One Heart One Life (Chinese) – World Vision
The Franklin Institute – The Giant Heart
One Heart – One Life to Protect and Treasure
Most people are blessed with a powerful heart at birth. Of course there are always exceptions, like my father, who was born with a weak heart. He needed to fight hard just to survive. But he did survive, persevering to develop a powerful, ageless heart for a long life!
Your marvelous heart, the perpetual pump that Mother Nature gives us, can go on beating almost indefinitely. According to Biblical legend, Moses was 120 years old when he died; Noah was 950; Jared lived to be 962; and “all the days of Methuselah” were 969 years. Today, in the United States there are over 60,000 people and the count is growing who are 100 years or older. In our research on longevity we have met many people who were 100 to 115 and still living healthy lives. This shows it’s possible to enjoy living a long life!
What greater treasure and enjoyment is there than a long, happy, healthy, active useful life, and being kind and loving?
Truly it doesn’t really matter what your calendar age happens to be. In fact, it might be better all around to forget chronological age and consider only anatomical or physiological age. We do!
Longevity is really a vascular question. A man is as old as his arteries. Sir William Osler, the Canadian medical teacher and writer, pointed out long ago, a man of twenty-eight may have the arteries of a man of sixty, and a man of forty may have vessels as much degenerated as they could be at eighty.
Sir Osler used the word degenerated. Webster’s defines degeneration as: Deterioration of a tissue or an organ in which its vitality is diminished; a process by which normal tissue becomes converted into or replaced by tissue of inferior quality, whether by chemical change of the tissue (true degeneration) or the deposit of abnormal matter in the tissue (infiltration).
Premature heart attacks unnecessarily kill almost one-half million Americans yearly.
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Our Miracle Heart and Circulatory System
At birth we are given a heart with clean arteries. It is our unhealthy foods and living habits that cause degeneration. The care we take of our heart determines the number of years we are going to stay on top of this earth. It is up to each and every one of us to take special care of our heart so we can make this life a long, healthy, and happy one. Health and happiness go hand in hand.
To understand the causes of heart trouble, we must know something about the heart and the circulatory system. The primary function of this cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels) is to distribute blood through the entire body, carrying a steady flow of nourishment and oxygen to billions of body cells. Just as important, it is responsible to remove toxic wastes from those body cells.
The blood makes its continual rounds throughout the body’s 60,000 mile network of blood vessels. These vessels connect to all the body’s cells, from the heart itself, to the scalp, all the way to the finger tips and toes. The average person has between 5 and 6 quarts of blood continually circulating throughout this network. For heart facts see Franklin Institute website: http://www2.fi.edu/exhibits/permanent/giant-heart-history.php
The heart is really a double pump: each side is composed of two chambers, an auricle and ventricle.
Our Heart is a Powerful Muscle
The heart is not an organ of the body; it’s a muscle and a very powerful, hard-working miracle! It has to be! The heart is a muscular (double) pump whose vital task is to pump the blood and keep it circulating in a life-long journey throughout the body. It’s readily apparent that the heart has to be powerful and efficient to do all the endless work required in its lifetime.
Consider what the heart must do: during rest or inactivity the blood makes one round trip (through the circulatory system) per minute; during activity or heavy exercise it may make as many as nine trips a minute in order to supply the needed fuel for the increased energy and to remove the burnt-out wastes. Even during rest the heart pumps an average of 1,800 gallons of blood every 24-hours, yet it’s no bigger than your closed fist.
The tissues of the body – including the heart – need oxygen to spark the chemical reaction which provides energy, just as fire needs oxygen before it will burn and generate heat. The blood’s important function is to carry oxygenated blood to nourish all the body’s tissues.
The oxygen is first picked up in both lungs, then this oxygen-enriched blood (reddish in color) travels to the heart; from there it is then pumped to the tissues where the oxygen content is exchanged for waste. This blood, depleted of oxygen, turns bluish in color as it makes a return trip to the heart to be pumped back into the lungs.
Thus the heart is receiving two types of blood simultaneously:
- Supplies of oxygen-enriched blood from the lungs and
- Oxygen-depleted blood from the tissues.
To keep these two streams separated, the heart chamber is divided in half by a muscular partition called the septum.
The left and right chambers formed by the septum are each divided into 2 compartments. The auricle, which has a thin wall, has little pumping action and serves mainly as a reservoir. The other is the ventricle which has a thick, muscular wall and does the main pumping.
The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average life – that’s enough to fill more than three super tankers.
Nova Dateline
Your Hard-Working Blood Network
The object of the blood circulating is to ensure that all the body’s cells will be regularly supplied with food and oxygen, and regularly cleared of toxic substances. To achieve this objective, your 60,000 mile intricate network of blood vessels runs throughout your body.
The blood vessels which carry the blood from the heart are known as arteries. Those which return the blood to the heart are called veins. Both vary greatly in size, just as do streams and creeks that flow into larger rivers.
The largest blood vessel is the aorta, the artery which acts as the main supply pipe leading directly out of the heart and from which – through numerous branches – all parts of the body are eventually supplied with blood. The smallest tubes of both the arteries and the veins are called capillaries – they’re so tiny that most are only visible under a microscope. Through these capillaries the last of the food and oxygen is exchanged and the return transfer is made into the veins.
The veins then carry the oxygen-depleted blood and toxic wastes back to the heart for purification. On the way to the heart, most of the wastes are deposited in the kidneys for elimination from the body through the urine. Carbon dioxide, another impurity, is expelled through the lungs.
For Easier-Flowing Bowel Movements:
It’s natural to squat to have bowel movements. It opens up the anal area more directly. When on toilet, putting feet up 6 to 8 inches on waste basket or footstool gives the same squatting effect. From behind use two fingers to gently pull up on edge of anus – this helps it roll out easier! Remember to drink 8 glasses of water daily!
Eliminate the “Dribbles” Exercise
This will help keep the bladder and sphincter muscles tightened and toned. Urinate – stop – urinate – stop, 6 times, twice daily when voiding, especially after the age of 40. This simple exercise works wonders.
