MUST YOU STRENGTHEN YOUR HEART

  Amar Nath Mukherjee

We appear into this world along with a costliest possession, about which we do not have a clear idea or understanding of its working; We know quite well about our Bank Balance and about our Properties that we have in our possession, the total quantity of Jewellery that we keep in our Bank’s Locker but we do not know or have a scant knowledge about the functioning of our Heart; because of that we are just not in a position to take care of our most valuable possession “The Heart”.

If we can get to know the answers of the following questions only then we will be able to increase our awareness level, consequently we will be able to take care effectively to maintain a healthy heart by adopting necessary changes in our lifestyle and our food habits.

The questions are as follows –

1.         Since when our heart starts beating?

Heart starts beating when we are about two & half months’ old in our mother’s womb (in foetus stage).           

2.         How many times it beats per day?

For a normal adult the heart beats on an average 72 times per minute which is equal to (72x60x24) about 104000 times in a day.

3.         What does it do by beating so many times?

Basically heart is a muscle pump and in every beat it squeezes about half cup i.e. about 70 ml of oxygenated blood in the aorta (the main artery of the body supplying blood from the heart to circulatory system).

4.         What is the physiological impact of heart beating?

While the blood delivers oxygen to the trillions of cells in our body, it also carries nutrients obtained from our food intake (small intestine), over and above the circulating blood acts as a detergent which cleans up toxins viz. metabolic waste, carbon dioxide etc.

As stated above, the heart is squeezing about (70x104000) seven thousand five hundred liters (approx.) of blood in a day to perform the above mentioned activities i.e. to deliver oxygen, enriching body cells with nutrition and cleaning of waste materials from our body.

5.         How it is functioning (modus operandi)?

Our heart is performing this enormous job even before our birth till this day without any perceptible interruption. When we sleep it does not stop its activity. It will only stop to herald the end of our biography.

6.         What are the advantages in its way of working?

Since heart is a forcing pump, propelling the blood into the arterial network and the skeletal muscular activity is essentially required to get blood back to the heart and here the muscles act as a sort of muscle pump.

In view of the above there are two distinct advantages of the heart –

a)         It does not have to do both the functions i.e. forcing out then suck in for return which results in heart getting half second of rest in between the two strokes – Systolic and Diastolic. During diastolic phase heart muscles relax and allow the chamber to fill with veinous blood. If it were otherwise i.e. doing forcing and suction both, our life span would have been halved.

b)         The other advantage of heart is that it gets half second of rest in between two strokes, therefore in a day it gets about 14 hours of rest (in 100000 beats or 50000 seconds or 833 minutes or about 14 hours); consequently heart works for 10 hours and its total resting time is 14 hours.

7.         What are the disadvantages?

The heart is the strongest muscle of our body and the leg muscles are the largest muscles (quadriceps) as a result our leg muscles largely contribute to the transportation of our veinous blood back to the heart. That is why they are termed as our second heart in our circulatory system.

Hence our cardiac function is heavily dependent on the skeletal muscle pumps of the legs for the return journey of the blood to the heart and this is the heart’s disadvantage.

8.         What needs to be done for its hassle free

            working?

How to make our circulatory system hassle free as far as possible? Before going into the details we must consider the following facts –

Our skeletal muscles are voluntary whereas the cardiac muscle (heart) is involuntary, i.e. it cannot be worked out as we do in our skeletal muscle, hence it is to be worked out indirectly to make it strong. Now what is to be done about it? By certain activity we have to increase the demand of oxygen in our system and the moment the increased demand is created our heart will automatically respond by increasing the cardiac outputs whereby the demand of additional oxygen is met by augmenting higher volume of oxygenated blood as desired.

This is possible only when we engage ourselves in some form of aerobic activity like Brisk Walking, Jogging, Swimming, Skipping etc. Basically aerobic activity is a kind of language with which we tell our heart to augment supply of oxygen by squeezing out higher volume of blood in our circulatory system.

For example, when our heart is beating normally i.e. about 72 times per minute and in each stroke about 70 ml blood is squeezed out, that results in about 5 liters (70x72) of blood is being circulated per minute.

Now with aerobic activity heart beat is increased to about 125 to 130 times per minute. Consequently about 9 liters per minute will be the rate of blood circulation.

Therefore, higher the volume of blood circulates in our body the basic function of the blood which are earlier stated, will reach at its peak.

Throughout the day about 7500 liters of blood passes through our blood vessel.

By our regular aerobic activity we can gradually clean out the scum/atherogenic deposits from the blood vessel.

Our body also tries to increase the HDL level which effectively cleans LDL deposit in the arteries. Arteries become flexible which reduces the chances of Arteriosclerosis.

The aerobic activity increases the strength of our heart muscles. This is the only reason why long distance runners/racers have a very low resting heart rate, which is as low as 40 times/minute. Their heart forces about the same volume of blood which an ordinary man’s heart does it at 72 times per minute.

The inference is that if we keep our heart strong we can make a healthy living.

Bibliography:

1.         Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, By Dr. H. David Coulter

2.         Yoga Self Taught, By Andre Van Lysebeth

3.         Know Your Body, By Dr. J.D. Ratcliff

4.         Heart Health, By Dr. Robert Ascheim & Dr. Deborah Ascheim.

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STIFFNESS IS DEATH & FLEXIBILITY IS LIFE

Amar Nath Mukherjee

It is a natural phenomenon that our body starts getting gradually stiff as we grow old and after death it becomes completely stiff (Rigor Mortis). This gradual stiffness of joints takes place so slowly that it is just not generally perceptible. For example, the body of an adolescent boy or girl is much more flexible than that of an elderly person.

Why it so happens? Plausible explanation to this is that, the joint movement is affected due to the neuromuscular support but as we grow old the skeletal muscles become asthenic (weak) due to ageing and inactivity, consequent to which joints do not get adequate muscular support for their movements. As a result, they tend to lessen and minimize their normal movement and lesser the movement of the joints, stiffer they become and at times get ankylosed (fused). Vascular accessibility between the joints is either partially or completely cut off. Hence the blood circulation in those area is severely impaired resulting which avascular neurosis sets in.

For example each of a pair of long muscles which connects the sternum, clavicle and mastoid process of the temporal bone that serve to turn and nod  the head (Sternocleidomastoid) when they become weak the movement of the cervical vertebra is very much restricted, sequel to which this portion of the vertebra gets stiffened causing spondylitis  or ankylosing spondylitis. Similar problem occurs in the lumber vertebra and sacroiliac joints also when the movement in this area is restricted due to obesity and larger waistline.

Now the question is how to effectively counteract the said condition. If we consider carefully we shall find that our physical activity becomes more and more reduced due to (a) Ageing (b) Irregular lifestyle (c) Improper diet resulting in obesity (d) Addiction.

As far as ageing is concerned we just cannot stop the process nor can we reverse it either. Nevertheless we can retard the ageing by regular moderate workout and proper food intake; otherwise the process is very likely to be accelerated as there is no other third option left.

Addiction and obesity are the other major problems which increase the possibility of our joints getting stiff.

In view of the above a regular moderate weight training along with stretching are absolutely necessary for avoiding or reducing stiffness of our joints.

Both of these activities will take care of toning the muscles which in turn provide effective support to the joints.

Healthy lifestyle, of course, cannot give us any guarantee against disease free life but certainly one can substantially and significantly reduce the chances of being unwell and also the intensity of infliction, if there is any, will be much less than those who do not maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Our physiological system has a tremendous inherent and inbuilt capacity to repair and rectify of its own PROVIDED we render all its desired assistance to facilitate its smooth working and not creating any hindrance by misusing and misbehaving with it.

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ACHIEVING WELLNESS

Amar Nath Mukherjee

Before dwelling on the subject, let us try to indicate the meaning of wellness. Wellness is basically a state of our body and mind which is how effectively responding and recouping from a disturbed state to a normal state. In medical parlance it can be defined as to how soon our psychosomatic system comes back to a normal state (homeostasis) from an unstable state.

For example, when we do work out or running around, obviously our heart rate increases, but when we come back to rest how soon our heart rate comes down to normal level. Similarly, breathing frequency also increases during that physical activity; it should also come down to normal breathing rate in short period in a stressful situation. We are likely to be tensed but how soon we can mentally normalize, in case of over ailment, how soon we convalesce. These are all indicative of over wellness states, both body and mind.

Now the wellness condition is largely dependent on our physical fitness and also on mental and emotional stability and status.

Our fitness criteria depend on factors which are as follows.

a)    One should have an accepted norm of body weight, i.e body mass index between 19 and 25.

b)   The waistline measurement should be less than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women, waist to hip ratio is also important in this matter.

c)    All the major joints viz. neck, shoulder, waist, hip etc. should be adequately flexible.

d)   All the major muscles viz. back, abdominal, shoulder, hand, leg should be well toned

e)    Air intake capacity of our lungs should be well maintained so as not to be gasping for breathing on short jogging or on climbing stairs.

f)     Normal blood chemistry viz. lipid profile, hemoglobin, creatinine, sugar level etc. are to be maintained.

g)    Regular bowel movement with formed defecation should be maintained.

h)   Emotionally and mentally stable so as to be able to effectively handle the stressful situation.

There is a direct relationship between wellness and fitness states of our physiological system, which can be formulated by an abstract equation.

1.    W α F

Or W= (E+d) F

Where W= Wellness. F =Fitness, E= Exercise, d=diet

2.    W α 1/S

Or W= ( E+ d)/S x M

Where, W= wellness, S= sickness, d=diet, E= Exercise, M= Medical assistance.

To keep the balance between wellness and fitness as per the said equation (1) we must have to improve and sustain our workout and proper diet.

In the case of the equation (2) there is one ‘M’ factor that has been introduced, the implication of this ‘M’ is that when we have                          some sickness like blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems etc. only exercise and diet are not sufficient, it must have to be addressed by medical assistance.

In medical treatments there are two parts. One is preventive and other curative, now the curative part is normally expensive, at times the patients spend their major earnings and assets for curative treatment but for preventive portion the expenses are insignificant.

Regular exercise and proper diet ensure us to maintain our wellness state - that is lesser and lesser chance of getting inflicted with various diseases. We can therefore reasonably infer that all types of workouts - be it jogging, brisk walking, swimming, yoga etc. act as preventive and not curative against disease. Nevertheless, few physical culturist or yogis wrongly claim it as to be curative and sell the idea as that.

However, going back to the subject we can say that our achievement of wellness is essentially dependent on our fitness endeavor, as such wellness is the result and the fitness is our endeavor.

To conclude, must you not put at stake your wellness for your occupation lest you may terribly repent at the end of the day.

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