Written by : Dr. Gauresh Indulkar, Hyderabad, e-mail:-igauresh(at)hotmail(dot)com

Proudly Published by Best Internet Resource

Stroke is perhaps one of the medical conditions that evade consistent identification, diagnosis, and even prevention. Despite this almost mystic quality to it, stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States (behind heart disease and cancer), and is the primary cause for disability in the United States and the European Union. For something that kills approximately 150, 000 Americans per year, it’s a surprise that not too many people are able to prevent it, take note of the danger signs, or even reduce their personal risk factor to the disease.

What is Stroke?

Stroke, also called a “brain attack”, is a medical emergency that occurs when blood flow to the brain is disrupted. Because the brain is central to the body’s over-all functioning, disruption of the blood flow supply to the brain causes neural damage or death within minutes. This is because blood that flows to the brain delivers two nutrients necessary for the brain’s operation: glucose and oxygen. When neurons are damaged or die in a particular portion of the brain as a result of this clog, abilities controlled by the said portion of the brain are lost. These lost abilities can range from speech, memory, and movement, usually not the same among stroke patients as the effects are dependent on which portion of the brain is affected by the stroke.

Strokes are classified according to the means through which blood flow is disrupted. Ischemic strokes are caused when a blood vessel or artery becomes blocked, and are further subdivided into categories based on what causes this blocking. Hemorrhagic stroke, on the other hand, is caused by the rupture or bleeding of a brain blood vessel.

Ischemia, the blockage of the blood vessel or artery causing a disruption in blood flow, is the cause of 80% of strokes.

The first kind of ischemic stroke is thrombotic stroke, where a thrombus or build-up clot narrows and eventually lodges itself, blocking the passageway of blood. These thrombi usually form around atherosclerotic plaques, which are plaques caused by the deposition of lipoproteins that carry cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. Atherosclerotic plaques are formed as an inflammatory response of the arterial blood vessel to excess deposits of lipoprotein at any point in the circulatory system. Because thrombotic stroke is formed from the gradual build-up of a thrombus that leads to its eventual blockage of an artery, this form of ischemic stroke is slower to manifest.

The second form of ischemic stroke is an embolic stroke, caused when an embolus or debris traveling through the bloodstream blocks the brain’s arterial access. An embolus can range from a blood clot, a plaque broken off from an atherosclerotic artery, fat, broken bone marrow, air, and even pieces of cancer cells. An embolus, by its very nature, can arise from any place in the body, so at the onset of its manifestation, the effects of the stroke are maximal and may cause immediate death.

The third form of ischemic stroke is the reduction of blood supply to all parts of the body, and is called the systemic hypoperfusion. This results usually in the failure of a cardiac pump during cardiac arrest. Because blood supply is reduced in all parts of the body, the brain can be affected universally, especially in “watershed” areas that control major cerebral arteries. While blood flow may not stop completely in these major cerebral arteries, sufficient reduction can cause brain damage.

Hemorrhagic strokes are more dangerous than ischemic strokes. With the disruption of a blood vessel, blood flow is reduced because the blood vessel can no longer deliver the blood to its intended destination. The greater danger is that the blood may leak into the brain and irritate brain tissue, disrupting the delicate chemical balance within the brain. The disruption of this chemical balance can cause pressure within the brain that will further disrupt blood flow in other areas aside from the areas directly affected by the first leaking blood vessel.

How can you tell that it’s stroke?

The symptoms of a stroke depend on the area of the brain where blood supply has been disrupted, with ischemic strokes affecting regional area controlled by the specific brain portion. Hemorrhagic strokes may exhibit paralysis in local areas but may likely affect the entire body due to the possibility of pressure in the brain caused by the hemorrhage.

Strokes may cause symptoms such as muscle weakness, numbness, reduction of sensory capabilities (like sight, speech, and speech comprehension), extreme headaches, and loss of coordination. Some people experience a sharp, sudden headache, which has come to be described as like a “clap of thunder”, which signals a cranial hemorrhage.

Strokes are usually diagnosed by neurologists with the help of various advanced equipment. CT scans and MRI scans are capable of detecting both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes, but MRI scans are more sensitive and accurate in determining hemorrhagic strokes.

What are the risk factors?

There are risk factors for stroke that are within a person’s control, while some are out of their control. Some uncontrollable risk factors include genetic predisposition to stroke or a family history of stroke, being aged 55 or older, being male, and being African-American, Hispanic or Asian. This age factor is manifested by the fact that 95% of strokes occur in people aged 45 and older. However, strokes can happen to anyone regardless of age.

Suffering from other diseases may also increase one’s risk for stroke. Some of these diseases include heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. Atrial fibrillation or a heart condition characterized by irregular heartbeats is a common cause of stroke for the elderly aged 65 years or older. Sickle cell anemia, a condition that causes abnormal blood clotting and blockage of blood vessels, increases the risk of stroke. Stroke is the leading cause of death for people under 20 who suffer from sickle cell anemia.

Some lifestyle choices also increase risk for suffering from stroke, which include smoking, alcohol consumption, and high cholesterol levels in blood.

How do you avoid stroke?

The best way to avoid stroke is to keep an eye for the risk factors and to modify one’s lifestyle so as to avoid these risk factors as much as possible.

First, it is important to undergo a thorough health check-up in order to determine and become aware of one’s particular health conditions. For example, high blood pressure or hypertension is an important warning sign for likelihood for an attack of stroke. Before their first stroke, many stroke patients registered a blood pressure of higher than 160/95. A lot of stroke patients also have high blood cholesterol levels, with their total cholesterol levels (LDL and HDL cholesterol) above 200. LDL, or what has been called “bad cholesterol”, can form plaques and lead to the formation of thrombus in the blood that can block the blood vessel and trigger a stroke.

For both hypertension and high blood cholesterol, lifestyle changes may be implemented to reduce risk for stroke. This would include getting more exercise, losing excess weight (especially for those deemed to be obese), and restricting sodium intake to below 6 grams of sodium per day. Regular exercise helps improve blood circulation in the body.

If you have diabetes and atrial fibrillation, it is important to consult your doctor as regards how to manage these two conditions and how it may affect your stroke risk factor. Diabetes increases the likelihood for stroke. Atrial fibrillation, which changes how your heart works and makes some blood become stagnant and therefore likely to clot, may increase likelihood for blood clots to clog one’s blood vessels.

Practicing moderation in alcohol intake and putting out a smoking habit may also help reduce one’s likelihood of having stroke. Women must have only one drink of alcohol per day, and men must limit it to two. A drink as advised here translates to either 12 oz. of beer, 4 oz. of wine, or 1.5 oz. of 80-proof liquor. Smoking more than doubles a person’s risk for stroke, so putting out that habit may in fact reduce the risk for stroke significantly.

How can you reduce the recurrence of stroke?

For people who fear the recurrence of a stroke, they may take two sorts of medications like antiplatelets and anticoagulants. Antiplatelets hinder the production of thromboxane, a chemical that triggers the clotting of various platelets in order to control bleeding. While control of bleeding is good for people without risk for stroke, blood clotting can be lethal for a person who’s already had a stroke. Antiplatelet agents like aspirin, diprydamole, and ticlopidine, all work to inhibit the release of thromboxane. Antiplatelet therapy, however, is not recommended for those with a history of liver, gastrointestinal, or kidney disease, and high blood pressure, asthma, or bleeding disorders. Aspirin is the most commonly available and prescribed antiplatelet medication.

Anticoagulants are recommended for people with atrial fibrillation and high stroke risk. Anticoagulants like warfarin and herparin reduce clotting by competing with Vitamin K, which is necessary for the formation of proteins in the liver that cause clotting.

While both antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapies work in reducing stroke, it is not a matter of which treatment is better than the other. It is important to consult a physician in order to determine which of the two therapies, or possibly, a combination of both, may be prescribed for each patient’s unique characteristics and health conditions.

Published by Best Internet Resource & Web Directory

Gone are the days when people took “C’est la vie!” as their personal mantra when it came to health and wellness. As a result of medical advancements and discoveries, greater awareness, and a general societal shift towards healthier lifestyles, more and more people are taking charge of their lives and becoming more dedicated in pursuing better health and a better life.

This is perhaps encouraged not only by the realization that it is better to live a healthy life, but also because of the various catastrophes borne of terrorism, of epidemics, and even of natural environmental phenomena. People are beginning to realize how short life is and how taking advantage of it would entail being healthy, and how these unexpected circumstances are best prepared for by being healthy. These realizations, coupled with much support from media and the market, are providing people with the inspiration and means to forward these health and lifestyle goals.

Taking charge of having better health and a better life is easier now because doctors and healthcare professionals do not have the monopoly of information. Logging on to the internet, joining online support groups, reading self-help books, visiting local clinics, or even participating in local support group activities are giving us the access to health information that helps us make these important daily decisions.

The advantage of having access to online resources when it comes to health tips is that there is a wealth of information available on a specific item of inquiry. This, compared to buying thick volumes of medical books provides a convenient access to relevant health information. Moreover, health articles online help people key in to specific words and terms that they can use to search for other articles online, and provide links to other useful pages.

Online health tips provide specific information about the ailment, usually covering all information that is relevant and filter the endless bounty of information for easy and enjoyable reading. They provide a general background on a particular health topic, and then go to more specialized details such as treatments, disease management, and even lifestyle considerations relating to the health topic (as in the case of diseases).

This relevance and specificity is best seen in how these articles are written usually for a target audience. Aside from those suffering for particular diseases, health tips for specific groups like children, pregnant women, teenagers, and senior citizens are widely available. This practice of targeting a particular group is useless especially because the needs of these specific groups differ widely. For example, advising the general public to eat a lot of seafood would not hold true for pregnant women who must eat seafood with caution or risk exposure to particular bacteria.

The specificity and relevance of these articles all contribute to how viable and useful they become for many of their end-readers. Many of these readers do not know specialized knowledge on health, lifestyle, or diseases, and health tips found online usually are written in a style that offers better general understanding. Specialized books and health references may flood the average person with too much facts and jargon to be able to walk away with useful knowledge.

These online health tips contribute to facilitating a trend of empowering people. This begins by giving them the information they need and are suited to them, in an avenue most accessible to them, and in a form they can best understand. While living healthier lives, or managing an ailment is not always easy, health tips online at least provide useful and relevant information with ease of access to facilitate achieving either goals.

This Health Article is brought to you by Best Internet Resource & Web Directory

Wounds and minor topical injuries are a common mishap in our day to day life. However, very few people know how to properly treat it or deal with it. This lack of knowledge of first aid treatment for wounds at times causes complications to what would have otherwise been an easily treatable minor injury.

What are Wounds?

In order to be able to adequately determine how to treat a wound, it is important to properly define and classify wounds.

Wounds are roughly defined as breaks in the continuity of a particular tissue of the body, and these breaks may be internal or external. External or open wounds are usually breaks on the skin or in a mucus membrane, while internal wounds are breaks in underlying tissues that do not manifest with an external break on the skin or mucus membrane. These wounds are usually caused by coming into contact with external physical forces, like falls, mishandling of sharp objects, or accidental clashes with objects or vehicles.

While minor wounds may be relatively harmless to the body, some wounds may be harmful not only to the tissues where the breaks in continuity are found, but also to the rest of the body. Some wounds that are highly detrimental may cause severe bleeding, disruption of breathing, or disruption in the workings of the brain, heart, or any other vital organ.

General Types of Open Wounds

Open wounds may be classified into four types: abrasions, incisions, punctures and avulsions. Abrasions result from the skin scraping against a usually rough surface, causing the skin to rupture and damage. Blooding is limited to some minor oozing of blood; however, the danger is the possible contamination and infection from dirt and bacteria may have mixed into the broken skin upon contact. Incisions on the other hand are usually clean cuts caused by sharp objects. The depth and length of an incision determines the extent of bleeding of the wound. Puncture wounds are caused by sharp, pointed objects such as nails and splinters. These wounds may bleed minimally on the outside, but may cause severe internal bleeding as the pointed object may sink deeply into the body. Avulsions are when a tissue is severed from the body, usually resulting from animal bites, explosions, or vehicular accidents.

Treatment

The first step in treating the wound is managing any bleeding that may be happening. To do this, apply direct pressure on the wound by pressing with one hand a piece of cloth (thick pad of sterile gauze, or any soft, clean cloth) on the general area of the wound. Should the blood soak through the cloth, additional pieces of cloth should be applied without removing the first piece of cloth. Not removing the original piece of cloth will avoid disturbing the clotting process and help control the bleeding better.

Afterwards, it is important to remove any foreign materials from the wound—huge pieces may be removed with the hand, while smaller pieces may be removed by washing the wound with mild soap and water. Abrasive agents like alcohol, peroxide, and iodine, are discouraged from being applied to the wound as they inhibit speedy healing.

After controlling bleeding and cleaning the wound, apply antibiotic ointment and bandage to the wound. For smaller wounds, commercially available bandages are available to help close wounds that gape open; bigger and deeper wounds may require professional medical attention and stitching.

Which wounds require further medical attention?

After receiving emergency care, people with wounds that exhibit any of the following characteristics must consult a physician for further medical treatment:

1. persistent bleeding despite actions done to control it; this may include blood that continually spurts from the wound even if it was initially controlled by first aid;
2. an incision deeper than the outer layer of the skin;
3. any laceration, avulsion, or deep puncture must be consulted to a physician to avoid infection;
4. an animal or human bite that caused a break in the skin;
5. laceration on the face or parts of the body where scar tissue would be visible;
6. an embedded foreign object deep in the tissue;
7. heavy exposure of the wound to soil, organic fertilizer (like manure) or any other organic substances; and,
8. any open wound where there is evidence of severed nerve, tendon or muscle.

Thus in the event of such an open wound you would not feel the need to run here and there asking for help as you are now very much in a good position to manage it without any worries