A Coked-Up Heart Can Beat For 25 Minutes Outside a Body

Video shows a heart from a cocaine user beating outside of the body for way longer than it should.

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Image via Complex Original
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As the educational children's program Chappelle's Show taught us, cocaine is a hell of a drug. And apparently it does a hell of a lot of bad things to your heart. 

Many of the problems with using the drug over a long period of time, according to the doctors who posted the video below (which came to us via the The Mirrorare some some serious heart problems. 

The heart in this gruesome video continued to beat for 25 minutes even after it was removed from a patient who needed a transplant after abusing coke for more than a decade. In comparison, a normal human heart would beat for about one minute after it was removed. 

Also, a human heart should not look like that. Cocaine use, which raises blood pressure and constricts the vessels, reducing blood and oxygen to the heart, have caused this heart to enlarge to nearly three times the size it should be. 

Doctors told The Mirror that it's possible this heart had become so adapted to that deprived state over the past 15 years, that it was resilient enough to beat without any oxygen for those 25 minutes. 

 

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