Al Fatihah to En. Islah & Simple Guide to Heart Attack & Strokes

Last week, we were shocked to learn of the sudden passing of our colleagues, En. Islah. He was a jovial, happy, friendly, positive guy.. still a considerably young for heart attacks, I think he hasn't reached his 50th years yet.

Thruthfully I didn't know him all that good, but for the few weeks he was our bosses (due to the last boss being posted, and the supposedly new boss didnt came in yet), he was very helpful, friendly.. overall his aura is a lovely lovely positive tinge.

Anyway, from the replies in our officials emails after the sudden notification of his deaths, and the FB status of collegues, all expressing shock and extreme sadness of his passing, we know he was a very popular guy.

So what happen?? Seems its nothing. A day before that, a group of friends remarked he was happy trying on our new corporate shirt. The morning it happen, a few more saw him enjoying his breakfast. Then, everything happen in a flash. He felt pain in his chest, went to the doc in our forth floor, collapsed, and while all the doctors and medical personnel tried to revive him, he passed on.

So sad, please please, dear readers, if you are a muslim, please dedicate al Fatihah to this beautiful guy, may Allah grant him mercy and Jannah (paradise)..

Am sharing the shared note by one of the highest boss in my organization, he himself greatly affected by the sudden passing, more profoundly as he is also considered on borrowed time, after a heart bypass surgery. Read on, hope we all benefited.

1. HEART ATTACK AND STROKE

HEART ATTACK   The heart is a strong, active muscle which needs a constant supply of blood to nourish the muscle and keep it beating. Blood flow to the heart is supplied by the coronary arteries. A heart attack occurs when the flow of blood through a coronary artery becomes severely reduced or stopped altogether. The loss of blood damages the heart, chiefly by cutting off oxygen to the heart muscle. The blood supply can be reduced by coronary spasm, the build-up of cholesterol plaque inside the artery (called atherosclerosis), or from blood clots, which arise from the rupture of cholesterol plaque.

The illustration above shows a blood clot obstructing the flow of blood through a coronary artery. If the obstruction lasts a long time, portions of the heart muscle nourished by the artery will die. This weakens the heart's ability to pump blood to the rest of the body, a condition called heart failure. If the damage is great enough, nerve fibers in the heart—which tell the heart when and how to beat—will also die. If too many nerve fibers die, the heart will stop beating, resulting in cardiac arrest and the death of the victim.

2.    STROKE

Just like the heart, the brain also needs a steady supply of blood to function properly. There are four main blood supplies to the brain—two carotid arteries and two vertebral arteries. A stroke (or brain attack) occurs when blood flow is severely reduced or stopped due to obstructions from spasm, cholesterol plaques or blood clots.

The illustration on the right shows a blood clot obstructing the flow of blood to the brain, causing damage to brain tissue. Many different kinds of neurologic symptoms can result from brain attacks, depending on the site and length of the attack. Short-lived attacks are called Transient Ischemic Attacks or mini-strokes. Attacks that last more than an hour and produce permanent disabilities are simply called strokes. And strokes that provoke no immediate symptoms are called silent strokes.
3. STRESS

Stress is defined as the sum of the body's reactions to adverse influences. Often, we can feel the effects of stress because it is accompanied by an activation of the sympathetic nervous system. The activation of this system can provoke strong cardiovascular changes, such as rapidly raising your blood pressure and heart rate. That's why episodes of acute stress are strongly felt inside of us. Moments of stress are often a trigger for strokes and heart attacks. Here's why. An artery is designed to react quickly to moments of stress by contracting or expanding in response to the signals it gets from the many nerve fibers that connect it to the sympathetic nervous system. When an artery is diseased by cholesterol plaque, it is much more likely to collapse into spasm as a result of stress. The force of the spasm cracks open the plaque, releasing soft cholesterol, which produces a blood clot. The clot can occlude the artery at the site of spasm or be swept away by the bloodstream, causing an occlusion further down the artery. Either way, the result may be a stroke or heart attack. Most people assume that only physical influences (such as shoveling too much snow on a winter morning) can cause the stress which leads to heart attacks. But did you know that chronic mental stress has a much more important role to play than physical stress as a trigger of strokes and heart attacks? Mental stress is a bit difficult to define, but its effect on your arteries is very real. On a small scale, mental stress accompanies many of the tasks that we attend to every day. These tasks usually involve some level of frustration or mental effort—solving an arithmetic problem, speaking in public, memorizing facts for an important test and so on.          On a larger scale, chronic mental stress is best understood as a "stonewall worry," that is, the state of your mind when it is confronted by a problem that seems to have no ready solution, such as loneliness, relationship troubles or depression. Mental stress has much the same affect on your blood vessels as physical stress does―it causes the arteries to contract or dilate, often with surprising swiftness. (A blush is the almost instantaneous dilation of blood vessels of the face.) The artery spasm caused by mental stress can be so strong that it crunches cholesterol plaque, breaking it open and allowing the formation of dangerous blood clots. Mental stress can be a chronic condition; your blood vessels can be affected for long periods of time. For that reason, and because mental stress is not readily observed, the cumulative affect on your arteries can be very dangerous, eventually provoking a stroke or heart attack.

It is possible to detect the effect of mental stress on your arteries with the non-invasive and painless Sit-Down Stress Test, an invaluable tool that safely predicts your risk for a heart attack.

Hope we all learn something today. Sometimes, it is worthwhile to just relax and smell the roses, and appreciate what we have today.