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Most recently published stories in Longevity.
What It's Like to Live With POTS
Upon standing, the body naturally disperses your blood to your legs and your belly, which causes low blood pressure because there is less blood flowing back into your heart. In the normal, healthy human body, baroreceptors near your heart and in the arteries of your neck sense this low pressure. In return, these receptors send a signal to your brain to make your heart beat faster and pump more blood, which stabilizes your blood pressure. POTS, which stands for Postural (obviously the position of your body whether it be standing, sitting, or laying) Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, is a form of low blood pressure that occurs when you sit up and stand from a laying down position.
By emily green8 years ago in Longevity
Cheap Products That Will Actually Help You Sleep Better
Sleep is super important to our health and overall well-being. No one can properly function without sleep every day. Sleep can actually affect our performance, depending on how many hours we get each night. That's why it's crucial everyone gets about seven to eight hours of full sleep each and every night.
By Jacqueline Hanikeh8 years ago in Longevity
Digestion Meets Uncle Kidney
One day i knew a guy named Digestive System. He was born with two main functions. There names were digestive and absorption. Digestion told digestive that he needs to process the converting food into substances capable of being used by the cells for nourishment. Then absorption came along and does a process in which the digested nutrients are transferred from the intestines to the blood or lymph vessels so that they can be transported to the cells. Then there were two organs that he forgot he even had. These organs were the alimentary canal and the accessory digestive organs.Alimentary canal consists of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Accessory digestive consists of the teeth, tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver, and gall bladder. Alimentary told digestive that he is a muscular tube that is five times as long as a person is tall and extends from the lips to the anus. Digestive always wondered why he had all these things going on in his system. He also is accompanied through physical and chemical means. The physical means involve the teeth, tongue, and involuntary muscles of the pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and small intestine. The teeth tear and grind the food into small pieces while the tongue mixes and moves the food that is called his buddy Chewing. His oral cavity prepares food for entrance into his stomach. in his mouth food is masticated(chewed) by the teeth and mixed by the tongue with secretions from his salivary glands. Saliva contains enzymes that begin to digest carbohydrates. his best friend "Bolus" is an action of the teeth, tongue, and saliva that prepare food into a soft ball that slides down the throat slide and is swallowed by voluntary and reflex muscles of the pharynx. After food travels down the esophagus it passes through the cardiac sphincter and enters the stomach where gastric juices is churned like butter and secreted from glands in the walls of the stomach that contain hydrochloric acid and protein-digesting enzymes. Chyme is like what we call a "smoothie" because it is a mixture of digesting juices, mucus, and food materials. Once we finish mixing our "smoothie" called chyme from the stomach it passes through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum of the small intestine. Pyloric sphincter is the number one rookie because he is first to play an important role in determining how long food is held in the stomach. His other best friend small intestine is the longest part of the alimentary canal and consists of three of his partners in crime the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. Bile from his liver and gall bladder is carried through the common bile duct and is essential for breakdown of fats. Then we have what he calls pancreatic fluid that enters the partner of crime the duodenum by way of his pancreatic duct and contains enzymes that act to digest proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Then we have some small fingers that protect the covering of the intestinal walls called "Mr. Villi" the villain of his team. After Mr. digestive system has done all his digestion things, then comes the waste which is unusable materials and it moves through the ileocecal valve into a small pouch-like a kangaroo pouch which is part of the large intestine called the cecum. The large intestine or colon continues his process upward along the right side of the abdomen to form the ascending colon. Then it travels to the abdominal cavity and forms the transverse colon. It goes down on the left side of the abdomen to become the descending colon. As the colon reaches the left iliac region it forms a "Superman" shaped S band known as the "Superman" signoid colon. Mr. Rectum is temporary storage for waste. The distal part of the large intestine is the anal canal which ends with the anus where dookie or poop is expelled. Then comes along Mr. Digestive system's family member who is part of the urinary system that includes two kidneys, two ureters, one bladder, and one urethra. He has a bean shaped organ located at the back of the abdominal cavity between the tenth thoracic and third lumbar vertebrae and kept in place by fibrous connective and fatty tissues called Uncle Kidney. I always thought when people asked about the kidneys they were referring to the can of beans we eat called kidney beans. The functional unit of Uncle Kidney is his son "Nephron". Good ol' Nephron was born with two to three millions "nephrons". Each day he filters out forty to fifty gallons of plasma from the blood. That is way more gallons of water than an elephant can drink a day. Ninety percent of this fluid is reabsorbed into the blood stream. Uncle Kidney's ureters excrete the remaining water and wast products through these two items. As Uncle Kidney filters his blood, he removes a certain amount of water and nitrogenous waste products of metabolism. His ureters are tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder where his urine is stored. His bladder is a hollow organ constructed of walls of elastic fivers and involuntary muscles that act as a reservoir for the urine until its secreted from his body. When Kidney has to go to the doctor they perform a urinalysis, which is a chemical examination of his urine that is often part of the doctor's routine examination given by most doctors. When Uncle Kidney is healthy his urine would be a clear yellowish fluid. But if he is sick then it is reddish brownish and can indicate he has an infection. Uncle Kidney's function is to maintain his body's water balance and acid-base balance. Another function he does is the production of the hormone called Mr. Renin, which acts to regulate his blood pressure. When his blood pressure is low, he stimulates to release more of Mr. Renin into his bloodstream which causes his blood vessels to contract, therefore, raising his blood pressure.
By NaQuita McKnight8 years ago in Longevity
The Pain of Anger
I have anger issues. I admit it. The urban dictionary explains them as: "a problem one has controlling his/her temper over trite and trivial concerns." I somewhat agree with this. Not all my concerns that upset me are trivial, but thats not why I'm writing this.
By Alexis Ybañez8 years ago in Longevity
Author's 105-Year-Old Grandmother Serves as Inspiration for Book on Healthy Living
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—In his debut book, 15 Steps to Healthy Living, author Dr. Gordon Fimreite combines his vast knowledge on health and wellness with insights from his grandmother to introduce strategies that can be easily adopted into our daily lives to help us manage our overall health.
By Nikki Gaskins Campbell8 years ago in Longevity
Something Happened at the Mall Today
Choose to walk out your front door today and deliberately decide that you're going to look for love happening to others instead of watching for negative things which may or may not happen to you. Let's face it, many of us do tend to walk around expecting to come in contact with negative people, places and things. But it simply doesn't have to be that way. It's not a healthy premise for us to walk through our day always on the verge of getting put off or being slighted by someone or something.
By Bernie BeeJay Tangie8 years ago in Longevity
Riding the Lightning
I’m always told that I will get used to having epilepsy. But how can you get used to something that deep down has ruined your life? When I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 18, I felt like my whole world had fallen apart, and to this day I still do. Before the diagnoses, I had all these dreams of what I wanted out of life: to be a mother, have a great job, and most importantly be happy. But that all changed. When that first seizure came, little did I know that my life would be changed forever.
By Charlotte Amis8 years ago in Longevity
What is Type One Diabetes?
I was late this morning. Not because my car broke down, not because my alarm didn't go off.I was late this morning for attempting to avoid hospitalization.Hi, my name is Raven Yule, and I have an autoimmune disease called Type One Diabetes. No, wait, don't click away. This isn't your average "diabetes." I didn't "give this to myself," I didn't "have a bad diet."Type ONE diabetes is an autoimmune disease. That means my autoimmune system attacked my pancreas (the organ that produces insulin—the thing you need to live) and killed it. Simple, yet not at all.I don't expect you to already know everything, unless you have a loved one with TD1 (That's the cool name that us TD1's like more). In the world, there are only about three million of us, whereas there's about forty million people with type two diabetes. Yeah, don't feel bad for not knowing what it is. I didn't know either when I was diagnosed.But, to be fair, I was just a kid. It's the morning of my tenth birthday. I wake up just a normal kid. Unaware that, by nighttime, I wouldn't be such a normal kid anymore. As I walk into the kitchen, I see the giant chocolate cake my mother has baked me and all the birthday balloons.I admit, I don't remember much of the day, other then a large breakfast and asking for seconds.Before dinner, my mother walks in as I'm changing. Immediately she's on the phone with the doctors and has an appointment ready. I complain and ask why on my birthday do I have to go get a check up. She tells me it's probably nothing, but I've lost a lot of weight even though I've been eating a lot. What she didn't tell me was how she could count every rib, or every spine notch.
By Raven Yule8 years ago in Longevity
I've Been Phone Free for a Month Now...
So the backstory, I dropped my S7 on the way back from college all the way back in May. It still worked up until about mid-September when the screen starting flashing white so much to the point I couldn't see the screen well enough. It was too expensive to get the screen replaced so I got a secondhand iPhone 5 off my step-dad as a replacement. This was fine until the battery gave out suddenly about a month ago that is. Since then I've been phone free and I'm kinda loving it. I've noticed a lot of differences in my life and all of them are for the better. Below are just some examples, there are meany other positive outcomes to going phone free but these are just the most important to me personally.
By Paige Gass8 years ago in Longevity
