Heart Attack and The Facts

A heart attack is a frightening event, and you probably don't want to think about it. But, if you learn the signs of a heart attack and what steps to take, you can save a life–maybe your own.

We all think that heart attack is sudden intense, where a person clutches his or her chest and falls over. But the truth is heart attack starts slowly, as a mild pain or discomfort. If you feel such a symptom, you may not be sure what's wrong. Your symptoms may even come and go. Even those who have had a heart attack may not recognize their symptoms, because the next attack can have entirely different ones.

Medical experts say the body likely will send one or more of these warning signals of a heart attack it could be like..

Uncomfortable pressure, fullness, squeezing or pain in the center of the chest lasting more than a few minutes.

Pain spreading to the shoulders, neck or arms. The pain may be mild to intense. It may feel like pressure, tightness, burning, or heavy weight. It may be located in the chest, upper abdomen, neck, jaw, or inside the arms or shoulders.

• Chest discomfort with light head redness, fainting, sweating, nausea or shortness of breath.
• Anxiety, nervousness and/or cold, sweaty skin.
• Paleness or pallor.
• Increased or irregular heart rate.
• Feeling of impending doom.
• There is no rule that those all symptoms should occur in every attack. But If you notice one or more of these signs in yourself or others consult your immediately.

Causes of Heart Attack

Age

this is considered to be the largest risk factor. When a man is over 45 years, and the woman is over 55 years of age, their risk of having a heart attack starts to rise significantly.

Angina

Angina is an illness where not enough oxygen is reaching the patient's heart. This raises the risk of a heart attack. In some cases a diagnosis of angina was wrong - it could have been a mild heart attack instead. The main difference between a heart attack and angina is that the patient with angina will feel better about 15 to 30 minutes after taking medication, while the heart attack patient won't.

Blood cholesterol levels 

Iif a person's blood cholesterol levels are high, he/she runs a higher risk of developing blood clots in the arteries. Blood clots can block the supply of blood to the heart muscle, causing a heart attack.

Diabetes

People with diabetes have a higher risk of developing several diseases and conditions, many of them contribute to a higher risk of heart attack.

Diet 

A person who consumes large quantities of, for example, animal fats, or saturated fats, will eventually have a higher risk of having a heart attack.

Genes 

You can inherit a higher risk of heart attack from your parents, and/or their parents.

Heart Surgery

Patients who have had heart surgery have a higher risk of having a heart attack.

Hypertension (High blood Pressure) 

Tthis could be due to lack of physical activity, overweight/obesity, diabetes, genes, and some other factors.

Obesity, Overweight

As more and more people are overweight, especially children, experts believe heart attacks will become more common in future (if the overweight children become overweight adults).

Physical Inactivity 

People who do not exercise have a much higher risk of having a heart attack, compared to people who exercise regularly.

Previous Heart Attack 

Anybody who has already had a heart attack is more likely to have another one, compared to other people.

Smoking

People who smoke heavily or regularly run a much higher risk of heart attack, compared to people who never smoked and those who gave up. Smoking regularly means smoking every day.

Check your Family History

If a close relative is at risk of developing coronary heart disease from smoking, high BP, high cholesterol, lack of physical activity, obesity and diabetes, then you could be at risk too.

How to prevent Heart Attack

1. You are what you eat! Eat nutritious, healthy food.

2. Choose foods low in saturated fat. Make sure you include servings of fruit, vegetables and whole grains which are rich in starch and fiber, but low in fat.

3. Cutting down on dietary cholesterol consumption can help bring down blood cholesterol. Egg white, and foods from plant sources do not have cholesterol.

4. Read food labels. Look for the amount of saturated fat, total fat, cholesterol and total calories per serving on the nutrition label.

5. Stress can be harmful by raising blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and making your heart beat faster. Relax, smile, don't get angry often.

6. Bring down high blood pressure. You can do this by minimizing risk factors, making lifestyle changes, or by taking medication if necessary.

7. Stop smoking. Stub out that cigarette butt - Now!

8. If you drink, do so in moderation. A limit of two drinks per day is good for your heart.

9. Fight the battle of the bulge! Obesity is bad. Stay slim and lean.

10. If you are overweight, try and lose the excess.

11. Don't try crash diets - instead opt for a slow, steady and sustained program to lose weight.

12. An active lifestyle is healthy. Exercise regularly.

13. Try and incorporate a higher activity level into daily activities like taking a walk, riding a bike to the supermarket, climbing stairs instead of using the elevator and playing sports like badminton and basketball.

Risk factors for heart attacks have often been talked about. Let us now focus more on the positive side of cardiac well being.

TB Symptoms and Treatment

The term ‘tuberculosis’ (or TB) has been derived from the name of its causative bacterium Tubercles bacillus. Tubercles bacillus is a strain of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a very deadly and a serious infection.

TB has been found to show fatal results in about 50% of its patients, if left untreated. About one-third of the total worldwide population has been found infected with TB. It is also estimated that every second at least 1 person is infected with TB. The symptoms of Tb are common in Asian and African countries whereas the count is quite less in the US.

The immune system attacks the TB bacteria within 2-8 weeks after a person is being infected. In some cases the bacteria can die and the infection can clear completely, but in others the bacteria can stay in an inactive state in the body and cause no TB symptoms. In still other cases the infection can develop in to active TB.

Symptoms of TB

Pulmonary tuberculosis is the most common form and coughing is often a common and only initial indication of tuberculosis.

Other signs and symptoms of active tuberculosis includes –

• Severe cough which lasts for three weeks or longer which produce bloody or discolored sputum
• Night sweats
• Slight fever
• Chills
• Fatigue and weakness
• Pain in the chest
• Loss of appetite
• Unintentional weight loss 

TB treatment

• Diagnosis of TB signs and symptoms is usually done by taking samples of sputum or fluids from the lungs or other body parts.
• Modern medication for TB has proved to be very effective TB cures in TB treatment.
• Active TB treatment consists of multiple antibiotics combinations Medication for TB includes drugs combinations to prevent patients suffering from TB becoming resistant to treatment.
• These medications have to be continued for a period ranging from a minimum of six months to a year. Medication for TB cures take time to show their effectiveness.
• The medications for TB treatment are effective only if doses are not missed in between. Any reduction in, or discontinuation of the prescribed dosage can prolong or worsen the symptoms and can cause complications in some cases.
• Nonetheless, besides being viewed as TB cures, these medications carry some side effects.

Some side effects of TB medications that can include:

• Jaundice
• Abdominal pain tenderness or soreness
• Nausea Fever for 3 days or of a longer duration
• Dark colored urine
• Vomiting
• Blurred vision

The most important step is to find, isolate and treat all disease carriers until they are no longer an infective risk to others.

It is always advisable not to get too close to people who are coughing; equally, people with a cough should be aware of those around them and try not to cough near them. Pregnant women with TB must be treated urgently as the disease may progress rapidly with high risk to both mother and baby.

Pregnant women and Health issues

Every pregnancy has some risk of problems. The causes can be conditions you already have or conditions you develop. They also include diabetes and Jaundice.

Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes which affects pregnant women. It is believed that the hormones produced during pregnancy reduce a woman's receptivity to insulin, leading to high blood sugar levels.

Gestational diabetes can harm you and your baby, so you need to consider about it seriously and start caring at once. The main aim of gestational diabetes treatment is to keep blood glucose levels equal to those of normal pregnant women. It needs a planned meal and scheduled physical activity, even blood glucose testing and insulin injections if required. If gestational diabetes is taken care of properly, reduces the risk of a cesarean section birth that high weight babies may require.

Pregnant Wman and Jaundice

Jaundice is not a disease but a symptom of liver dysfunction. It is not a common disorder in pregnant women with no previous liver problems although it can occur if the woman develops cholestasis of pregnancy, pre-eclampsia or an acute fatty liver. Non-pregnancy-related causes, such as liver disease, drug use or inflammation of the liver, can also bring on jaundice during pregnancy.

Click below video to know how effects diabetic and jaundice on babies during pregnancy and what are the precautions we should to take.

Healthy Breakfast

Heart Attacks

Family Pack to Six pack

Fish, the Environment and Health

When you consider what the report says, it may make you decide that you prefer to focus on fish as your source of animal protein.

But there are ramifications for this also: both for the environment and for your health.

In fact, there are so many ramifications to eating fish that I will devote an entire series to this subject at another time.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t eat fish, or any animal food at all. That’s your personal choice, but it’s best if you make your choice an informed and educated one.

If you’re not willing to consider becoming a vegetarian, you want to at least cut down on the amount of animal food you do eat, or at least do what Paul McCartney is advocating, of going meat-free on Mondays, or whichever day you want to designate as a meat-free day.

If you watch the above video, which is a trailer to a film called The End of the Line, you will understand what one of the environmental reasons is for considering your fish intake.

A 2008 United Nations reports that 80 percent of the world’s ocean fishing areas are now either fully fished (i.e. incapable of providing more) or overexploited.

This is also what The End of the Line is stating. But besides the overfishing and possible catastrophic results from it that The End of the Line discusses, there are also environmental and health issues.

There are many fish in the ocean that contain dangerous levels of mercury, PCB’s and pesticides, and the trend towards fish farms isn’t necessarily a panacea, as there are troubling environmental and health issues surrounding fish raised that way – from the corn feed, chemical feed and hormones that some farmed fish are given, to the pollutants that are in the waters at these factory fish farms.

And then there are questions as to whether the health claims of fish are overhyped, as a study that came out in March 2009 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated.

So what to do about eating fish? You can make your decision by choosing sources that are fished or farmed responsibly, and low in environmental contaminants.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, you want to choose either wild fish from healthy, well-managed populations, or caught using fishing gear that does little harm to sea life and marine habitats; or choose farmed fish raised in systems that control pollution, the spread of disease, chemical use and escaped fish.

Most fish that the Environmental Defense Fund considers safe to eat are also low in environmental contaminants and can be safely eaten at least once per week.

The list of fish that make this list include: Arctic char, farmed oysters, sablefish (aka black cod), wild Alaskan salmon, sardines, farmed trout and West Coast albacore tuna, anchovies, catfish, soft shell clams, Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, farmed striped bass, tilapia, farmed white sturgeon, and squid.