Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are some facts about the heart on this ever so heart friendly day!

The average human heart is about the size as two fists.

Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times.

Give a tennis ball a good, hard squeeze. You're using about the same amount of force your heart uses to pump blood out to the body. Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard--twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting.

As an adult, your pulse rate is an average of 72 beats per minute.

The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose.

Your body has about 5.6 liters (6 quarts) of blood that circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km (12,000 miles)--that's four times the distance across the US from coast to coast.

The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime--that's enough to fill more than 3 super tankers. 

If nothing else, you are now a little more heart smart today and have some conversation starters for your next party!