We say that when the heart has an arrhythmia, it has malfunctioning electrical signals. Where do these electrical signals come from? The nerves? Are they the same as electricity? Do our bodies produce electricity?
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The heart is a 4 chambered pump. Each chamber needs to contract at the proper time in order for it to effectively pump blood. The contractions are controlled by nerve signals which start in the top right of the heart and move to the bottom left. Any interruptions in the signals along the way can cause the heart to not function properly which could affect blood flow and be very bad.
The electric signals in your heart are a bit different from the electricity you’re used to. Normally we think of electricity as electrons moving in a wire, but in the case of the heart it is positive ions moving into and out of a nerve cell along it’s length. If you measured the voltage in a nerve cell you would see little spikes every time it fires because of those ions moving into then being pumped back out of the cell. The pumps that move the ions in and out of nerve cells run on chemical energy from the food you eat.
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