Heart Attacks and Water

Mayo Clinic

 

 

 

How many folks do you know who say they don't want to drink anything before going to bed because they'll have to get up during the night!!

 

Heart Attack and Water -

I asked my Doctor why people need to urinate so much at night time. Answer from my Cardiac Doctor - Gravity holds water in the lower part of your body when you are upright

(legs swell). When you lie down and the lower body (legs and etc) seeks level with the kidneys, it is then that the kidneys remove the water because it is easier. This then ties in with the last statement! I knew you need your minimum water to help flush the toxins out of your body, but this was news to me. Correct time to drink water... Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist!

 

Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body:

2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs

1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal - helps digestion

1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure

1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack

 

I can also add to this... My Physician told me that water at bed time will also help prevent night time leg cramps. Your leg muscles are seeking hydration when they cramp and wake you up with a Charlie Horse.

 

Mayo Clinic Aspirin Dr. Virend Somers, is a Cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, who is lead author of the report in the July 29, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

 

Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 A.M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. Somers and his colleagues have been working for a decade to show that sleep apnea is to blame.

 

1. If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour "half-life"; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system.

 

2. FYI, Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar).

 

Please read on. Something that we can do to help ourselves - nice to know. Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets.

 

Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It's about Heart Attacks -

 

There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also occur less frequently.

 

Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack.

 

The majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep.

 

If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water.

 

Afterwards: - Call 911. - Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by. - Say "heart attack!" - Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins. - Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and ...DO NOT LIE DOWN!

 

Applying a Compression Wrap for a Sprained Ankle

A compression wrap is used to prevent swelling. It does not support the ankle or prevent it from moving, so it does not protect it except by reminding you to be careful of your ankle.

Instructions

1. Roll up the elastic bandage if it isn't already rolled up. Hold your ankle at about a 90-degree angle. Start where your toes meet the body of your foot. Hold the loose end of the bandage at the side of your foot. Wrap the bandage around the ball of your foot once, keeping it somewhat taut with a light pull.
2. After this, slowly start circling your way around the arch of the foot. Pull the bandage diagonally from the bottom of the toes across the foot's top and circle it around the ankle. Now bring the bandage diagonally across the top of the foot and under the arch in a figure-eight pattern.
3. When you get to the anklebone, wrap the bandage around the felt piece so it stays in place at the outside anklebone. Continue around the ankle and foot in a figure eight, moving toward the heel on the bottom and toward the calf at the top of the eight.
4. The wrap should cover the entire foot (but not the heel) and end several inches above the ankle. Most compression wraps are self-fastening or come with clip fasteners. If not, use tape to secure the end. The wrap should be snug but should not cut off circulation to the foot.

These foods that can wreck your sleep

Junk Food

No surprises here. High fat, high sugar processed food is a really bad idea before bed. Fatty foods over stimulate the production of acid in the stomach. This can lead to heartburn and indigestion. Sugary junk  foods, including soda, rapidly crank up your blood sugar levels. You might fall asleep easily (the “sugar crash”), but during the night when your blood sugar plummets, your body will sense this chemical imbalance, disturbing your sleep cycle, possibly waking you up.

Chocolate

Chocolate in it’s unrefined form is actually quite healthy for you. Raw cacao, the bean that chocolate is processed from contains loads of antioxidants and essential minerals and amino acids. A real superfood if ever there was one. However, chocolate also happens to contain natural stimulants¹ including caffeine, theobromine and phenylethylamine. In addition, processed chocolate contains lots of sugar, which as we know can cause a  ’sugar high’.

Spicy Foods

Unless you have a cast iron stomach, avoiding hot and spicy foods before bedtime just seems like common sense.A study² showed that foods such tabasco sauce and mustard showed marked changes in male subjects, reducing the overall amount of stage 2 light sleep and stages 3 & 4 of deep sleep. Whilst indigestion is a likely cause for the sleep zapping effects, the subjects also exhibited elevated body temperatures, suggesting the hot spices were interfering with the body’s natural thermoregulation process.

Leafy Greens

Green vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts are high in fiber. Depending on how well your body digest carbohydrates, these vegetables can often be resonsible for producing excess gas in the stomach. Symptoms can include burping, passing wind, bloating and even abdominal pain. If greens affect you in any of these ways, it’s best to avoid them before bed time.

Preserved Meats

Bacon, ham, pepperoni and all preserved meats contain an amino acid called tyramine. Tyramine causes the adrenal gland to release the neurotransmitter norepinephrine which is part of our brain’s ‘flight or flight’ mechanism. This can make you feel alert and agitated, not the ideal state you want to be in at bedtime. Tyramine also occurs in aged cheeses, sauerkraut and some vegetables.

Alcohol

If you’re fond of a night-cap to send you off, you may be making things worse than better. Although alcohol has a sedative effect, it’s effects are short lasting it interrupts your natural sleep cycles.³  In the latter stages of your sleep, when REM (rapid eye movement) occurs more frequently, sleep is often interrupted causing you to stir easily in the night. This often causes drinkers to wake early from their slumber without feeling as if they have slept properly.

Why do we yawn?

Yawning is such a common, everyday phenomenon that we scarcely pay any attention to it. Although most people put it down to tiredness or boredom, the truth is far more complex and mysterious.

Common beliefs about yawning

In 1986, Dr Robert R Provine (a world authority on yawning research) stated “at present, yawning may have the dubious distinction of being the least understood, common human behavior.”¹ Over 30 years later, we’re still not that much wiser and this has led to a number of misconceptions and over simplifications. The three most common associations with yawning are:

1:Sleepiness

Yawning is most commonly associated with being tired or sleepy. Scientists have demonstrated that yawning most frequently occurs during the hours before you fall asleep and just after you wake up.² In a separate study EEG recordings confirmed that a sleepy brain will indeed prompt yawning behaviour.³

2:Boredom

As well as sleepiness, yawning seems to be inextricably linked to situations where we feel bored or are lacking stimulus. The boredom hypothesis was demonstrated in an experiment which subjected students to 30 minutes of a television test bar pattern whilst another group watched 30 minutes of music videos.⁴ The first group yawned on average 70% more, confirming the belief that people yawn more during uninteresting as opposed to more interesting, stimulating events.

3:Oxygen deprivation

There’s a widely held belief that yawning is a mechanism to allow more oxygen into the body and/or expel carbon dioxide. According to this theory, when we get tired we breathe more slowly, reducing the amount of oxygen into the lungs. This causes a carbon dioxide build up in the blood, signalling the brain to take a deep breath, whereby a yawn is produced. Although there’s a certain logic to this assertion, it’s almost certainly a myth. The ‘oxygen/CO2′ theory was tested in 1987⁵ and the results showed that CO2 deprivation did not result in increased yawning, nor did an enriched oxygen supply decrease instances of yawning.
A comprehensive 2010 review by Adrian G Guggisberg supported these findings, stating “…given current evidence, it seems unlikely that yawning has respiratory or circulatory functions.”⁶

Other theories

Yawning cools the brain

One of the more popular theories of recent years has been that yawning is a way to cool down an overheated brain. Two studies support this theory, the first found that applying cold packs to the subjects’ heads practically eliminated contagious yawning.⁷ The second study⁸ found that yawning frequency differed from season to season and was more likely to occur when the outside temperature is either equal to or higher than internal body temperature.

Untested theories

Many other theories have been spawned over the years concerning yawning and its’ regulatory function on body physiology. Even Hippocrates, the father of medicine hypothesized about yawning, imagining it as a means of removing bad air from the lungs. Some more recent ideas include:

• yawning stretches out the lungs and nearby tissues, preventing them from collapsing in a condition known as atelectasis (Cahill, 1978);
• yawning distributes a chemical called surfactant, a fluid that coats the airways in the lungs and helps to keep them open. (Forrester, 1988);
• yawning is linked to blood cortisol levels and a number of neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and stroke (Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis, 2011)

Although these may be true, none of these propositions have been experimentally tested.

Yawning as a social phenomenon

In recent years, much of the research has moved away from physiological explanations towards the idea that yawning may serve a communicative or sociological purpose. Some have postulated that yawning is a remainder of our distant evolutionary past – a subtle means to coordinate the actions of a social group, similar to the herding behaviour found in flocks of birds. Others hypothesize that yawning may be associated with “mental state attribution”⁹ ie the ability to see things from someone else’s point of view.

One experiment found that students who scored highly on tests of empathy, yawned more in response to videos of other people yawning. This ‘contagious’ quality of yawning is strongest when people are related or are close friends¹⁰ The effect is so powerful it has even been observed across different species. A 2007 study¹¹ showed that 21 out of 29 dogs yawned when shown videos of yawning humans.

Dogs can catch yawns from humans. (CLICK FOR VIDEO)

Conclusions

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a single ‘unified theory’ about the causes and functions of yawning. While it’s clear that some physiological factors such as sleepiness and boredom play key roles in triggering yawning, recent research into empathy and contagious yawning is starting to unravel the complex social interactions that can cause a chain reaction in humans and other species.
Many questions are yet to be answered. Is yawning just a vestigial remainder from our primitive evolutionary past? Could it be an indicator of vital bodily functions and potential illnesses? Or maybe it’s a subconscious form of communication we have yet to fathom? More research is needed but for now, yawning remains a mystery.
If you want to find out more about the world of yawning, check out the excellent archive at http://www.baillement.com/index_english.html

photo by: twob

References

1. Yawning: Effects of stimulus interest. R. R. Provine and H.B.Hammernik. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 24, 437-438.
2. Yawning: Relation to sleeping and stretching in humans. R. R. Provine, H. B. Hamernik, and B. C. Curchack. Ethology, 76, 152-160.
3. The functional relationship between yawning and vigilance. Guggisberg AG, Mathis J, Herrmann US, Hess CW. Center of Sleep Medicine, Department of Neurology, Inselspital, University of Berne, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland. Behav Brain Res. 2007 Apr 16
4. Yawning as a stereotyped action pattern and releasing stimulus. R. R. Provine. Ethology, 72, 109-122.
5. Yawning: no effect of 3-5% CO2, 100% O2, and exercise. Provine RR, Tate BC, Geldmacher LL. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland Baltimore County. Behav Neural Biol. 1987 Nov;48
6. Why do we yawn?Adrian G Guggisberg, Johannes Mathis, Armin Schnider, Christian W Hess University of Geneva, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Division of Neurorehabilitation. DOI:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.03.008
7. Yawning as a brain cooling mechanism: Nasal breathing and forehead cooling diminish the incidence of contagious yawning. Andrew C. Gallup, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222 Evolutionary Psychology 5
8. Contagious yawning and seasonal climate variation. Andrew C. Gallup, Omar Tonsi Eldakar. Department of Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA. Center for Insect Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
9. Contagious yawning: the role of self-awareness and mental state attribution. Platek SM, Critton SR, Myers TE, Gallup GG. Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, USA. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2003 Jul
10. Yawn Contagion and Empathy in Homo sapiens. Norscia I, Palagi E (2011). PLoS ONE 6(12).
11. Dogs catch human yawns. Ramiro M Joly-Mascheroni, Atsushi Senju, Alex J Shepherd. School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

Nurse has heart attack and describes what
women feel when having one.....

NURSE'S HEART ATTACK EXPERIENCE

I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of
this event that I have ever heard. Please read,
pay attention, and send it on!

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but
this is the best description I've ever read.

Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men
have ... you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the
chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest &
dropping to the floor that we see in movies. Here
is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior
exertion, NO prior emotional trauma
that one would suspect might have brought it on. I
was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold
evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an
interesting story my friend had sent me, and
actually thinking, 'A-A-h, this is
the life, all cozy and warm in my soft,
cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when
you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of
sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water,
and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've
swallowed a golf ball going down the
esophagus in slow motion and it is
most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have
gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more
thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to
hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was
my initial sensation--the only trouble was that I
hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like
little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing
up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta
spasms), gaining speed as they
continued racing up and under my
sternum (breast bone, where one
presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on
into my throat and branched out into both jaws.
'AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was
happening -- we all have read and/or heard about
pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI
happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and
the cat, Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap,
started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to
myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be
walking into the next room where the phone is or
anywhere else... but, on the other hand, if I
don't, nobody will know that I need help, and if I
wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a
moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair,
walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics...
I told her I thought I was having a heart attack
due to the pressure building under the
sternum and radiating into my jaws. I
didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the
facts. She said she was sending the
Paramedics over immediately, asked if
the front door was near to me, and if so, to
un-bolt the door and then lie down on
the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor
as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don't
remember the medics coming in, their examination,
lifting me onto a gurney or getting
me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they
made to St. Jude ER on
the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived
and saw that the radiologist was
already there in his surgical blues and cap,
helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the
ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions
(probably something like 'Have you taken any
medications?') but I couldn't make my
mind interpret what he was saying, or form an
answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until
the Cardiologist and partner had
already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my
femoral artery into the aorta and
into my heart where they installed 2 side by side
stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at
home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before
calling the paramedics, but actually
it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and
both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my
home, and my Cardiologist was already
to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on
restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere
between my arrival and the procedure) and
installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail?
Because I want all of you who are so important in
my life to know what I learned firsthand.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your
body, not the usual man's symptoms but
inexplicable things happening (until my
sternum and jaws got into the act).
It is said that many more women than men die of
their first (and last) MI because they didn't know
they were having one and commonly mistake it as
indigestion, take some Maalox or
other anti-heartburn preparation and
go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the
morning when they wake up... which doesn't happen.
My female friends, your symptoms might not be
exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the
Paramedics if ANYTHING is
unpleasantly happening that you've not felt
before. It is better to have a 'false alarm'
visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said 'Call the Paramedics.'
And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF
THE ESSENCE!

Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a
hazard to others on the road.

Do NOT have your panicked husband who
will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's
happening with you instead of the road.

Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't know where you
live and if it's at night you won't reach him
anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or
answering service) will tell you to call the
Paramedics. He doesn't carry the
equipment in his car that you need to be saved!
The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN
that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you
have a normal cholesterol count.
Research has discovered that a
cholesterol elevated reading is
rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's
unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood
pressure). MIs are usually caused by
long-term stress and inflammation in
the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones
into your system to sludge things up
in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a
sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The
more we know the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says if everyone who
gets this mail sends it to 10 people, you can be
sure that we'll save at least one life.

Haifa University Researchers Find Important Link In Fight Against Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s disease is considered incurable. However, researchers at Haifa University may have discovered a starting point towards an eventual treatment. During the study, conducted at the University of Haifa’s Sagol Department of Neurobiology, a link has been discovered between Alzheimer’s disease and the activity level of a protein called eIF2alpha. According to Prof. Kobi Rosenblum, head of the Department, altering the performance of this protein via drug therapy could constitute a treatment for Alzheimer’s. The study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

In recent years, Alzheimer’s research has primarily focused on battling the disease once symptoms have appeared, even though it’s known that the disease nests in the brain many years before any symptoms are revealed. In advanced stages of the disease, Prof. Rosenblum explains, small lumps (called plaques) are identified forming in the brain from a protein called amyloid. These plaques, he says, are typical in Alzheimer’s patients and undermine brain functioning. Much research has been directed at understanding these plaques and trying to eliminate them or restrict their formation and growth.
The new study, conducted by research student Yifat Segev in the Laboratory for Research of Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Learning and Memory, which is headed by Prof. Rosenblum, in cooperation with Prof. Danny Michaelson of Tel Aviv University, sought to identify factors that could be linked to Alzheimer’s even before the irreversible amyloid plaques are formed, and that are connected to the disease’s primary risk factor – age.
Promising results
A previous study co-authored by Canadian researchers and Prof. Rosenblum’s lab at the University of Haifa, revealed that cognitive abilities could be improved by altering the activity of the eIF2alpha protein, which regulates the creation of proteins in all cells, including nerve cells. That research gave Alzheimer’s researchers a glimmer of hope: Perhaps it would be possible to improve cognitive abilities or even prevent cognitive damage in Alzheimer’s patients at an early stage of the disease by intervening in the mechanisms that regulate protein generation in nerve cells.
The current study compared mice that expressed the human Apoe4 gene – a gene known as a central risk factor for Alzheimer’s – with a group of mice with the parallel Apoe3 gene, which does not constitute a risk factor for the disease. Mice in the former group showed a change in the regulating mechanism for protein generation involving the eIF2alpha protein that damaged the cognitive abilities of those mice at a young age. This sort of mechanism change is characteristic of aging, and so also hinted at the tendency of these mice toward premature aging.
According to Segev, this is the first time that a link has been found between the activity of eIF2alpha and the Apoe4 gene in relation to Alzheimer’s disease. She noted that modification treatments for the eIF2alpha mechanism are being widely researched and are developing quickly, and so the more we can understand about the connection between this mechanism and Alzheimer’s, the more we can find ways to identify and slow the progress of the disease.

Study Finds Precious Stem Cells Are Assigned ‘Bodyguard’ Cells

Hiding deep inside our bone marrow — the flexible tissue found in the interior of bones — are special cells. They wait patiently for the hour of need, at which point these blood forming stem cells can proliferate and differentiate into billions of mature blood cells to help the body cope with infection, for example, or they can turn into extra red blood cells for low oxygen levels at high altitudes.

Even in emergencies, however, the body sticks to a long-term plan: It maintains a reserve of undifferentiated stem cells, meaning cells that have not yet expressed signs of their future specific type, for eventual needs and crises.

A research team headed by Prof. Tsvee Lapidot of Israel’s Weizmann Institute’s immunology Department recently discovered a new type of bodyguard that protects stem cells from over-differentiation. In a paper that appeared in Nature Immunology, they revealed how this rare, previously unknown sub-group of activated immune cells keeps the stem cells in the bone marrow “forever young.”

Blood forming stem cells live in comfort in the bone marrow, surrounded by an entourage of support cells that cater to their needs and direct their development – the mesenchymal cells. But the research team, which included postdoctoral fellow Dr. Aya Ludin, Prof. Steffen Jung of the Immunology Department and his group, and Ziv Porat of the Biological Services Unit, discovered another type of support cell for the stem cells. These are an offshoot of the macrophage family, literally the “big eaters” of the immune system that are important, for instance, for bacterial clearance.

The team found, however, that a rare sub-population of the bone-marrow macrophages has another role to play. Each of these rare macrophages can take a stem cell under its wing and prevent its differentiation.

Keeping useful cells alive during chemotherapy

Probing more deeply, the researchers revealed, in precise detail, how these macrophages guard the stem cells. They secrete substances called prostaglandins, which are absorbed by the stem cells. In a chain of biochemical events, these substances delay differentiation and preserve the youthful state of the stem cells. In addition, the prostaglandins work on the neighboring mesenchymal cells, activating the secretion of a delaying substance in them and increasing the production of receptors for this substance on the stem cells, themselves.

This activity, says Lapidot, may help the non-dividing stem cells survive chemotherapy – a known phenomenon. Macrophages also live through the treatment, and they respond by increasing their prostaglandin output, thus heightening their vigilance in protecting the stem cells.

The bodyguard macrophages also increase their activity in times of infection. While other members of the macrophage family are recruited to fight the pathogens, their cousins in the bone marrow are hard at work ensuring that a pool of stem cells will resist the urge to differentiate.

In previous work in Lapidot’s lab, it was discovered that prostaglandin treatments can improve the number and quality of stem cells. This insight is currently being tested by doctors in clinical transplantation trials for the use of stem cells from umbilical cord blood to treat adult leukemia patients. These trials are showing that prior treatment with prostaglandins improves migration and repopulation potential, enabling the small quantities of cord blood stem cells to better cure the patients.

“The present study hints at the possibility of further increasing the support for bone marrow stem cells by exploring this intriguing connection between the immune cells and stem cells,” says Lapidot. “An understanding of the mechanisms at work in these cells might improve the success of stem cell transplantation, especially that of umbilical blood.”