Your heart beats on average 60 to 100 beats every minute. That’s 86,000 beats or more a day and at least 31 million beats a year. By your 65th birthday, your heart has squeezed blood through its chambers billions of times.
“All of that can take a toll on the electrical system of the heart,” says Abhishek Deshmukh, M.B.B.S., a cardiac electrophysiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Over time, parts of the heart can wear down. The heart’s electrical system can become fatigued, lose cells and fail to generate electrical signals. The heart wall can thicken, and heart cells can deteriorate. Diseased blood vessels can reduce blood supply to the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle.
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