Archive for July, 2006

Shingles (Herpes Zoster) is a burning, aching pain usually on one side of the chest wall. We know where the pain is coming from as soon as we recognize shingles, for a skin eruption usually

Fig. 66. Breast Pain. Caused by several different disease possibilities, pain in the breast probably will afflict almost all women at some time or other. By comparison the undeveloped male breast is only seldom the seat of any trouble. Most people are surprised to learn that breast pain hardly ever means cancer, but that pain usually means a benign (non-malignant) condition, like “cystic disease of the breast.” Breast pain never means heart disease.

shows up over the course of the pain in just a few days to a week. Also, in shingles, pain is produced by pressing with the finger along the course of the nerve, between the ribs, and we know now that any kind of pain produced by pressing against the chest wall, in any area, is never recognized as pain originating from the heart.

Chest pain coming from tumor growths of the chest wall itself, is extremely rare. Because of the rarity and difficulty in attempting to describe such tumor growths, we will only say that the enlargement of the tumor will certainly be noticed much before the pain. This alone should bring the patient to his physician. Chest pain of great importance may originate from the swallowing tube (esophagus) running from the throat to the stomach.

Fig. 67. Shingles Pain. Often called Herpes Zoster, the pain of shingles is due to soreness of a nerve itself. The pain typically burns, aches and stabs, and follows the nerve route between the ribs (generally the 4th, 5th and 6th ribs). The usual shingles skin eruption may appear within a few days, itching furiously and inviting constant scratching.

This type of pain is worthy of special study in the age-fifty group, because it is so common and so often severe. Real pain of the esophagus which might be confused with heart pain, is nearly always that of heartburn (reflux-esophagitis or achalasia). In heartburn, the acids normally in the stomach back up into the esophagus and cause intense burning pain. Being situated deep in the chest, in the heart region, this chest pain is named heartburn, a well-known name among chest pains.

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles

Let us study next, pain in the chest originating from bone, muscle and ligament of the chest wall. Pain of this sort is usually regularly produced by certain movements of the body, such as sneezing, bending, coughing or lifting. These pains are likely to be of arthritic origin or pressure on nerve roots from the spine, around the neck and chest, and commonly respond to heat and Aspirin.

Pain and soreness of ligaments is common, especially following unusual or heavy work. Such work just before aches and pains begin, usually tells the patient what type of difficulty has brought about his pain. Also, pain and soreness of muscles and ligaments which seems related to damp or cold weather, is referred to frequently as myalgia, neuralgia, fibrositis and other names. Such difficulties

Fig. 64. Muscle Pain. Pains, aches and soreness of muscles are made worse if the sore muscles are worked. Usually a “come and go” story, muscle pain is related to cold, damp weather, and may be relieved by aspirin and heat application. If-as a test-pain is produced when the involved muscle is pressed, it cannot be coming from the heart.

seldom worry a person that the pain may be originating in the heart.

Pain sometimes found in the front of the chest and thought to be heart pain is called Tietze’s Syndrome. This is a pain produced from an irritation or soreness of the cartilage joints, joining the front of the ribs to the breastbone or sternum. This pain is produced easily by pressing on the ribs in front of the chest. It can never be mistaken for heart pain because we will now know that pain produced by pressing on any part of the chest wall, never originates from the heart.

Chest pain due to breast inflammation, irritation or tumor growth is fairly easy to recognize. Here the breast, as the offender, presents painful breast situations which may come and go for all women, and occasionally in men. This pain and soreness tends to be steady, with occasional periods of increased trouble. These sensations, though considered chest pain, usually worry people more about cancer than about heart disease. It is

Fig. 65. Chest Wall Pain. Pain of the front chest wall-referred to as Tietze’s Syndrome-is fairly common. Like any other joint, the cartilage joining the rib to the breast bone may become very painful; unlike other joints, it cannot be rested unless breathing is stopped. There is a definite sore spot (usually over the heart) and pressing on it causes great pain. This eliminates the possibility of heart pain which cannot be produced by pressing anywhere on the chest wall.

a comforting fact to know that painful breasts are rarely any indications of cancer, and even less often caused by heart disease.

Of interest is one particular form of pain in the male breast. It is breast pain caused by administration of hormone, for the treatment of cancer or bone difficulty elsewhere in the body. Knowledge of the foregoing hormonal treatment usually clears up the issue for the patient and the doctor, so that he may know the pain is not originating in the heart.

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles

What can we know of chest pains for our own benefit? Let us look at chest pain generally to observe a few fundamental facts about it. First of all, most chest pains are not caused by the heart. Most chest pains have their cause in either:

1. The breathing mechanism.
2. The muscle, ligament and bone of the chest.
3. Inflammation or tumor growth.
4. The swallowing tube (esophagus).
5. Pain originating from the abdomen.
6. Nerves (often called effort syndrome or neurocirculatory asthenia).

Heart pain can best be appreciated if the other chest pain sources are studied first. So let us first examine pain caused by the breathing mechanism. Pleurisy pain is the most common-type pain felt when the lungs or bronchial tubes are diseased. If pain is definitely related to the movement of breathing in and out, and ceases when breathing is stopped, it is nearly always the pain of pleurisy.

What causes pleurisy pain? Ordinarily, the lungs, covered by a smooth, wet envelope called the pleura, slide over a similar surface on the inside of the chest wall with each breath. If either of these smooth surfaces is irritated, inflammed or roughened in any way, the gliding movements of breathing cause enough friction to bring about pain (pleural pain). Pleurisy may be caused by various lung disorders such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, lung abscess, a blood clot in the lungs (infarction), pus in between the lung and chest wall (empyema), fractured ribs, and other difficulties. Pleurisy pain is thoroughly easy to understand and to identify when it occurs. It is not the kind of pain produced by the heart. It is well to know that heart disease is rarely accompanied by any pleural pain.

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles

Chest Pains

When pain strikes in the chest, one question leaps to the foreground. Is the pain coming from the heart or somewhere else? It is the same for all people including doctors themselves, who

Fig. 63. Chest pain strikes fear of heart trouble and possible sudden death. Most pain in this region is not from the heart, however, but from several other distinct causes. It is important not to disregard this pain which may be a warning of more serious possibilities ahead.

as a group seem particularly singled out for heart difficulties.

There is marked fear of chest pain today because most people have the idea that a heart attack is a painful story. This idea, usually correct, is an impression gleaned from newspapers, neighbors and educational literature. However, most people have only a portion of the true story, and they probably differ quite a bit one from another.

A well-rounded idea of chest pains is as important to us today as the much publicized danger points of cancer, because heart disease is the greatest killer in the United States today. Its chief symptom, chest pain, more than any other symptom, will alert an individual to seek expert medical advice regarding the status of his heart. It should, of course, be obvious that the greatest importance in chest pain is the opinion of a competent physician. He is skilled in interpreting pain and associated findings into an exact diagnosis, and will direct the treatment possibly for a severe heart attack or perhaps dismiss the difficulty as due to some less serious cause, such as heartburn.

In studying chest pain possibilities, we know that a slight pain for one of us might be described as unbearable by someone else. Also, we must realize that the severity of chest pain does not always reflect exactly the seriousness of the underlying disease. Chest pain, however, may never be taken lightly, and all too often, severe chest pain is regarded with a shrug, as caused by indigestion. This tragic error has aided many useful intelligent people to slip into eternity far before their time. The story is frequently heard after it is too late, “He thought it was only a little indigestion.”

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles

This is a disease affecting the heart which becomes most noticeable after the age of fifty. Although it is seen at much younger ages, of our 60,000,000 citizens at this age, more than one in every ten has a blood pressure problem and women outnumber the men two to one. It is fact that more people die partly or directly because of high blood pressure than all types of cancers combined.

Fig. 60. Blood pressure in an artery is similar to water pressure in a hose. It is measured by the amount of weight necessary to stop the flow by squeezing the artery shut-exactly like stepping on a hose to shut off the water.

An understanding of blood pressure is basically simple. It is the pressure from the heart necessary to drive blood through our blood vessels and it varies with conditions such as work or rest. We recognize a high and low pressure of a wave corresponding to each heart beat and we determine what is normal pressure from the average of many thousands of people.

Experience teaches us that blood pressure much higher than normal frequently results in a limitation of body activity through easy fatigue, poor endurance and lack of a healthy reserve. There are, of course, many other difficulties resulting from high blood pressure, including headache, dizziness, shortness of breath, palpitation and kidney disease. Also in the background of high blood pressure disease hover the spectres of stroke and heart failure.

Fig. 61. The size of the heart and large arteries may be greatly enlarged with high blood pressure. The normal heart weight of 300 grams can enlarge to 1000 grams. When pressure rises too high some arteries may burst, and in the brain this is called a stroke. Nearly half of all definite stroke victims die within two weeks.

The cause of elevated blood pressure for about one-fifth of all cases is from known disease such as arteriosclerosis, adrenal gland difficulty and thyroid disease. Most high blood pressure however, is called essential hypertension, because the cause is yet to be discovered.

Fig. 62. The evidence points heavily to salt as an important factor in high blood pressure. Although its exact role is unknown, the hypersensitive patient often does much better when salt is cut down in the diet.

The treatment of high blood pressure consists principally in the physician’s guidance in diet restriction, weight determination, drug therapy and continual observation. In no other medical disease is the close cooperation between doctor and patient so richly rewarded as in the treatment of high blood pressure. Like the fitting of shoes, the physician must guide the blood pressure patient into a practical, effective and tolerable manner of treatment, which the patient will accept and carry on from day to day for complete control of this most significant disease.

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles

Heart Failure {Congestive Failure, Dropsy). The normal heart pumps more than enough blood for all body functions, but the diseased heart may not be able to pump the minimum required by the body, and then heart failure is said to be occurring. The heart does not fail all at once but by slow degrees, and is usually

Fig. 59. Heart or anginal pain (in shaded region) is variable, generally left-sided, also in the left arm. Pain distribution is due to nerve arrangements to and from the heart region. Pain in the left arm is, therefore, usually more significant than pain in the right arm.

marked by increasing shortness of breath, pressure in the chest and a frequent flip-flopping sensation of the heart. Water logging of the body may be noticeable as heart failure begins and body water begins gravitating down into the lower legs. Normal size legs in the morning then become considerably swollen by evening.

Caused by diseases which greatly weaken the heart muscle, heart failure is often a result of childhood rheumatic fever, or in later years, arteriosclerosis of the heart arteries themselves. The physician can markedly strengthen the weakened heart with digitalis-like drugs, and other drugs effective in combating the heart failure, to promote a stronger normal heart function.

Heart Attack (Coronary Occlusion, A Coronary). Heart attack means a sudden block of a coronary (heart) artery by a blood clot stopping the blood flow to a quickly damaged portion of the heart muscle. If this damage is slight, it might even go unnoticed, but if damage to the heart is severe, it is likely to stop beating, with death following quickly. It is apparent that there are many degrees of severity in heart attacks.

The pain in the chest can be excruciating, causing nausea, weakness, pallor and perspiration similar to extreme exhaustion, and the patient may collapse. A heart attack is nearly always suspected, but cannot be known with accuracy until an electrocardiogram has been taken. Possible candidates for heart attack are the fifty-year-old (and younger) individuals, including those who have never known any discomforts or disease. Most vulnerable of all is the person with already existing heart disease who must take extra precaution to spare his heart, and promote as strong and healthy a heart muscle as possible.

The person who dies a few moments after his heart attack could not benefit from any known treatment, but for those who live through the early attack, the physician, with marvelous drugs, can greatly magnify chances of survival. A yearly check-up of the heart condition in all people of fifty years is necessary for sane regard of good health.

Keywords: Skin, Head, Eye, Ear, Cancer, Face, Lips, Teeth, Thyroid, Chest, Breast, Lungs, Heart, Nail, Asthma, Tongue, Neck, BP, Migraine, Scalp, Eczema, Shingles