AMAZING FACTS ABOUT HUMAN BODY

Travis Stork, MD, of the hit syndicated show "The Doctors" takes you on a personal guided trip through all the incredible things your body quietly accomplished today.
Amazing Facts About: Your Brain

You had about 20,000 thoughts today.  Picture 100 billion neurons (or brain cells), which each “fire” (talk to each other) five to 50 times per second (on average). The impulses can travel as fast as 270 miles per hour. This speed is what allows you to, say, see an object and immediately identify that 1) it’s a cat, 2) it’s orange, 3) it reminds you of Garfield, and 4) Garfield was your favorite comic.
You didn’t overheat or freeze. Your inner thermostat, located in the hypothalamus, is an engineering marvel. A change of as little as one degree Fahrenheit triggers your body to make lifesaving adjustments. When your temperature gets too high, blood vessels in your skin dilate to release heat. When it drops, they constrict and your sweat glands shut down. Once your core temp hits 97 degrees, you can start shivering as a way to produce heat.
Amazing Facts About: Your Heart

Your heart beat anywhere from 60 to 100 times every minute today. Imagine doing biceps curls at that pace! That’s about 100,000 times a day—and up to three billion times in the average person’s life. What’s also very impressive about the heart is its ability to adapt to our lifestyles. During a vigorous workout, more than 70 percent of the heart’s output fuels your working muscles, for example, compared with just 20 percent while you are less active. You have about 100,000 miles of various blood vessels, laid end to end, and your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood through them every day.
Amazing Facts About: Your Lungs

Today, you breathed 25,000 times—without trying. If you had to consciously choose to breathe that often, you’d never get anything else done. Or be able to sleep. So thank your brain stem for making the habit of breathing automatic. Curious why you need to inhale and exhale so often? Well, humans have a very high metabolism; at rest, you demand about seven to ten ounces of oxygen each minute. And your lungs are perfectly designed to handle these truckloads of oxygen. They contain about 300 million microscopic air sacs called alveoli, which provide the surface area roughly equivalent to half a tennis court to bring oxygen into the body while releasing carbon dioxide.
Amazing Facts About: Your Eyes

The muscles that help focus your eyes moved about 100,000 times today. That’s a workout equivalent to a 50-mile walk.
You also blinked about 15 times a minute, or almost 15,000 times today while you were awake. You do this spontaneously to protect your eyes and clean away dirt. Even cooler: Your brain doesn’t let you miss out while you blink—it fills in missing information so you never realize your eyes were closed.
Amazing Facts About: Your Mouth

You produced about six cups of saliva today. Yes, that’s a lot of spit, but saliva is one of the body’s most under appreciated fluids. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to taste or swallow food. Or form words. Saliva is also a potent germ fighter: Its enzymes clean your mouth and prevent tooth decay and infections. No wonder animals lick their wounds.

Amazing Facts About: Your Circulation System

Today, you made up to three million red blood cells each second. That’s almost 260 billion for the day. They perform one of blood’s most important roles: delivering precious oxygen to all your body’s cells. A single drop of blood contains millions of these guys, which get their scarlet hue from the protein hemoglobin.
You got cut but didn’t bleed out or get a systemic infection. Next time you get a scrape, think about this cascade of events: After some bleeding, which helps clean the wound, your body stops blood flow by forming a clot. If bacteria enter through the break in the skin, white blood cells quickly arrive to destroy them. Mast cells from your immune system release histamine, a chemical that increases blood flow to the site (it also makes the area red and swollen).
This leads other cells to begin battle with the bacteria. It’s a magical sequence that helps save your life whenever you get cut.
Amazing Facts About: Your Digestive System

The lining of your stomach regenerated about 25 percent of itself today. Your tummy is home to a powerful fluid: hydrochloric acid, which helps break down foods in much the same way that laundry detergent cleans stains. It’s so potent (strong enough to dissolve the metal zinc) that your stomach lining regenerates itself every four to five days so the acid won’t injure it.
You had dozens and dozens of chances to choke to death today—but didn’t. The back of your mouth displays an impressive feat of life guarding every time you eat or drink food or liquids. As you prepare to swallow, your soft palate comes up to cover your nasal cavity (so you don’t squirt spaghetti out your nose) and your epiglottis covers your trachea (so food doesn’t go down your lungs). To appreciate the art of swallowing, watch a baby being spoon-fed a jar of mashed carrots. He’ll push the food out with his tongue because he is still learning how to perfect the swallowing reflex, without which he would likely die.
Amazing Facts About: Your Kidneys

Your kidneys cleaned and recirculated almost 50 gallons of blood today. That’s about three times as much as a medium-size car’s gas tank would hold. To fully appreciate the wonder of the kidneys, which form the most high-tech filtration system you’ll ever encounter, all you have to do is look at someone on dialysis due to poor kidney function. People need a machine about the size of a mini fridge to filter their blood, adjust electrolyte levels, and get rid of waste, while your body accomplishes this without any fanfare using two small organs, each about the size of a computer mouse.
Your kidneys also help maintain the proper level of hydration. When you’re drinking a ton of water, they excrete more, turning your urine a clear or pale yellow color. When you’re dehydrated, they cling to as much fluid as possible, so your urine becomes more concentrated, making it look darker (like apple juice). 

Amazing Facts About: Your Skeleton

You regenerated about 0.03 percent of your skeleton today. Your bones—strong as steel but as light as aluminum—aren’t just some chalky-white lifeless scaffold; they are living tissues with blood vessels and nerves. They are constantly repairing and rebuilding—about 10 percent of your adult skeleton is replaced each year. Your bones are also a good example of “use it or lose it”: The bones of someone with a broken leg who is immobile for a few weeks will literally shrink during that time, but they will bulk up once the person starts bearing weight and exercising again.
Amazing Facts About: Your Feet

Your feet produced up to two cups of sweat today. No wonder your shoes and socks smell less than fresh. That sounds like a lot, but you’ll want to cut your feet a break when you consider how much work they do. If a healthy person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, that’s the equivalent of walking the circumference of the earth four times by age 70!
Amazing Facts About: Your Skin

Your skin shed about 50 million dead cells today. That’s about 30,000 to 40,000 a minute (just think about how much skin you’ve axed since you started reading this article). You may have heard that your skin is your body’s largest organ, and because it serves so many important functions, the scaffolding is always up, so to speak. Just one square inch of skin has 650 sweat glands, 20 feet of blood vessels, 60,000 pigment cells, and more than 1,000 nerve endings. 

Amazing Facts About: Your Immune System

Today, you may have fought cancer. Your body has trillions of cells. If a mutation occurs in the DNA (genetic material) of any, it can create cancer cells, which divide uncontrollably and can clump together to form tumors. When you consider how many cells split every minute—and each time a cell divides, it has to copy 30,000 genes—it’s a wonder we don’t get cancer all the time. The reason we don’t: the body’s incredible system to catch errors. When a cell divides, proofreading enzymes fix any DNA mistakes. If the proofreaders don’t work, the cell itself can detect that it’s “broken” and commit suicide. It says, “I’m about to become cancerous, so I’ll kill myself to save the body.”

Courtesy To: Steve Vaccariello, Bryan Christie & Reader's Digest

BEST WAYS TO DEAL WITH ANGER

Did you know angry people are three times more likely than calmer ones to have a heart attack? Protect your health with the following five tips on how to keep your cool.
 

First: What's going on in the angry brain?
When we get mad, our brain's more rational prefrontal lobes shut down, and its reflexive back areas take over. Hormonal and cardiovascular responses kick in. We pump out cholesterol and a group of chemicals called catecholamines, which encourage fatty deposits to pile up in the heart and carotid arteries. It’s no surprise, then, that angry people are three times more likely to have a heart attack than those less prone to fury. The fight-or-flight response can prompt your nervous system to cut blood flow to your stomach and divert it to your muscles, impacting digestion secretions. Stress can also increase stomach acids. And anger causes a surge in the stress hormone cortisol, which bumps up oil production and leads to acne and other skin problems. During prolonged and frequent eruptions of rage, parts of the nervous system become highly activated, which can affect our immune systems over time. So, how can we avoid all this?

1. Retrain your brain.

Cognitive restructuring, or “thought stopping,” involves challenging your take on anger-inducing scenarios and reevaluating irrational beliefs.

2. Book an appointment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help you learn to spot anger triggers and to control reactions. 

3. Breathe deep.

Bliss out with breathing exercises—they help slow your heart rate and keep your mind focused on something other than the source of your stress. 

4. Sweat it out.

Exercise provides an outlet for aggression and stimulates feel-good brain chemicals. 

5. Medicate.

If anger is a symptom of a bigger problem such as depression, prescription drugs could be a solution. Check with your doctor.

DRUG, DRUG USE, ABUSE AND ADDICTION (THIRD PART)

Can addiction be treated successfully?

YES. Addiction is a treatable disease. Discoveries in the science of addiction have led to advances in drug abuse treatment that help people stop abusing drugs and resume their productive lives. 

Can addiction be cured?

Addiction need not be a life sentence. Like other chronic diseases, addiction can be managed successfully. Treatment enables people to counteract addiction’s powerful disruptive effects on brain and behavior and regain control of their lives. 

Does relapse to drug abuse mean treatment has failed?

No. The chronic nature of the disease means that relapsing to drug abuse is not only possible, but likely. Relapse rates (i.e., how often symptoms recur) for drug addiction are similar to those for other well-characterized chronic medical illnesses such as diabetes, hyper-tension, and asthma, which also have both physiological and behavioral components. Treatment of chronic diseases involves changing deeply embedded behaviors, and relapse does not mean treatment failure. For the addicted patient, lapses back to drug abuse indicate that treatment needs to be reinstated or adjusted, or that alternate treatment is needed.

What are the principles of effective addiction treatment?

Research shows that combining treatment medications, where available, with behavioral therapy is the best way to ensure success for most patients. Treatment approaches must be tailored to address each patient’s drug abuse patterns and drug-related medical, psychiatric, and social problems. 

How can medications help treat drug addiction?

Different types of medications may be useful at different stages of treatment to help a patient stop abusing drugs, stay in treatment, and avoid relapse. 

Treating Withdrawal

When patients first stop abusing drugs, they can experience a variety of physical and emotional symptoms, including depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders; restlessness;and sleeplessness. Certain treatment medications are designed to reduce these symptoms, which makes it easier to stop the abuse.

Staying in Treatment

Some treatment medications are used to help the brain adapt gradually to the absence of the abused drug. These medications act slowly to stave off drug cravings, and have a calming effect on body systems. They can help patients focus on counseling and other psychotherapies related to their drug treatment.

Preventing Relapse

Science has taught us that stress, cues linked to the drug experience (e.g., people, places, things, moods), and exposure to drugs are the most common triggers for relapse. Medications are being developed to 

interfere with these triggers to help patients sustain recovery.

Medication used To Treat Drug Addiction

Tobacco Addiction

• Nicotine replacement therapies (e.g., patch, inhaler, gum)
• Bupropion
• Varenicline

Opioid Addiction

• Methadone
• Buprenorphine
• Naltrexone

Alcohol and Drug Addiction

• Naltrexone
• Disulfiram
• Acamprosate

How do behavioral therapies treat drug addiction?

Behavioral treatments help engage people in drug abuse treatment, modifying their attitudes and behaviors related to drug abuse and increasing their life skills to handle stressful circumstances and environmental cues that may trigger intense craving for drugs and prompt another cycle of compulsive abuse. Moreover, behavioral therapies can enhance the effectiveness of medications and help people remain in treatment longer.

How do the best treatment programs help patients recover from the pervasive effects of addiction?

Getting an addicted person to stop abusing drugs is just one part of a long and complex recovery process. When people enter treatment, addiction has often taken over their lives. The compulsion to get drugs, take drugs, and experience the effects of drugs has dominated their every waking moment, and drug abuse has taken the place of all the things they used to enjoy doing. It has disrupted how they function in their family lives, at work, and in the community, and has made them more likely to suffer from other serious illnesses. Because addiction can affect so many aspects of a person’s life, treatment must address the needs of the whole person to be successful. This is why the best programs incorporate a variety of rehabilitative services into their  comprehensive treatment regimens. Treatment counselors select from a menu of services for meeting the individual medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal needs of their patients to foster their recovery from addiction.

DRUG, DRUG USE, ABUSE AND ADDICTION (SECOND PART)

How do drugs work in the brain?

Drugs are chemicals. They work in the brain by tapping into the brain’s communication system and interfering with the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information. Some drugs, such as marijuana and heroin, can activate neurons because their chemical structure mimics that of a natural neurotransmitter. This similarity in structure “fools” receptors and allows the drugs to lock onto and activate the nerve cells. Although these drugs mimic brain chemicals, they don’t activate nerve cells in the same way as a natural neurotransmitter, and they lead to abnormal messages being transmitted through the network.

Other drugs, such as amphetamine or cocaine, can cause the nerve cells to release abnormally large amounts of natural neurotransmitters or prevent the normal recycling of these brain chemicals. This disruption produces a greatly amplified message, ultimately disrupting communication channels. The difference in effect can be described as the difference between someone whispering into your ear and someone shouting into a microphone.

How do drugs work in the brain to produce pleasure?

Most drugs of abuse directly or indirectly target the brain’s reward system by flooding the circuit with dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter present in regions of the brain that regulate movement, emotion, cognition, motivation, and feelings of pleasure. The overstimulation of this system, which rewards our natural behaviors, produces the euphoric effects sought by people who abuse drugs and teaches them to repeat the behavior.

How does stimulation of the brain’s pleasure circuit teach us to keep taking drugs?

Our brains are wired to ensure that we will repeat life-sustaining activ-ities by associating those activities with pleasure or reward. Whenever this reward circuit is activated, the brain notes that something important is happening that needs to be remembered, and teaches us to do it again and again, without thinking about it. Because drugs of abuse stimulate the same circuit, we learn to abuse drugs in the same way.

Why are drugs more addictive than natural rewards?

When some drugs of abuse are taken, they can release 2 to 10 times the amount of dopamine that natural rewards do. In some cases, this occurs almost immediately (as when drugs are smoked or injected), and the effects can last much longer than those produced by natural rewards. The resulting effects on the brain’s pleasure circuit dwarfs those produced by naturally rewarding behaviors such as eating and sex. The effect of such a powerful reward strongly motivates people to take drugs again and again. This is why scientists sometimes say that drug abuse is something we learn to do very, very well.

What happens to your brain if you keep taking drugs? 

Just as we turn down the volume on a radio that is too loud, the brain adjusts to the overwhelming surges in dopamine (and other neurotransmitters) by producing less dopamine or by reducing the number of receptors that can receive signals. As a result, dopamine’s impact on the reward circuit of a drug abuser’s brain can become abnor-mally low, and the ability to experience any pleasure is reduced. This is why the abuser eventually feels flat, lifeless, and depressed, and is unable to enjoy things that previously brought them pleasure. Now, they need to take drugs just to try and bring their dopamine function back up to normal. And, they must take larger amounts of the drug than they first did to create the dopamine high—an effect known as tolerance.

How does long-term drug taking affect brain circuits?

We know that the same sort of mechanisms involved in the development of tolerance can eventually lead to profound changes in neurons and brain circuits, with the potential to severely compromise the long-term health of the brain. For example, glutamate is another neurotrans-mitter that influences the reward circuit and the ability to learn. When the optimal concentration of glutamate is altered by drug abuse, the brain attempts to compensate for this change, which can cause impairment in cognitive function. Similarly, long-term drug abuse can trigger adaptations in habit or nonconscious memory systems. Conditioning is one example of this type of learning, whereby environmental cues become associated with the drug experience and can trigger uncontrollable cravings if the individual is later exposed to these cues, even without the drug itself being available. This learned “reflex” is extremely robust and can emerge even after many years of abstinence.

What other brain changes occur with abuse? 

Chronic exposure to drugs of abuse disrupts the way critical brain structures interact to control and inhibit behaviors related to drug abuse. Just as continued abuse may lead to tolerance or the need for higher drug dosages to produce an effect, it may also lead to addiction, which can drive an abuser to seek out and take drugs compulsively. Drug addiction erodes a person’s self-control and ability to make sound decisions, while sending intense impulses to take drugs.

What are the medical consequences of drug addiction?

Individuals who suffer from addiction often have one or more accompanying medical issues, including lung and cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, and mental disorders. Imaging scans, chest X-rays, and blood tests show the damaging effects of drug abuse throughout the body. For example, tests show that tobacco smoke causes cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, blood, lungs, stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, and cervix. In addition, some drugs of abuse, such as inhalants, are toxic to nerve cells and may damage or destroy them either in the brain or the peripheral nervous system. 

Does drug abuse cause mental disorders, or vice versa?

Drug abuse and mental disorders often co-exist. In some cases, mental diseases may precede addiction; in other cases, drug abuse may trigger or exacerbate mental disorders, particularly in individuals with specific vulnerabilities

How can addiction harm other people?

Beyond the harmful consequences for the addicted individual, drug abuse can cause serious health problems for others. Three of the more devastating and troubling consequences of addiction are: 

Negative effects of prenatal drug exposure on infants and children. 

It is likely that some drug-exposed children will need educational support in the classroom to help them overcome what may be subtle deficits in developmental areas such as behavior, attention, and cognition. Ongoing work is investigating whether the effects of prenatal exposure on brain and behavior extend into adolescence to cause developmental problems during that time period.

Negative effects of second-hand smoke. 

Second-hand tobacco smoke, also referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a significant source of exposure to a large number of substances known to be hazardous to human health, particularly to children. According to the Surgeon General’s 2006 Report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, involuntary smoking increases the risk of heart disease and lung cancer in never-smokers by 25–30 percent and 20–30 percent, respectively.

Increased spread of infectious diseases. 

Injection of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine accounts for more than a third of new AIDS cases. Injection drug use is also a major factor in the spread of hepatitis C, a serious, potentially fatal liver disease. Injection drug use is not the only way that drug abuse contributes to the spread of infectious diseases. All drugs of abuse cause some form of intoxication, which interferes with judgment and increases the likelihood of risky sexual behav-iors. This, in turn, contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, and other sexually transmitted diseases.

DRUG,DRUG USE, ABUSE AND ADDICTION (FIRST PART)

Drug and Drug use

A pharmaceutical preparation or a naturally occurring substance used primarily to bring about a change in the existing process or state (physiological, psychological or biochemical) can be called a ‘drug’. 

When drugs are used to treat an illness, prevent a disease and improve health condition, it is termed drug use.

Drug abuse and Addiction

Intake of drugs for reasons other than medical in a manner that affects physical or mental functioning is termed drug abuse.

Addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences. It is considered a brain disease because drugs change the brain—they change its structure and how it works. These brain changes can be long lasting, and can lead to the harmful behaviors seen in people who abuse drugs.

Why do people take drugs?

In general, people begin taking drugs for a variety of reasons:

To feel good. 

Most abused drugs produce intense feelings of pleasure. This initial sensation of euphoria is followed by other effects, which differ with the type of drug used. For example, with stimulants such as cocaine, the “high” is followed by feelings of power, self-confidence, and increased energy. In contrast, the euphoria caused by opiates such as heroin is followed by feelings of relaxation and satisfaction. 

To feel better.

Some people who suffer from social anxiety, stress-related disorders, and depression begin abusing drugs in an attempt to lessen feelings of distress. Stress can play a major role in beginning drug use, continuing drug abuse, or relapse in patients recovering from addiction. 

To do better.

The increasing pressure that some individuals feel to chemically enhance or improve their athletic or cognitive performance can similarly play a role in initial experimentation and continued drug abuse. 

Curiosity and “because others are doing it.”

In this respect adolescents are particularly vulnerable because of the strong influence of peer pressure; they are more likely, for example, to engage in “thrilling” and “daring” behaviors.

If taking drugs makes people feel good or better, what’s the problem?

At first, people may perceive what seem to be positive effects with drug use. They also may believe that they can control their use; however, drugs can quickly take over their lives. Consider how a social drinker can become intoxicated, put himself behind a wheel and quickly turn a pleasurable activity into a tragedy for him and others. Over time, if drug use continues, pleasurable activities become less pleasurable, and drug abuse becomes necessary for abusers to simply feel“normal.”Drug abusers reach a point where they seek and take drugs, despite the tremendous problems caused for themselves and their loved ones. Some individuals may start to feel the need to take higher or more frequent doses, even in the early stages of their drug use.

Is continued drug abuse a voluntary behavior?

The initial decision to take drugs is mostly voluntary. However, when drug abuse takes over, a person’s ability to exert self control can become seriously impaired. Brain imaging studies from drug-addicted individuals show physical changes in areas of the brain that are critical to judgment, decision making, learning and memory, and behavior control. Scientists believe that these changes alter the way the brain works, and may help explain the compulsive and destructive behaviors of addiction.

Why do some people become addicted to drugs, while others do not? 

As with any other disease, vulnerability to addiction differs from person to person. In general, the more risk factors an individual has, the greater the chance that taking drugs will lead to abuse and addiction. “Protective” factors reduce a person’s risk of developing addiction

Which biological factors increase risk of addiction?

Scientists estimate that genetic factors account for between 40 and 60 percent of a person’s vulnerability to addiction, including the effects of environment on gene expression and function. Adolescents and individuals with mental disorders are at greater risk of drug abuse and addiction than the general population.

What environmental factors increase the risk of addiction?

Home and Family

The influence of the home environment is usually most important in childhood. Parents or older family members who abuse alcohol or drugs or who engage in criminal behavior can increase children’s risks of developing their own drug problems.

Peer and School

Friends and acquaintances have the greatest influence during adolescence. Drug-abusing peers can sway even those without risk factors to try drugs for the first time. Academic failure or poor social skills can put a child further at risk for drug abuse.

What other factors increase the risk of addiction?

Early Use

Although taking drugs at any age can lead to addiction, research shows that the earlier a person begins to use drugs the more likely they are to progress to more serious abuse. This may reflect the harmful effect that drugs can have on the developing brain; it also may result from a constellation of early biological and social vulnerability factors, including genetic susceptibility, mental illness, unstable family relationships, and exposure to physical or sexual abuse. Still, the fact remains that early use is a strong indicator of problems ahead, among them, substance abuse and addiction.

Method of Administration

Smoking a drug or injecting it into a vein increases its addictive potential. Both smoked and injected drugs enter the brain within seconds, producing a powerful rush of pleasure. However, this intense “high” can fade within a few minutes, taking the abuser down to lower, more normal levels. It is a starkly felt contrast, and scientists believe that this low feeling drives individuals to repeated drug abuse in an attempt to recapture the high pleasurable state.