Start: 8th September 2014, free online course by University of Reading

Learn more about how your heart works, the causes of heart disease and what you can do to keep your heart healthy.

About the course

Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day, pumping blood around your body to deliver oxygen and nutrients while taking away waste products. When your heart is unhealthy it can’t perform this vital task so effectively. This can cause significant health problems – cardiovascular disease is one of the biggest killers in the UK and around the world: An estimated 17 million people die of cardiovascular disease each year. Heart disease is something that touches many lives, but can be difficult to understand. This four-week course aims to improve your knowledge of how the heart works, the effects of heart disease and what you can do to avoid it.

Throughout the four weeks of this course we’ll explore the anatomy of the heart, explaining how the circulatory system works and what it does. We’ll then introduce some of the most common cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart failure. We’ll help you to understand their effects on the body, why they happen and what can be done to prevent them. In the final week we’ll examine the risk factors for cardiovascular disease and what can be done to keep your heart healthy.

Each week you’ll have the opportunity to get hands on and do a practical activity, helping you to apply the knowledge you’ll gain on the course to better understand your own heart.

You can use the hashtag #FLhearthealth to join and contribute to social media conversations about this course.

This course will give you the opportunity to purchase a Statement of Participation.

The University of Reading is ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world with a reputation for teaching, research and enterprise. The University aims to deliver a world-class experience to all of its learners. Teaching is research-led, so learners can benefit from the expertise and hands-on knowledge of teaching staff. The award-winning UK campuses in the south-east of England offer a fantastic environment in which to live and learn, with state-of-of-the-art facilities – all just 25 minutes from London.Requirements

This beginner’s course is aimed at anyone with an interest in how the heart works and the diseases that commonly affect it. It will help if you have a basic understanding of human biology, but we hope that we can explain things in a way that will be easy for anyone to understand. If you get stuck, you can always ask questions in the comments and others may be able to help you.

Click here for more information.

Register here.

Tip: More up to date educational events dealing with healthcare can be found online on the Education Database »medicine & health«.