That Amazing Organ​—Our Heart!

“I SHALL laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, as my soul is very well aware.” (Psalm 139:14) Those appreciative words of the psalmist David should strike a responsive chord deep inside us, for truly the Creator has made our bodies in a way that incites wonder and awe.

Thus, in his book Man the Unknown, Alexis Carrel, Nobel prize winner, stated regarding the blood, “the river of life” that courses through our arteries and veins: “It carries to each cell the proper nourishment. Acting, at the same time, as a main sewer that takes away the waste products set free by living tissues. It also contains chemical substances and cells capable of repairing organs wherever necessary. These properties are indeed strange. When carrying out such astonishing duties, the blood stream behaves like a torrent which, with the help of the mud and the trees drifting in its stream, would set about repairing the houses situated on its banks.” (Pages 77-8) Yes, imagine the body’s food and sewage being taken care of by the same stream and never the one interfering with the other! And what causes this river of life to flow throughout our bodies? The heart!

The heart is truly a manifestation of the Creator’s wisdom. It is a hollow muscular organ about the size of one’s fist. In men it weighs 11 ounces and in women about 9 ounces.a It consists of four chambers, two on the right and two on the left. The right upper chamber receives the blood from the body-wide circulation. As it fills up, the blood is pumped into the lower chamber and from there into the lungs. A series of valves keeps the blood from backing up when it is pumped onward. In the lungs the blood disposes of its carbon dioxide and at the same time takes in the much needed oxygen. From the lungs the blood passes on to the upper left chamber, from which it is pumped to the lower chamber and out into the body-wide circulation, enabling the blood to nourish all the cells of the body and remove their various waste products.

So actually there are two pumps and two circulations. The slightly smaller two right chambers care for the circulation of the blood in the lungs, and the structurally larger and stronger two left chambers supply the blood for the entire body. All told, there are some 60,000 miles (97,000 km) of blood vessels​—arteries, veins and capillaries.

Structurally, the heart consists of the most intricately woven muscle in the body. When a man is running at full speed, this unique muscle enables his heart to work twice as hard as his other muscles. Those muscles soon tire out, but the muscle of the heart works incessantly from the cradle to the grave. However, it should be stated that the heart has a tiny rest period after each beat. At birth the heart beats about 150 times a minute; with maturity it slows down to about 72 beats per minute.b In a lifetime of about 70 years, the heart will have beaten about 4,000 million times. And during that time it will have pumped 46 million gallons, or about 174 million liters, of blood. The heart will beat up to twice as fast when we engage in vigorous exercise, and it also beats more quickly when we get excited, fearful or angry, thus preparing us for “fight or flight.”

Another very remarkable fact about the heart is that it furnishes its own energy. The autonomic nervous system accounts for the churning action of the stomach in its preparing food for digestion and also accounts for the rhythmic action of the intestines whereby the body’s waste materials are moved forward, finally to be eliminated. But the heart has its own source of energy, the pacemaker. This truth was not always appreciated. Thus the fetal heart begins to beat before it is supplied with any nerves. And the heart has been found to keep on beating when removed from the body, and this is especially the case if the heart is supplied with blood.

Surely such a vital, hardworking organ deserves to be treated well. That means providing it with proper nutrition, giving it needed rest, as well as exercise, to keep it strong. In particular should tobacco be avoided altogether. Further, balance and moderation should be shown in the enjoyment of the good things in life.

Since the heart is such a vital organ, it is mentioned frequently in the Bible. However, as we shall now see, the Bible’s emphasis is on the figurative rather than on the literal heart.

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