All about your Heart

The heart is a muscle in your chest made up of four chambers: the Right Atrium, the Left Atrium, the Right Ventricle and the Left Ventricle. Your heart is protected by your ribs and pumps blood around your body. This is what happens: Your blood ‘picks up’ the oxygen from your lungs and then it travels to your heart. The heart pumps or pushes the blood around your body by using the muscles in its walls. These muscles contract to push the blood around the body. Arteries carry the blood to every part of your body so your muscles and organs can use the food and oxygen to make them work. Veins carry blood back to your heart when all the oxygen has been used so the blood can be pumped back to your lungs again to ‘pick up’ more oxygen.