The Beat of Life: A Surgeon Reveals the Secrets of the Heart

by Reinhard Friedl

The heart is our most important - and perhaps most mysterious - organ.Every day it pumps 9000 litres of blood and beats around 100,000 times. But the heart is more than just a pump. In all major human cultures, it is seen as the source of love, sympathy, joy, courage, strength and wisdom. Why is this so?

Having witnessed the extraordinary complexity and unpredictability of human hearts in the operating theatre - each one individual in its make-up, like a fingerprint - heart surgeon Reinhard Friedl went on a search for answers. He examined closely the latest findings in neurocardiology and psychocardiology, and in The Beat of Life he shares his discoveries, using riveting personal stories to illustrate the complex relationship between the heart, the brain and the psyche.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Medicine

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

DR. REINHARD FRIEDL is an eminent surgeon who has held thousands of hearts in his hands. He has operated on premature babies and repaired the heart valves of patients well advanced in years. He has implanted artificial heart turbines and stitched knife wounds to the heart. He lives in Germany.

Reviews

[julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die meisten Kapitel waren super interessant und sehr lehrreich. Lediglich einige Exkurse in die Anstronomie oder Physik waren für mich eher weniger interessant. Alles in allem ein wunderbares Buch über unser Herz und unser Bewusstsein - ich konnte einiges mitnehmen, beispielsweise denke ich jetzt mehr über das Herzbewusstsein nach und werde nun täglich mind. 1 Minute Herzjogging machen!

[Books By Your Bedside · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Hero publishers for the gifted copy of this book in return of an honest review.

Medical books are ten a penny at a moment and the market is saturated, and yet I still continue to add to my collection. Generally they remind us that whilst doctors and nurses are medical marvels and heroes among us, they are at the very heart of it (pun intended) human beings.

Sadly, considering my love for other medical books, this one just didn’t grab me at all. I give books the benefit of the doubt for the first couple of chapters, but this one didn’t improve for me. I didn’t learn much more than what my layman brain already knew about the heart, and what I didn’t know was written in such a technical way, I’m not sure I would have realised if I knew it already or not. There’s no denying that Reinhard is a very intelligent man and skilled surgeon, but I felt this book didn’t paint him in the best light.

Unfortunately, this was just not my kind of book, even though I have seen many 5 star reviews for it.

[Rob O'Hearn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accomplished heart surgeon, accustomed to only seeing the heart as a pump in the OR,( in the ‘orange square surrounded by green fabric”), goes in search of a more holistic view. Exploring the wider physical, cultural and emotional connections of this most vital of organs, Friedl touches on many fascinating subjects: heartbeat synchronisation between humans, heart nerve cells controlling other organs, cardio-electromagnetic fields, effects of love on tissues,and many other wild heart-brain connections. With revealing glimpses of hospital culture, and some vivid scenes of surgery, this book also takes us within a surgeon’s life. We are left viewing the heart as the very hub of the human.
(Note: I read the English translation by Gert Reifarth)

[Sue Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this was a very intriguing book. I was partly fascinated and partly frustrated by it. The book charts the journey of the author from a hard-core, science-based heart surgeon to a more holistic cardiac doctor. It describes the way he needed to shut down his emotions in order to succeed as a surgeon, and his gradual realisation of how that affected his life, and how some of his patients might suffer from a similar effect. I would have loved to have read more about some of the cases that he worked on, because the ability to physically fix a heart is amazing. Much of the book, though, was about his awakening - and there's some pretty esoteric stuff in there! I had to slow down through some of these passages, just to follow what he was saying. Like any specialist, he has a tendency to champion his area of expertise - he seems to be in a bit of a battle with the brain, and points out that, like the brain, the heart also produces oxytocin. (But so does the gut, and he fails to acknowledge this.) Ultimately, though, he does work towards a holistic view of the body, and it's his journey towards this that's quite interesting to follow. I felt he had a rebound effect - he appears to endorse homeopathy and similar approaches, which is a long way from traditional medicine. However, I felt he redeemed himself somewhat at the end of the book, by proposing that you ask yourself two questions: what does your heart need today, and what can your heart offer today?

[Stefan Lang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Der Pitch für dieses Buch ist "erfolgreicher Herzchirurg entdeckt, dass Herz nicht nur Pumpe ist, sondern in erster Linie ein Sinnesorgan". Das Buch enthält eine ganze Reihe interessanter wissenschaftlicher Fakten zum Herz. Leider sind diese in eine populäre und für mein Gefühl kitschige Schreibe eingebettet, die das Lesen unerfreulich macht. Zudem hat der Autor zwar ein grosses Wissen über die Physiologie des Herzens, aber philosophische Begriffe wie Seele, Selbst, Geist, reines Bewusstsein verwendet er, ohne sie zu definieren, und manche Aussagen bleiben schwammig.

[Natasha Ciesielski · Rating 2 out of 5]

A heart surgeon writes about the heart - the physical and spiritual side. Some interesting medical stories and I enjoyed learning about the working of heart. Didn't love the actual writing style. He waffled too much. I wouldn't recommend it.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I had hoped... interesting perspectives and history of the Heart and what it embodies, but challenging to read and follow

[Fiorenza Tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk why I read this but it was hella interesting

[Becs · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's no disputing Reinhard Friedl is most likely a really impressive guy. I would imagine any successful heart surgeon, or surgeon at all, would be considered impressive and, as such, perhaps deserves to have some degree of nonchalance or confidence about them. My main issue with this book however was that the confidence, in print, feels much like self-indulgence and occasionally like arrogance. I think it's pretty unlikely Reinhard Friedl is in fact either of those things, because what could be more humbling than holding a human heart in your hands and knowing you are the only person who can save it? But I don't think this book has done him the service he deserves and has instead perhaps lost sight of, or simply just detracted entirely from, what this book was really about.

That's not to say the content was perfect. Sadly there was something to be desired there as well. I expected this to be the human heart equivalent of Bill Bryson's The Body, or perhaps more akin to the career journey of Unnatural Causes (a sensational book by a forensic pathologist). By that I mean that I expected to learn a great deal about the heart, and to perhaps learn about the career of this accomplished surgeon. Instead, I felt like it was more about his journey to self discovery and some of the more romanticised associations with the heart, which is fine but it needed a bit of the other stuff too!

So, whilst I should have been the perfect audience for this book having loved many books like it before, I truly feel it hasn't been delivered in the way it might have been intended and sadly I can't recommend it because of that.

ARC provided from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Allyson Dyar · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you wander over to dictionary.com and type in “heart” the definitions displayed are varied. The first entry is for the heart that pushes blood to all corners of our body. Another definition is “the center of the total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion.”

While adequate attention is paid to the first definition with personal anecdotes, author Reinhard Friedl, a heart surgeon by profession, prefers to focus this book on the mind-heart connection and how it affects just about everything we do remarking that scientists haven’t fully explored the Brain-Heart axis as he calls it.

One such aspect that has been reported is Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy better known as “broken-heart” syndrome in the lay press. This is a weakening of the left ventricle from extreme stress. Interestingly, this occurs mostly in women, especially post-menopausal women. The syndrome is named for the Japanese octopus traps as the heart on x-ray appears strikingly similar.

If you think about it, this makes sense that extreme stress would cause the heart to react. After all, as Dr Friedl discovered, meditation can change the heartbeat, slowing it so we can relax.

As I finished reading “The Beat of Life” I felt that as much as we think we know about the heart, there is so much more out there to learn.

While this isn’t the type of book I would readily seek out, I recommend this read for those who are looking for a different way of looking at the anatomical heart and by extension, its relationship to the rest of the body as well as those who interested in the more mystical aspects of the heart. You won’t be disappointed.

[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion which I have given here.]

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable Look at Remarkable Organ. In this text, a German heart surgeon looks to both the physical heart in your chest and the various idioms and metaphysical thoughts on the heart and attempts to arrive at some "holistic" understanding that somehow marries the two. In this, it is as much personal exploration and journey as it is science book, though to be clear there is in fact quite a bit of documented science here - the bibliography is roughly 31% of the book, which is a bit higher than the norm in this reader's experience, and generally indicative of a particularly well documented effort. This reader has read much of the brain and neurology, but this is the first book specifically on the heart that he has considered, and it really was quite stunning. As to some of the more fantastical claims, among them that the heart has its own independently firing neurons and thus could be said to have some form of thought or cognition independently of the brain, and indeed that the human consciousness isn't just a product of the brain, but of the whole body... again, look to the sources in the bibliography - though note that in many, if not all, of these passages the author is clear that science as it currently stands at minimum doesn't fully understand these mechanisms at this time. Ultimately a truly thought provoking book, and very much recommended.

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an interesting read! I can honestly say I’ve never thought that much about my heart - I have always been a very think with your brain kind of person so it was super interesting to learn so much more about the heart and how much it really does not just in the body but how it links to the psyche as well. This was such an easy non-fiction to read which kept me enthralled with every chapter. I loved all the personal stories entwined within the story which made the information so easily understood and really made me think with each chapter. Overall a very well-written book where you can feel the passion and care that has been put into its writing and that I am so happy to have read!

Form: physical