Can you find your heart?

Quick – put your hand over your heart! Did you put your hand on the left side of your chest? Most people do, but your heart is actually right in the middle. It just tips to the left so that part of it taps against the left side of your chest when it beats.

If you’ve ever wondered how big your heart is, there’s an easy way to find out. If you’re a kid, make a fist. If you’re a grown up, make two fists and put them together. That’s how big your heart is!

Your heart pushes blood around your body. But blood doesn’t just slosh around inside you; all your blood is contained in small tubes called blood vessels. Some are so small that it would take ten of them together to make up the thickness of one of your hairs. If you were to take every blood vessel out of your body and stretch them out end-to-end, you’d have a line of blood vessels 60,000 miles long! That’s enough to reach around the earth more than twice! By the time you grow up, that line would reach around the earth four times!

To get blood through all your vessels, your heart will beat about 100,000 times every day. In the time it takes you to read this, your blood will have gone all the way around your body about three times! If you want to feel it happening, take two fingers and press them on the inside of your wrist or on your neck just below your jaw. Feel that bumping against your fingers? That’s your blood passing by!