• Question: Does our heart ever get tired?

    Asked by anon-225175 to Simon, Selen, Paul, Nawapat, Natalie, Katy on 14 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Paul Laurance-Young

      Paul Laurance-Young answered on 14 Nov 2019:

      Good question! It does wear out, it is still a muscle. But does it get tired like your legs after a race… never thought about that.. I’m going to ask that of one of our physiologists!

    • Photo: Natalie Fowler

      Natalie Fowler answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      The heart is like no other muscle in our body because for most people it continues to work every second of every day. The heart has a lot more mitochondria (energy factories!) than your skeletal muscles which help it to avoid getting tired/need rest. It also has a great blood supply all to itself to keep it going with oxygen and nutrients.
      When we sleep the heart does slow down, so this could be seen as it’s resting time but it’s back to full speed at a drop of the hat if needs be.

    • Photo: Katy Bruce

      Katy Bruce answered on 25 Nov 2019:

      I’m not a biologist but I would have thought it does. I know that cardiac muscle is unique in the body and doesn’t work in the same way as smooth muscle or skeletal muscles (as this was my son’s homework the other day!) but it is bound to wear out at some time, just as the rest of the body does. What I would say is that it can become more “tired” by not being looked after properly – smoking, eating the wrong things, not exercising enough, etc.

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