The heart works tirelessly, but how many times does it beat in a day or in a lifetime? (Image credit: PM Images via Getty Images)
The heart inspires more than any other organ in the body. Throughout human history, people from different cultures have written, spoken, and sung about the heart in many languages, depicting it as a symbol of love, kindness, and courage.
But the heart's primary job is to sustain life. This muscular, fist-sized organ controls the circulatory system, pumping oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. It can speed up or slow down depending on our emotions or physical activity, as well as due to injury or illness. In general, a healthy heart beats steadily and reliably.
So, how many heartbeats does a person have in a day or in a lifetime?
There are many variations in how fast your heart beats throughout the day; whether you’re sitting at your desk, going to the store, or running on a treadmill, your heart adapts to different energy demands by speeding up or slowing down. The intensity of your heartbeat also changes for about 100 milliseconds each time you inhale and exhale, said Dr. Partho Sengupta, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
“The most interesting feature of the heart is its ability to change its rate and function based on the metabolic demands of the body,” he told Live Science. “The physiology is constantly adapting — it basically has its own brain to sense the needs of the body.”
Assessing your heart rate starts with taking your heart rate minute by minute and then checking to see if your average resting heart rate falls within a certain range. Heart rate is measured in beats per minute (BPM). The normal range for a healthy adult is 60 to 100 BPM at rest, though most adults fall between 55 and 85 BPM, according to Harvard Medical School. By comparison, a newborn’s average resting heart rate is 70 to 190 BPM, according to the Benioff Children’s Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco, to meet the energy needs of a faster metabolism.
In adults, if the resting BPM is outside the normal range, it raises concerns for cardiologists, Sengupta told Live Science. “We diagnose conditions based on a faster heart rate, when it’s above 100, or a slow heart rate, when it’s below 60,” he added.
People's heart rates typically slow slightly as they age as time takes its toll on the heart muscle, said Dr. Salvatore Savona, a cardiovascular specialist and associate professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.
For example, aging can lead to fibrosis — the growth of extra tissue that makes it hard to contract — or abnormal heart rhythms, such as atrial fibrillation, the most common heart rhythm disorder, Savona told Live Science. “It can affect how fast or slow the heart beats,” Savona said.
Listen to your heart
How do heartbeats stack up over time? For example, a person with a typical resting heart rate of 70 beats per minute will generate 100,800 heartbeats in a single day. Over the course of a year, that’s about 36.8 million beats. The average life expectancy in the United States (as of 2022) is 77.5 years, according to a 2022 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This means that over a lifetime, a person's heart beats approximately 2.85 billion times.
Is there a threshold beyond which the heart wears out and stops beating? Or, to paraphrase a famous Celine Dion song, will your heart keep beating?
Factors such as age, genetics, injury and disease,
Sourse: www.livescience.com
