Where is the heart in the body?

The human heart is the most important organ, because every beat of the heart means that life continues. In the earliest times, the standard for human death was that the heart stopped beating, but in today's high-tech world, death is generally considered true death when the brain dies, which is not as simple as the heart stopping beating. Since the heart is so important to humans, where is it located in the body?

Location

The heart is located in the chest cavity, between the two lungs above the diaphragm, about two-thirds to the left of the midline. The heart is like an inverted, slightly flattened cone at the front and back, like a peach. The blunt round apex of the heart faces the left front and lower side, close to the anterior chest wall, and its surface projection is 0.5-1.0 cm inside the midclavicular line in the fifth intercostal space of the left anterior chest wall, so the apex beat can be seen or felt here. The base of the heart is wide, with large blood vessels entering and exiting it, heading towards the upper right posterior side, adjacent to the esophagus and other organs in the posterior mediastinum.

effect

The function of the heart is to promote blood flow and provide sufficient blood flow to organs and tissues to supply oxygen and various nutrients (such as water, inorganic salts, glucose, protein, various water-soluble vitamins, etc.), and take away the end products of metabolism (such as carbon dioxide, urea and uric acid, etc.) so that cells maintain normal metabolism and function. Various endocrine hormones and some other humoral factors in the body also need to be transported to target cells through blood circulation to achieve the body's humoral regulation and maintain the relative constancy of the body's internal environment.

In addition, the realization of the blood's defense function and the relatively constant regulation of body temperature also depend on the continuous circulation of blood in the blood vessels, and the circulation of blood is achieved due to the action of the heart "pump". An adult's heart weighs about 300 grams and its role is enormous. For example, when a person is at rest, the heart beats about 70 times per minute, pumping 70 milliliters of blood each time, which means about 5 liters of blood per minute. It can be calculated that the work done by a person's heart in pumping blood throughout his life is roughly equivalent to the work done in lifting an object weighing 30,000 kilograms to the top of the Himalayas. The myocardium that makes up the heart contracts and relaxes rhythmically to form the heart beat. When the myocardium contracts, it pushes blood into the arteries and flows to the whole body; when the myocardium relaxes, blood flows back to the heart through the veins. Therefore, the beating of the heart drives the flow of blood and is the driving organ for blood transportation.