
31. Heart disease actually kills two times more women than all cancers combined. 
32. Do not rely only on cholesterol level. 77% of people who have the first heart attack attack are found to have normal cholesterol.
33. If your ECG, ECO and Treadmill tests are normal still you can have early disease for changes occur in these tests after blocks develop to more than 60%. That means you are missing out early lesions and indirectly allowing the disease to grow.
34. Conventional coronary angiogram is unable to detect early heart disease where the relative cross sectional plaque area is less than 45%.  In other words a "normal coronary angiogram" may not necessarily mean normal  coronary arteries.
35. When you measure your BP you have 2 values eg 120/80mm Hg. The number on the top ie 120 mm Hg is the systolic pressure which is the highest arterial pressure recorded during a ventricular cycle. This is commonly recorded during the contraction stage of the heart muscle. The bottom number 80mm Hg is the diastolic pressure. This is the lowest arterial pressure during a ventricular cycle. This is usually recorded while the heart is refilling with blood.
36. French physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826) invented the stethoscope when he felt it was inappropriate to place his ear on his large-buxomed female patients' chests.
37. Physician Erasistratus of Chios (304-250 B.C.) was the first to discover that the heart functioned as a natural pump.
38. The structure of the heart was first described in 1706, by Raymond de Viessens, a French anatomy professor.
39. The electrocardiograph (ECG) was invented in 1902 by Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven. This test is still used to evaluate the heart's rate and rhythm.
40. The first heart specialists emerged after World War I.