Heart Friendly FoodsWritten by www.fatfreekitchen.com
Heart Friendly FoodsCopyright www.FatFreeKitchen.com [You have permission to publish this article in your web sites, ezines or electronic publication, as long as piece is used in its entirety including resource box, all hyperlinks (clickable) and references and copyright info. ] Heart disease results when plaque builds up inside arterial walls, which causes a partial or complete obstruction of blood flow. This reduces flow of blood to heart and may result in angina. Angina is a sensation of discomfort, pain, burning or pressure, generally felt in chest area. Angina may be first indication of heart disease. But many people with heart disease often get no warning signals, until they suffer a full heart attack. Chest pain should not been ignored, even when it is not permanent. During a heart attack, supply of oxygen to heart is cut off, resulting in tissue death for a part of heart muscle. There are certain foods that lower cholesterol and thus risk of heart disease. The following heart friendly foods are important for health of your heart. Apples: Drinking 12 ounces of apple juice or eating two whole apples a day is beneficial. Research has shown that phytochemicals in apples could help cut risk of death from heart disease or stroke in half. Onions: Eating half a raw onion a day raises HDL (good) cholesterol by an average of 25 percent in most people. -
| | Diving with AsthmaWritten by Sheldon Hey
Many asthmatics want to dive, but unfortunately, there are a number of concerns about effect of asthma on dive safety. Dive physicians have traditionally taken a very conservative approach to asthma in dive fitness assessments. Mention of word "Asthma" and potential divers were ejected from surgery faster than you could say, "but it wasn't serious and it's gone away now" More recently, some dive physicians have begun to take a more liberal, informed consent approach in assessing previous or mild asthmatics for diving. Some ex-sufferers previously prevented from diving can now dive, after making an informed choice about possible risks. To understand this, it is first necessary to understand what asthma actually is. Asthma is a condition affecting medium to small airways in lungs. In asthmatics, these airways are prone to narrowing, which impedes flow of air into and, in particular, out of small air sacs (alveoli) where gas exchange occurs. The trigger for these events is often an allergic response to a specific stimulus. Some asthmatics also respond to physical stimuli such as exercise or a change from breathing warm air to cold air. The result is that patient feels short of breath and there may be an audible wheeze due to airway narrowing which can cause severe breathing difficulty, which in severe cases, can certainly be fatal. One of biggest problems in discussing asthma, and this is particularly true when discussing asthma in context of diving, is that spectrum of severity is extraordinarily wide. There are three main concerns about asthma and diving. First, asthma may make divers more likely to suffer a dive-related illness. We are all taught that most important rule in diving is to breathe normally and to never hold your breath. If a diver ascends while holding his breath, expanding air can damage delicate lung tissue, and air may be introduced directly into blood, travel to brain and cause an arterial gas embolism (AGE). There is concern that an asthmatic may suffer narrowing or blocking of small airways during a dive, and that expansion of any trapped air during ascent may lead to same problem. There is also concern that use of reliever medication, such as Ventolin, prior to diving may cause lungs to be less efficient at filtering out venous nitrogen bubbles we all have after dives. These bubbles may then circulate through lungs and reach arteries where they might, in theory, be more likely to contribute to development of decompression illness. Second, it is recognised that an asthma attack in water may severely compromise diver's safety by incapacitating him and causing an inability to function effectively. Indeed, it is hard to argue that difficulty breathing would not be a decided disadvantage if you were caught in a current that was sweeping you away from your boat. Third, it is a plausible concern that diving itself could precipitate asthma. Asthma can be precipitated by exercise associated with diving, or by irritant effect of breathing a cold, dry gas. It is also recognised that regulators frequently leak a little salt water, and that some of this may be nebulised into a mist during breathing. This mist can irritate airways and precipitate narrowing in vulnerable individuals. The problem with all these very plausible concerns is that we have no idea how truly significant they are as there has been very little historic research. There is some data from retrospective surveys and these reveal many asthmatics (including active asthmatics) do dive, and that while their relative risk in diving may be more, their absolute risk remains reasonably low. e.g. one survey indicated that asthmatic is twice as likely to suffer an AGE as a non-asthmatic. Sound bad? Maybe. But if risk of AGE for a non-asthmatic is one in every 50,000 dives, then risk for an asthmatic is one in 25,000; a clear illustration of fact that not very much multiplied by two is still not very much.
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