Jan xiv, 2020

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Life-threatening Claret Clots Can Happen to Anyone

I of the primary goals of the Who Cares Almost Men's Health podcast is to make our listeners aware of potential health threats they may face. For the most part, younger men don't face also many threats to their wellness, only there is one matter that will of a sudden kill a young, healthy person: a pulmonary embolism.

A pulmonary embolism is a blood clot that typically starts in the deep veins in the legs or artillery. This blood clot can break free and travel through the torso towards the lungs. Once the clot reaches the lungs, the patient can experience extreme chest pain with a high adventure of cardiac arrest.

What Does a Pulmonary Embolism Feel Like?

Upwardly to one-third of patients with a pulmonary embolism (PE) will dice of cardiac arrest earlier the dangerous clot is identified in a hospital or emergency department. A big reason for the high mortality rate is that the symptoms of PE are typically non-specific until it progresses to an emergency state of affairs.

Patients accept described their pulmonary embolisms as feeling like indigestion, a foreign calf pain, or even unexplained shortness of breath over a week. All symptoms that could understandably be confused for something more benign.

More than severe symptoms of PE may include:

  • Sudden onset of breathing issues
  • Chronic shortness of breath that appears overnight
  • Pain or pressure level in the chest
  • Dizziness
  • Fainting
  • Temporary loss of consciousness
  • Coughing upwards blood

Co-ordinate to PE specialist Dr. Stacy Johnson, the problem with these clots is that the symptoms are non only non-specific, only they're also unpredictable. Dr. Johnson has seen patients with relatively mild symptoms, but when the tests come up back, the patient has an extremely large clot. On the flip side, some patients with extreme pain have a relatively minor embolism that can be treated with medication.

Do Non Look to Go to the ER if You Doubtable a Clot

Again, over one-third of patients with pulmonary embolism don't make information technology to the hospital in fourth dimension. Unless it'due south caught in time by a md or - in some extreme cases - some other person witnesses a patient equally they enter cardiac arrest, it'southward difficult to prevent or take hold of a pulmonary embolism.

"Unfortunately, that's the nature of the illness," says Dr. Johnson.

Then what's a patient to do? There are some descriptors of symptoms you lot tin can keep on the scout for:

  • A charlie horse that will not become abroad no matter what you practice
  • A pulled muscle accompanied by uneven swelling
  • An unexplained pressure or pain in your chest

According to Dr. Madsen, f you accept any of these symptoms, go get an ultrasound or a CT scan at the ER as presently equally possible. Don't wait to schedule it a week or ii out.

"It'south definitely a killer of immature people," says Troy. He explains anecdotally that if a young person comes into the ER experiencing sudden cardiac abort, pulmonary embolism is the first affair he thinks of.

If these symptoms hit you or a loved 1, do not wait to seek treatment.

There is No Single Cause for Pulmonary Embolism

Dr. Stacy Johnson explains that pulmonary embolisms can exist caused by a long list of potential risk factors including:

  • Long, sustained plane flights
  • Undergoing surgery
  • Injury
  • Cancer
  • Diabetes
  • Smoking
  • Age
  • Testosterone supplements

Genetics does play a role in some cases of pulmonary embolism. There has been a lot of research during the 1990s and early 2000s looking into a potential genetic or familial link and take a chance of forming PE. In that location are multiple genes and mutations that accept been shown to increment a person's hazard of forming blood clots. Several of the electric current at-dwelling genetics tests fifty-fifty screen for some of these mutations.

Still, at that place is no way to apply these genetic findings clinically. Recent studies have identified as many as 100 different genes involved in the clotting pour process and potential five,000 mutations that tin can increase or decrease a person's chance of forming a dangerous jell.

Because most Deoxyribonucleic acid tests only test for five or fewer of these mutations, it'due south of import to realize that a negative result will only give a false sense of security.

Life Afterwards Pulmonary Embolism

The life-long repercussions following a PE event are non as bad as information technology used to be. If yous've heard of the terrible "rat-poison" that used to exist prescribed, balance bodacious those days are long behind us.

Physicians stratify the risks of each PE patient, both before and afterward treatment. They identify the severity of the clot, what level of take a chance it presented, potential recurring causes, etc. etc. This stratification informs the blazon of treatment and later on-care a patient can expect.

For lower-risk patients, the PE can be treated with a claret thinner medication and sent home either the aforementioned 24-hour interval or after a few days of observation in the hospital.

For higher-risk patients, the jell will often be treated immediately through "heroic efforts," including clot-busting medications and/or surgery.

After treatment of the embolism, patients can expect a certain level of afterward-intendance depending on the same type of risk cess they had for treatment.

Patients with a depression risk of forming another clot can expect to take claret-thinning medication for merely a few months after treatment.

For patients at a high run a risk of forming a jell again, they tin await to be on long term medication treatment.

Lucky for patients, the blood-thinning medications bachelor today are safer, simpler, and more than effective. These medications are taken as a 1 or two pills a day and don't require the frequent blood work or dietary changes the older medications required.

Because the Realities of At-Home Genetic Testing

Scot is still on the contend nigh taking the genetics test he got for Christmas. He was originally a little concerned about whether or not he wanted to know about his likelihood of forming item diseases and what that would mean for his future. But every bit he does more research into consumer genetics tests he's learning in that location's a lot more than he has to consider before spitting in that cup.

Scot shares with Mitch and Troy a recent Croaky.com article entitled The Horrifying Reality of Consumer Genetics Testing that lists 6 of the lesser-known concerns with at-home genetics testing.

If yous're interested in knowing your DNA or engaging with the results, go to our website, Facebook, or employ this link to take a short v question survey and be entered to win your very ain DNA kit.

Housekeeping — Mitch'south 100 Day Quitversary

It's been i hundred days since producer Mitch started his latest attempt to quit smoking. This is the longest he's gone without smoking and he's committed to making it stick.

Since Episode 26: Trying to Quit for the seventh Fourth dimension, Mitch went through ii more nicotine patch steps downs. He explains that they were both pretty rough and miserable. He suffered from strong cravings, farthermost irritability, and physical side furnishings of withdrawal. Only he fabricated it through.

He still experiences craving now and then, so he volition occasionally turn to low-dose nicotine glue to help become him through potential stress triggers.

Mitch says he learned that everyone is on their own personal journey. Just because some people had an easier time quitting doesn't mean you've failed. Information technology's important to keep that perspective and gauge your own success confronting the success of others.

He admits that quitting this time was hard, but the low-cal at the stop of the tunnel is the piece of mind knowing he is more likely to have a long and salubrious life without cigarettes and vaping.

"Yes I even so am irritable. Yes I still take cravings," says Mitch, "Simply I'm taking command of my future and my health and that's what it'due south all about."

Just Going to Leave This Here

On this episode's But Going to Leave This Here, Troy laments the pains of getting a new smartphone afterwards his old one died, and Scot has been diagnosed with a specially not-and so-manly orthopedic issue.

Talk to United states

If you have whatever questions, comments, or thoughts, email u.s. at howdy@thescoperadio.com.

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