In the following video Alexander Tsiaras calls the development of the human heart magnificent oragami as the heart forms with cells developing at a rate of one million per second.
Conception to birth — visualized
It is generally believed that the heart acts as a pressure pump forcing an inert fluid through the lungs and through the bodily tissues and organs. There is evidence that this is not the case and that it is more accurate to view the heart as an organ which regulates the dynamic activity of the blood.
Here Walter Alexander reviews Branko Furst’s radiacal alternative:
… the possibility that the dominant paradigm is deeply flawed is what Branko Furst, MD, explores in The Heart and Circulation: An Integrative Model in 2014 and in “The Heart: Pressure-Propulsion Pump or Organ of Impedance” in the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia in 2015. In these, he marshals the evidence against the standard propulsion pump model and presents an alternative that may open new avenues for understanding circulation and, ultimately, pharmacotherapy. As a vascular anesthesiologist in a tertiary care medical center, Dr. Furst holds hemodynamic monitoring and support of circulation at the core of his acute-care concerns.
To challenge the prevailing paradigm in any field is difficult, and in the case of heart function, with its notoriously complex dynamics, myriad of interrelated influencing factors, and vast diagnostic and therapeutic implications, it is a prodigious undertaking. Dr. Furst has provided more than 800 supporting references in his book and the journal article. It is far beyond the scope of this article to fairly represent the range of this content. However, we will attempt to review the basic argument and rationale for such a challenge and give the reader a compass for delving more deeply into the underlying research.
In the article THE HEART IS NOT A PUMP:
A REFUTATION OF THE PRESSURE PROPULSION PREMISE OF HEART FUNCTION Ralph Marinelli writes the following:
Implicit in the notion of pressure propulsion in the cardiovascular system are the following four major concepts.
(1) Blood is naturally inert and therefore must be forced to circulate.
(2) There is a random mix of the formed particles in the blood.
(3) The cells in the blood are under pressure at all times.
(4) The blood is amorphous and is forced to fill its vessels and thereby takes on their form.
However, there are observations that challenge these notions. It is seen that the blood has its own form, the vortex, which determines rather than conforms to the shape of the vascular lumen and circulates in the embryo with its own inherent biological momentum before the heart begins to function. Just as an inert vortex in nature pulses radially and longitudinally, we tentatively assume that blood is also free to pulse and is not subject to the pulse-restricting pressure implied in the pressure propulsion concept. The blood is not propelled by pressure but by its own biological momenta boosted by the heart.
The recent advances in non-invasive imaging allows the dynamics of the circulatory system to be studied in much more accurate detail than ever before. And it is beginning to be obvious that the current understanding of the heart as a mechanical pump is false.
Frank Chester discovered the chestahedron, 7 sided polyhedron with surfaces of equal area. He discovered this by combining art and science. From studying this form he made many further discoveries including discoveries about its relationship with the human heart as demonstrated in this video.
Craig Holdridge gives a good description of the relationship between heart and blood:
We’ve arrived at a picture of the intricate streaming, turning, looping blood flow through the heart that follows a different pattern in each of the four chambers. The coiling, looping heart fibers create contractions that mirror and facilitate this dynamic coursing of the blood. The heart muscle does not work, as we often imagine it does, opening and closing as we can do with our fist, first forming a fist (systole) and then relaxing the fist (diasole). Rather, the heartbeat (cardiac cycle) includes a much more complex array of movements. During systole the heart moves downward and oscillates slightly to the sides and also rotates around its own axis. During diastole it moves upward and rotates back in the opposite direction. Only the heart’s interwoven spiraling muscle fibers can produce this kind of complex motion.
We see that blood flow, the form of the heart and the pattern of its fibers, and the heartbeat are intimately entwined. We can’t think of one without the others. When we go back to the origin of the blood and the heart in embryonic development, it is no simple matter to say what came first (see Brettschneider’s preface to Woernle’s chapter in this book). Maybe it’s also just our mechanical way of thinking that wants to see a clearly directional cause and effect relation between the heart and the blood instead of a more living relation of mutual dependency.
This mutuality shows itself during the embryonic development of the heart. Early in its development the heart begins to form loops that redirect blood flow. But before the heart has developed walls (septa) separating the four chambers from each other, the blood already flows in two distinct “currents” through the heart. The blood flowing through the right and left sides of the heart do not mix, but stream and loop by each other, just as two currents in a body of water. In the “still water zone” between the two currents, the septum dividing the two chambers forms. Thus the movement of the blood gives the parameters for the inner differentiation of the heart, just as the looping heart redirects the flow of blood. Blood movement and heart differentiation belong together.
In describing the heart as a machine we produce a conception of it which is far removed from reality. It needs to be understood in its true, dynamic, living nature.
Similarly to John Harshman, I don’t see what the dynamics of fluid flow in a vessel show you with regards to the topic of your OP. Helical flow is seen in many different applications of fluid dynamics. Water can be made to flow helically at certain velocities in a curved pipe-elbow (the article I’m thinking of is behind a pay-wall so I shant bother linking it) and a utility inspector I worked with early in my career told me that LNG travels helically trough pipelines. I don’t see how the helical flow model buys you anything with regards to blood being non-inert.
Two sentences which seem completely unrelated. Well, okay, they are both wrong if you want to count that as a relation.
To be fair, this is mentioned in Furst’s article in the section titled “Failing Heart, Rising Output?”. He cites cases where a 25% increase in ‘cardiac output’ was seen during aortic cross-clamping for surgery. I’m not currently interested in going down the rabbit-hole of following the trail of citations, but the Burns, Permutt et. al. article cited is with regards to testing in canines and was published in the American Journal of Physiology. If anyone has the required technical knowledge and desire to chase down that source and digest the data (I have neither), I’d love to know if the result of a 25% increase is statistically significant or anecdotal.
Wrong. I don’t make that determination at all. I leave it to universities, journals, and others with actual expertise in the field. Exactly what you should do–at least until such time as you have studied the field (and that doesn’t mean checking out some youtube videos that seem really cool to you).
The tag for a hyperlink is:
<a href=”http://www.yourURLgoeshere.com”>text</a>
which will end up looking like this:
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Awesome. Thank you!
I’d say you are right about the irreducible complexity.of the circulatory system. The more I come to understand about the way it operates in the capillary beds, how it transfers the various substances and how it is regulated, the more impressed I become.
I wasn’t asking how much locomotion would be produced. If they can wiggle then they are capable of autonomous locomotion.
But that isn’t the subject under discussion. If you recall, this discussion is about the heart. You were proposing blood cell wiggling as an alternative to pumping by the heart as an explanation of blood circulation. Don’t you remember?
Microcirculation refers to the blood flow either side of and through the capillaries. All the blood must circulate through the capillaries if it is to return to the heart. there are around ten billion capillaries in the average human body spanning tens of thousands of miles. So I would say that 20-30 trillion red blood cells travelling through this network is not a tiny amount of motion.
RoyLT has commented on this below with a reference to this article
No, but by observing the system and the flow patterns in the blood, I can see the wisdom inherent in the design.
The link you provided is actually by Walter Alexander but of course he is in support of Furst’s work.
The heart may be thought of as a pump, but what type of pump. The argument seems to be about not being a pressure pump, but it does assist in pushing the blood into the arteries in what has been described as an action not dissimilar to that of wringing out a towel in a twisting motion. And the double helix form of the myocardium has been described as like a rope. The apex of the left ventricle is very thin and so it is hard to imagine how it would withstand much of a pressure build up although I suppose the pericardium would help.
I agree that the blood is a very complex mixture. A liquid, a solution, a colloid? As you say it is a non-Newtonian fluid.
I will take your advice and Google HAPE and HACE. Thanks for your input.
Water transport in plants is via dead cells (xylem) and movement is accomplished by surface tension, adhesion, and cohesion of water and its interactions with the interior of the xylem cell walls. There is no ‘pumping; whatsoever.
Of course it is especially if the water being pumped through the copper pipes contains solutes, e.g., saltwater.
the heart is absolutely a pressure pump and it is solely responsible for pushing the blood into the arteries. No heartbeat no blood flow. Without a heartbeat you end up with lividity not continued blood flow through the body. That this is so obvious it is a wonder why it is even being questioned. The action of a heart pumping blood is completely dissimilar from the wringing out a towel analogy.
I’m pretty sure I just heard Charlie’s head exploding
That was a vacuous statement. Did you know it was?
Comment
Blood is by no means inert, it can be regarded as an active fluid.
Branko Furst, MD & Walter Alexander:
Here is an article on active fluids:
As technology advances we find that nature has already beaten us to it and this is why biomimicry has become so popular. We might get there quicker if we were to work with nature rather than against her as is so often the case.
Viktor Schauberger was a pioneer in working with natural energy and the flowforms of water. The circulatory system uses some of the same principles as the blood and lymph flow through our bodies.
In other words he was practicing Goethean science.
Do you consider Branko Furst to be a nutjob?
We cannot have a useful discussion about the heart without discussing the circulatory system as a whole. The heart in isolation is an abstraction.
PeterP,
PeterP, please have another look at the writings you are replying to regarding who wrote them.
I’m afraid we can’t have a useful discussion about anything. Or everything.
I don’t believe I’m in a position to opine on Branko Furst’s theory. I will leave it to experts in the fields of biology and medicine to determine whether the pump paradigm ought to be shifted. And, as said, that’s what I think lay persons should do generally. Specifically you, who seem to have theories about pretty much everything.
So you know better than researchers at Harvard
Naked credentialism, applied only when you think the credentialed folks agree with you. But in fact, they don’t even do that. That article doesn’t refute the idea that the heart is a pump; it just explains how the pump operates.
Tty wringing out a towel and see if you get directional flow. when I stun my pigs and sever the aorta immediately above the heart, to bleed them out, the resulting blood flow can be described in several ways but wringing out a towel is not among those descriptions. The end result is 4-6 liters of blood out of the pig and on the ground within 1-2 minutes. Grab a towel the size of the heart and see if you can replicate that. then get a pump and see how that performs compared to the towel.
The heart’s movement is a result of differential contraction of various parts of the heart I hope you realize that and don’t think (believe?) that the heart contracts all at once.
John ^^ above is absolutely correct in his assessment of your claims.
FWIW, here’s my go-to person on heart function:
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/412099?ref=heart-is-a-lonely-hunter
Well I could go into detail about where I see the wisdom. But I would encourage anyone else who has only a cursory acquaintance with the circulatory system to explore its wonders for themselves.
It’s a bit more nuanced than the black and white picture you are painting. I don’t have to agree with everything a researcher says in order to find value in their work. The facts interest me, I don’t care about their source. I was arguing about a specific statement that PeterP made, namely that the action of a heart pumping blood is completely dissimilar from the wringing out a towel analogy. Can you see the similarity that PeterP dismisses out of hand?
The problem is that you have taken the towel wringing analogy too far. Blood in the circulatory system is restrained in a way that water in a towel is not. The similarity to the towel wringing is in the fact that it is turned in one direction at one end and in the opposite direction at the other end. Do you agree that this is an accurate depiction of the motion of the heart?
I think we both agree that the blood in the arteries is higher than atmospheric pressure and so it is no surprise that blood spurts out.
Yeah, that’s another vacuous statement. I have to suppose that “Kantian science” is prone to them. “Ooh, what a cool forest” should not be the end point of a discussion; time to look at the trees and see how they fit together.
As neat a description of quote-mining as I’ve seen. You’ve used a description of the way in which the heart works as a pump in order to deny that it’s a pump. Now you’re trying, apparently, to walk that back.
Apparently they don’t interest you enough to get them right. This too seems a feature of “Kantian science”, at least as you do it.
You pushed the analogy so far beyond its actual utility as to make it clearly false. Now you’re walking that back, but in doing so you abandon your original claim. Or do you? Does the heart act to pump blood, or doesn’t it?
Why can’t a machine be a work of art?
I’d like to know what you mean by “Kantian science” and how it fits into the discussion?
I’ve discussed the fibres of the myocardium, the microcirculation in the capillary beds, the self-initiated movement of the erythrocytes; I’ve linked to sources that go into the circulation in great detail. In what way is this looking at the forest and ignoring the trees?
This is where we need to go into the detail. By its rhythmic, twisting action, the heart certainly assists the blood on its journey around the body and I’m happy to call this a type of pump. But does it supply enough energy to move the blood through a complete circuit of the system? I would say no. I think that blood flow is assisted by the ventricles but it is not initiated by them.
What facts have I not got right?
I’m happy to say that the heart pumps blood, but I do not think that it is the primary source of the circulation, certainly not in the same way that an oil pump circulates oil within an engine. IMO it regulates rather than instigates.
Do you agree that blood cells are capable of autonomous movement?
It can be. But a work of art does not have to be a machine.
Well, you’re the one who keeps bringing it up, most recently in the context of a guy who apparently had an out of body experience that gave him a mystical understanding of water. So whenever you say something vacuous I interpret that as an example of Kantian science.
You mention all these things, but then you draw blurry, vacuous deepities from them. Red blood cells can wiggle, therefore the blood circulates itself. And such.
You may say no, but your quote about the towel does nothing to support the claim, and you used it for that purpose.
Now in fact there are other forces that help to move the blood, particularly in the venous system, and that’s well understood. The veins have valves, muscle movements act to force blood through them, various blood vessels also have some contractile action. But none of this is what you’re talking about. You’re talking about the blood moving on its own, and there is no evidence that this happens to any significant degree, even if erythrocytes can wiggle.
Well, immediately, you have misunderstood the quote about towel-wringing as support for the idea that the heart is not a pump.
That’s some progress. You previously had denied it. Of course you’re also self-contradictory here. Pumps instigate. Regulating isn’t their function. Perhaps you meant to say that the heart supplies some but not all of the motive force; that would be correct. You merely underestimate the heart’s role, and you assign the additional force to things you have no evidence for, or at least no evidence that their contributions are significant.
Sure. On a very small scale that can’t significantly affect the gross circulation. In other words, “the blood moves itself” is not relevant to explaining circulation. One element of Kantian science, as you practice it, seems to be a rejection of quantification.
The point is that there is no opposition between works of art and machines, so being a work of art is no argument that the heart is a machine. What is it, then, that makes the heart not a machine? What do you mean when you say “work of art” and when you say “machine”?
John, What do you mean by “Kantian science” and what makes you think that I practice it? I do not have the time at the moment to reply to the rest of your comments, I’ll do so when I have more time.
I mean “Kantian science” as a throwaway dig at your embrace of woo. You’re the one who keeps talking about it, and it’s generally used by you in the context of some woo you like. I have my doubts that Kantian science is really a thing. Does that help?
Copper pipes, unlike capillaries, are not permeable to any meaningful degree and they are incapable of changing their diameters based upon biochemical stimuli.
I’m more than happy to be educated on the technical details of water uptake by plants, but I’m surprised that my statement above elicited even the slightest bit of controversy.
It seems to me pretty clear that you are trying to argue that the heart is not the dominant supplier of motive force for the bloodstream. Despite the fascinating findings of a couple of the studies that you linked, they do not change the fact that the heart does the lion’s share of work in moving blood around the body. There are no doubt other parts of the circulatory system that contribute to blood flow, but I would bet the house that all of those effects combined are dwarfed by the mechanical pumping power of the heart.
Yes,Charlie’s claim is absolutely ludicrous. take for example a simple calculation: cardiac output. cardiac output (CO) is calculated using stroke volume (SV) and heart rate (HR) where CO=SV X HR and in a average human (154 lbs or so) at rest that result is about 5 liters per minute or 300 liters per hour or 7200 liters per day or in gallons 1.3/min; 79/hr; and 1902/day. If charlie has data that demonstrates this is a minimal (trivial?) amount of blood flow from the heart’s pumping of the blood I’d be sure interested in seeing it!
The other factor that would contribute to blood flow in a body with no heart beat would be gravity which results in lividity, a pooling of the blood at the lowest point in the body of the deceased individual. Red cell ‘wiggling’ contributes nothing to blood flow through the body which is why people immediately keel over once the heart stops beating and why initiation of CPR is so critical with a victim who has no heart beat.
If you want to drill down into the note gritty then, yes, there are differences but the overall general concepts. However, you could engineer a system that would mimic the blood flow through the body although, admittedly, not in as fine as detail as found in the body.
Evapotranspiration is the driving force of water transport in plants. As water evaporates out of the stomata the resulting ‘sucking’ and water tension moves water from the roots to the upper reaches of the plant. Root water force can also drive water through the plants in times of low evapotranspiration and you can see this in the early morning as drops of water at the ends of the blades of grass as water is forced out of the hydathodes since the stomata are typically closed at this time of day.
You made a general statement and I responded with a general response to the analogy of a pump moving water through copper, or any, piping system.
nonsense, see my reply above to RoyLT.
However, I would be very interested in seeing any data you have that can match cardiac output in flow, volume, and pressure.
Quantification is not a part of Kantian science.
Interesting. I haven’t picked up a book on botany since high-school and I had myself naively convinced that the ‘capillary action’ referred to in trees was an active change in vessel diameter. Thanks for the clarification.
I have never used the term Kantian science and I do not claim to practice it. I believe that all science should rest on empirical grounds. Shauberger was successful in his use of water precisely because of his observational thoroughnes. He studied water intently.
Have you even looked into the results of Shauberger’s work on water systems or do you just dismiss it because it sounds like woo to you?
So now you are saying that I do look at the trees (details) but I misinterpret what they mean. I’ll admit that is a possibility.
I have not made such a bold claim. I am claiming that because red blood cells display autonomous movement, blood cannot be regarded as an inert fluid.
We have some points of agreement here. The heart is not the sole source of the blood’s movement.
You do not say that there is no evidence that the blood moves on its own, you say there is no evidence that this happens to any significant degree. I think we are making a wee bit of progress here 🙂
Awesome.
(And BTW, John–it’s not Kantian science that turns Charlie on, it’s Goethian science.)
I’ll say it: there is no evidence that blood moves on its own. White blood cells move on their own — that’s been known for decades. Red blood cells wiggle. Cool. That might help them get through capillaries; don’t think there’s evidence either way on that front. “Blood”: nope.
You seem very eager to latch onto an effect that is, at most, tiny. As John has noted, there are well-understood contributions from arterial elasticity and venous valves. As to their relative importance, please consider the medical consequences
effectof 15 minutes ofa) atherosclerosis : hypertension (think that one through, will you… no really, think about it)
b) varicose veins : yucky
c) cardiac arrest : anoxic brain death
The heart is a pump. When it stops pumping, you die.
Here are some figures about capillaries
The quantity of capillaries and their total surface area are not small scale figures.
So? and the lungs have a surface area the size f a tennis court for gas exchange.
No heart pumping blood no capillary perfusion. Easily discerned by looking at capillary refill in nail beds on a healthy living person, a person with low blood pressure, and a recently deceased person.
Red cells have no directional movement although they are flexible and can bend, fold, and resume their former shape after stretching with optical tweezers if they are given enough time. Absolutely no directional movement.