Congenital Heart Disease, What Is It ?

The heart is the most important part of one’s body; it ensures blood circulation throughout the body, without which life would not be possible. Medicine has advanced greatly and, with modern technology, almost all heart diseases can be treated successfully if detected in time.

What is Congenital Heart Disease

Congenital heart disease, or CHD, is a malformation of the heart or a large blood vessel near the heart. Congenital heart disease is a condition that one is born with and it is one of the most common forms of major birth defects in newborns, affecting approximately 8% per 1000 infants. It is normally diagnosed within one week from birth in 40-50% of congenital heart disease cases.

This condition is not a problem until after birth, as the blood circulation differs from that after birth. The fetal circulation derives oxygen and nutrients from the mother through the placenta, and the fetal circulation has important communications between the upper heart chambers and the great blood vessels near the heart. Consequently, most types of congenital heart disease are well tolerated during fetal life.

The Cause of Congenital Heart Disease

This disease can have different causes such as:

- Environmental factors such as chemicals or drugs are sometimes to blame. For example, if a mother-to-be catches measles or rubella during pregnancy, the infection can impair the development of the unborn baby’s heart or other organs. Similar effects can take place if the mother-to-be consumes alcohol during pregnancy.
- Maternal diseases for the mother can increase the risks of developing congenital heart disease in the unborn baby.
- Chromosome abnormalities – a common chromosome abnormality causing congenital heart disease is Down’s syndrome where an extra #21 chromosome is present. About 50% of children with Down’s syndrome also have CHD.

Treating Congenital Heart Disease

The treatment depends from person to person due to the huge difference in occurrence from case to case. Everything needs to be taken into consideration in order to follow an effective treatment program.

A treatment program can only be decided after proper diagnosis made by a specialist. While eating healthy and exercising always helps, congenital heart disease is a special case which needs to follow strict doctor’s instructions; no self medication or treatment is advised. Information and guidelines are available both online and in the doctor’s office to help one educate themselves in order to deal better with this disease.

The Cause of Heart Disease - Do Not Blame Your Parents !

If your mother and your father had heart disease, and their parents before them, you may feel doomed to heart failure. While it is true that heredity is a cause of heart disease, it is only a factor among many others. One recent study even says heredity accounts for less than 10% of a person’s risk of developing heart disease.

So, What is the Other 90%?

Doctors do not agree on the number one cause of heart disease, but smoking, obesity, and high cholesterol are the frontrunners in any study.

The chemicals in cigarettes damage artery walls, making it easier for cholesterol deposits to build an unhealthy, blood-blocking home in the body. Smoking also makes platelets, the component of blood that causes clotting, to be more active, and hence the risk of a killer clot rises.

A body needs cholesterol and can actually produce all it needs, so when we ingest foods high in cholesterols, like dairy and meat products, our bodies get a lot more cholesterol than they need. The body saves cholesterol instead of excreting it, and that cholesterol gets stored along the walls of the arteries. Too many cholesterol deposits lead to artery blockage and clots.

High blood pressure is also a major cause of heart disease. Imagine this, your arteries are narrowed because of all that cholesterol stored in there, yet your body is the same size and needs the same amount of blood; so your heart is trying to pump a lot of blood through a passage that is getting too small. Just as the motor of an air conditioner can get worn out trying to push air through a filter that no one has cleaned, your heart can overtax itself trying to force blood through blocked passages.

Obesity, not just because of all the health problems that come with it, is another cause of heart disease. Often obesity comes with high cholesterol and blood pressure, which we know increase the risk of heart disease, but new studies are also showing a correlation between abdominal fat and heart disease in a way that is not yet fully understood. Either way, as the circumference of stomach increases, the risk of heart disease seems to increase more.

Also, stress causes an overall decline in health and is particularly associated with heart disease. So, unless your parents are stressing you out enough to cause a heart attack, they are not the cause of heart disease.

Quit Smoking Cigarettes - 2

What does it take to quit smoking cigarettes? Self-Hypnosis? A patch? A sympathetic friend? An admonishment from your doctor? A simple switch to pumpkin seeds?

If you are one of the millions who smoke cigarettes, it is no doubt that these questions have floated through your mind time and again. No matter what approach you take to try to quit smoking cigarettes, one thing I have learned is this: You cannot do it using will power alone. Will power may be a component of the solution, but it does not get to the heart of the matter.

In order to quit smoking, you have to cease beating yourself up about it.

Something fundamentally needs to shift in you. The craving needs to disappear. If you have tried being harsh on yourself and that tough approach has not worked, then you have to go easy on yourself. Try going to the opposite extreme and see what happens.

Will power is a feeling of over-effort, a determination to be in control. Will power goes hand in hand with being harsh on yourself. It is an honorable way to tackle things, but unfortunately, it is one that is uncomfortable and usually offers just a temporary solution.

You have to seek deeper. In order to truly quit smoking cigarettes you have to look within and remove your negative attitudes first. In order to quit the smoking habit, you must first attain a very high degree of self-acceptance for the fact that you do smoke.

"But I already accept myself for smoking!" you may be screaming. Hmmm. Look carefully. Be honest. Be radically honest! If there is even a slight degree of uncomfortableness about not having quit smoking, then you are judging yourself in some way. Judgment locks the craving in place. It has a locking effect because the craving in you is a natural "rebel." If you judge the craving, then that makes the craving fight back even stronger. The "craver" in you rebels and makes you want the cigarettes more intensely

On the other hand, if you let the craving be ok as it is, not being harsh on it, giving it room, not fighting against it, it MUST subside over time. Try it. You have nothing to lose. Smoke slowly. Let your self enjoy every inhale. Let yourself relax with ever exhale. Once you have mastered this practice of acceptance, THEN put your attention on quitting. I am certain you will notice a difference.

At the very least, you will not be as unhappy about learning to quit smoking cigarettes as you were before. Beating yourself up for smoking or for not being able to quit smoking is just as much of a killer as the smoking itself. Beating yourself up kills your mood.

So, take the Zen approach instead. Let yourself feel at peace with the smoking, and then take appropriate action to quit smoking (a patch, a pumpkin seed, or whatever). Make self-acceptance your truest goal, and your goal to quit smoking cigarettes will come much more easily.

Quit Smoking Cigarettes

Quit smoking cigarettes!!?? Yeah, right. I loved them. They were my solace, my trigger, my friends. They were part of my French heritage, so I told myself, so giving me the out as one of a culture with low disease and death rates.

But my closest friend, a CNS working in a retired living center described to me the fallout: “You’re at risk for cancers, emphysema, and strokes, for starters,” she said, despite my balking. “If you don’t quit smoking cigarettes,” she nagged, “I would hate to see you end up like my people here, gasping for breath, toting around oxygen tanks, needing help doing the simplest of tasks because you’re all stroked out.” So I agreed. I would quit smoking…if she would help me.

That’s the key to quitting cigs—using all the help you can get your desperate, hacking, trembling hands/self on, can wrap your resistant brain around. Here are some steps I took to quit smoking cigarettes, steps you, too, can take to one level or another:

-PREPARE BY READING UP ON QUITTING

The American Cancer Society offers free, thoughtful info on giving up the habit. The pamphlets are written in serious terms and at the same time use gentle language. If you need the soft approach, so you don’t feel like a freak, the ACS might be for you.

There are plenty of books on quitting--many informative, supportive, coaxing, humorous, brilliantly researched, and helpful. I can’t recall the title (it was about 15 years ago I quit smoking cigarettes), but you’ll know it when you see it, as it has something like twenty words in the title, all hyphenated: something like, The No-nagging-low-pressure-how-to-really-quit-smoking-cigarettes-book!

And it’s written by an MD offering info on how smokes are a dual drug…unlike any other: they are, he says, upper/downers. When you’re nervous or agitated, you take long…slow…drags and are tranquilized; when you’re logy, sluggish, tired, you take short.quick.puffpuffpuffs, and are instantly energized, hyped up.

Doc X exclaims, “No wonder it’s so hard to quit smoking!” He also defines another characteristic that helps us appreciate why we’re so hooked. He gives the times for onset, noting how there’s only one other drug, of all drugs (OTC, street, prescribed that hits the brain faster, and that’s crack cocaine. If I recall correctly, crack hits you in 3 seconds, heroin in 10, 7.

Cigarettes are harder to quit than heroin!

-INTERVIEW SUCCESSFUL QUITTERS

No need for brutal interrogation; just informally ask how others who stopped smoking did it. Here are a few tricks told to me:

1. Drink water. A lot of it. Our bodies take at least 8 ten-ounce glasses of water a day anyway, so whenever you feel the urge to puff, do water instead.

2. The oral act is a big part of smoking. Use a pencil, an imaginary butt, or even—if you’re brave—a real unlit cig, and each time you have the crave to drag, inhale really deeply and satisfyingly, instead.

3. Say, “If I still want a cigarette in 20 minutes, I’ll have one.” What? Give in? No. Give yourself permission to. BUT…truly wait the whole 20 minutes (for most cravings cycle through and pass away in 20 mins.). Then, here’s the trick, repeat the permit. If you still want a cigarette in 20 minutes, you can have one. The next thing you know, 8 hours have passed.

4. Reward yourself. First, when you plan to quit smoking cigarettes, note how much you spend on smokes. During white-knuckle moments, remember you have a treat coming. Use the same money you’d use on cigs to buy a toy, new bauble, health drink (not coffee!), magazine, DVD (yes, some of us smoke that much).

5. Use slogans. 12-step programs have something there. Easy does it. This too shall pass. I think I will have to wring the neck of the crazy driver in front of me.

Well, not that last one…but you get the idea. Do whatever works. Pray. Meditate. Run. Walk. Bike. Hike.

I did a lot of hiking. My friend drove us to Mt. Tam every day, and we scaled trails I bitched about, cried over, resented. But the tricks worked. For a year and a month, exactly. Then I stupidly picked up the lung bleeders again.

Quit smoking cigarettes? Aw, crap. Here we go again.