“World Lupus Day was 5/10/23 and by WELCOA a health topic for May. Genes do play a role in the predisposition to the development of lupus. There are dozens of known genetic variants linked to lupus. These genes impact both who gets lupus and how severe it is.  20 percent of people with lupus will have a parent or sibling who already has lupus or may develop lupus. About 5 percent of the children born to individuals with lupus will develop the illness.  Although lupus can develop in people with no family history of lupus, there are likely to be other autoimmune diseases in some family members.  Lupus is not contagious, not even through sexual contact. You cannot “catch” lupus from someone or “give” lupus to someone.

World Lupus Day (https://worldlupusday.org/lupus-facts-and-statistics/)

“You can’t cure or slow the progression of Huntington disease, but health care providers can offer medications to help with certain symptoms.   As Huntington disease progresses, you will need constant assistance and supervision because of the debilitating nature of the disease. People usually die from the disease within 15 to 20 years of developing symptoms.  If you have been diagnosed with, or are at risk for Huntington disease, it is critical to maintain your physical fitness as best you can. People who exercise regularly and stay active tend to do better than those who don’t.  A number of studies are currently under way to examine possible therapies for Huntington disease.”

John Hopkins Hospital (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/huntingtons-disease)

“Huntington Disease (HD) typically begins between the ages of 30-45, though onset may occur as early as the age of two or as late as the 70s.  HD affects males and females equally and affects all ethnic and racial groups.  Symptoms of HD can differ from person to person, even for members of the same family.  Early symptoms may include depression, mood swings, forgetfulness, clumsiness, involuntary twitching, and lack of coordination.  HD usually progresses over a 10-25 year period. Death follows from complications such as choking or infection.  Affected individuals require assistance for daily care such as bathing and dressing.  Each child of a person with HD has a 50% chance of inheriting the HD-causing gene mutation.  More than 250,000 Americans have HD or are “at-risk” of inheriting the disease from an affected parent.  A blood test can accurately determine whether an adult carries the HD-causing gene.”

Hennepin Healthcare (https://www.hennepinhealthcare.org/specialty/neurology/huntingtons-disease-clinic/hd-facts/)

“Know Huntington’s disease is a rare, inherited disease that causes the progressive breakdown (degeneration) of nerve cells in the brain. Huntington’s disease has a wide impact on a person’s functional abilities and usually results in movement, thinking (cognitive) and psychiatric disorders.  Huntington’s disease symptoms can develop at any time, but they often first appear when people are in their 30s or 40s. If the condition develops before age 20, it’s called juvenile Huntington’s disease. When Huntington’s develops early, symptoms are somewhat different and the disease may progress faster.  Medications are available to help manage the symptoms of Huntington’s disease. But treatments can’t prevent the physical, mental and behavioral decline associated with the condition.”

MAYO CLINIC

“Huntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive brain disorder caused by a defective gene. This disease causes changes in the central area of the brain, which affect movement, mood and thinking skills. The cause of this disease is the defective gene identified in 1993 causes virtually all Huntington’s disease.

The Huntington gene defect involves extra repeats of one specific chemical code in one small section of chromosome 4. The normal Huntington gene includes 17 to 20 repetitions of this code among its total of more than 3,100 codes. The defect that causes Huntington’s disease includes 40 or more repeats. Genetic tests for Huntington’s disease measure the number of repeats present in an individual’s Huntington protein gene.”

Alzheimer’s Association (https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/huntington-s-disease)

“Hepatitis D virus and hepatitis E virus. Hepatitis D virus infection always occurs with hepatitis B infection, either with a chronic hepatitis B infection (superinfection) or as two simultaneous new infections (coinfection).Reports are rare. Cases of hepatitis D are typically associated with injection drug use. Cases of hepatitis E are typically travel associated.  Humans are the reservoir for hepatitis D, which is usually transmitted by contact with blood or body fluids, particularly sharing drug paraphernalia. Humans and animals (swine) are the reservoir for hepatitis E which is transmitted most commonly through fecal contaminated food, water, and environment.”

Washington State Dept of Health (https://doh.wa.gov/public-health-healthcare-providers/notifiable-conditions/hepatitis-d-and-e)

“Hepatitis C is a liver infection caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Hepatitis C is spread through contact with blood from an infected person. Today, most people become infected with the hepatitis C virus by sharing needles or other equipment used to prepare and inject drugs. For some people, hepatitis C is a short-term illness, but for more than half of people who become infected with the hepatitis C virus, it becomes a long-term, chronic infection. Chronic hepatitis C can result in serious, even life-threatening health problems like cirrhosis and liver cancer. People with chronic hepatitis C can often have no symptoms and don’t feel sick. When symptoms appear, they often are a sign of advanced liver disease. There is no vaccine for hepatitis C. The best way to prevent hepatitis C is by avoiding behaviors that can spread the disease, especially injecting drugs.”

CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hcv/index.htm)

Now don’t get me wrong oxygen is an element that is a must for most creatures that live in the world both now and since it began but there is dangers to any element especially if mixed with some other element causing a negative result in the end. So you wonder how oxygenation can have pros and cons and why oxygen would ever have dangers to it, well let’s take a deeper look.

Oxygenation may refer to:

1-Oxygen saturation (medicine), the process by which concentrations of oxygen increase within a tissue

2-Oxygenation (environmental), a measurement of dissolved oxygen concentration in soil or water

-Great Oxygenation Event, an ancient event that led to the rise of oxygen within our atmosphere

-Water oxygenation, the process of increasing the oxygen saturation of the water

-Dioxygen complex, the chemical details of how metals bind oxygen

Of course, oxygen has its good points. Besides being necessary for respiration and the reliable combustion engine, it can be liquefied and used as rocket fuel. Oxygen is also widely used in the world of medicine as a means to imbue the body with a greater amount of the needed gas. But recent studies indicate that administering oxygen might be doing less good than hoped—and in fact be causing harm. No one is immune to the dangers of oxygen, but the people who might most suffer the ill effects are infants newly introduced to breathing, and those who are clinically dead.

Oxygen regarding the medical view:

There are a variety of injuries and ailments for which modern medicine dictates oxygen therapy. Look at the medical aspect, the common wisdom is that by filling the lungs with pure O₂, one is pushing more of the vital gas into the blood, and thus to organs that are weakened and in need of support. It has also long been known that even at partial pressures, pure oxygen can be toxic—a fact with which scuba divers and astronauts are intimately familiar. Recent studies have indicated that the human body responds to pure oxygen, even at normal pressures, in a negative way.

When pure O₂ is introduced to the lungs, autonomic reflex increases respiration. The increased rate of breathing means that a much larger load of carbon dioxide is released from the body, which causes the blood vessels to constrict. Despite the increased amount of available oxygen in the lungs, the circulatory system is hampered, and cannot deliver precious O₂ as well as it could when breathing normal atmosphere.

Ronald Harper, a neurobiology professor at UCLA, conducted observations on a group of healthy teenagers breathing various gas mixes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). His findings showed that in some subjects the pure O₂ caused the brain to go clinically bonkers. Brain structures such as the hippocampus, the insula, and the cingulate cortex all displayed an adverse reaction; they in turn spurred the hypothalamus, the body’s main regulatory gland, into a fervor. The hypothalamus regulates a myriad of things, including heart rate, body temperature, and is the master of a variety of other glands. The introduction of pure oxygen prompts the hypothalamus to flood the body with a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters which serve to hamper heart rate, and further reduce the circulatory system’s effectiveness. But Harper also found that by adding a mere 5% CO2, all the detrimental effects found in pure oxygen are negated.

There are circumstances, however, where even the proper mix of gases would prove inadequate. Modern medicine has long taught that after respiration stops, the brain can only survive for six to seven minutes without oxygen before its cells begin to die in droves. In order to combat this, standard procedure has been to aggressively attempted to restore breathing and heartbeat immediately upon cessation, CPR. The base premise on which this protocol is designed may be in error but only if continuing longer than the AHA guides us to do CPR. For there is more than just to lack of oxygen in patients who die having CPR done to them for death (Ex Exacerbation of a disease, multi – organ failure, years of CHF, etc… Even thought lack of 02 is part of the reason for the death in the end. There was a cause for it happening and leading to lack of 02 is the prime entity to death of all diseases leading up to this in a human.).

Upon examining heart cells and neurons deprived of oxygen under a microscope, Dr Lance Becker of the University of Pennsylvania found there was no indication that the cells were dying after five or six minutes. In fact, they seemed to endure the state for up to an hour without adverse affect. Given this unexpected observation, the researchers were forced to investigate why human resuscitation becomes impossible after only a few minutes of clinical death. The answer they uncovered was that the body’s cells were not dying of oxygen starvation; they were expiring due to Reperfusion—the sudden reintroduction of oxygen to a dormant cell = Programmed cell death! The cells reintroducing oxygen back into the cell from outside the cell in the bloodstream caused the destruction of the red blood cells, the RBCs carry oxygen to all our tissues sites. You would think that would save the cells in sending more oxygen out to the tissues but like we’re told from childhood too much of almost anything can hurt or kill you (Ex. Food/work/stress…)

Take a patient with severe emphysema they do get oxygen in their body but the problem is that oxygen gets air spaced elsewhere rather than all the 02 breathed in going in the red blood cells at the lungs exchange for 02 at the bottom of the lungs with CO2 (carbon dioxide) sent from the cells to the lungs to leave the body. Than the cells go off throughout the bloodstream having our tissues utilize from the red blood cells the oxygen it needs (a transfer of 02 to our tissues).   Upon return of the red blood cells that took the CO2 from the tissues to keep the tissues more oxygenated, so they can do their function as an organ. Oxygen deprivation to a severe state is Oxygen Starvation to our bodies leading to death, if not reversed. Also with the severe COPD emphysema pt their body adjusts to having high C02 levels compared to a person without emphysema. A normal person’s brain functions to sending messages out to cause us to breath when our 02 level is low but to a severe emphysema pt the low C02 levels causes their brain to send out messages to breath, so if you give an emphysema pt over 2L of 02 for several hours if will turn the brain off and the pt deceases (except when a emphysema pt is in respiratory distress since it is needed and temporary support of higher oxygen levels than when stable and out of respiratory distress their at 2L of 02 again).

Inside the cells, the culprit seems to be in the mitochondria, which is the cell’s power plant where sugar and oxygen are converted to usable energy. Mitochondria are also responsible for apoptosis—the organized, controlled self-destruction of a cell. Normally apoptosis occurs in situations such as the cell being damaged beyond repair, infected by a virus, an attempt to prevent cancer, or aiding in initial tissue development. The process effectively kills and dismantles the cell allowing the body’s usual waste management functions to carry the cell’s remains away. For reasons not entirely clear, reperfusion triggers apoptosis—the oxygen intended to save the cell actually causes cellular suicide.

Armed with this new information about how cells react to oxygen, it is clear that current emergency care is not altogether ideal, and new protocols are under investigation. Dr Becker proposes that induced hypothermia may slow cell degradation, and if a means can be found to safely reintroduce oxygen to tissues, a clinically dead person—who still has trillions of living cells—could be resuscitated after being an hour dead.

This glorious future is still on the horizon, but to imagine the practical application leads one to ponder the multitude of accidents and injuries that are currently fatal, but will one day be treatable. Emergency Medical Personnel could arrive on the scene, and inject the patient with a slurry of ice and salt that lowers the body temperature to about 92° F. In a hypothermic state, the patient is hauled to the hospital, where instead of frantically trying to restart the heart, doctors patch up the problem, prevent apoptosis , and then restart the heart. Though it won’t save everyone, these findings may lead to a future where a person made up of perfectly good human cells is not written off as dead merely because their heart has stopped beating. The miracle of modern medicine, it seems, is on the cusp of determining the true distinction between dead and mostly dead.

“Hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver caused by the hepatitis A virus (HAV). The virus is primarily spread when an uninfected (and unvaccinated) person ingests food or water that is contaminated with the feces of an infected person. The disease is closely associated with unsafe water or food, inadequate sanitation, poor personal hygiene and oral-anal sex.Hepatitis A occurs sporadically and in epidemics worldwide, with a tendency for cyclic recurrences. The virus can also be transmitted through close physical contact (such as oral-anal sex) with an infectious person, although casual contact among people does not spread the virus.  Now,Hepatitis B is a potentially life-threatening liver infection caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV). It is a major global health problem. It can cause chronic infection and puts people at high risk of death from cirrhosis and liver cancer.  Hepatitis B is transmitted through blood and sex including spread from mother to child at birth (perinatal transmission) or through horizontal transmission (exposure to infected blood), especially from an infected child to an uninfected child during the first 5 years of life. The development of chronic infection is common in infants infected from their mothers or before the age of 5 years.  A safe and effective vaccine that offers 98% to 100% protection against hepatitis B is available. Preventing hepatitis B infection averts the development of complications including chronic disease and liver cancer.”

WHO World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-a)

“In today’s fast-paced world filled with increasing demands, stress management is a life skill and a lifesaver. It’s also important to note that while the link between stress and high blood pressure (HBP or hypertension) is still being studied, stress is known to contribute to risk factors like a poor diet and excessive alcohol consumption.

In addition to the emotional discomfort we feel when faced with a stressful situation, our bodies react by releasing stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) into the blood. These hormones prepare the body for the “fight or flight” response by making the heart beat faster and constricting blood vessels to get more blood to the core of the body instead of the extremities.

Constriction of blood vessels and increase in heart rate does raise blood pressure, but only temporarily — when the stress reaction goes away, blood pressure returns to its pre-stress level. This is called situational stress, and its effects are generally short-lived and disappear when the stressful event is over.

Stress is a lifestyle factor and, to a certain extent, a fact of life. Each of us also has a certain level of anxiety. On the other hand, chronic anxiety and anxiety disorders are medically diagnosed conditions (like hypertension=High B/P), which can be impacted by stress.”

AHA American Heart Association (https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/changes-you-can-make-to-manage-high-blood-pressure/managing-stress-to-control-high-blood-pressure)