Forums → The Tavern → Your medical questions answered!
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In an effort to procrastinate doing everything...okay, really simply to revise my material for next semester when I start working at hospitals (but the first one sounds less dorky D
...anyway...
In an effort to revise my material, I'm inviting each and every one of you to ask any questions you had on the human body (and mind). As long as it's medical, it can be pretty much anything- and I'll attempt to answer it as quickly as possible, hopefully off the top of my head.
HAVE AT IT
- 327 Replies
I must admit that almost everything about almost anything in medical thought is a closed book to me. In the box labeled 'fire starters'. Anyways, since my grandmother just died, due to a Gall Bladder rupture. So I was wondering what happens when your Gall Bladder ruptures? Why does it happen? It's a simple question that I could probably look up on the internet, but I trust you more.
Not strictly a medical question I suppose but since it seems quiet in here anyway i may as well ask - i bashed my toe about three weeks ago and it didnt bleed, but it sort of 'bloomed' a reddish purple mark there under the skin instantly.
Now three weeks later its still there but now its brown. Any ideas whats wrong with it?
morbid_giggle i think thats a bruise except scince it happend on a smaller place it cant spread verry well so the blood stays there turning it red, because bruises are bleeding under the skin.
Umm, why do we have finger nails?
but your blood is purple until it meets iron which you get when you eat good foods and it goes to your heart to make your blood turn red but really your blood is a blueish purple, so i dont know why its purple red
Great idea Strop! This could be very interesting and educational
I have a question: I have heard that it is not actually possible for a human to adapt to a certain type of weather. My roommate was saying this after she learned it in a class (she is pre-med). But apparently, if you live in a warm place all of your life, you do not become more adapted to it in any way. Same goes with extreme cold. Is it just that we are mentally better to deal with it? Or what?
@ Funkymonkey: First up, I'm sorry to hear your grandmother passed away. May she rest in peace.
The gall bladder is a small pouch that sits next to the liver. It has a duct (outgoing tube) that joins up with a duct from the liver (common hepatic duct) and then one from the pancreas (common bile duct) which then flows into the initial portion of the small intestine (duodenum).
What does the gall bladder do? It produces bile! (Hence the name of the bile duct). Bile neutralises acids in foods and helps digest the fats in foods, and is therefore quite important in humans. It just so happens that the enzymes in the small intestine only work effectively in a slightly alkaline environment whereas the inside of the stomach is strongly acidic! So if you didn't produce bile, you wouldn't die from it but you'd have more difficulty digesting things. You'd also have to limit the fats in your food otherwise it wouldn't get digested (and the end result is really gross and I'll spare you those details.)
How can a gallbladder rupture? Often, this is a serious end-complication of inflammation of the gallbladder (cholecystitis), which can be caused by a few things but often gallstones (cholelithiasis). Because of the blockage and irritation, the walls of the gallbladder become inflamed (a standard reaction), bile flow can stop, gut bacteria can infect the area, and the irritation can spread to the diaphragm and other parts of the intestinal tract.
In the serious cases, the gallbladder tissues can die and rot (necrosis) or rupture- usually because the blockage is so bad that the blood supply gets cut off too (no blood --> no oxygen --> tissues die). The greatest risk of death from a ruptured gallbladder is if infected bile spreads through the peritoneal cavity (i.e. your abdominal space), causing systemic infection.
I'll come back and answer the other questions later!
ok,
My question...?
'Why didn't I get a big purple bruise when I hit my cheekbone hard on someone elses skull?'
KIngRyan
@ morbid_giggle: DivineDarkness is partially right- but most likely you didn't exactly have a bruise.
A bruise is a type of haematoma- the general term for a collection of blood in tissues (the result of haemorrhage) either under the skin or in organs. Specifically, a bruise occurs when the bleeding occurs on a nearly microscopic scale- the patches appear because of damage to a collection of capillaries- the smallest type of blood vessel.
From experience, you may have done more focal damage to the blood vessels in your toe seeing as there's a smaller area, so it bled more directly under the skin and stayed there. It turned brown later as the blood dried up and a clot formed. Normally if it was on the outside it'd be a scab and would peel off but in this case it's stuck there until it degrades. Or, as I am tempted to do sometimes, slice the skin off and remove it myself. Though I don't really recommend that as it's harmless where it is.
@ DivineDarkness: Err, about the blood, I think you're slightly confusing things!
NB TO ALL: For the terms, I'm using Australian/English spelling and terminology! Some words may be completely different!
Red blood cells (RBCs- one of the major components of blood) need iron for part of the haemoglobin complex- it is this that binds oxygen and transports it from the lungs to tissues. It's also this that accounts for the difference in blood colours.
When blood is carrying oxygen, it is bright red. When blood isn't carrying oxygen, it's more 'bluish' (some say brownish, others say it's darker, let's just say it's NOT bright red.) RBCs pick up oxygen in the lungs, and they'll travel to the tissues that need oxygen, dump it there, and come back to the lungs for more. The cycle goes like this:
1) Blood picks up oxygen and dumps carbon dioxide in lungs (making it bright red.)
2) Blood travels from the lungs, in the pulmonary veins, to the left side of the heart.
3) Blood travels from the left side of the heart to all the various tissues in the arteries.
4) Blood then dumps oxygen in tissues and picks up carbon dioxide (and other stuff, leaving it purplish brown.)
5) Blood travels back from the various tissues to the right side of the heart in the veins.
6) Blood travels from right side of heart to the lungs via the pulmonary arteries.
7) Repeat from 1)
You may be confused by all the talk of arteries and veins thrown in- so I'll throw in this diagram snitched (with permission) from the GSCE Science text on WikiBooks:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/1/1c/Gcsebiolcirc.gif
By definition, arteries carry blood away from the heart to tissues, veins carry blood back to the heart from tissues. Note that the pulmonary veins carry oxygenated blood whilst the pulmonary arteries carry deoxygenated blood as the blood goes from tissues --> heart --> lungs --> heart and so forth. To say that venous blood is deoxygenated and arterial blood is oxygenated is a frequent oversimplification that can cause much confusion later down the road!
Great. I forgot to add the image tags, THEN I linked to the wrong URL.
Carlie asked:
I have a question: I have heard that it is not actually possible for a human to adapt to a certain type of weather. My roommate was saying this after she learned it in a class (she is pre-med). But apparently, if you live in a warm place all of your life, you do not become more adapted to it in any way. Same goes with extreme cold. Is it just that we are mentally better to deal with it? Or what?
Phrased as it is, that's a difficult question to answer. I'm going to assume that by 'adaptation' one means 'hysiological' adaptation, because from my classes, I figured that patterned behavioral changes are also adaptations- that there's not much point to arbitrarily dividing behavioral and physical attributes.
I'm not sure how correct I am, but I'm under the impression that as far as preserving the balance in bodily processes, certain things are more important than others. Specifically, temperature, fluid balance and the concentration of various ions/electrolytes in the blood must be kept fairly constant by the body otherwise certain things simply don't work. Enzymes that are crucial to our metabolic processes only work within a narrow pH and temperature range, for example- otherwise they denature and fall apart and, well, you die.
With this in mind, the body prioritises its functions. Longterm exposure to extremes of temperature will have your body responding accordingly with its default physiological mechanisms (shivering in cold, sweating when hot) but since certain metabolic processes are consistent in their output and others parameters must be kept constant, I'm guessing that the only actual 'adaptations' would be the physiological changes that come incidentally with the behavioral ones.
For example, if I was in a cold environment, I'd probably be inclined to eat more because more insulation is good and I'll also be burning more energy just to keep the body's core temperature constant. However, my body couldn't somehow regulate my temperature by burning more energy on its own- you can't get something for nothing and the byproducts of a process isn't something your body can change in the short term. Likewise, humidity would be another factor that your body cannot adapt to in that way.
One of the major factors that defines how you react to climate conditions as a whole would be endocrine function as that would largely dictate the parameters of your metabolic functioning. I won't go into the details of it as it's much too complicated and what little I learnt of it I've kinda forgotten anyway :P But I am under the impression that our endocrine system doesn't react to changes in temperature/humidity trends- it's governed by the signals it gets from its own internal messengers: hormones.
One 'climate' variable that I can think of that the body adapts to would be altitude and therefore air pressure. Seeing as oxygen is kinda important to us, if there's less of it in the air, the heart will raise its output accordingly to make sure that the tissues are still getting the required amount, and over time the muscle will thicken. The blood also thickens as more RBCs are produced, and the efficiency of delivery of oxygen to tissues and tolerance of by-product buildup is increased.
This doesn't come for free, either. Thicker blood makes it harder on the heart, and the body, being more stressed, is susceptible to pathology. Furthermore the body starts consuming muscle at high altitudes in order to provide energy just to keep going.
The object lesson really is that optimal conditions are just that. Your body will try to cope with everything it can but nothing comes for free.
DivineDarkness asked:
Umm, why do we have finger nails?
This is a hard question to answer because medicine doesn't aim to literally answer 'why do we have this' questions. I could give 'what is it used for' and 'how did they come about' questions a shot, but with regard to fingernails, this is somewhat speculative, so ironically, it's natural that one would ask this question.
Fingernails appear to be quite handy. Just imagine what you couldn't do without them- your fingertips would lose some rigidity, you couldn't scratch, pick things, pull at strings and other very fine manipulation tasks. That is to say that they're something that increases the use of our fingers themselves greatly.
KingRyan asked:
Why didn't I get a big purple bruise when I hit my cheekbone hard on someone elses skull?
Most likely because you didn't break any blood vessels. Not all impacts cause bruises, and some people generally bruise more easily than others.
thanks strop, now i can stop worrying that theres something wrong with it
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