Warning! These 3 things can easily cause sudden death. Come and see if you are doing it right?

The first time I heard the concept of "sudden death" was when I was reading a news article: a bus driver stopped his car on the side of the road in the last second of his life, thus avoiding a major traffic accident.

Later, more and more people died of sudden death.

Street vendors, college students singing in KTVs, and young people working in the IT and financial industries.

01

What is sudden death

"Sudden death" literally means sudden death.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines sudden death as death within 6 hours after onset of illness. However, in terms of performance, most sudden deaths are a kind of "instant death".

Some diseases that cause sudden death are difficult to detect in the early stages, while others are very serious and can take a person's life within a few minutes.

There are many causes of sudden death, including acute myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, allergies, poisoning, etc.

What we are going to talk about today is sudden death caused by the cardiovascular system, which is called sudden cardiac death.

02

"Death from overwork" is closely related to cardiovascular disease

"Death from overwork" is a common cause of sudden death.

Usually, the deceased worked for a long time and at a high workload before death, or suffered from high mental stress for a long time.

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This mode of death is often closely related to cardiovascular disease.

Some young and middle-aged people often work late at night for long periods of time due to work pressure or deadlines.

In order to complete high-intensity work, in addition to concentration, a lot of physical strength is also needed to support it.

At this time, the sympathetic nerves in the body have been at a highly excited level, secreting a large amount of vasoactive substances, causing vasoconstriction and increased blood pressure.

At this time, the heart needs to make greater efforts to pump blood into the already thinned blood vessels; and the blood vessels also have to withstand the huge impact brought by the high-pressure and high-speed blood flow.

Maintaining a state of vasoconstriction and elevated blood pressure for a long time can cause great damage to the heart and blood vessels.

Schematic diagram of blood circulation in the heart. The blue arrows represent the flow of venous blood, and the red arrows represent the flow of arterial blood. | Mayo Clinic

If this continues for a long time, the heart will continue to work harder and eventually lead to heart failure.

The failing heart can no longer pump blood into the blood vessels.

Subsequently, a drop in blood pressure and hemodynamic disorders will cause the patient to go into shock, followed by insufficient tissue and organ perfusion, organ failure, and ultimately death.

Even after the heart has been overloaded for a long time, it has not failed.

Another situation may also occur: due to the faster blood flow rate, some potential atherosclerotic plaques are ruptured by the impact of blood, which in turn causes blood vessel rupture and causes bleeding.

Because there are many "big turns" in the course of cerebral blood vessels, this type of blood vessel rupture is particularly prone to occur within the skull.

If the amount of bleeding is large and the rate of bleeding is fast, the patient will die from brain herniation due to the rapid increase in intracranial pressure.

03

Sitting for too long can also lead to death

Among patients who died suddenly, death due to pulmonary embolism is also relatively common. Howling to the sky before dying is not only an interpretation in the book, it also vividly describes the manifestation of the disease of pulmonary embolism.

When healthy, people inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide relying on normal blood circulation in the lungs.

When a blood clot blocks the pulmonary artery, no blood can flow through the lungs, causing carbon dioxide in the blood throughout the body to be unable to be discharged and oxygen to be unable to enter the blood, which can lead to death.

Nowadays, many people are in a state of stress due to long-term high-pressure and high-intensity work, and the coagulation system is relatively excited, which makes the blood easy to coagulate;

Some women who take combined short-acting oral contraceptives regularly for a long time are at risk of developing hypercoagulation of the blood.

In this case, if you sit still for a long time and your lower limbs are under pressure, the already hypercoagulable blood flow rate will slow down, making it easy for blood clots to form.

As the blood clot slowly grows larger, moving the limbs or the impact of blood flow will cause the blood clot to fall off the blood vessel wall and travel with the blood flow.

Venous blood eventually reaches the lungs through the inferior vena cava and the right side of the heart.

If a blood clot travels through the bloodstream to the pulmonary artery, pulmonary embolism will occur.

Due to sudden chest pain and acute hypoxia, patients often fall to the ground and die soon after shouting.

After the lower limb vein thrombosis breaks off, it flows back to the heart along the veins and then reaches the lungs through the heart, forming a pulmonary embolism | Mayo Clinic

04

Defecation can also kill people

The accelerated pace of modern life and changes in eating habits have led to an increasing number of people being diagnosed with coronary heart disease around the age of 40.

For some of them, the condition is so severe that any heavy exercise can cause an attack of precordial pain (angina).

This type of person often dies suddenly when defecating, and the chance of sudden death is greater when the stool is dry.

Defecation involves holding the breath and exerting force, which will cause the pressure in the chest and abdominal cavities to increase, thereby reducing the amount of blood returning to the heart.

It can also cause the heart rate to increase, which can lead to ischemia of the coronary arteries.

For healthy people, this is not a problem, but for patients with existing coronary artery lesions, this coronary ischemia may suddenly lead to myocardial infarction.

If the lesion range is relatively large and the area of ​​infarction is large, it may cause acute heart failure and cardiogenic shock, and then death due to lack of timely treatment.

For patients who have previously suffered a myocardial infarction, since the myocardium has already been necrotic, this activity that increases the workload on the heart is likely to cause the weak part of the myocardial infarction to suddenly rupture, directly leading to death.

05

How to prevent sudden death?

1. Maintain healthy living habits.

Don't work overtime or stay up late at night, and don't force yourself to work when you are feeling unwell.

Many patients who die from overwork experience symptoms such as chest tightness, chest pain, dizziness, and headache before death. This is the body's way of sending an alarm.

So, if you feel tired, please rest as soon as possible and never sacrifice your life in pursuit of temporary efficiency.

For people who sit for long periods of time at work, standing up and walking around every hour or two can effectively promote blood circulation in the legs and avoid pulmonary embolism.

2. Seek medical attention promptly if you encounter any problems

Many patients who are hospitalized for heart disease have actually experienced precordial pain.

But they didn't take it seriously, and even when they suspected they had a heart disease, they didn't see a doctor.

This is very dangerous.

The onset of heart disease always progresses from stable angina pectoris to unstable angina pectoris, and finally leads to myocardial infarction (except for myocardial infarction caused by acute thrombosis and other unexpected symptoms).

If you experience pain in the precordial area after exercise in your daily life, or find that your activity tolerance has decreased significantly, you must go to the hospital for treatment.

This is not alarmist. The age of onset of coronary heart disease is getting earlier and earlier. If you don’t pay attention, you may be the next one to suffer a heart attack!

3. Provide active treatment.

If someone around you falls to the ground or loses consciousness, after calling 120, do not wait for the ambulance to arrive.

For patients who suffer sudden death, especially those with cardiac arrest or acute heart failure, early on-site cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is very effective.

If someone collapses next to you, is unresponsive, and has no pulse, perform chest compressions as quickly as possible and call an ambulance; you may be able to save his life.

Source: Guokr

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