Heart / Cardiac Diseases / Symptons / Syptoms / Diaganosis & Treatments

Types of an Enlarged Heart in Children

An enlarged heart is often referred to as a cardiomegaly. Most often seen in children, this condition is often the result of some other health condition and is much more common than many people would think. In adult, an enlarged heart is often a result of cardiovascular diseases and even pregnancy. In severe cases, large quantities of drugs are often associated with an enlarged heart, causing severe long term health issues. Understanding and knowing your child suffers from an enlarged heart is very important to their short and long term health. Remaining vigilant of the symptoms most commonly associated with an enlarged heart in your child could greatly increase the chances of successful treatment. Listed below are a few types of cardiomegaly and the common effects of each.

Cardiomyopathy

Perhaps the most common cause of an enlarged heart is cardiomyopathy. This condition is the result of the heart not being able to pump blood thoroughly and properly throughout the heart which often also leads to congestive heart failure. Cardiomyopathy is usually present in children as a result of a viral infection that is left untreated or not treated properly. Many other causes of cardiomyopathy include congenital heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, chemotherapy as a result of cancer treatment, and a fast rhythmic heart. Cardiomyopathy is often genetic as well. Many women with enlarged hearts over-compensate while the child is in the womb which often results in the child acquiring the disease as well.

Congestive Cardiomyopathy

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The Benefits of Coq10 for Treating Heart Palpitations

The effectiveness of Coq10 in treating heart palpitations is extremely well known and widely researched. Coq10 actually possesses numerous other health benefits that are largely known and far reaching. Coenzyme q10 treats various different heart conditions and also remains beneficial in many other health matters including migraines, headaches, and ever various forms of cancer. Coq10 is hosted inside mitochondria of the eukaryotic cells that live within your body. This enzyme participates in your body’s metabolic energy and is often transported naturally throughout your body, helping to regulate heart palpitations. Without such enzymes, your heart and liver would not have the vital energy necessary to function on a daily basis.

How does Coq10 Treat Heart Palpitations?

The connection between Coq10 and heart palpitations is that enzymes relieve palpitation symptoms and other heart failure symptoms including shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, and swelling of joints and muscles. Basically, the more Coq10 that is pumped throughout your heart, the more energy your heart stores and generates which assists in the circulation of the necessary blood and oxygen for everyday life. Fortunately, the Coq10 can be manufactured and is often given to patients with heart palpitations in the form of medicinal treatment, allowing your heart the ability to gain strength and allow for increased overall heart health. Over time, the more Coq10 your heart receives, the stronger your heart becomes and as is able to sustain itself through normal exercise as is commonly done like many other muscles in your body.

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Recognizing Heart Attack Symptoms

As people age, it becomes crucial for one to be aware of the symptoms of a heart attack. Heart attacks are very common for men and women, however, men are often more likely than women to suffer from one. Today’s society leaves many adults vulnerable to the onset of a heart attack. Most likely, this is the result of the types of horribly unhealthy yet convenient foods we consume along with not getting enough rest coupled with high stress levels. Of course, should any symptoms ensue that make you believe you are having a heart attack, you must seek medical help immediately as it could be a matter of life or death. Understanding the symptoms of a heart attack could save your life. There is a deeper meaning to the signs of a heart attack in that prevention is the best key to avoiding suffering from one.

One of the first signs of a heart attack is the feeling of uneasiness in the chest. Most common of symptoms, this uneasiness is very uncomfortable and sharply painful. Many people are unaware that they are having multiple smaller heart attacks when feeling minor chest pains. Mild and small, these minor chest pains are indeed often tiny heart attacks that lead up to a much larger attack at a later date. Upon feeling chest pains, see your doctor immediately to run the necessary tests in order to determine your heart’s health.

Another sign of a heart attack is when you feel a heaviness within the chest area. Many people associate this heaviness as if someone is placing a weight on their chest and holding it down firmly. Also associated with a squeezing feeling, many people associated this symptom as having an actual heart attack during that time as the pain is often excruciating.

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Common Causes of Low Blood Pressure

Low blood pressure is often difficult to assign as a diagnosis to any given individual. Doctors today often struggle to determine what precisely dictates a low blood pressure number for each individual patient. Contrary to popular belief, low blood pressure is indeed a health risk for those diagnosed with it, yet, not as dangerous as high blood pressure. When viewing an array of blood pressure readings, one would most likely see numbers across the charts while determining the outliers to be low or high in nature. Of course, your specific blood pressure is deemed low or high based upon your unique physiological factors. The most common factor in determining your blood pressure being low or high is by taking your average blood pressure readings and determining the deviation from it to be safe of dangerous. This article will discuss whether low blood pressure is positive or negative for any given person.

When is low blood pressure normal?

Average blood pressure ratings are generally above 90/50 for any human being. Any lower than this level, if not even around this number for some, would be considered low blood pressure by most medical standards. This sort of reading avoids being labeled low blood pressure, yet, on average from the standard norm of blood pressure readings it indeed is low. This lower blood pressure reading merely results in an average blood pressure reading for you. You most likely will not experience any health side effects and will require little to no treatment. This low blood pressure situation is normal in that this reading is merely the process in which your body generates blood pressure. Under this condition, your low blood pressure is normal and should not cause concern.

When might low blood pressure cause concern?

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How Tough Is Your Gut

When we eat we are allowing external substances to pass into the internal world of the body – after all the body must have essential resources in the form of nutrients to keep it functioning. However, this invariably means ingesting potentially dangerous or damaging elements that come as part and parcel of the food source or attached to it, for instance in the form of bacteria. The gut is therefore heavily guarded by the immune system and protected by a strong cellular wall. The gut wall needs to be very strong to prevent harmful elements passing through but it also needs to be porous so that essential nutrients can filter into the system. In theory, in order for nutrients to pass through the gut wall, food must be broken up into minute particles. A healthy digestive system does this by subjecting it to powerful stomach acids and bacteria, and mechanically churning it and breaking it down as it moves through the system.

If the permeability of the gut wall is as it should be, then only small particles can pass through and the immune system will be ready and waiting on the other side of the wall just in case anything harmful does pass through. To stop the immune response reacting to nutrients as they pass through, and to stop it from reacting to every little tiny thing that sneaks into the body, the body has devised a system of recognition. The immune system is set up to react to alien elements over a certain size. This allows the small particles of nutrients to pass harmlessly into the body but enables the immune system to respond to the presence of larger molecules such as bacteria, a virus or unprocessed waste. Read the rest of this entry »

What is Food Intolerance?

Leaky gut occurs when the permeability of the gut wall has increased to an unhealthy level. This can happen as a result of injury or illness but more commonly it is caused by a slow process of digestive decline. A highly permeable gut wall allows harmful substances such as acid and bacteria to pass into the rest of the body. The gut is designed to tolerate these things but other systems are not and hence this can lead to health problems, pain and fatigue.

A leaky gut will also allow ineffectively processed food particles to pass through the gut wall. This generates two main problems. First, because these large particles are unprocessed, they are unusable and simply become a bit of waste that has provided no nutritional benefit. Secondly, because they are large, they are likely to trigger off an immune reaction. This reaction is then memorized by the immune system, which categorizes the food as a harmful substance. Your body has now developed an intolerance to that particular food because if you eat it again, your immune response will remember that it is harmful and react accordingly.

A food intolerance is therefore an inappropriate immune reaction to a food source, the usual cause of which is ineffectively processed food passing through the gut wall. Your immune system reacts to this unprocessed food by generating an inflammatory response, creating swelling and pain. Unlike an allergy, where reactions occur as soon as you come into contact with the food, symptoms of an intolerance could take hours or even days to occur as the food has to pass through the digestive system first. Some foods take up to five days to process and this makes it very difficult to identify the offending food – or to even consider food as the problem. Another difficulty with detection stems from the fact that the foods that are creating the Problem are often those you enjoy or eat the most. If you eat a lot of the same foods, this increases the chance of a reaction to them. However, your immune system, as well as your taste buds, can encourage you to eat more of these foods. This occurs because when the immune response is triggered it also sets off the stress response to help the body solve the problem. Read the rest of this entry »

The Truth About Toxins

The key area of natural damage generated by energy production is a result of the build up of toxic waste. If you look at fuel sources such as petrol or coal for example, during the burning process a residue is produced. This needs to be cleared away once the energy has been utilized, in order to enable a new supply to burn effectively. This clear-up operation is necessary for two main reasons: the first is because it clogs everything up, preventing oxygen reaching the fuel source; and the second is that it is toxic and contains harmful by-products that could be dangerous. Our internal energy supply is no different. As we utilize energy, a residue or by-product is produced and this needs to be disposed of, otherwise it will get in the way and cause damage.

Your structure is made up of bones, muscles and tissue, each of which is a mass of cells stacked together to create form. In between the individual cells, fluid flows, supplying the essential nutrients and water the cells need to function. This fluid also transports oxygen around the body so that it can fuse with the glucose oozing out of the cells and supply energy to all areas of the body. Cells themselves are an individual powerhouse so in order to function they also need energy. This means that your body needs energy to make energy. To maintain energy levels and keep the cells healthy it is essential that nothing affects this constant flow. In addition to supplying energy, this distribution system also removes harmful substances, enables a speedy response to any damage that is incurred and allows the immune system to operate effectively.
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Stimulate Metabolism with Exercise

Approximately 60 percent to 75 percent of the energy liberated from food is expended to maintain the essential functions of the body. The energy to accomplish these functions is the basal metabolic rate (BMR) – the minimum amount of energy that the body expends to sustain life while at complete rest. The BMR is measured at least 12 hours since the last meal, after 8 hours of sleep, and in a thermally neutral environment (at a comfortable room temperature). Because these conditions are difficult to satisfy, they often are approximated, so that the BMR is estimated by the resting metabolic rate (RMR) The RMR requires that measurements be taken 3 to 4 hours after the last meal, following a 30-minute rest period, in a thermally comfortable environment, on a day in which the person has not participated in vigorous physical activity.

Because of less muscle and more fat, the RMR of females is 5 percent to 10 percent lower than males and 15 percent lower than that of very muscular males. Males who are overweight primarily because of heavy musculature have higher RMRs and respond more readily to exercise/diet approaches to weight loss than overweight men whose excess weight is primarily fat. The energy needed to sustain the RMR constitutes a significant amount of the total number of daily calories expended by the average adult. Then, from a weight-management perspective, it is advantageous to preserve or enhance the RMR and to do nothing to reduce it. Exercise fits the bill nicely, particularly resistive exercises that build muscle.

A persistent misconception regarding exercise is that it does not burn enough calories to make the effort worthwhile. Actually, consistent participation in aerobic exercise (such as walking, jogging, cycling, rowing, and aerobic dance) will burn substantial kcals. Anaerobic activities such as weight training do not burn many kcals during the workout, but they build the muscle tissue that will require more kcals later.
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Why Cigarette Smoking is Bad for Your Health

Cigarette Smoking is directly responsible for 419,000 deaths from all causes in the United States. Smoking accounts for 30 percent of all deaths from cancer and 30 percent of all cardiovascular deaths.

Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, 60 of which are carcinogenic (capable of producing cancer). Two of the most noxious of these are nicotine and carbon monoxide.

Nicotine is an addictive, stimulant drug that releases chemicals that raise the heart rate, blood pressure, and resting and physical-activity metabolism. Carbon monoxide, the same gas that is emitted from the exhaust of automobiles, trucks, and buses, is a poisonous gas that competes with oxygen for binding sites on hemoglobin.

Hemoglobin (a protein pigment transported by red blood cells that attaches to and carries oxygen) has a much greater affinity for carbon monoxide than it has for oxygen. As a result, there is a proportional decrease in oxygen that is displaced by carbon monoxide. This is a significant problem that is further complicated by the fact that carbon monoxide has a half-life of 5 hours after it attaches to hemoglobin. By comparison, oxygen detaches from hemoglobin in just a matter of minutes.

An increased level of carbon monoxide combined with nicotine act in concert to reduce HDL-cholesterol, to increase blood platelet adhesiveness (which increases the likelihood of arterial spasms), to increase fibrinogen (which increases the probability of clot formation), and increases levels of homocysteine (a protein that increases the risk of having a heart attack). These factors, individually or together, predispose people prematurely to coronary heart disease. The answer is: Stop smoking or, better yet, don’t start.

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Three Major Risk Factors for Heart Disease

Although most heart attacks occur later in the life cycle (55 percent after 65 years of age), the processes responsible begin quite early, often before adolescence. Atherosclerosis is responsible for about 80 percent of all heart attacks. It is the result of interactions between genetic factors and lifestyle behaviors.

Certain lifestyle behaviors were identified by the Framingham Heart Disease Study as risk factors for coronary heart disease. The risks are generally categorized as those that can be changed and those that cannot.

Age
The statistical probability that a person will die from heart disease increases with advancing age. In fact, 55 percent of all heart attacks occur after 65 years of age, and 85 percent of all fatal heart attacks occur after 65 years of age.

Male Gender
Men are, and have been, the primary candidates for heart disease. An alarming trend has surfaced in recent years though: Morbidity (the sick rate in a population) and mortality (the death rate in a population) have been increasing steadily in premenopausal women. The prime contributor is cigarette smoking, and when it is coupled with taking oral contraceptives, the risk increases substantially. By age 65, a woman’s risk is approximately the same as a man of the same age. On average, women tend to get heart disease about 10 years later than men, so men are at higher risk at younger ages. But the risk equals out and eventually reverses at and beyond 65 years of age.

Women have a more favorable blood-fat ratio that protects the arteries from atherosclerosis. Vulnerability to heart disease for women increases after menopause because estrogen production decreases and then stops, and blood-fat ratios change so they resemble the masculine profile.
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