Your Heart Will Beat 3 Billion Times Without Stopping

Your heart will beat 3 billion times in your lifetime and it never takes a break.

It beats about 100,000 times per day, 35 million times per year. If you live to 80, that's roughly 2.8 to 3.2 billion contractions. And it never stops, never rests like your skeletal muscles do.

It has its own electrical system. The sinoatrial node, a clump of cells the size of a grain of rice in your right atrium, fires an impulse that spreads through the heart. It generates its own beat even if disconnected from the brain. That's why a transplanted heart starts beating immediately.

Over a lifetime it pumps about 200 million litres of blood - enough to fill 80 Olympic swimming pools. It does this on about 20% of your body's energy, contracting with a force that could squirt blood 10 metres. No maintenance, no pause, just 3 billion beats, one after another, from 3 weeks after conception until the end.