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.