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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

I've read a number of reports about that. Apparently it's a little unnerving at first, but the biggest problem is that they have to make sure that any medical professionals or people they know are aware that they don't have a heartbeat and that's expected and does not mean they need CPR.

Also, there's a long-term question of whether there are any processes within the body are keyed off of the heartbeat, because biological designs are often spaghetti and take full advantage of any random interaction and make it load-bearing.

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I have a heart abnormality that shows up as an inverted T-wave on an echo cardiogram. Some physicians will immediately think I'm having some sort of heart attack, though I display no symptoms. It's actually that my heart fills fully and empties fully in a single cycle. I'm not a medical professional, so all I have are laymans explanations, but what it means is that my heart beats less frequently but stronger than the average heart. It was documented thoroughly throughout my time in the Marines and a cardiologist suggested it wasn't a defect. My heart rate remains much lower than other peoples when under stress and my heart rate at rest is only slightly lower than an average persons. When I asked him what all that meant he suggested that I probably won't die of anything heart related, but my body is otherwise normal.

If you don't mind me asking, what is your blood pressure with this abnormality? My gut feeling would be that it you have a much larger gap between your systolic and diastolic numbers than average?

It's actually less of a difference, I think. Systolic hovers around 110-115 and diastolic is anywhere from 80-90.

It almost sounds like an advantage? like, a positive mutation? does it allow you to push further while exercising?

If that's the case, I suggest having as many kids as partner will allow.

I was thinking that. Sounds like the OP has evolved.

So you're basically running a 2-stroke heart?

I would guess that, all things remaining the same, you'll have a life a lot longer than most people. I wonder if that behaviour could be induced in a normal heart, as it looks like it's a timing thing.

My guess was the opposite, that it would lead to scarring and eventual heart failure. Many top athletes end up with scarring on their heart from chronically working it so hard. My completely uneducated guess would be that the single power pulse would be a constant source of high impulse strain on the heart muscle, compared to two lower power pulses.

> Also, there's a long-term question of whether there are any processes within the body are keyed off of the heartbeat, because biological designs are often spaghetti and take full advantage of any random interaction and make it load-bearing.

I've heard it suggested that musicians keep time according to their heartbeat; I don't feel like I'm doing that when I'm playing music, but I'd be interested to see what a musician feels like after having this procedure.

The workings of our bodies are just the xkcd "holding spacebar makes the computer overheat" on a giant scale.

The regulation of any individual process in the body is a rube goldbergian nightmare of hormones and neurotransmitters and things that just happen to fire under the right conditions.

I have absolutely no doubt that something in the body relies on a periodic heartbeat in some fashion, but it seems so far to not be anything particularly critical.

Probably passive lymph pumping in organs that aren't muscular

CSF fluid too maybe.

Agreed. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if some part of human neurology used heartbeat as a clock signal (particularly aspects that would benefit from speeding up in same situations the heart does).

>The regulation of any individual process in the body is a rube goldbergian nightmare of hormones and neurotransmitters and things that just happen to fire under the right conditions.

Yeah, it makes me wonder if would be possible to re-engineer some of this stuff to reduce the needless complexity and improve performance and reliability and service life. The problem is that there's so much spaghetti code that any change you make could have unintended consequences.

Get that tattooed on the chest.

My first thought also

Ah, so like my codebase

That’s a tattoo that’d actually make sense.

And a deep meaning and usefulness

"Caution - rotating heart inside"

Make it with e-ink and attach a subcutaneous flexible PCB right below the pigmented layer so that the heart can communicate status in a visible way.

I mean, with that level of heart failure that an artificial heart is required, there are a bunch of other medical concerns that should be reliably transmitted. As an example, people with diabetes might have tattoos.

Also, CPR is administered primarily when breathing is not sensed. If the patient is already in the hospital, they will surely check basic stuff, like a huge scar on the chest.

Though it would be very interesting if the machine would artificially output a potential vector that makes it very apparent to EKG and similar devices that it is operating, but it is not an ordinary heart (e.g. doing a square wave). It would require minuscule energy.

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