Your Heart Never Sleeps

Put two fingers on the inside of your wrist, under your thumb. Wait a few seconds. Can you feel a small beat? That is your heart. It is working right now, and it never stops.

Your heart is a muscle. It is about as big as your fist. It is in your chest, a little to the left. Every beat pushes blood around your body. The blood carries food and air to every part of you. It goes from your head to your toes.

Now look at a clock. Count the beats in your wrist for one minute. When adults are resting, most of them have 60 to 100 beats in a minute. Children often have more. When you run, your heart beats faster. When you sleep, it beats more slowly, but it doesn't stop.

Let's do some math. Seventy beats in one minute is 4,200 beats in one hour. In one day, that is about 100,000 beats! And every day, your heart moves more than 7,000 liters of blood.

Your heart doesn't take a day off. It doesn't sleep at night, and it doesn't rest on the weekend. It only rests for a tiny moment between two beats.

Here is a question for you. You started this text about two minutes ago. How many times did your heart beat while you were reading?