Know you Heart!
In order to understand what a "Heart Attack" is you first need to know a little about how the heart worksThe heart is slightly larger than a clenched fist. It is located just a little to the left of centre of the chest, behind the breast bone.
Your heart is actually a pump made from muscle. A special type of muscle not found anyware else in the body, and it does not become tired in the way ordinary muscles do.
The main function of this "Muscle Pump" is to pump blood around the body. Each day the heart contracts and relaxes (beats) some 100,000 times, pumping an average of 1500 gallons of blood around the body every 24 hours.
So the basic function of the Heart is to pump Blood around the body.
The reason the heart pumps blood around the body is so that dissolved oxygen from the lungs & nutrients from the stomach can be transported to the body tissues. The blood travels via a system of arteries & veins throughout the body. Artries are shown in RED and indicate oxygenated blood from the lungs being pumped to the body organs.
As the blood passes through the body tissues the oxygen and nutrients are consumed, it then returns via the Veins shown in BLUE. to the heart.
The heart then completes the cycle by retuning the blood back to the lungs to absorb more oxygen. So the blood circulates the body in a never ending journey carrying oxygen to the body tissues.