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grahkingston · 3 years

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Animal Hospital in Kingston: A Brief Note on Pet Emergency Care Kingston

It’s undeniably TRUE’s that canines, similar to individuals, experience medical emergency. In the event that your pet succumbs to a sickness or a mishap, he should see a veterinarian in detail. The accompanying tips may keep your canine out of impending peril until he gets proficient assistance.

What to Do in Emergencies

One of the initial steps you should take in a crisis is to call our emergency veterinarian. Be ready to portray the circumstance. Your veterinarian can disclose to you how to direct medical aid and how to move your pet securely for pet emergency care.

Breathing

In the event that the canine can’t inhale, you’ll need to perform fake breath. In the first place, clear the canine’s mouth of any deterrents, including bodily fluid or blood. Then, at that point close the mouth, place your lips over the canine’s noses, and offer three to four major breaths, 10-to-12 times each moment. In the event that you can’t recognize a heartbeat, position the canine on his back or side. Backing little canines by putting one hand on each side of the chest close to the elbow. Perform five chest compressions to one speedy breath. Proceed with this example until the canine beginnings breathing all alone.

Bleeding

Outer bleeding requires prompt consideration, so push down solidly on the space with your fingers or the palm of your hand and afterward apply a firm, however not tight, gauze. Try not to stress over clearing out the injury until the draining has halted. Take the canine to the veterinarian as fast as could be expected. Anti-microbials might be expected to fight off contamination.

Interior dying, from a fall or from being hit by a vehicle or other weighty item, can be more hazardous. The canine may give these indications: excruciating or swollen mid-region; pale gums; blood in upchuck, pee, stools, salivation, or nose release; inconvenience breathing; shortcoming and breakdown. A veterinarian or vets in Kingston needs to regard inward draining straightaway.

Shock

Shock once in a while happens in circumstances that include head wounds, huge loss of blood or liquids, and serious contamination. The signs incorporate a quick pulse, pale mucous layer, extremely low circulatory strain, almost no urinary yield, and a powerless heartbeat. Keep the canine warm and calm, treat any noticeable wounds, and take him to the veterinarian right away.

Broken Bones

Fractures require quick consideration. Canines will hold a broken or disengaged appendage in an unnatural position; indications of a break regularly incorporate faltering, agony, and expanding. The canine ought to be moved to the veterinarian with as little development as could really be expected. Try not to utilize cleaning agents or salves on open breaks.

Heatstroke

Heatstroke may happen when canines are left in vehicles or overexercised on hot, or even warm days, or when pet hotel regions don’t have appropriate ventilation. Signs incorporate gasping and slobbering, skin that is hot to the touch, heaving, loss of coordination, and breakdown. You should utilize cool water, ice packs, or wet towels to cool the canine, yet don’t submerge him in chilly water. Offer him limited quantities of drinking water once he starts to chill off. Call our veterinarian in the wake of regulating the medical aid, or even better, have another person call while you’re treating your canine.

Vomiting and Diarrhea Pet Emergency

Regurgitating and diarrhea are as a rule indication of issues with the stomach-related framework and could be brought about by quite a few things, from ingestion of hot food sources or toxins to gastrointestinal framework illness, kidney or liver disappointment, or sensory system problems. Lack of hydration from heaving or looseness of the bowels can be deadly. Ensure the canine has a lot of water. In the event that your canine is heaving with the runs or spewing and has a helpless hunger, call your veterinarian and be ready to inform her regarding whatever might have contributed, like admittance to human drugs, poisons, an adjustment of diet, and other potential causes.

Seizures

Entire body seizures, called Grand Mal seizures, cause your canine’s whole body to writhe, while a few seizures might be confined, like a facial quake, or abrupt beginning of musical developments or activities. Stay quiet and note how long the seizure keeps going. To keep your canine from harming himself, get him far from steps, pad his head, and delicately hold and solace him until he starts to recapture awareness. Call our veterinarian.

Stings

Honey bee and wasp stings can be excruciating and alarming for a canine. A solitary honey bee sting will deliver torment, expanding, redness, irritation. On the off chance that your canine is stung, cautiously eliminate the stinger with tweezers. Apply a glue of heating pop and water and afterward an ice pack to calm growing and agony. Get some information about giving your canine a portion of oral antihistamine. Give him new water and watch him cautiously. Unfavorably susceptible responses for the most part happen inside 20 minutes, however can be postponed for quite a long time.

In the event that the sting is spot on, mouth, or around the head, notice your canine for a few hours to ensure that any growth doesn’t meddle with breathing or gulping. In the event that the growing increments significantly following a couple of moments after the sting, see a veterinarian right away. In the event that your canine upsets a hive, call him to her and put distance between your canine and the multitude right away. Then take him to a vet clinic in Kingston. Treatment for massive amounts of stings must occur quickly to prevent shock and circulatory collapse and to minimize damage to organ systems.

Choking

A canine that hacks powerfully, slobbers, gags, holds his mouth open, or paws at his mouth might be gagging. Try not to put your fingers in his mouth since you may be nibbled or drive the article further in. Attempt to unstick the item by pounding the canine between the shoulder bones or by applying a few fast, pressing compressions on the two sides of his rib confine.

Dog First Aid Kit For Emergency

Keeping certain things available if there should arise an occurrence of crisis is fundamental. Keep in mind, a medical aid unit is anything but a substitute for veterinary consideration. Here is a rundown of things to include:

Bandaging materials: Think sterile pads, stretch bandages, and bandaging tape

Hydrogen peroxide

Cold pack

Antibiotic ointment

Hydrocortisone 1%

Magnifying glass

Small scissors

Tweezers (for bee stingers and splinters)

Disposable gloves

Cotton balls

Iodine swabs

Extra leash

Emergency numbers for our veterinarian and poison control

Collapsible water bowl

Aluminized thermal blanket

Tourniquet

Benadryl

Request our veterinarian to clarify the appropriate use from these things, and on account of any skin or oral drugs, make certain to check with our vet prior to controlling them.

At GRAH, we have a diverse and talented team of Veterinary professionals. You can trust the skills of our vets, leaving the care and treatment of your pet in their capable hands. Let us earn your trust by becoming one of our veterinary families at GRAH.

Schedule A Pet Emergency care service in Kingston Appointment with One of Our Best Veterinarians Today

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markmurata · 4 years

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Walking to A Healthful Living

Walking is a traditional exercise that can improve health and fitness with no big expenses. It's not hard on the body and will not bring shock to the bones and joints like those caused by running. It may be done outside the house and it doesn't need any special equipment for the exercise to be carried out. Additionally, it burns calories which makes it an ideal exercise for everyone.

Doctors say that a 30-minute daily for five to seven days per week can improve cardiorespiratory fitness that could be maintained if the 30-minute walk is completed in 1 year. It might also be done 3 to 4 times, but with greater intensity. As an example, a 150-pound individual, walking at a rate of 3.75 mph can burn 300 calories per hour. If done daily, with a 15-minute brisk walk, it will certainly shed calories off. The perfect walk pattern is approximately 6 calories per minute or 360 calories an hour.

Walking is a way to get people more healthy and live longer. Someone walking 30 minutes a day may have an extra 1.3 years in their life. This is possible because the walking exercise can have the heart and the circulatory system protected while increasing HDL and taking off some weight. If walking is done on a regular basis, the possibility of experiencing a heart-attack and colon cancer will be reduced. It may likewise reduce pressure from work and problems. Truthfully, it can save car owners gasoline.

In getting started with regular walking exercise, someone must feel committed to perform the exercise daily. Appropriate preparation methods should also be executed. It would often start with calling own doctors about the constraints of the planned walking exercise. Walking possibly the lightest kind of exercise, but it also requires a physician's advice. A check up should also be conducted prior to starting. Additionally, the gears or clothing to be used when running has to be chosen correctly, taking note particularly of the material used for your clothing. The shoes must fit well and has to be flexible on the balls of their feet. Heels must be low to the floor and flat. The perfect shoes are a set of well-fitting athletic shoes like running shoes and cross trainers.

Starting off a mile for half an hour is great. Eventually, as this goes on, walking faster and more will not be a bother and actually will become more comfortable.

Check out for more information about stay healthier. Visit MARK MURATA

Healthy Living For a Healthy Life

The majority of us understand that living with a healthy body is the best path to stay happy, to feel better, and also to look better. Healthy living will direct us to the stage where we can enjoy life to the fullest till we grow older and won't ever experience anything that may hurt us or give us pain.

In this guide, we'll take you into the world of healthy living and healthy lifestyle. It's extremely straightforward and yet it gives you the simplest method on the best way best to develop yourself to get a better and healthy individual. Moreover, we'll provide you essential information which may be integrated to your daily life.

At the moment, the majority of the people on the planet have fear of different ailments, and we're commonly trying to find the best prevention. Among the most effective preventive measures to prevent illness is a healthy diet. Bear in mind that prevention is much better than cure; this famous line can be applied to anything in this world.

Eating healthy foods is a very important aspect to be from some immeasurable ailments and to get a fantastic state of our body. Every one of us knows that eating healthy and having a normal exercise will leads us into a healthy lifestyle. There are a great deal of healthy recipes which may be viewed in certain health magazines.

These healthy living magazines can be bought from any bookstore in your region in addition to healthy living catalogs where you find the guidelines of the food pyramid.

Talking of food pyramid, it's a group of food which informs the importance of eating various food that we need each and every day. It reveals the food that we will need to eat less, and the ones that need to be eaten much too. To name one, carbohydrates is the main food in the pyramid that we ought to take as it gives us more energy for our daily activities, next are the fruits and vegetables group that's high in protein.

However, remember that too much isn't good and is going to have a bad outcome. Eat only that's necessary and avoid eating food that's more in calories and less nourishment.

Cooking light is the most common means of losing weight. A lot of us are experiencing obesity with the most important problem of weight reduction. In our current time, natural living is promoted and introduced, the natural holistic living. Life is filled with challenges that they say, but we can avoid too much trials, particularly in regards to our health if we're having a healthy living.

If you will see the vegetarians, or the green living individuals, you'll be able to know that what they're practicing is something which is actually amazing and fantastic-the organic living. However, the body still needs us to choose proteins from several sources, like eggs, meat, and other poultry products with only limited sum, simply to maintain the food pyramid. Having all of the things done appropriately, forever-young alive is going to be achieved, gradually but surely.

A number of healthy living articles like this give healthy living tips that are extremely useful and beneficial for everyone who wants to start and act today to obtain a excellent life now and for the upcoming years of their lives. Here are some of the basic things that we sometimes tend to overlook

Determine if you're really starving or simply dehydrated. Drink a glass of water before the meal but more than a glass.

Eating healthy is taking in fresh vegetables and fruits. Rather than unhealthy snacks, replace them with fresh fruits and vegetables. Nutrition is located most on the darker ones.

Protein is muscle builder. Superior source of protein are fish, legumes, meat etc.. Again, don't eat too much of it because to the kidney will overwork to filter them.

Starch ought to be avoided since they are sugar; one of them are white bread, potatoes, French fries, and instant oatmeal. Instead, try out the grains.

Exercise a regular exercise. Produce a plan that you can perform without missing a single session due to laziness. This increases the metabolism of the body.

Fasting isn't a fantastic idea. Instead of the three major meals, replace them with 5 smaller meals a day.

Fiber is great as it controls the rising rate of cholesterol in the body. You can locate them in legumes, fibrous fruits such as pineapple and whole grains.

Fatty acids are good to the body also. Thus, include them to a healthy diet. They can make excellent nails, skin, and hair.

There are a few simple yet essential methods to have a healthy living. You can practice them anytime to enhance the general health of your entire body. If the body is in good shape, the fantastic metabolism will lead to good digestion, will lead to greater circulation of blood flow, and will give us more energy to do our everyday tasks.

It's a series of organs and body, and should all of them work flawlessly, the brain will operate nicely also, to help us think well of better thoughts. You can feel and look better when you perform a healthy living.

Healthy Eating Ideas to Start Your Healthy Living Goals

Healthy living is among the growing trends nowadays especially in such times that people are living a hectic lifestyle and eating healthy is becoming less and less a priority. If you're one of those who wish to change to a healthy lifestyle, continue reading for a few healthy eating ideas it is possible to start with.

- Choose foods that are natural sources of nourishment. Switching to more fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet is one of the main things you can begin with. Fresh fruits and vegetables are among the top sources of nourishment for the body with no cholesterol and other preservatives and chemical. If you may select organically grown fruits and veggies, then that is going to be a whole lot better. If you can also grow your own vegetables and fruits, the greater as well.

- Avoid overeating. Have only moderate portions when eating. This can allow you to take control and prevent overeating. Other healthy eating ideas you might also want to bear in mind is never to skip any meals especially breakfast. Skipping any foods will only make you hungry later and that may also be one thing which may lead you to overeating.

- Maintain a healthy weight. Obesity and being overweight is becoming another significant health problem nowadays when folks appear to be into the sedentary way of life, thus you also must be certain that you're also tracking your weight and you're keeping your ideal weight also. Also have a routine exercise that will help you raise your metabolism and keep your healthy weight also.

- Do not remove important food groups in your diet. Rather, cut down the parts of your meals. What you will need to drastically decrease your diet are fastfoods and foods packed with additives and empty calories.

- Think of moderation. If you like to eat sweets, you do not need to torture yourself not to eat some but always be certain that you eat in moderation and be sure that you are also balancing the foods you eat every day. Be certain you get sufficient calories needed for your day to day activity but also be certain that you don't get too much daily. Use it with physical activities especially with exercise.

- Drink a lot of water. This won't only help hydrate your body, it will also ensure that your bodily functions are doing well. Make sure also that you cut with your alcohol intake particularly if you're beyond what is allowable to your weight. Of course, preventing it is ideal for you particularly if you're also having health difficulties or if you would like to keep healthy as could be.

Besides these simple measures and healthy eating ideas it is possible to begin with, also be certain that you are well-informed in regards to your health. Particularly when it comes the bad fats and understanding what's good for you and what to avoid, it's indeed important that you're well-informed so you will also be guided correctly on your quest to live a healthy life.

#healthy living #healthy ideas #healthy advice #healthy lifestyle

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nancygduarteus · 7 years

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The Disputed Death of an 8-Year-Old Whose Organs Were Donated

This is the part everyone agrees on: A 8-year-old boy died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in August 2013. His liver and kidneys were donated for transplant.

The Los Angeles Times reports police are now investigating exactly how he died at the hospital. The boy—though not technically brain dead—had suffered so much brain damage after a near drowning that doctors determined he would never wake from a coma. So his family decided to take him off life support and to donate his organs.

A doctor gave him a dose of fentanyl after his ventilator was removed. She says it was to ease his suffering. But a county coroner who later examined the boy’s body says it was the fentanyl that killed him, raising the question of whether a fatal dose was meant to quicken his death and keep his organs more viable for donation. The coroner has since filed a lawsuit alleging retaliation from her bosses when she relayed these concerns.

This unusual case casts light on a once-controversial but increasingly common protocol called “organ donation after circulatory death,” which occurs after the heart has stopped. (Also sometimes called “donation after cardiac death,” or DCD.) In contrast, the vast majority of organs in the U.S. come from donors who are brain dead.

Brain death is in some ways a logical standard for organ donation because it resolves an inherent paradox: The donor must be dead, but the organ itself alive. People who are brain dead generally have no reflexes; with life support, their organs stay healthy up until the moment they’re removed for transplant. A Harvard Medical School committee first proposed the idea of brain death in 1968—in part to resolve controversies about organ transplants— and it slowly gained acceptance. Less than one percent of people who die in hospitals are brain dead.

So in the 1990s, in response to long transplant wait lists, experts began pushing to expand the pool of potential donors. They advocated for the return of DCD, a protocol used in the early 1970s before brain death became widely accepted. In DCD, doctors remove ventilators from patients who have suffered severe brain damage but are not brain dead—like the boy in L.A.—and wait for them stop breathing on their own.

But the clock starts ticking as soon as the ventilator comes out. With every minute, the organs can deteriorate. Hearts and lungs from DCD donors are rarely viable. More resilient organs like kidneys and livers can survive 30 to 60 minutes. If the patient does not stop breathing within that time, the whole organ donation is called off.

The time pressure in DCD is part of the reason why critics have raised ethical concerns in the past. In 2007, a doctor in San Luis Obispo stood trial for attempting to hasten the death of a potential organ donor with morphine. The patient actually took seven hours to die. The doctor was eventually acquitted, but the case was a wake up call for transplant surgeons.

Over time, hospitals have refined their DCD protocols to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. For example, doctors who care for patients are entirely separate from transplant teams who procure the organs. DCD now accounts for about 9 percent of all transplants in the U.S.

But parts of the protocol still vary hospital to hospital, because some ethical questions do not have clear answers. One issue is how far can doctors go to preserve organs before the DCD donor dies. Can they give heparin, a blood thinner, that aid preservation but does not benefit the patient? Can they stick a catheter into the patient, so their blood begins running through oxygenation machines as soon as possible after their heart stops?

These questions come up because doctors are supposed to act in their patient’s interest. “As long as a patient’s heart is beating they’re considered our patient,” says Jeremy Simon, an emergency doctor and bioethicist at Columbia University. One way to address these concerns, says Simon, is to obtain consent for these interventions from the patient or a surrogate beforehand.

Patients taken off ventilators will often gasp for air. To alleviate the pain from “air hunger,” doctors will administer painkillers, though the medical profession establishes a bright line: The dose cannot be so big as to intentionally kill the patient. (Medical experts said it was difficult to determine whether the dosage was appropriate in the L.A. case based on the few publicly available details.)

“It’s a matter of public trust in the system,” Francis Delmonico, a transplant surgeon at Harvard Medical School, told The New York Times in 2009. If patients believe doctors are euthanizing patients for their organs, the country’s already low organ-donation rate could only go down.

That Times story also profiles a family whose daughter died after an unsuccessful attempt at donating her organs through DCD. It captures the heartbreak of the moment and the uncertainty inherent to the process:

Paul has some difficulty understanding why, if Jaiden was going to die anyway, she could not have been put under general anesthesia, undergone surgery to donate her organs, and then been declared dead. Removing the breathing tube to attempt D.C.D. had the same effect, only it took much longer and Jaiden breathed irregularly for many hours, which seemed to Paul more distressing. “If it was all up to me,” he explained, “I would have said, ‘Take her organs.’ ”

For these reasons, Robert Truog and Franklin Miller, an anesthesiologist and a bioethicist respectively, have proposed in The New England Journal of Medicine to do exactly that. The proposal hasn’t gained much traction in the medical community though. “Truog and Miller’s proposal is still very controversial as a point of academic debate, says Armand Antommaria, a doctor and ethicist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. It’s not even discussed in the realm of official institutional policy.

But brain death was once a controversial idea, too. DCD went from standard practice to controversial idea to standard practice again. Over the decades, advances in medicine have stretched out the gap between life and death. Organ transplants, by necessity, can only exist in that gap. And the very rise of organ transplant has influenced where the boundaries of it are drawn.

Has your family gone through DCD, or are you a doctor with experience in the procedure? If you would like to share your story, please email [email protected]. (We may publish your response in Notes; please let us know if you would like to remain anonymous.)

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/organ-donation-death/530511/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 7 years

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The Disputed Death of an 8-Year-Old Whose Organs Were Donated

This is the part everyone agrees on: A 8-year-old boy died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in August 2013. His liver and kidneys were donated for transplant.

A doctor gave him a dose of fentanyl after his ventilator was removed—she says to ease his suffering. But a county coroner who later examined the boy’s body says it was the fentanyl that killed him, raising the question of whether a fatal dose was meant to quicken his death and keep his organs more viable for donation. The coroner has since filed a lawsuit alleging retaliation from her bosses when she relayed these concerns.

But parts of the protocol still vary hospital to hospital, because some ethical questions do not have clear answers. One issue is how far can doctors go to preserve organs before the DCD donor dies. Can they give heparin, a blood thinner, that aid preservation but does not benefit the patient? Can they stick a catheter into the patient, so the patient’s blood begins running through oxygenation machines as soon as possible after their heart stops?

“It’s a matter of public trust in the system,” Francis Delmonico, a transplant surgeon at Harvard Medical School, told the New York Times in 2009. If patients believe doctors are euthanizing patients for their organs, the country’s already low organ-donation rate could only go down.

For these reasons, Robert Truog and Franklin Miller, an anesthesiologist and a bioethicist respectively, have proposed in the New England Journal of Medicine to do exactly that. The proposal hasn’t gained much traction in the medical community though. “Truog and Miller’s proposal is still very controversial at a point of academic debate, says Armand Antommaria, a doctor and ethicist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. It’s not even discussed in the realm of official institutional policy.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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wallythayer · 7 years

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How Exercise Affects Circulation (and Vice Versa)

What comes to mind when you think of the circulatory system? For many people, it’s blood and the means by which it moves throughout the body. But there’s so much more going on.

Circulation, a primary function of the circulatory system, delivers oxygen and nutrients via blood to each of your body’s 50 trillion cells while also ushering away toxins. Known interchangeably as your cardiovascular system, the circulatory system -includes not just the heart but also 60,000 miles of blood vessels. It’s essential for keeping you alive.

This intricate network, increasingly considered by some experts to be an organ in its own right, leaves no cell or body system untouched. It powers your brain, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, waste and lymph systems, and muscles in important ways. Healthy circulation allows you to not only survive but thrive.

While there are many factors that affect the circulatory system (including genetics and lifestyle factors, such as nutrition), exercise is notably effective. Movement of all kinds keeps your heart pumping well and your vascular system strong and clear. In a beautiful cycle, the better your circulatory system works, the better you move — and perform — in the gym and in life.

“The circulatory system loves exercise,” says Donald Dengel, PhD, director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He explains that exercise makes the circulatory system stronger, more flexible, and more expansive — all at the same time. A healthy circulatory system then returns the favor by boosting athletic performance.

Still, we often overlook how circulatory health and exercise benefit one another. While we can see and feel the effects of our fitness efforts as we lose fat, gain strength, and build endurance, improvements in our circulation aren’t as visible. Unless there is a problem — be it a blocked artery that leads to a heart attack or stroke, or impaired blood flow that leaves feet cold or tingly — it’s a system that hums along quietly, a diligent but silent worker that doesn’t ask for much in order to give a great deal in return.

Just because it’s quiet, however, doesn’t mean the circulatory system doesn’t deserve some attention when you hit the gym. Let’s explore this intersection of exercise and blood flow, and discover how small changes to your fitness routine can make a measurable, long-term impact.

How Your Circulatory System Works

The circulatory system is often thought of as a static network of tubes that simply shuttles blood around the body — but it’s so much more. Also called the cardiovascular system (or sometimes just the vascular system), it’s composed of the lungs, lymph tissue, heart, and blood vessels, and it works in concert with your liver, stomach, intestines, and other organs. Moreover, the circulatory system is metabolically active, supports optimal immune function, and serves as an important waste-removal system.

Illustration by Stuart Briers

1. Heart

This muscular pump contracts and relaxes some 80 times a minute on average (depending on a person’s genetic profile and fitness level), moving enriched blood through your arteries to your brain, organs, tissues, and bones. The oxygen and nutrients it delivers fuels every cell in your body. Regular exercise helps strengthen and enlarge the heart.

2. Lungs

When you inhale, your lungs fill with oxygen. Then, in a process known as gas exchange, oxygen crosses over from the lung tissue to the bloodstream via a web of capillaries. Exercise has been shown to improve the efficiency of gas exchange. This newly oxygenated blood then flows into the left side of the heart.

3. Blood Vessels

This network of arteries, capillaries, and veins reaches every nook and cranny of your body. Blood travels the whole loop — from the heart to every cell and back to the heart again — in about one minute. The 5 to 6 quarts of blood in your system accounts for as much as 7 percent of your body weight. Those who exercise regularly tend to have greater blood volume.

4. Liver

Your liver detoxifies your body, filtering waste via your blood and bile. Exercising regularly improves blood flow by strengthening the heart and blood vessels, bolstering this filtration system. In turn, overall energy and well-being — including athletic performance — are improved if your body’s natural detox method is functioning well.

5. Stomach and Intestines

Your blood absorbs nutrients from digested food via capillaries in your gastrointestinal system; your blood vessels then distribute these nutrients throughout your body. Exercise not only increases the formation of “collateral” blood vessels, which improves nutrient delivery — regular movement also improves digestion and makes you more regular.

6. Waste System

In addition to delivering oxygen and nutrients to your body’s tissues, your blood picks up waste products, like carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Exercise boosts overall circulation, which moves waste out of the body through the capillaries. Blood then travels back to the heart and lungs, where the cycle starts all over again.

Circulation by the Numbers

2.5: Number of times the 60,000 miles of arteries, capillaries, and veins in your body would wrap around the circumference of the earth.

42, 048, 000: Number of times your heart beats each year — about 4,800 times an hour and 115,200 times a day.

23,000: Number of breaths the average person typically takes every day — about 8.4 million a year.

145: Gallons of oxygen you breathe into your lungs daily. Your lungs boast a total surface area the size of a tennis court to facilitate oxygen transfer to your blood.

Exercise RX

A solid fitness regimen benefits your entire body by boosting your circulation in surprisingly varied and vital ways, which makes sense when you remember how much of your body is touched by your vascular system. These are some of the key ways working out can improve your circulatory health.

1. Exercise promotes blood-vessel health.

A healthy vascular system can be measured in two ways: structure and function.

“Arteries are like tubes, with an outer wall and inner wall, and we can talk about both pieces being in good or bad health,” explains Dengel. “In terms of wall thickness, being too thick is not structurally sound — we don’t want stiff vessels. We want them to be very flexible.”

That leads directly to function. When vessels are flexible, they have elastic properties, like the ability to constrict and dilate when presented with changes in volume and pressure. Elasticity is the definition of a healthy artery.

Exercise boosts vessel flexibility because “blood pressure goes up temporarily when we exercise, which forces the blood to flow faster and creates turbulence against the wall of the artery,” he says. “It is like the artery itself is exercising.”

It’s especially important to maintain vessel flexibility in middle age and beyond.

“Vessels are very plastic and can take a lot of abuse when we’re young,” says Dengel. “As we age, unhealthy lifestyle habits — consuming a lot of low-quality fats and sugary food and drinks, for instance — have more effect. Our vessels become more rigid.”

A wealth of research supports the idea that exercise helps prevent — and can even correct — some of that arterial damage. A 1993 study published in the journal Circulation examined 146 men and women, ages 21 to 96. Researchers found that higher physical-conditioning status, determined by VO2 max, was associated with reduced arterial stiffness.

Another study found that the reduction of stiffness was associated with improvement of insulin resistance in type 2 diabetics.

In addition to keeping blood vessels bendy, regular exercise has been shown to reduce arterial inflammation and reduce the dangerous buildup of arterial plaque.

In a 2009 study of mice, researchers found that a consistent daily exercise program over six months helped make existing plaques stronger and less likely to rupture (plaque ruptures can cause a heart attack or stroke).

Regular exercise has also been shown to prevent and dissolve blood clots by enhancing fibrinolysis, a process by which enzymes break down fibrin, a component of blood clots.

2. Exercise helps inoculate against chronic disease.

Vascular endothelial cells line every surface of the circulatory system, sheathing the heart, veins, arteries, and capillaries. These cells were once thought to be nothing more than a sort of biological cellophane wrapper, with only one function: to let a bit of water and some electrolytes pass through to tissues.

Researchers now know that these cells play a major role in maintaining optimal health. Damage to the endothelial lining has been linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, insulin resistance, diabetes, kidney failure, and cancer.

Exercise puts pressure on the vascular endothelium — and that’s a good thing. Experts believe the various types of stresses exercise induces prepare the endothelial cells to withstand everyday threats, whether it’s inflammation from eating too much sugar or damage to the lung tissue from breathing smoggy air.

3. Exercise reduces heart-disease risk.

Movement improves vascular hormone production. In as little as a few weeks, exercise has been found to increase the production of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), the vascular hormone that counterbalances high blood pressure.

“Research has shown that older individuals who engage in exercise over the long term can see blood pressure improvements” similar to results from ACE inhibitors prescribed for hypertension, says Brad Dieter, PhD, research fellow at Providence Medical Research Center in Spokane, Wash.

High circulating levels of the vascular hormone brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), on the other hand, have been associated with increased risk for heart failure. According to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Disease Research, endurance exercise, in particular, was found to reduce circulating concentrations of BNP.

4. Exercise bolsters athletic performance.

A stronger heart pumps more blood, more efficiently, to your lungs and throughout your body. The result? More oxygenated blood reaches your muscle tissue — and when muscles have more oxygen for fuel, they can work harder, improving athletic performance.

Over time, this higher volume of blood widens the blood vessels (another benefit) and builds new ones. “When you exercise, you create collateral vessels,” says Dengel. So not only is more oxygen-rich blood being pumped by a stronger heart, but that blood has more routes to reach muscle tissue.

At the same time, aerobic activity improves lung capacity — and greater lung capacity means more staying power in your favorite game or activity.

5. Exercise improves lymphatic function.

The lymph system — an extensive network of tissues, organs, and vessels that transport lymph fluid throughout the body — has two primary functions: balancing the fluids in the body and producing white blood cells that help fight off infection. The lymph system works in close concert with the blood vessels, and the robust circulation of lymph fluid is essential for optimal health.

Certain exercises promote the flow of lymph fluid. Jumping on a trampoline for just 10 minutes can enhance lymphatic activity. Inversions, like shoulder stands in some yoga practices, help drain lymph fluid and accelerate the rate at which lymph fluid is cleansed and filtered.

6. Exercise makes the heart bigger and stronger.

“Endurance training — like running or rowing — provides specific benefits to the heart,” says Dieter. “The chambers of the heart get bigger.”

That process is called eccentric remodeling, and it allows the amount of blood being pumped out of the heart to increase with each heartbeat. That’s why endurance athletes’ resting heart rates are so low. Their hearts don’t have to beat as often because each contraction pumps out a higher volume of blood.

Strength training has a different effect on the heart. “If you’re weightlifting, your heart will increase in size, but the chamber won’t get bigger. That’s called concentric remodeling,” he explains.

Concentric remodeling increases pressure across the chamber of the heart, so the heart wall gets thicker.

“The heart is a muscle, so just like other muscles, weightlifting makes the heart muscle get stronger,” he says.

(To learn about the possible cardiac risks of extreme, high-intensity endurance training, visit “Out of Rhythm“.)

While strength and endurance training may confer different specific benefits, experts agree that any fitness regimen is a win for the circulatory system. “There is a baseline benefit to any type of movement,” says cardiologist Mimi Guarneri, MD, FACC, author of The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing.

The simple advice to move more — no matter what type of movement you choose — recalls the old saying that the best exercise is the one you will actually do. So whether your passion is golf, doing cartwheels, or Olympic lifting, the fact that you are moving is what matters. Movement is medicine for circulatory health.

The Truth About Circulation

Can exercise help varicose veins? Are there quick fixes for cold hands? Learn what’s true, and what’s false, when it comes to circulation.

Q | Can certain exercises cure varicose veins?

A | Not really, says osteopathic doctor Spencer Nadolsky, DO, of Olney, Md. Varicose veins are largely genetic and exercise only does so much. If your legs ache and feel heavy, which can accompany varicose veins, elevating your legs might help. Try doing legs-up-the-wall, for example. (For directions, go to “The Restorative Workout“.) People who stand or sit for many consecutive hours are more likely to develop varicose veins. Compression socks may also help with discomfort.

Q | Will compression socks aid my circulation and improve my athletic performance?

A | Yes and no, says University of Minnesota exercise physiologist Donald Dengel, PhD. Compression socks and sleeves might improve circulation when you sit for a long time on a plane, for example, and they support the healthy movement of lymph fluid throughout the body. But research is scarce on their performance-enhancing ability. (For more on compression socks, see “Expert Answers: Does compression gear work?“)

Q | Are cold hands and feet due to poor circulation?

A | “Yes, it very well could be,” says Brad Dieter, PhD, a research fellow at Providence Medical Research Center. Exercise improves blood flow, both in the moment (do enough burpees and dead bugs and your whole body will heat up, even your fingers and toes) and over the long term, thanks to the creation of collateral blood vessels, which pump more blood and oxygen to your extremities.

Q | Does massage improve circulation?

A | Yes. Researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago, found that massage improves blood flow and vascular function in both regular exercisers and sedentary individuals. But don’t use this as license to skip your workout and rely solely on massage for blood-flow benefits; exercise has unique circulatory benefits that can’t be replicated.

That said, there is a specific type of massage, called manual lymph drainage, that is thought to improve lymph circulation. While some practitioners believe that manual lymph drainage has little benefit for those who have not undergone lymph-node removal or other chest surgery, others say that it can help the lymph flow in all individuals, aiding the body’s ability to fight infections and detoxify.

This appeared as “Pumped Up: How Exercise Affects Circulation (and Vice Versa)” in the June 2017 print issue of Experience Life.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/how-exercise-affects-circulation-and-vice-versa/

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