Abstract
The heart pumps approximately 5 L of blood per minute at rest and up to 24 L per min during vigorous exercise. Accordingly, it consumes more energy than any other organ, cycling about 6 kg of ATP, which is 20–30 times its own weight, every day. To acquire this enormous amount of energy, the heart converts chemical energy stored in fatty acids and glucose into mechanical energy, in the form of actinomyosin myofibrillar interactions. Fatty acids, through β-oxidation, account for about 70% of ATP synthesis, and glucose, through aerobic glycolysis, for the remaining 30%. Due to this dependence on oxidative energy production, increases in cardiac activity require instantaneous parallel increases in oxygen availability [1].
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Piccoli, M., Orazi, S., Giubilato, G., Fioranelli, M. (2013). Coronary Pathophysiology. In: Dowe, D.A., Fioranelli, M., Pavone, P. (eds) Imaging Coronary Arteries. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-2682-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-2682-7_5
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