Your heart

Your heart beats over 100,000 times every day. With each heart beat, precious oxygen-rich blood is pumped around your body to keep your cells functioning so you can think, move around and make the most of life.

Your heart is specially designed to do this work and responds to your body’s demands, like when you stand up, run for the bus, get an adrenalin surge or see someone you really like.

They say that, in a lifetime, your heart expends the same energy it would take to lift a battleship out of the water – not bad for a muscle about the size of your fist.

Because the heart is so special, we often refer to it in everyday conversation: the heart of the matter, light-hearted, heart of gold, change of heart. One of our favourites here at Heart Research UK is "to have your heart in the right place" and that should be first place, because your heart works hard for you and deserves to be cared for.

Sometimes things can go wrong and you can find out more about heart disease in our heart in trouble section and the different risk factors that can increase your likelihood of developing heart disease.