How do waves of excitation from the heart reach the skin?

[jimmydasaint]

This is one of the huge gaps in my knowledge.

 

Can someone elucidate how wave of excitation from a heartbeat reach the skin to be detected? I cannot find a reference so an help would be appreciated.

[DrmDoc]

A heartbeat corresponds to a wave of pressurized venous blood flow--pumped by our heart muscle--that is detectable as a pulse where subdermal veins near our skin's surface. If your inquiry regards tingling skin sensation, you should probably research effects of adrenaline and/or arrhythmia.

Edited July 9, 2016 by DrmDoc

[imatfaal]

A heartbeat corresponds to a wave of pressurized venous blood flow--pumped by our heart muscle--that is detectable as a pulse where subdermal veins near our skin's surface. If your inquiry regards tingling skin sensation, you should probably research effects of adrenaline and/or arrhythmia.

 

Veins and venous blood do not tend to have a significant pulse. The pulse is overwhelmingly noticed in arteries and arterial flow.

This is one of the huge gaps in my knowledge.

 

Can someone elucidate how wave of excitation from a heartbeat reach the skin to be detected? I cannot find a reference so an help would be appreciated.

 

If you do not mean the pulse - which is simply arteries rhythmically engorging with blood as the heart pumps blood - then perhaps you mean the electrical pulse which is recognized by an electrocardiogram (ECG) or a sports chest strap heart monitor. The heart beats as a wave of nerve signal propagate through the heart and cause a sequential contraction - nerve signals are (very simplisitically) a cascade change in electrical potential across cell membranes; there are so many of these that the change in electric field is not isolated in the heart, you can detect them all the way across the chest (we conduct electricity quite well)

[DrmDoc]

 

Veins and venous blood do not tend to have a significant pulse. The pulse is overwhelmingly noticed in arteries and arterial flow.

 

You're quite right; though the OP appears to have a simple answer, that was a distinction I should have known and made in my reply.

[jimmydasaint]

Excellent answers. My question was about the wave of depolarisation conducting down the specialised conducting tissue and then through electrolytes and other tissues until it reaches the skin.

 

I wondered at the mechanism because an ECG would presumably detect changes in electrical potential energy.

 

Is there a concomitant current provided by ion movements which cascades across connective tissues and then permeates for over a metre over the skin?

 

Would this mean perturbation of charge ratios across every cell membrane from the heart to the skin?

 

Which part of the cell membranes in other tissues would be affected by the heartbeat in terms of electrical conductivity?

 

As I have said, this is one of the many gaps in my knowledge and my Internet searches for answers were frustrating.

 

Keep going guys...

[jimmydasaint]

OK guys,I did not sit still and leave it aloe. I watched the following video for clues:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5smas8uum4

 

then I watched the following:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=electroytes+in+the+human+body&atb=v10&ia=videos&iai=JhdFkyQBfSY

 

and now I will make a testable and falsifiable hypothesis which you are all free to falsify so that we all move forward to a higher amount of knowledge.

 

I am assuming that:

 

a) the beating of the heart has an effect on calcium and sodium levels in the conducting fibres of the heart but also on Interstitial (or tissue fluid); lymph or blood plasma;

b) sodium and calcium ions are extracellular:

c) the beating of the heart causes a change in levels of extracellular ions such as sodium or potassium which are "relayed" to the skin where voltmeters or electrodes can detect changes in electronic potential energy which is correlated with ion movements (current).

 

You are all welcome to comment and correct me.