Tuesday 25 February 2014

10 Tips To Keep Your Kidney Healthy

1. Manage diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease: In most of the cases, kidney disease is a secondary illness that results from a primary disease or condition such as diabetes, heart diseases or high blood pressure. Therefore, controlling sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure by following a healthy diet, exercise regimen and medication guidelines is essential to keep kidney diseases at bay.

2. Reduce the intake of salt: Salt increases the amount of sodium in diet. It not only increases blood pressure but also triggers the formation of kidney stones. Here are a few tips to actually cut down your salt intake.

3. Drink lots of water every day:  Water keeps you hydrated and helps the kidneys to remove all the toxins from your body. It helps the body to maintain blood volume and concentration. It also helps in digestion and controls the body temperature. Atleast 8-10 glasses of water a day is a must.

4. Don’t resist the urge to urinate: Filtration of blood is a key function that your kidneys perform. When the process of filtration is done, extra amount of wastes and water is stored in the urinary bladder that needs to be excreted. Although the bladder can only hold a lot of urine, the urge to urinate is felt when the bladder is filled with 120-150 ml of urine. 


 
So, if start ignoring the urge to go to the restroom, the urinary bladder stretches more than its capacity. This affects the filtration process of the kidney.

5. Eat right:  Nearly all processes taking place inside your body are affected by what you choose to eat and how you eat. If you eat more of unhealthy, junk and fast food, then your organs have to face the consequences, including the kidneys. Here’s more information on the relation between unhealthy diet and kidney damage.

You should include right foods in your diet. Especially foods that can strengthen your kidneys like fish, asparagus, cereals, garlic and parsley. Fruits like watermelon, oranges and lemons are also good for kidney health.

6. Drink healthy beverages: Including fresh juices is another way of drinking more fluids and keeping your kidneys healthy. Juices help the digestive system to extract more water and flush out wastes from the body. Avoid drinking coffee and tea. They contain caffeine which reduces the amount of fluids in the body. So, the kidneys have to work harder to get rid of them. Read more about how soft drinks and sugars can affect the kidneys.

If you’re already suffering from kidney problems, you should avoid juices made from vegetables such as spinach and beets. These foods are rich in oxalic acid and they help in the formation of kidney stones. But you can definitely have coconut water. Here’s how coconut water can help in preventing kidney stones.

7. Avoid alcohol and smoking: Excess intake of alcohol can disturb the electrolyte balance of the body and hormonal control that influences the kidney function. Smoking is not directly related to kidney problems but it reduces kidney function significantly. It also has an adverse effect on heart health which can further worsen kidney problems.

8. Exercise daily: Researchers believe that obesity is closely linked to kidney related problems. Being overweight doubles the chances of developing kidney problems. Exercising, eating healthy and controlling portion size can surely help you to lose extra weight and enhance kidney health. Besides, you will always feel fresh and active. Here’s more about how obesity and kidney disease are linked.

9. Avoid self medication: All the medicines you take have to pass through the kidney for filtration. Increased dosage or taking medicines that you are not aware of can increase the toxin load on your kidneys. That’s why you should always follow dosage recommendations and avoid self medication. Read more about how drugs affect the kidneys.

10. Think before you take supplements and herbal medicine: If you’re on vitamin supplements or if you’re you’re taking some herbal supplements, you should reconsider your dosage requirement. Excessive amount of vitamins and certain plant extracts are liked to kidney damage. You should talk to your doctor about the risk of kidney disease before taking them.

Source: health.india

Causes Of Headache

Headaches can cause many work delays and sometimes can affect our quality of live. Sometimes headaches are caused by medical conditions and sometime in can be caused by what we eat and even how we sit. These are the fifteen causes of headaches that often causes us headaches:

Emotional Tense 

Too much work burden often triggers the sensation in the head. The fact is, all things which rise tension and stress will make us easier being attacked by headache or migraine. 


Headache caused by the emotional tension is called functional headache or tension headache. The symptoms started with muscle tense at the neck muscle, shoulders and head because of emotional stress. The pain usually starts from the back of the head, travel to the front, then to the both sides of head. Light massage to those areas can lessen the headache, but after some time it will come back

Hormonal Change  

Headache caused by hormonal changes usually come in the form of headache in one side of the head. Generally this headache is felt harder than tension headache. Migraine sufferers in female are three times more compared to male. The main cause is hormonal change.

Hot Air  

Increased in air temperature often causes migraine or heavy headache. In a study it is known that 7.5 percents of respondents have headache during hot air or hot weather.

Too Strong Odor or Smell 

Have you ever felt dizzy when you smell a perfume? Strong odour, even the good one, generally causes dizziness. It is still not known why this happens, but scientists guess that the strong aroma stimulate the nervous system. Beside perfumes, paint odors, flower aromas, or dust, often causes the throbbing sensation in your head.

Hair Accessories  

The way we treat our hair can affect our head. Tying hair too tightly can make the skin tissues on the head to be in tense and invites headache. A too tight hat or hairpin could give the same effect.

Heavy Sports  

Too heavy sport activities, including sexual intercourse, also can cause headache. Too much physical activities can make the blood vessels in the neck and head to swell and pressured. Headaches because of sex or sports are easier to attack peoples who suffer migraine.

Poor or Bad Body Posture 

 It is not just sports that can cause stress on the neck muscles and the head, body postures that forms from our daily routines also can rise headache. You can say it either sitting with bent shoulders, sitting without leaning, watching the computer monitor at a too high or too low position or cradling your phone between your ear and shoulder. If these cause you to get a headache, it is time to fix your daily body postures.

Trauma  

This headache often emerges as an effect from an accident, even after only a small injury happened at the head. The sensation sometimes emerges after weeks, or months after injury and can last for a year after the traumatic incident.

Cheese  

The trigger of half side of the head headache, alias migraine, are most often are cheese, including cheddar, blue cheese, mozzarella and parmesan. The cause is tyramine, which is formed from broken protein, which occurs in cheese. The longer a food or drink processing is, the more tyramine it will contain.

Red Wine  

Tyramine also can be found in red wine and alcoholic drinks. Alcohol content inside the drink will also increase the blood flow to the brain, and causes dizziness.

Postponing Lunch  

Empty stomach because of not having lunch at some people often causes headache. Beside dizziness, empty stomach also makes blood sugar to decrease, causing the body to feel weak. Always have your lunch with a balance diet. Avoid consuming sweet foods, such as chocolate or sweet to fill your empty stomach. Sugar from sweet foods will make the blood sugar level to spike for then to decline again even lower.

Allergy  

This disturbance often comes with symptoms like runny nose, watery eyes and painful throat. The emergence can be raised by certain foods or whatever that can cause the allergy.

Smoking and Cigarette  

Smoking is on the list of causes of headache, not only to the person that smoke the cigarette, but also the passive smokers around him or her. The nicotine content will causes the blood vessel to shrink, and the result is blood flow to the brain decreases.

Caffeine  

People who often get headache are usually be friended with coffee. Caffeine can be a friend and also foe. The fact, some of headache medications contain caffeine inside them. On the other side, caffeine also can cause headache.

Sinus Problem  

Sinus headache can be easily known from it symptoms. One or both blocked nostril and itchiness spreading to the cheek and brow. Those areas are so sensitive up until a touch will constantly feels itchy. Those are the fifteen causes of headache. Among them there are some that you may not be aware of and can cause extreme headache. Therefore, the most important thing is to constantly look after your body condition so it will always be fit by having a healthy lifestyle from now on. When headaches constantly happen and cannot be treated by your usual headache medication, it is good for you to get your doctor

Source: facmedicine

How To Read An ECG

The ECG paper is mostly standardised

  • Each large square on the paper represents 0.2 seconds
  • Each small square represents 0.04 seconds
  • 5 large squares therefore = 1 second
  • 300 large squares = 1 minute
  • To calculate heart rate – count large squares within an R-R interval & divide 300 by this number

P-waves
  • P-waves represent atrial depolarisation
  • There should be a P-wave preceding each QRS complex
QRS complex
  • The QRS-complex represents depolarisation of the ventricles
  • It is seen as 3 closely related waves on the ECG (Q,R & S wave);
  • The first downward deflection is the Q-wave
  • Any upward deflection is an R-wave
  • Downward deflections after an R-wave is called an S-wave
  • It should be between 0.06-0.10 seconds
T-wave
  • The T-wave represents ventricular re-polarisation
  • It is seen as a small wave after the QRS complex
Source: facmedicine

Tuesday 18 February 2014

How Music Affects the Brain

Thanks to smartphones, music marketplaces from iTunes and Amazon, and the popularity of apps such as Pandora and Spotify, it seems like everyone’s plugged into their headphones all day, every day – whether in their cubicles at work, at the coffee shop or even just walking down the street. Do you ever wonder how this constant stream of audio and music might impact our brains?


Listening to music – essentially, a combination of sounds and rhythms – is one of the most primitive activities of the human race. It’s woven into the fabric of cultures around the world and throughout time. The neurological responses triggered by music in the brain have been well documented. Earlier this year, researchers at McGill University in Montreal confirmed that music increases activity in the nucleus accumbens part of the brain, the same structure that releases dopamine, a neurochemical associated with pleasure and reward. Music also activates the amygdala, which is partially responsible for complex activities such as processing emotions.

“When we’re listening to music, the most advanced areas of the brain tie in to the most ancient,” said Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist who was part of the McGill research team, in a TIME article. Listeners get not only a feeling of pleasure from music, but emotional and intellectual stimulation, too.

Music may also have the ability to bring people together, thanks to similarities in how the brain processes it. A study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience in May 2013 found that study participants – all who had little or no musical training – exhibited similar, synchronized brain activity patterns when exposed to the same tune (symphonies by composer William Boyce) despite having different personal musical preferences. This suggests that music may have the power to create a shared common experience on a neurological level, no matter what personal biases may be present.

What’s more, areas of the brain that aren’t directly involved in processing sounds were also activated, including regions related to movement, attention, planning and memory. This suggests that listening to music may create a larger, more expansive and complex experience than just the experience of listening. It might also explain why we feel a connection to others through music and song, whether it’s around a campfire or at a concert with thousands of strangers.

Is there such thing as too much musical stimulation or too much of a good thing, especially now that we essentially have an unlimited supply of tunes in our pockets? That remains to be seen, but being plugged into headphones all the time certainly can have negative consequences. For one, you’re probably less aware of your surroundings, which can be a safety concern. It’s probably not a good idea to walk down the street late at night with your headphones turned up. Secondly, there is something inherently anti-social about wearing headphones or earbuds, particularly in situations (at work, for example) where it might prevent people from engaging in conversation with you. For me, it’s all about striking a balance between tuning in and tuning out.

Source: everydayhealth.com

'Pregnant' one-year-old girl has unborn twin's foetus removed

A one-year-old girl has survived surgery to remove her unborn twin’s foetus from her swollen stomach.

Kang Mengru was abandoned at birth and was taken in by a childless couple in Luohe City, in the central Chinese province of Zhenzhou.

Within months, her stomach began to swell and superstitious neighbours began calling the little girl a 'monster' and gossiping that she was pregnant.



Medical scans revealed Kang was actually carrying the parasitic foetus of her unborn twin in her belly.

A doctor told Kang’s worried foster parents: ‘She will die unless she has the surgery immediately.’

After 10 hours of complex surgery to remove the foetus, Kang's family have been told she can return home at the end of the month having made a full recovery.

Chief surgeon Dr Zhang Xuedong told The Sun: 'She will be able to go home at the end of the month, with her mother Wang Guihua and father Kuang Xiqing.

'There was a very real risk of cardiac arrest. The pressure within the child's chest and belly was very great but now she is out of danger.'

But Kang’s foster family had to rely on donations to be made to a fund set up by local government in order to pay for the surgerty.

Source: Daily Mail

Love Hormone May Help Children with Autism

For children with autism, a dose of oxytocin — the so-called "love hormone" — seems to fine-tune the activity in brain areas linked to social interactions, according to a new study.

Although the hormone didn't change children's social skills in the study, its boosting effect on the brain's social areas suggests that using oxytocin nasal sprays immediately before behavioral therapies could boost the effects of those treatments, the researchers said.

"Oxytocin temporarily normalized brain regions responsible for the social deficits seen in children with autism," said study researcher Ilanit Gordon, a neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. 



The study involved 17 children and teens with autism spectrum disorders who underwent two sessions of brain imaging as they performed a task related to social behavior. In each session, the participants received either oxytocin nasal spray or a placebo, and were asked to judge the mental states of people based on a picture of their eyes.

The results showed that, compared with placebo sessions, when children received oxytocin they showed greater activity in the "social brain," which includes regions that process social information and are linked to reward, social perception and emotional awareness.

In contrast, oxytocin seemed to decrease the activity of the brain's social regions when children were engaged in a task that was not related to social processing, such as labeling the category of vehicles shown in pictures of cars.

In other words, the hormone seemed to help attune the brain to the difference between social and nonsocial stimuli, according to the study, published today (Dec. 2) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, Gordon said the findings do not mean that one dose of the hormone would treat social deficits in people with autism. "It means that there's a change in the brain that we read as positive and exciting, but we need to learn how to utilize it to create a change in real-life behavior," she said.

Oxytocin is a hormone produced in the brain, and is thought to be involved in various aspects of social interaction, such as emotional bonding, trust and love.

Previous studies had found lower blood levels of the hormone in children with autism than in typically developing children, and it had been suggested that oxytocin treatments could help children with autism overcome their difficulties with social interactions.

However, studies that examined the behavioral effects of administrating oxytocin yielded negative or weak results. In those studies, researchers gave the hormone to adults and children with autism for days and weeks, and found only modest improvements, or no change at all, in participants' social behavior.

Similarly, in the new study, when children received oxytocin, they didn't perform any better in identifying mental states based on their assessment of a person's eyes. But the greater activity in the brain's social regions after they received the hormone suggests that it may improve the effectiveness of behavioral treatments.

"There's a window where the brain increases its efficiency in processing, and we can utilize that window to teach kids on the autism spectrum in behavioral treatment," Gordon told LiveScience.

It remains unclear how the hormone affects the brain and leads to better social processing. One possibility is that oxytocin makes social stimuli more rewarding to children with autism, the researchers said. It is also possible that the hormone makes the information pertaining to humans stand out from the background information consisting of objects and, in turn, helps social information to become salient to people with autism, the researchers said.

Source: LiveScience

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Top Ten Pharmaceutical Companies In The World

This is a static for the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world according to total revenues.


1- Johnson & Johnson

2- Pfizer

3- Roche

4- GlaxoSmithKline

5- Novartis

6- Sanofi

7- AstraZeneca

8- Abbott Laboratories

9- Merck & Co.

10- Bayer

Source: Facmedicine

15 Reasons Why Nurses are the Best Relationship Partners

While searching in the web , I read this topic about benefits of being in relationship with a nurse , I think nurses here in the forum will like it

1- Nurses make a comfortable living, are goal-oriented, and future-focused. These are very positive qualities to potential mates seeking a serious and/or long-term relationship. Potential mates look at someone with these qualities as a person who knows what he/she wants and has a plan for getting there. This equals stability!

2- Nurses are hardworking. We worked hard to get our degrees and licensure, and now toil at work every day. After all, relationships need a serious dose of elbow grease to be successful and long-lasting. 

 

They do not simply exist, but, like your flower garden, require constant work and routine maintenance to grow. So when you’re with a nurse, expect him/her to put in that extra effort to make it work.

3- Nurses are good listeners, complete with understanding and patience. Our work life has taught us to be patient listeners! We are experts at putting ourselves in other people's shoes in understanding his/her position. Dating and building a nursing relationship requires patience, understanding, and good listening skills.

4- Nurses are compassionate. Not only are we great listeners, but we are well equipped to help handle difficult situations. We will always "be there"!

5- We tend not to sweat the small stuff. When you take care of sick patients all day long, having dirty dishes in the sink or having the toilet seat up are not really big issues to us.

6- Nurses deal with life and death situations on a daily basis. We tend to handle everyday stressors, which may "freak" some people out, with a quick-witted remark and a smile.

7- We have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly involving the human body. Nothing surprises, shocks, or disgusts us! More importantly, we tend not to laugh anymore about anomalies with any human body.

8- We don't mind the dirtier cleaning jobs around the house. When you empty bedpans for years on end, no cleaning task bothers you.

9- We have cool work tools your potential mate can play with.

10- Free medical advice and care, even for his/her family and friends!

11- We are really good at bed baths—and making beds for that matter. What other professional has been trained to give baths and make beds? Add to that a one-of-a-kind bedside manner and you've got a combo that's hard to beat.

12- We are great at medicating minor headaches and flu symptoms.

13- We can multi-task like nobody else.

14- We look good in our nursing scrubs.

15- He/She should be proud to say i am dating a nurse.

Source: Facmedicine

15 Year Old Incan Girl Found after 500 Years

History has the weirdest way of uncovering itself! A more contemporary version of a mummy was found in the form of a 15 year old Incan girl in 1999 near Llullaillaco’s 6739 meter summit. Scientists revealed that there was blood present in the girl’s undamaged vital organs, therein showing how well preserved her internal system was. They also revealed that this was due to the cold mountainous temperature and this girl had eventually frozen to death. This “mummy” is a relic of a 500 year old tradition called the capacocha, whereby children were sacrificed by religious leaders so as to protect the Incan tribe.

The history behind the Incan Girl

The mummy’s discovery expanded upon the mysterious scope of Incan history. It was then found that children who were the most “attractive” were sacrificed to Incan Gods to protect the tribe from harm. These younglings were taken to high mountain tops where they were left by religious leaders. 


 

In the course of that time, most children freeze to death. This girl is the perfect example of that. The cocoa leaf on her lip explains that it was obviously difficult for children to maintain their warmth in these high altitude areas. Therefore, their leaders would give them these leaves so that they could keep their inner system revitalized enough to function till they reach the mountain top.

New age technology and history enthusiasts

After preserving her body in an acrylic cylinder inside a box made of tripe paned glass, scientists ensured that the conditions perfectly matched those of the mountain tops. Therefore, her body could remain frozen and just as preserved as found on Llullaillaco. The mummy has earned the title of “La Doncella” and awed many history enthusiasts. Scientists have even ensured that the condition she was found in remains the same. Therefore, she sits at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta in her finely braided hair, brown clothes and sandals, with her head leaning lightly against her shawl so as to put her head to sleep or to keep away the deathly cold.

Source: Facmedicine

Monday 3 February 2014

Countries With The Most Plastic Surgeries

According to a recent study conducted by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, this is a list with the most popular countries for plastic surgeries either non-surgical procedures or surgical procedures.

1: United States
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 2,011,100
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 1,094,146
Top Surgical Procedure: Breast augmentation

2: Brazil
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 542,090
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 905,124
Top Surgical Procedure: Lipoplasty



3: China
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 635,720
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 415,140
Top Surgical Procedure: Lipoplasty

4: Japan
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 579,878
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 372,773
Top Surgical Procedure: Lipoplasty

5: Mexico
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 494,731
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 299,835
Top Surgical Procedure: Breast augmentation

6: Italy
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 388,440
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 316,470
Top Surgical Procedure: Breast augmentation

7: South Korea
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 391,588
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 258,350
Top Surgical Procedure: Lipoplasty

8: India
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 274,792
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 191,439
Top Surgical Procedure: Lipoplasty

9: France
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 248,247
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 207,049
Top Surgical Procedure: Breast augmentation

10: Germany
Total Non-Surgical Procedures: 228,255
Top Non-Surgical Procedure: Botulinum Toxin Type A
Total Surgical Procedures: 187,193
Top Surgical Procedure: Breast augmentation

Source: Facmedicine

10 Truths About Cigarettes

1. Cigarette industries earn about $400 billion a year as cigarette is the most traded item in the world.

2. Out of total cigarettes sold all over the world, 25 % are smuggled.

3. 70 % of the cigarette market is owned by major brands like Marlboro, Camel, Kent and kool.

4. The American cigarette manufacturers sell much less cigarettes to Americans as compared to the number that they sell to non-Americans.

5. Urea, which is excreted in urine is used to flavor the cigarettes.



6. Additional flavors are mixed in blended tobacco with the help of toppings of substances like, clove, licorice, orange oil, apricot stone, lime oil, lavender oil, cocoa and many others.

7. Legally tobacco can not be sold to people younger than 18 years in most of countries except Japan where legal age for the purpose is 20 years.

8. There is a myth that smoking helps in digestion. In fact smoking slows digestion by diverting the blood towards other organs, away from intestine where it is required for digestion.

9. Within 10 seconds of inhalation of cigarette smoke, nicotine reaches every part of body including brain.

10. It has been proven by research that smokers’ life expectancy is reduced by 14 years.

Source: Facmedicine

5 Reasons You Need More Sleep

Lack of Sleep Makes You Fatter

In the Nurses’ Health Study, 70,026 women were studied to see whether not sleeping enough increased the risk of future weight gain and even obesity. Researchers concluded that self-reported sleep restriction impacts your ability to burn calories and increases the risk of weight gain. In fact, they reported that women in the study who slept 7 to 8 hours per night had the lowest risk for major weight gain. Similar studies suggest that those who sleep less than 7 hours per night are more likely to be obese.



In a study of middle-aged women, researchers concluded that weight gain was directly correlated with the amount of sleep the subjects received each night. This study started about 20 years ago and included more than 68,000 women who were asked every 2 years about their sleep patterns as well as their weight. After 16 years, the findings revealed that those women who slept 5 hours or less each night weighed 5.4 pounds more than the women who slept 7 hours. In addition, women who slept 5 or fewer hours per night were 15 percent more likely to become obese than women who slept 7 hours each night. Another sleep study reported that losing just 16 minutes of sleep per night increased the risk of obesity.

Lack of Sleep Makes You Eat More Carbs and Snacks

In a revealing study, scientists at the University of Chicago allowed people to sleep 5.5 hours on 1 night and 8.5 on another and then measured how many free snacks they downed the next day. The participants ate an average of 221 calories more when sleepy—an amount that could translate into almost a pound gained in 2 weeks! (More: A snack to satisfy every craving)

In another study that reviewed short sleep (less than 6 hours) in young adults, researchers concluded that after poor sleep, the increase in appetite for foods with high carbohydrate content was particularly strong. It was as if the sleep-deprived brain craved its primary fuel, glucose, which your body produces from carbs.

In addition, not getting enough sleep affects the amounts and types of food you eat. Some studies show that sleeping for a shorter time and spending waking hours in an environment where people tend to overeat can cause you to engage in excessive snacking—and I don’t mean on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Lack of Sleep Increases Inflammation and the Risk of Diabetes

Sleeping too little for just one night can increase proinflammatory markers in the blood and boost hunger-promoting chemicals. Studies show that inflammation provoked by certain immune cells leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is directly correlated to obesity and is epidemic worldwide. There is increasing evidence that people who sleep fewer than 7 hours a night have a higher risk of diabetes.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that losing just 3 to 4 hours of sleep over a period of several days is enough to trigger metabolic changes that are consistent with a prediabetic state. They determined that when sleep was restricted to 4 hours for 6 consecutive nights, the body’s ability to keep blood glucose at a consistent level declined significantly, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. This may be because sleep deprivation stresses the body. Getting good-quality sleep is now considered a basic defense mechanism for staying healthy and preventing obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Lack of Sleep Leads to High Blood Pressure

Studies report a link between high blood pressure and sleep deprivation. When people are sleep deprived, whether it is from insufficient sleep quantity or poor sleep quality, they place an increased load on their hearts. Here’s why: When you are awake, your heart pumps faster to move the blood around. During sleep, your body does not require that much bloodflow, so your heart rate slows and the heart gets a much-needed rest. Without ample resting time, the heart muscle gets fatigued. Because your heart has to work harder, you can have an increase in blood pressure or possibly thickening of the heart muscle, which can lead to more serious heart problems.

Lack of Sleep Leads to Metabolic Disturbances

In a study of shift workers with irregular sleep, researchers found that the volunteers had definite metabolic disturbances that are clearly linked to insulin resistance. Insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas, promotes the storage of calories as fat and regulates the glucose level in the blood. Metabolic syndrome—also called insulin resistance syndrome—happens when your body steadily becomes less responsive to the actions of insulin. With metabolic syndrome, your blood sugar level rises despite the blood’s high level of insulin, and type 2 diabetes can result.

Source: Facmedicine