Worried about the risk of sudden death? How can people in the workplace stay healthy?

According to the 2022 Workplace Health Insights Report, in terms of exercise frequency, 43.0% of people exercise every week, but only 3.0% of people exercise every day on average, and 16.0% never exercise. Most people in the workplace choose the "lazy" exercise - walking. Most people in the workplace are more or less worried about the risk of sudden death.

In the face of this situation, how can people in the workplace stay healthy? Let’s talk about this topic with you today.

01. Is not exercising because of laziness?

In fact, most people really don’t have time to exercise, and they are not lazy. The time here does not mean that the 996 schedule takes up all their time, or that they are accused of “playing games and lying down after work without exercising.”

It's because of time, it's not really calculated that way. I remember a wealthy man in Hong Kong thought that poor people were lazy, so he went to experience the daily life of the poor. After that, his superficial perception changed.

Many times, people's daytime fatigue has reached their physiological limit. In this case, if they still want to continue exercising or learning to improve themselves after get off work, it will inevitably exceed their physical endurance and is naturally too much to ask.

Moreover, this kind of pressure is not only physical pressure, but also mental pressure. For example, the "overwork obesity" proposed in recent years refers to the phenomenon that people tend to gain weight due to problems such as high work pressure, irregular diet, and irregular work and rest.

Therefore, I really dislike using the word "lazy" to describe working people. The truth is that they have a hard life.

Of course, getting back to exercise, if you really have the energy, then exercising is actually good.

02. About Sudden Death

I have talked about the issue of sudden death before. In fact, most people don’t have to worry about sudden death.

Sudden death is essentially the result of problems in the body, which are triggered by certain factors.

Sudden death is generally a description of a phenomenon, which refers to the phenomenon that a normal or seemingly normal person suddenly becomes ill unexpectedly and dies within an hour.

But it is not completely mysterious. According to research, common factors causing sudden death include cardiovascular disease, trauma, respiratory diseases, and neurological diseases.

The most common of these is sudden cardiac death, that is, sudden death caused by heart disease, accounting for more than 80%.

There are many direct causes of sudden cardiac death, such as catecholamines. The familiar dopamine and adrenaline are both catecholamines.

It can enhance the excitability of the sympathetic nerves and accelerate the body's metabolism, but if the coronary artery spasms or embolism occurs at this time, the myocardium will suffer from insufficient blood supply, further ischemia and hypoxia, leading to sudden cardiac death.

Translated into human language, it means that the body is too excited and the heart cannot keep up with the rhythm, so it becomes blocked.

Another example is the pathological changes of the cardiac conduction system. In the case of His bundle-Purkinje fiber system functional block or sick sinus syndrome, if the sympathetic nerves are overexcited, the mechanical reflex of the ventricular wall will be oversensitive, and the left ventricular contraction will increase sharply. The body will mistakenly think that the left ventricular capacity is overloaded, so the sympathetic nerves begin to inhibit the excitement of the vagus nerve, the conduction velocity decreases significantly, the heart rate begins to slow down, and finally sudden death occurs.

In plain language, the brain thinks you are too excited, so in order to avoid the previous situation, it asks the heart to beat slower. Then the heart simply stops beating.

In addition, some genetic factors have been found to be related to sudden cardiac death. For example, studies have found that SCN5A, which encodes the cardiac sodium ion channel, is the main pathogenic gene of early repolarization syndrome that can cause sudden cardiac death.

This is easy to understand, it is a debuff that comes with birth, and there is currently no feasible medical intervention plan. But have you noticed that all of the above can only be considered as inducements. The root cause is that the heart function itself is not normal.

Almost all people who die from sudden cardiac death have heart-related diseases, such as congenital heart disease, myocarditis, heart failure, abnormal heart structure or abnormal heart rate. However, these diseases are relatively hidden and difficult to detect in daily life. Therefore, the body surface looks normal, but they are more vulnerable than normal people.

03. Prevention is better than cure

When there are signs of sudden death, emergency rescue is the most effective way, such as "cardiopulmonary resuscitation" that we have been learning since childhood. Families with patients diagnosed with heart disease may use defibrillators, but the purpose is to quickly restore the heartbeat, thereby creating the possibility of emergency treatment in the hospital.

Prevention is more useful than first aid.

First of all, you should have regular physical examinations. Many people do not have the habit of doing physical examinations, or they often ignore the heart when doing physical examinations, resulting in potential heart problems not being discovered. Therefore, it is recommended that you have regular physical examinations and pay attention to heart health.

Of course, in addition to sudden cardiac death, there are also sudden cerebral death, sudden pancreatitis, accident-related death, etc. So if you feel chest pain, chest tightness, long-term headaches or long-term fatigue, you also need to focus on these parts during the physical examination.

Secondly, when doing strenuous exercise, you should warm up sufficiently, and non-professional athletes should also control the intensity of exercise. Sudden death caused by exercise is very common, and the cause is often due to heart disease plus excessive release of catecholamines caused by exercise.

In addition, there is no targeted research on death from overwork, which is of concern to the general public, but it is generally believed that it is mainly due to existing heart problems, such as coronary heart disease, arterial embolism, etc. Long-term overwork, coupled with staying up late to work overtime, irregular diet, etc., will lead to abnormal metabolism and reduced repair ability of the body, which will eventually cause death from overwork.