HG Smart

You may not have heard of Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome (ZES). It is a fairly rare condition. However, aside from diet and stress, Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome is among the more common causes of heartburn, acid reflux, and ulcers.

The condition is actually caused by tiny tumors called gastrinomas that are located in the pancreas and/or the duodenum. These tumors cause the stomach to have extra acid. The symptoms are similar to peptic ulcers:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Sudden weight loss
• Severe acid and gastroesophageal reflux

However, while gastrinomas could eventually cause a sufferer of ZES to develop peptic ulcers, the major risk involved is the tumors metastasizing and spreading throughout the body.

DIAGNOSIS

If a person suffers these symptoms, he or she-mainly 30 to 50 year old hes-will report them to a physician. That physician looks at the symptoms and, if he or she feels that it is necessary, measures the stomach acid and gastrin in the blood of the patient. If the measurements suggest it might be ZES, imaging tests such as OctreoScan, Angiography, Ultrasound, and CT Scan will be used to find tumors in the pancreas and duodenum. Read more…

In the good old days when men sold their souls to the company store for sixteen tons and even then only got deeper in debt, there was no technology to warn the miners if gas was building up. The first they might know is an explosion bringing down the roof. Being careful men, they experimented with different ways of testing the air for gas and canaries were the most reliable indicator they found. All they had to do was keep the birds in the mine. If they fell off their perches, there was too much gas around and it was time to evacuate. So much for the history lesson.

Every year, modern medicine directs a lot of money into basic research to look for ways of detecting serious health problems in their early stages. Sometimes, technology is the answer. So many women who go for regular mammograms detect breast cancer early and the treatment is more likely to save the breast and guarantee a long life. In other cases, there are early symptoms that may not, at first sight, have any connection to the more serious condition that appears later. In the case of heart disease, there’s now very clear evidence that erectile dysfunction in younger men is a very clear warning of a possible stroke or heart attack within the next five years.

The explanation for this is slightly complicated. Various types of cells line the walls of our blood vessels. The most sensitive of these are called endothelial. For reasons no one can explain, there are more of these cells in the penis than anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. If you eat a diet containing too much fat, there’s likely to be a build up of plaque on the walls of the arteries. This hardens the cells and prevents the arteries from dilating and contracting. Since the formation of an erection depends on dilation, anything preventing it in younger men signals high risk the same problem will spread to other blood vessels in the body. Read more…