Friday, November 30, 2012

Rapid heart beats after eating -worry or not

Rapid heart beats after eating - what should we be worried about?


Rapid heart beats

Some people experience rapid heart beats after eating and this can create an important discomfort as they begin to be afraid or avoid eating in order to prevent these irregular heart beats to occur. Others are worried they might have a heart disease that causes palpitations and sick medical help. In the next part of the article we will find out what is the meaning of these palpitation and how can we prevent them.
After a meal, the digestion process requires more blood in the stomach and intestine and that’s why the heart has to pump more blood in these organs. The process consisting in increasing the amount of blood in the abdominal area after a meal is very important as it helps the body to assimilate food. This routine activity can determine palpitations, because heart has to work harder then usually. Until now, heart palpitation after eating seems to be a normal manifestation that can occur during a daily physiological process of our body.
Along with palpitation, after eating there are other manifestations that can also occur:
  • nausea
  •  dizziness-it occurs because cerebral blood flow is reduced, as the stomach needs more blood then usually in order to digest the food.
  •  fatigue or even exhaustion (the blood will accumulate in the digestive system, while other organs and among them, the brain, will receive a smaller amount of blood)
  • chest pain after eating- many times, patient with coronary disease (chronic heart ischemia determined by deprivation of oxygen) can have a chest pains after eating
  •  sweating
  • insomnia-if you sleep immediately after a meal, you may have problems to fall asleep. Because during night digestion and digestive secretion used in this process are diminished, you may get indigestion with abdominal discomfort, nausea and vomiting.
  •  shortness of breath-the stomach is full of food and presses against diaphragma, restricting lung expansion during breathing
  •  abdominal discomfort-if we eat too much or meals which are difficult to digest

If we experience rapid heart beats after eating should we seek for medical help?

Even if sometimes, heart palpitation after eating it is a normal manifestation, there are other causes for this condition, which need to be evaluated and treated. The answer is yes, if we experience heart palpitation after eating we should pay a visit to our doctor and check if there is something wrong.
What is the cause for heart palpitations after eating?
  •  sudden consumption of food after a long period of starvation. This is often seen in patients suffering from anorexia nervosa, when after a long time of not eating, they start the consumption of food, the level of blood sugar increases rapidly, followed by increased secretion of insulin, which can create arrhythmia and also decreases blood sugar. The rapid decrease of blood sugar will stimulate the secretion of adrenaline, which will stimulate heart activity and create palpitation (it is like when you hurry up a person and it is obviously that in some point she will do mistakes)
  •  hiatal hernia– a small portion of the stomach protrudes into the chest through diaphragm (the muscle that separates chest from abdomen and looks like a roof). This condition is usually associated with gastroesophageal reflux disease and may lead to chest pain and palpitations.
  •  obesity- usually these persons have a diet with lot of sugar and caffeine, with a sedentary lifestyle and they can experience palpitation and chest pain. Their body has a lot of fats and these fats will deposit on the blood vessels wall, blocking them and generating heart disease (coronary arteries disease-with deprivation of blood and oxygen in the heart tissues). Also, the heart has to work extra hard to pump blood into their stomach.
  •  hormonal imbalance could be a possible cause of heart palpitation after eating. For example hyperthyroidism (a thyroid disorder with high level of hormones) determines heart palpitation, tachycardia, chest pain, shortness of breath etc.
  •  Severe anemia can affect heart and determine tachycardia (rapid heart rate) or irregular heart beats. Because there is a small number of oxygen carriers, heart will try to pump the blood faster and faster in order to satisfy the tissues need for blood and oxygen. In the same time, heart needs oxygen for itself, working harder with less oxygen it is a very good condition for palpitation to occur. Persons that avoid eating meat, can have anemia, as the meat is the main source of iron.

How can we treat rapid heart beats after eating?

Preventing heart palpitation after eating should first start with a moderate diet and by this we mean to eat moderate amounts of food at regular intervals. It is not advisable to eat one meal after we starved ourselves an entire day. Regular meals in small proportion, regular exercise, losing weight and periodically check of the hormones level (since hormonal imbalance can determine heart dysfunction) are the solution to this medical issue.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Pinched nerve symptoms

Pinched nerve symptoms may result after injury or damage to a nerve and can occur in any part of the human body. Pinched nerve may result from direct pressure or compression on a nerve. Nerves are some organs that transmit information from the brain in our body and from our body in the brain. Nerves are distributed throughout entire the body and they are of two types: motor nerves and sensory nerves. Motor nerves allow the brain to send information to the body and command organs of the body. Sensory nerves transmit information from the body to the brain for processing and then to give an answer. Thus, patients may feel pain, numbness or burning feeling. This may be some pinched nerve symptoms.

Pinched nerve symptoms and locations

Pinched nerve symptoms depend on the location of nerves in human body. These appear in the part of the body that is affected. There are some pinched nerve symptoms that are common regardless of the nerves. This are pain (patient feels pain in the region innervated by that nerve), burning feeling (patients complain of burning sensation in the affected region) and change in symptoms based on body position (if the patient changes position the pain may disappear). Another pinched nerve symptoms are fecal incontinence (patient can control the stool) and urinary incontinence (inability to control urination). Also may appear decreased sensation in the affected area or numbness (patients feel affected region with tingling, feel that region asleep) and weakness (loss of strength). Feeling of weakness may occur in the whole body or a part of the body.

Other locations of pinched nerve symptoms


This may occur in the upper limb and can be caused by carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the median nerve) or by cubital tunnel syndrome (compression of the cubital nerve). They are two nerves that innervate the upper limbs. Sometimes the pain may be to the neck and then the pinched nerve symptoms appear in the arm. If the nerve affected is in the low back, the pain can usually down to the leg. Usually can identify which nerve is affected because of where the pain occurs. One of the affected nerves is the sciatic nerve and this is a disease called sciatica.
When a person has some of the symptoms that have been discussed above, he must go to the doctor to diagnose a possible pinched nerve. The doctor will begin by asking the patient about the symptoms, work history and family medical history. Then the doctor will exam the affected part of the body involved for more information. Depending on these results the doctor can do additional tests.  If the pain is on the back or in the neck, the patient must make an X-ray of the spine for a possible differential diagnosis of arthritis.
Pinched nerve symptoms may be treated with rest or ice applied to the affected region. Various medications can be used for treatment of pinched nerve. Anti-inflammatory medications may reduce the inflammation. Another treatment for pinched nerve symptoms is physical therapy and as an extreme solution is surgery
Pinched nerve symptoms may persist and can give severe complications. These are peripheral neuropathy, carpal tunnel syndrome or cubital tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow (commonly found in tennis players and that is a condition in which the outer part of the elbow becomes painful).

              In conclusion pinched nerve symptoms may appear in different situations and patients with  this condition can be totally recovered.

Friday, November 16, 2012

What is cardiovascular disease?

We read very often about cardiovascular disease, about heart failure, heart attack, stroke and many other disorders, but we don’t know for sure what is cardiovascular disease, why and how it occurs and what changes occur in our body. Next, we will try to explain what is cardiovascular disease in the society of nowadays and how much did medicine advanced in this research field.

What is cardiovascular disease

A question that scientists succeeded to answer but failed to cure.



Nowadays, when more and more people are suffering from heart disease we may wonder what is cardiovascular disease and why is it the first cause of death in most of the countries. We invest millions of dollars on research, looking and testing a lot of drugs, we even found out what is causing AIDS (and we succeeded to transform it in a „chronic” disease) and many other disease with strange names. But all the time there is a new disease, a new virus or bacteria that gives us trouble to treat and sometimes it feels that the more drugs we discover, the more diseases occur. Even so, the most frequent cause of death are
cardiovascular disease, a group of diseases that seem to be entirely understood, with lots of article and medical research, that could make some wonder what else is left to discover. The truth it is far from being so, as with the medical treatment we have at this moment we can only slow down these disease and not cure. Even the prophylaxis of cardiovascular disease is not very promising as we live in the century of unhealthy foods, McDonald’s food, alcohol consumption, smoking, stress, sedentariness and we spend all out time watching TV and working on computer.
After we established how important these diseases are, now let’s finally find out what is cardiovascular disease.

What is cardiovascular disease? A group of disorders that affect heart, brain and blood vessels.



The most frequent cardiovascular diseases:
  • hypertension: high blood pressure affects both brain and heart as it can determine bleeding (stroke) or small infarcts in the brain and also determine or worsen heart failure. Beside heart and brain, hypertension also affects eyes and kidneys.
  • heart valve disease: valves fail to close or open properly and in time they can cause heart failure,
  • irregular heart beats can cause fainting, shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue or even heart failure,
  • other heart tissues disorders: infection, metabolic disorders that affect heart (different disorders that can determine deposits of some substances in heart tissues like iron, copper etc)
  • strokes: a blood cloth can block one of the brain blood vessels and make a variable brain area to die or a blood vessel may break and let blood flow into the brain (this usually occurs in patients with hypertension or with blood vessel malformations).
  • atherosclerosis: fat deposits in the blood vessels wall that in time can determine strokes, heart attack, chest pain, arterial disorder with legs pain during walking and even during rest, in advanced cases, neurologic symptoms: dizziness, fatigue, fainting, drowsiness, memory and concentration dysfunction etc.
Now that we found out what is cardiovascular disease, let’s see how is treated. As we’ve seen, it is easy to answer what is cardiovascular disease, but is difficult to treat it. Treatment has two parts and two partners: the patient and the doctor. The patient should respect a healthy diet, with no salt, fats and sweets, attend regular exercise (jogging, running or any kind of sport), no smoking or alcohol consumption, keep a normal weight, control blood pressure and blood sugar. Doctors have a large number of drugs they can use, the purpose of this treatment is to slow down the disease and treat other disorders that may worsen cardiovascular diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, high level of fats in the blood, infections, irregular heart beats etc. It is also important to prevent other cardiovascular events from happening, that’s why antiplatelet medication like aspirin is prescribed in patients that are suffering from cardiovascular disease.
We hope this article can offer a brief answer to the question what is cardiovascular disease and why this medical problem is so important in nowadays society.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Flu symptoms in adults

Flu symptoms in adults- different faces of the same disease

In the last years more and more people complain from flu symptoms and every year new vaccines are elaborated. People started to be very worried about flu symptoms in adults especially after the outbreaks of avian flu and AH1N1 virus, even if the “common” flu virus could cause death too. Because of the large number of people vaccinated, contradictory opinions about the efficiency and possible complications coming from the vaccination began to appear  and the result was that many people refused the vaccine.
People also searched for ways to strengthen the immunity system and they choose to use different types of medication based on plants. In clinical practice, because of the large number of patients that died even if they had no risk factors associated, doctors started to treat pneumonia with antiviral and antibiotic medication. But the more the antiviral medication is used, the more the risk of developing resistance to this treatment increases.

Next we will talk about flu symptoms in adults and its complication.

Why are we so concerned about flu symptoms in adults? For many of us, flu is just a common disease; we all had it at some point and as some use to say it lasts 7 days if you treated or one week if you don’t. But are flu symptoms in adults so insignificant that doesn’t worth talking about? This is a false idea among us that flu symptoms in adults are common manifestations. The truth is that in some people flu symptoms in adults can be as devastating as cancer or heart disease.
The main flu symptoms in adults:
  • fever-some wrongly believe that fever is determined only by bacterial infection. It is a wrong idea, both viruses and bacteria can determine high fever and they can disseminate to other organs through blood,
  • shivers- the feeling of body shaking
  • sweating-the body tries to lose some water in order to decrease the temperature,
  • headaches
  • rhinorhea-water discharge from the nose as we call it
  • cough-first it can start as a dry cough, but  in a few days expectoration can appear, considering that even viral infection can determine a secondary bacterial infection,
  • sore throat with pains that increase while trying to swallow
  • severe aches and pains in muscle and joints
  • generalized weakness and fatigue, feeling the need of lying down,
  • being unable to eat,
  • nausea and vomiting.
Flu symptoms in adults usually last a few days (about a week), but in some cases other complication can occur:
  • pneumonia- a flu symptom in adults that seems simple to deal, can  get complicated with a lower respiratory tract infection like pneumonia. In patient with reduced immunity as are those suffering from AIDS, these infections can be fatal, even if for many of us it can be a common disorder.
  • invasion of the virus in other organs through blood flow, which leads to a condition called septicemia, one of the worst flu symptoms in adults and an important threat to patient’s life,
  • meningitis-if the viruses reach the nervous system, they can determine meningitis, which is an infection of the tissues layers that cover the brain and are called meninges.
  • shortness of breath or fast breathing, bluish skin color (the blood hasn’t enough oxygen)
  • neurologic symptoms: dizziness, drowsiness, confusion
  • fulminant myocarditis
  • pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the pulmonary arteries) seems to be linked to the infection determined by AH1N1 virus,
Complications are more common in people suffering from respiratory, cardiac disease obesity and of course, those with diminished immunity (like patients with AIDS).
As we saw, flu symptoms in adults can be common or can be very serious, depending of the aggressiveness of the virus, the immunity system of the host, the risk factors associated, but it is important to remember that it can be fatal (about 40.000 people died every year, in USA, in the past 20 years, because of the flu).

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