Weightlifting Death Risk

Scientists are calling for widespread heart screening of people before they begin weight training. That's based on new evidence that lifting more than half your body weight could put you at risk of sudden death, as this ScienCentral News video explains.

Strong Evidence
"They wanted let me go home ... They gave me the option to stay but said 99 percent I'd be fine to go home ... They wanted me to come back the following day for a stress test," Bill Linski recalls. He was only 21 years old and in great shape from his 6-day-a-week gym workouts when intense chest pains sent him to his local hospital emergency room. Luckily, he let his mom decide. She thought he should stay.
It turned out that pumping iron earlier that day had pumped up Linski's blood pressure, which caused a tear in his aorta, the heart's main artery. He was airlifted to Yale New Haven Hospital where surgeon John Elefteriades performed lifesaving surgery.

Sadly, Elefteriades says similar scenarios all too often end in the death of a healthy young man. "A problem and a tragedy arises in the fact that it's uncommon for physicians to think of an internal tear of the aorta in healthy young athletes," Elefteriades says.
In 2003, he and his team wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that they'd noticed a pattern: five young patients, including Linski, with torn aortas following heavy lifting. All had a previously undetected aneurysm, or enlargement of the aorta.
Now, they report even stronger evidence of this association in the journal Cardiology, where they've documented that link in 31 patients.

"Of the 31 patients," says Elefteriades, "10 of them are dead."
He's grateful to family members who contacted him and allowed him to investigate the deaths of their loved ones. "Through the generosity of families who shared their stories with me ... I've heard the most tear-wrenching accounts," he says.
His team's new recommendations are based solely on trying to prevent such terrible losses, he says. "For heavy strength training involving weight lifting or similar activities like pushups, we're recommending screening for unknown or undetected aortic aneurysm."
Elefteriades says that includes people who do heavy lifting on the job, and that the team defines heavy lifting as more than half your body weight.
The screening test they recommend is a heart echo exam, technically called transthoracic echocardiography, also commonly called a heart ultrasound. It's "a very simple test which is painless, it's fun to have and relatively inexpensive," he says.

Excretory System: Poison Protection

If you knew there was poison hidden in your house, you would surely do everything possible to find and remove that poison. If you didn't, you and your family would slowly die. How would you find it? How would you remove it? You would probably figure out a system of searching and removing. That would be an excretory system. Your body does the same thing every day.
Hidden throughout your body are dangerous poisons that must be removed in order for it to survive. The process of excretion involves finding and removing waste materials produced by the body. The primary organs of excretion are the lungs, kidneys, and skin. Waste gases are carried by blood traveling through the veins to the lungs where respiration takes place. Dead cells and sweat are removed from the body through the skin which is part of the integumentary system. Liquid waste is removed from the body through the kidneys. Located beside the spine in your back within your ribcage, the kidneys are small (about 10 centimeters long) reddish-brown organs that are shaped like beans. During circulation, blood passes through the kidneys in order to deposit used and unwanted water, minerals, and a nitrogen-rich molecule called urea. The kidneys filter the wastes from the blood, forming a liquid called urine.

The kidneys funnel the urine into the bladder along two separate tubes called ureters. The bladder stores the urine until muscular contractions force the urine out of the body through the urethra. Each day, your kidneys produce about 1.5 liters of urine. All of it needs to be removed from your system. This occurs through urination. If your kidneys are diseased and not working properly, the buildup of waste in your system will eventually lead to death. Some kidney diseases can be treated with medication. Severe kidney diseases require more intense treatment. One treatment is called dialysis.

The patient's blood is pumped through a dialysis machine which filters the waste from the blood and returns the clean blood. A dialysis patient has to spend nearly sixty hours each week attached to the machine. The most radical treatment for kidney disease is a kidney transplant. Healthy people can live comfortably with only one kidney. Therefore, their other kidney can be donated to a person with kidney disease. The donor and patient must have very similar genetic structures in order for the patient to accept the new kidney without complications. The patient also receives anti-rejection drugs. During a kidney transplant operation, the healthy kidney is placed in the abdomen of the patient and attached to the blood vessels and bladder. The patient's original kidneys are not removed.

Pulmonary Circulation: It's All in the Lungs

Pulmonary circulation is the movement of blood from the heart, to the lungs, and back to the heart again. This is just one phase of the overall circulatory system. The veins bring waste-rich blood back to the heart, entering the right atrium throughout two large veins called vena cavae. The right atrium fills with the waste-rich blood and then contracts, pushing the blood through a one-way valve into the right ventricle. The right ventricle fills and then contracts, pushing the blood into the pulmonary artery which leads to the lungs. In the lung capillaries, the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen takes place. The fresh, oxygen-rich blood enters the pulmonary veins and then returns to the heart, re-entering through the left atrium. The oxygen-rich blood then passes through a one-way valve into the left ventricle where it will exit the heart through the main artery, called the aorta.

The left ventricle's contraction forces the blood into the aorta and the blood begins its journey throughout the body.

The one-way valves are important for preventing any backward flow of blood. The circulatory system is a network of one-way streets. If blood started flowing the wrong way, the blood gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide) might mix, causing a serious threat to your body. You can use a stethoscope to hear pulmonary circulation. The two sounds you hear, "lub" and "dub," are the ventricles contracting and the valves closing.

Owning a cat 'cuts heart attack or stroke risk by third'

Whether it's a frisky kitten or a tubby tabby, a cat at home could cut your heart attack or stroke risk by almost a third, according to a new study.

A team of international researchers has found that owning a cat helps in relieving stress and anxiety, which is known to help protect against cardiovascular problems by lowering blood pressure and reducing the heart rate.

"The logical explanation may be that cat ownership relieves stress and anxiety and subsequently reduces the risk of heart disease," 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted lead author Prof Adnan Qureshi of the Minnesota University as saying.

According to the researchers, one reason could be that stroking the pet could cut the level of stress-related hormones in the blood.

The team came to the conclusion after analysing a data of 4,435 adults, aged between 30 and 75, about half of whom owned a cat. Subsequently, the team tracked rates of death from all causes, including heart and stroke.

The cat owners "appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks" over 10 years of follow-up compared to feline-free folk, Prof Qureshi said, adding the magnitude of the effect -- a 30 per cent reduction in heart attack risk -- "was a little bit surprising".

Cat owners were still found to have a much reduced chance of developing strokes or heart attacks when the team took factors known to trigger heart disease, including high cholesterol levels, smoking and diabetes, into consideration.

"We certainly expected an effect, because we thought that there was a biologically plausible mechanism at work. But the magnitude of the effect was hard to predict," Prof Qureshi said.

Respiratory System: Oxygen Delivery System

The primary function of the respiratory system is to supply the blood with oxygen in order for the blood to deliver oxygen to all parts of the body. The respiratory system does this through breathing. When we breathe, we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. This exchange of gases is the respiratory system's means of getting oxygen to the blood. Respiration is achieved through the mouth, nose, trachea, lungs, and diaphragm. Oxygen enters the respiratory system through the mouth and the nose.

The oxygen then passes through the larynx (where speech sounds are produced) and the trachea which is a tube that enters the chest cavity. In the chest cavity, the trachea splits into two smaller tubes called the bronchi. Each bronchus then divides again forming the bronchial tubes. The bronchial tubes lead directly into the lungs where they divide into many smaller tubes which connect to tiny sacs called alveoli. The average adult's lungs contain about 600 million of these spongy, air-filled sacs that are surrounded by capillaries. The inhaled oxygen passes into the alveoli and then diffuses through the capillaries into the arterial blood. Meanwhile, the waste-rich blood from the veins releases its carbon dioxide into the alveoli. The carbon dioxide follows the same path out of the lungs when you exhale.

The diaphragm's job is to help pump the carbon dioxide out of the lungs and pull the oxygen into the lungs. The diaphragm is a sheet of muscles that lies across the bottom of the chest cavity. As the diaphragm contracts and relaxes, breathing takes place. When the diaphragm contracts, oxygen is pulled into the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, carbon dioxide is pumped out of the lungs.

Respiratory System: Oxygen Delivery System

The primary function of the respiratory system is to supply the blood with oxygen in order for the blood to deliver oxygen to all parts of the body. The respiratory system does this through breathing. When we breathe, we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. This exchange of gases is the respiratory system's means of getting oxygen to the blood.

Respiration is achieved through the mouth, nose, trachea, lungs, and diaphragm. Oxygen enters the respiratory system through the mouth and the nose. The oxygen then passes through the larynx (where speech sounds are produced) and the trachea which is a tube that enters the chest cavity. In the chest cavity, the trachea splits into two smaller tubes called the bronchi. Each bronchus then divides again forming the bronchial tubes. The bronchial tubes lead directly into the lungs where they divide into many smaller tubes which connect to tiny sacs called alveoli. The average adult's lungs contain about 600 million of these spongy, air-filled sacs that are surrounded by capillaries. The inhaled oxygen passes into the alveoli and then diffuses through the capillaries into the arterial blood. Meanwhile, the waste-rich blood from the veins releases its carbon dioxide into the alveoli. The carbon dioxide follows the same path out of the lungs when you exhale.

The diaphragm's job is to help pump the carbon dioxide out of the lungs and pull the oxygen into the lungs. The diaphragm is a sheet of muscles that lies across the bottom of the chest cavity. As the diaphragm contracts and relaxes, breathing takes place. When the diaphragm contracts, oxygen is pulled into the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, carbon dioxide is pumped out of the lungs.

Circulatory System: The Circle of Blood

On average, your body has about 5 liters of blood continually traveling through it by way of the circulatory system. The heart, the lungs, and the blood vessels work together to form the circle part of the circulatory system. The pumping of the heart forces the blood on its journey.

The body's circulatory system really has three distinct parts: pulmonary circulation, coronary circulation, and systemic circulation. Or, the lungs (pulmonary), the heart (coronary), and the rest of the system (systemic). Each part must be working independently in order for them to all work together.

Men and Heart Disease Statistics

While heart disease is the number one killer of women, men are equally affected.

• In 2002, over 340,000 men died from heart disease.
• Heart disease is the leading cause of death in men.
• A man's average age for a first heart attack is 66 years old.
• Between 70 percent and 89 percent of sudden cardiac incidents occur in men.
• 50 percent of men who have a heart attack before the age of 65 die within eight years.
• Men suffer heart attacks on average, ten years earlier than women.
• 50 percent of men who have died from a heart attack exhibited no previous symptoms.
• Men who are clinically depressed have a higher risk of heart disease and heart attack then men who are not depressed.

HEART DISEASE AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES

Heart disease after Hodgkin's lymphoma treatment

Women and Heart Disease Statistics
Every day, another woman becomes a fatal statistic to heart disease. Here are some quick facts about heart disease and its effect on women:

-Heart disease is the number one killer of women.
-8 million women in the United States have some form of heart disease.
-Every 34 seconds a woman dies from a heart related disease
-Women who have reached menopause are two to three more times likely to develop coronary artery disease than those who have not reached menopause.
-6 million women in the United States have had a heart attack or experienced angina. -31,837 women each year die from congestive heart failure.
-Heart disease takes more lives than the next eight on list for top killers of women, including breast cancer. -267,000 women will die from a heart attack this year.
-Women who smoke have a chance of having a heart attack 19 years before women who do not smoke.

Congestive Heart Failure

Congestive heart failure is another type of heart disease. It is, simply put, when a persons heart fails. It is the most common reason for the elderly to be hospitalized. Congestive heart failure often is a result of another type of heart condition.

It occurs when the heart is not able to pump out enough blood from its chambers to meet the body's needs. Congestive heart failure can also occur when a persons heart chambers become stiff, which doesn't allow the heart to relax and thus fill with blood.

There are several symptoms to congestive heart failure. The symptoms are determined by which side of the heart may be failing. Often, the symptoms of congestive heart failure are from the congestion that occurs when fluid backs up into the lungs and pushes into the surrounding tissues.

Symptoms of heart failure on the left side of the heart may be as follows: tiredness, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing; especially when sleeping, wheezing, and weight loss. Symptoms of heart failure on the right side of the heart may result in the following: tiredness, fluid in the feet, legs and abdomen, enlargement of the liver, and weight gain that is unintentional due to water retention. A doctor should be contacted immediately when a person has any of the above symptoms.

Body Weight Contributes to Heart Disease

Being overweight can contribute to the development of heart disease. The heart has to work harder in people that carry more weight than those who are slim. This puts a strain on the heart of the overweight person. Someone who is overweight may also have a higher bad cholesterol level, higher blood pressure and an increased risk of diabetes.
Having high blood pressure or high cholesterol increases the chances of developing heart disease. To lessen your risk of heart disease due to weight, it is important to know your BMI, or your body mass index. BMI is calculated using your height and weight.
Doctors often use it to determine if one is overweight or underweight. To figure BMI you must divide your weight in pounds by 2.2. You then must multiply your height in inches by .0254. When this is done, you divide your pounds by inches to get your BMI.
A BMI higher than 30 would be considered obese. Being obese puts you at risk for heart disease. Being overweight is classified as anything from 25 to 30. People who are overweight are also at an increased risk for heart disease. A normal BMI is from the 18.5 to 24.9 range.
Exercise and diet can help you lose weight; it can also help reduce your chance of developing heart disease due to obesity.

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Blood Pressure Contributes to Heart Disease

Blood pressure is often called a "silent killer", because many people are unaware they suffer from high blood pressure. High blood pressure can lead to stroke and heart attack. People need to have their blood pressure monitored on a regular basis by a physician.

High blood pressure often causes an increase pressure on the kidneys and the heart to work harder. This then increases the risk of heart attack, stroke and even kidney disease. A normal blood pressure is considered to be 120/80 and lower. High blood pressure is considered to be 140/90 and higher.

Blood pressure can be controlled through exercise, weight loss and diet. There are times when medication is required to help decrease blood pressure. Reducing your blood pressure results in less chance of developing heart disease.

Cholesterol Contributes to Heart Disease

Many people don't know what cholesterol is let alone know what their cholesterol levels may be. One thing that is known is: having high cholesterol can contribute to heart disease. When fatty deposits filled with bad cholesterol build up on your arteries, it can cause a lack of blood flow and oxygen to your heart. This can result in heart disease.

A person's total cholesterol level should be lower than 200 mg/dl. Your LDL (this is the bad cholesterol in your blood) should be less than 70 mg/dl if you have an existing heart disease. Your LDL level should be less than 100 mg/dl if you are at risk for heart disease and it should be no higher than 130 mg/dl if you have no risk factors.

It is important to raise your good cholesterol (HDL) and lower your bad (LDL). A goal for good cholesterol (HDL) is 40 mg/dl, and anything higher is wonderful. People at risk for heart disease, and even those not at risk, should have their cholesterol levels checked regularly. By simply changing your diet and exercising, you can lower your cholesterol.

Heredity and Heart Disease Risk

Heredity is one cause of heart disease that someone cannot change. Many times heart disease is genetic and passed on from parent to child.
Children who have parents that have heart disease are more likely to develop heart disease themselves. Many times when heart disease is prevalent in families, it is also compounded with other risk factors.
It is always important for a family with a high risk factor of heart disease to treat and control any risk factors that may present themselves. Seeing a doctor regularly for check-ups and heart checks is important in helping to control any heart disease that runs in families.
The more a person knows about the heart disease that may run in their family, the more a person can do to help minimize the risks of developing it. Obviously, doctors cannot do anything about what is in someone's genes, but the more information a person can share with his or her doctor about a hereditary heart disease, the more a doctor can do more to develop strategies that may help that person in the future.

Preventing Heart Disease, Heart Attack through Stress Management

• People who have “hurry sickness” can be cured-and heal their hearts. Try to substitute sympathy for irritation.
  
• Some 70 percent of those who were hostile were found to have clogged arteries. Learn what pushes your buttons and reconstruct a healthy response.

More Advice For Preventing and Managing Heart Disease, Heart Attack

• Get two cholesterol readings when necessary to avoid errors
• Getting up on the treadmill and monitoring your heart can show if it is getting enough oxygen during exercise
• A new test may identify people with a family history of high cholesterol
• An array of drugs help your heart behave normally.
• An aspirin a day may keep blood clots at bay. A new device is now available to scrape away plaque from narrowed arteries