Calories Burned in a Heart Beat

How many calories are burned in a single heart beat?

From what data I could find from doing various Google searches, and based on my math, it appears the answer is 0.01 calories per beat.

This is based on data suggesting that a person weighing 150 pounds will burn about 500 calories sleeping in an eight hour period. I subtracted 100 calories from that due to muscles used in breathing, and rolling our bodies around in bed. Then I multiplied the remaining 400 calories by 3 to arrive at a full 24 hour period (1,200 calories).

I divided 1,200 calories by 103,680, which is how many times our heart beats in a day. That's for a healthy human being in a resting state, and is based on the accepted medical average of 72 beats per minute.

Hence, a normal healthy heart in a resting state should burn 1,036 calories per day. Or you could can round that number down to an even 1,000.

The formula I used for calculating how many calories burned in a heart beat...

Calories burned = calories burned by heart in 24 hour period / (pulse rate * 1,440)

• "calories burned by heart in 24 hour period" is based on a resting state, and varies on a person's weight. A person weighing 150 pounds will typically burn 500 calories sleeping in an eight hour period. But about 20% of those calories (100) are consumed by breathing and moving around in bed. Hence For a 300 pound person, simply double those calories. For a 225 pound person, increase those calories by 1/2.


• "pulse rate" for a normal healthy person is 72 beats per minute. Take your own pulse by touch or by monitor, and enter your figure here.


• "1,440" is the number of minutes in a 24 hour period.