FINAL WEEK!

Final Spring Challenge Postings.

WEEK FIVE - May 8th - 14th

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK!

On Saturday, while riding with us at Grand Beach, Kevin jokingly (maybe not so jokingly) asked what would happen if someone had a heart attack in the wilderness.

Since I am always desperate for content on this blog, I thought it might be an interesting topic. The resulting tips come from a variety of websites including the Boy Scouts of America.

Have fun and exercise safe ( I should talk).

"In a heart emergency, you must make crucial decisions under stress. Even if you ultimately make wise choices, you waste valuable minutes if you spend time weighing your options. If you do insist on waiting to see what happens, allot yourself only five minutes. But not a minute more.

"As heart attack is a common medical emergency, the signs are often part of first aid courses. General management in the acute setting is calling for help as soon as possible; giving aspirin (300-500 mg), which inhibits formation of further blood clots; being prepared to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in case of arrhythmia or cardiac arrest.

"Since the publication of data that availability of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public places may significantly increase chances of survival, many of these have been installed in public buildings, public transport facilities and in non-ambulance emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars and fire engines). AEDs analyze the rhythm and determine whether the arrhythmia is amenable to defibrillation ("shockable").

"CPR is performed if there is no satisfactory cardiac output. About 20% of patients die before they reach the hospital; the cause of death is often ventricular fibrillation.

"Wilderness first aid: In wilderness first aid, a possible heart attack justifies medical evacuation by the fastest available means, including MEDEVAC, even in the earliest or precursor stages. The patient will rapidly be incapable of further exertion and have to be carried out. Immediately make the patient comfortable, raise up their feet and administer aspirins if available.

"Fast action is crucial. A heart attack occurs when an artery supplying your heart with blood and oxygen becomes blocked. With each passing minute, more heart tissue is deprived of oxygen and sustains permanent damage or dies. It's crucial to restore blood flow within the first hour, when most damage occurs.

"In the initial minutes, a heart attack can trigger ventricular fibrillation. This unstable heart rhythm produces an ineffective heartbeat, causing insufficient blood flow to vital organs. What this means, of course, is that if a patient having a heart attack tries to "ride it out" for a while, hoping the symptoms are due to indigestion or muscle strain, or if the medical personnel delay instituting therapy for any reason, the delay can lead to devastating and permanent results.

WEEK FOUR - May 1 - May 7th

Sedentary lifestyle causes more deaths than smoking!

Following a sedentary lifestyle is more dangerous for your health than smoking, says a new study carried out by the University of Hong Kong and the Department of Health. In the study, researchers looked at the level of physical activity in people who died and were able to correlate their level of physical activity with their risk of dying.

The results are fascinating: 20% of all deaths of people 35 and older were attributed to a lack of physical activity. That's more deaths than can be attributed to smoking.

Looking at specific diseases, the risk of dying from cancer increased 45% for men and 28% for women due to lack of physical activity. The risk of dying from respiratory ailments was 92% higher for men and 75% higher for women. The risk of dying from heart disease was 52% higher for men and 28% higher for women, all due to a lack of physical activity.

It turns out your television viewing may also be slowly killing you.
(from an article by Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Director,Chronic Disease Control, Alaska Division of Public Health.)


On average, American adults now watch more than four hours of television per day. That's four hours wasted every day, four hours squandered on gaping into the vapid, make-believe world of the 'boob tube'.

That's four hours not spent talking with loved ones, helping kids with homework, volunteering in one's community or doing any of the wonderful things that bring meaning to life. That's one-sixth of your time on earth.

Can it be any surprise that more than half of American adults are now overweight, and nearly one-third are clinically obese?

Television viewing is our number-one cause of physical inactivity, and physical inactivity is now our number-two preventable cause of death, behind smoking.

This is really no surprise to physicians, physical activity is absolutely critical for the health of the human body. In fact, it's fair to say that the human body was designed to be used. There are a lot of misleading metaphors in modern medicine that compare the human body to an automobile. These metaphors propose the idea that the body wears out with use. People say their knee joints have worn out, for example, and that's why they have knee pain.

But I have news for you on this: joints don't "wear out" like car parts, and the human body actually gets healthier with use -- unlike your automobile.

In fact, the more you use your body, the healthier it gets -- up to a point of course; you don't want to overexert yourself and cause injury, but very few people run the risk of actually doing too much exercise in modern society.

Sadly, in today's world, a lot of people just sit around. They spend endless hour watching TV, and they hold jobs that require them to sit behind a desk for 8 or 9 or 10 hours a day engaging in virtually no physical movement at all. As a result, they are being diagnosed with chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory ailments -- all related to a lack of regular physical exercise.

These diseases can be prevented and even frequently reversed through physical exercise alone. Looking at why physical exercise makes individuals so much healthier gives us an interesting perspective on how the human body really works. The human body is designed to move around. And by moving the muscles, ligaments and limbs, you actually massage the tissues and organs of the body, bringing them oxygen and enhancing their flexibility. You also move lymph fluid around the body, and lymph must be moved through physical activity alone since there is no "lymph heart" to circulate lymph fluid regardless of your physical activity like there is with your cardiovascular system. (In other words, your heart pumps your blood even if you're sitting in a chair. But there's nothing to pump your lymph fluid other than sloshing your body around through regular movement.)
Physical activity gets everything moving in your body -- the blood, the oxygen, the nutrients, the cellular respiration, the nervous system, and so on.

Sweating is good for you as well -- you sweat out toxins and replace the lost liquids by drinking fresh, clean water. Physical exercise, if done outside, also exposes you to the healing effects of natural sunlight, an essential nutrient for the human body that is deficient in most people. Getting enough sunlight on your skin can prevent and even reverse an astounding number of chronic diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, osteoporosis and more.

If you put all of this together, you see that physical exercise is extremely beneficial to the human body, and in fact the body won't live nearly as long without it. Studies also show that it doesn't take an enormous amount of physical exercise to achieve health-enhancing results. A mere 30 minutes a day of walking, swimming, jogging, cycling or other cardiovascular exercise can have astounding positive health effects.

Based on web articles by Mike Adams from Health Ranger.