Everyone in the world knows each of us only has one heart, but what’s remarkable is how cavalierly most people treat theirs. Unlike a few duplicate organs within us like kidneys or eyes, the heart is an utterly indispensable organ. It stops, we stop. Period.
So why, then, is heart disease on the rise? Being one of the leading causes of death worldwide, one would think more care would be taken to ensure its optimum health and function.
But that may be the problem. It works so well, under extreme, prolonged duress at times, that people tend to think nothing will ever go wrong. And when it does, those people are often no longer around to do anything to rectify that.
Other than the brain, the heart is the organ that most people think about on a regular basis. Not from a health standpoint, rather from an emotional one. But there are actionable, concrete, EASY steps people can take to care for their hearts and hopefully sidestep or at least mitigate potential problems. Yet most don’t, and don’t understand the very basics of heart function beyond the dependable beating in their chest.
This is where I think that 3D animations could help a great deal. Even though everyone knows they have a heart, they often don’t really know how it works. They have an idea, but only in a cursory way.
The more I learned about how the heart functions, the more fascinating it became. And I realize I’ve only learned a small portion of what there is to know about it. I would bet most people have only a generalized idea that heart beats depend on electrical signals that radiate across the heart in extremely sophisticated ways. And it does this all the time, minute by minute, for your entire life. It never takes a break.
Think about that fact. Could a person do a leg press with the equivalent of 2 psi of backpressure, 60+ times a minute, repeatedly for their entire lifespan? The quadricep would tire out after 5 or 10 minutes tops, requiring time to recover.
People would be awed by the fact that a very small group of specialized cells, call the SA node, or sinoatrial node, are what are responsible for sending out those electrical signals that make the heart contract.
And when those signals get out of whack, through disease, injury or genetics, a-fib quickly becomes a serious concern. The population needs to understand how these systems interact. What they do, eat, and even think (with stress-induced illness) impacts the heart in predictable, but preventable ways.
We live in a visual society, where meme culture has become paramount, and every item bought or sold comes with a video primer. Why don’t we utilize this for our preventative health?
Twenty-five years ago, I had open heart surgery to repair a mitral valve that had been chewed up by haemophilus parainfluenzae. Two years ago I got a sparkly new (to me) porcine valve. I am Beth 2.0. But I did have a-fib for a while following that last surgery, and I now understand the gravity of that condition, and why people need to pay very close attention to it.
Seeing is believing, and for people to believe that they need to take care of their cardiovascular system, they need to understand its function, and to see just what keeps that heart beating.
But all of this has only made me more fascinated with how the heart works. Most people take their hearts for granted – always there, always pumping, seemingly with no need to do anything to keep it going. That works, to a point, and then it doesn’t. Seeing this amazing organ in action through visualization might be the best way to get them to take steps towards preventing issues that COULD be prevented.
Beth Anderson is CEO and co-founder of Arkitek Scientific, a visual communications agency for science, pharma and technology companies. www.arkitek.com
