Before I begin, I want to say anything that is said here does not constitute medical advice, treatment, or anything else. It is for educational and entertainment purposes only. See a professional if there are any concerns pertaining to your heart, or anything else.

That being said….

Your heart makes a lot of music.

The whooshes and ba-dums are elegant, and to me I feel it shows that God loves bass drummers.

=D

Amid the sound of the beats much chaos can be found believe it or not.

It isn’t enough to be noticeable to the human ear, but it can be detected on ECG.

What’s amazing is from this chaos arises order, and it adapts to the inputs of the body.

We have known for a while now that when the electrical activity of the heart becomes more predictable… it can actually hint that the heart is sick.

Meaning that when the spacing between the electrical discharges becomes more consistent pertaining to time, rather than being “off” by milliseconds – it shows that the heart is being driven more by the sympathetic nervous system, and the input of the parasympathetic nervous system has less drive on it.

If you are stressed the electric discharge isn’t as variable as it is at rest. Having some chaos in the rhythm at a small level is good.

Since it shows that the heart is responding quickly to demands placed on it before the fact, not just after – it means that it is flowing with the game.

You can think of it like this, 100 % sympathetic equals tachycardia (fast heart), and 100% parasympathetic equals bradycardia (SLOWWW heart)… provided that one or the other is the primary input to the heart’s pacemakers.

Yes… you have more than one pacemaker. Two to be exact, and a region of the heart that can function as one if the main two fail.

It’s not mere redundancy at play here. It is common a common trait in safety critical domains such as: military equipment, airplanes, pressure vessels (boilers and the like), nuclear reactors, etc.

This isn’t a post purely on the physiology and anatomy of the heart, but amazingly… you can get some beats of inspiration from the heart itself pertaining to a different one.

It could be argued that the heart “speaks” about the mind more than we can with words. With all its waves and sounds (both auditory and electrical) it speaks volumes about the state of the body and the soul (emotions).

As does the gut… its feelings are quite literally shared with the brain by the vagus nerve (which is also the 10th cranial nerve).

Don’t start listening to the advice of a cheeseburger though. =P

This bad boy starts on both sides of the neck and as it runs down the body it connects to the heart, diaphragm, gut, and other organs.

It’s elegant, but I will say it reminds me of a wiring harness for an engine. Connects many things and sprawls all over the place.

Nevertheless it works beautifully.

[Sourced from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve#/media/File:Gray793.png, Public Domain].

So… why would I give you a rundown of this kind of thing?

Because it is more than medical. It affects our lives profoundly.

We recognize more than we think we do, and we react to things at a rate that we can barely grasp the speed of. Our guts have ancient intelligence through epi-genetic memory and exposure to stimuli constantly giving its input throughout the systems of the body.

While the gut can be wrong… it always has a reason for feeling what it does.

The heart can be wrong too, but it has reasons for doing what it does.

You ever sit down and have your heart racing for no reason? I’ll tell you one thing that can cause that.

Dehydration.

Our bodies scream for water. We need much more than we think we do.

Thirst is barely a metric of how much we need.

Of course we don’t want to get toxic from too much for sure, but we need much more than we get.

That being said….

Amazingly, the heart knows to pump faster when blood volume is low. This is the case in the conditions of a lack of blood, and dehydration.

It does this to compensate for pressure/volume loss in the vascular system.

I’m speaking from experience with the one thing (dehydration) so I will tell you quite literally — water is a medicine of its own.

I’m glad to know it now, along with knowing the one who gives living water.

Speaking of which, I found out something interesting.

In the chapter of Mark 9, while Jesus wasn’t talking about a fast heart (tachycardia)… he amazingly mentions things that can help one (salt and water). He even uses the word tachy in the Greek there.

Salt is known to help people with cases of a racing heart from getting up too fast (if they have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome — POTS) due to it helping their bodies stabilize pressure.

Just like we need salt and water for the heart… we should never forget to use those things in our lives and mindsets too. Metaphorically speaking.

We don’t need to dry out, and we don’t ever have to lose our spice.

Can they both be challenged? Yes… certainly.

But there is a lot of choice in giving our souls a drink or perking them up with something hearty.

“Salt is good, but if the salt loses its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Mark 9:50, WEB

It’s good advice.

How many situations would be made better if we had some temperance, or humor for that matter?

How much richer could we help people be around us by meeting needs, instead of being so self-serving?

You can go too far to the right or the left make no mistake about it, but….

If we want to make hearts flutter to life, arouse butterflies (in a good way), and freshen the air of emotion around us – we have to listen to our hearts.

They need water (fullness of life).

They need salt (for spice and volume).

Just like our souls do.

Now…

What beat will you go out with today?

I’ll let you decide.

Peace.