What Causes Pain

People that experience a heartburn attack feel the burning pain behind their breast bone, although some feel the pain in their middle back. Contrary to the name, a heartburn attack has to do with the digestive system rather than the heart.

Severe Heartburn Requires a Doctor Visit

Ordinary heartburn is a normal part of modern life. Quick meals, spicy food and lots of caffeine translate into occasional bouts of a burning sensation in the chest. Usually, an antacid tablet or just a little time takes care of the problem and life goes on. You know deep down that this is a medical problem, but it’s so common and usually not more than an annoyance.

Nevertheless, the symptoms of heartburn can mimic the symptoms of more serious disorders and severe heartburn can lead to chronic problems. How do you know when it reaches the level of severe heartburn and you need to see a doctor?

Common Sense

Some of the ways to know when to go to the doctor are just common sense. The symptoms of even mild heartburn are difficult to overlook as you know your own body. When the symptoms change, become more frequent or more painful you know it. Often, people feel a little silly to bother a doctor with a condition that could be a common, minor problem. No one likes to look like a complainer. However, it is always safer to err on the side of caution with a matter like severe heartburn.

When your heartburn persists even after you have taken the medication that normally works, you may be experiencing severe heartburn. If the problem lasts longer than usual and the pain is worse, you should call your doctor. Difficulty in swallowing, pain when swallowing, or the feeling of having something stuck in your throat is a sign that you should contact your doctor. Don’t ignore pain that keeps you awake or wakes you during the night, nor should you ignore pain in the neck, chest or back.

Ordinary heartburn will not cause vomiting and signs of blood should never be ignored. Other signs of severe heartburn include persistent hoarseness, throat pain and coughing or wheezing. Excessive saliva or serious weight loss are indications that you should call the doctor. Above all, ordinary heartburn should not interfere with your regular routines.

Accepting severe heartburn as part of your life is not necessary. If over the counter medicine or home remedies don’t take care of the problem, you may be experiencing something other than heartburn. Acid indigestion, for instance, is not the same as heartburn in spite of similar symptoms. It is much more serious and can lead to much more chronic conditions. If you feel that you are experiencing severe heartburn on a regular basis, assume that you are right and contact your physician.

For the average person, getting a kidney infection is relatively uncommon. There are some conditions, however, that can lead to kidney infections. The medical term for this kind of infection is called pyelonephritis. It can lead to kidney failure and also to spread of infection from the kidneys to the bloodstream, leading to a dangerous case of gram negative sepsis, which can be fatal in the elderly.

Kidney stones can be a cause of chronic or recurrent kidney infection. Stones are foreign bodies inside the “pelvis” or urinary side of the kidney and can allow bacteria to seed onto them. The kidney stones then become a reservoir for bacteria, leading to recurrent infection.

Prostate disease can cause kidney infection. When the prostate is enlarged or inflamed, it can result in a back up of urine from the bladder all the way up to the kidneys. This can trap bacteria in the urinary tract and can lead to both bladder and kidney infections. These can be very dangerous because prostate enlargement is most common in elderly men who often do not fight off infection well. The mortality rate from kidney infections is higher in the elderly than they are in young people.

Any kind of narrowing or blockage further down the urinary tract can cause kidney infection. Children can be born with abnormal ureters that cause them to develop kidney infections at a very early age. Only through X-Rays involving dye can the blockage be found and repaired. Anytime a child gets frequent bladder or kidney infections, especially boys in which infections are rare, an X-Ray should be done to determine whether or not the child is born with an abnormally placed ureters or ureters.

Women in pregnancy are prone to kidney infection. They often present with blood in the urine and extreme pain on the side where the infected kidney is. This can cause irritability of the uterus and preterm labor.

Most kidney infection problems occur when bacteria come up from the outside through the bladder and up inside the ureters. In rarer cases, however, the individual can have infection first in the bloodstream, a condition called gram negative sepsis. Because the kidney filters blood, it can collect bacteria and cause infection in the kidneys themselves.

The signs and symptoms of a kidney infection are often unmistakable. The individual experiences a fever with flank pain on the side where the kidney is infected. They also have bacteria, blood and sometimes kidney cells showing up in the urinalysis. This is a very painful infection and must be treated aggressively.

The primary cause of a kidney infection is that of bacteria called Gram negative bacteria. They are the type of bacteria found in the stool and because of the proximity of the rectum and the urethra, bacteria from the stool can come up through the urethra, into the bladder and up through the ureters to the kidneys.

Migraine headaches generally come in two forms: With and without auras. The headaches themselves can be equally painful whether or not an aura is present.

Statistics indicate that only about 20% of migraine sufferers actually experience these auras. However, I’ve actually observed that the prevalence of aura type migraines is substantially less than that.

What Is A Migraine Aura?

The aura is a distortion in perception. Most often a migraine aura is a visual alteration or other sensory phenomena occurring just before the pain phase of a migraine headache starts. The aura also typically ends before the headache itself begins.

Symptoms associated with auras may include flashing lights, geometric patterns, or distorted vision.

However, some people may have non-visual auras involving hearing sounds (usually buzzing), olfactory auras involving smelling odors, or tactile auras that manifest like a physical touching sensation.

Characteristics Associated With Auras Include:

Flashing lights

Wavy or zigzagging lines

Visual spots or other shapes

Blind spots or partial loss of sight

Blurry vision

Olfactory hallucinations, or the smelling of aromas that aren’t really there

Tingling feeling or numbness about the face or extremities

Difficulty speaking or forming words

Confusion

Vertigo (dizziness)

Partial and temporary paralysis

Hearing loss

Reduced sensation to touch

Hypersensitivity to feel and touch

Migraine auras normally lasts from 20 minutes to an hour; however some sufferers have been known to experience aura symptoms lasting up to two days. Migraine aura symptoms can and do vary tremendously from one migraine sufferer to the next.

“Negative” and “Positive” Symptoms

The most commonly reported aura consists of flashing lights or zigzagging lines, known as the so-called “positive” symptoms.

Partial or total visual field loss or vision blackouts are called “negative symptoms”.

A combination of so-called “negative symptoms” (such as vision loss) with the “positive symptoms” (like zigzagging lines) make up the typically distinctive features of a migraine aura.

Vision blackouts – the “negative symptoms” – are caused by a depression of nerve activity. On the other hand, zigzagging lines are caused by hyperactivity in the nerve cells.

Cortical Spreading Depression (CSD)

Special imaging and magnetic brainwave studies strongly suggest that Cortical Spreading Depression (CSD) forms the biological basis for the “negative symptoms” of a migraine aura.

From studying a particular type of migraine – Familial Hemiplegic Migraine (FHM) – recent findings have shown two genes are responsible for causing this symptom. These genes – which control the ion flow of calcium, sodium and potassium to the nerve cells – are damaged in people inclined to this type of migraine. It’s believed this genetic mutation makes a person’s neurons susceptible to CSD.

In essence, the nerve cells (or neurons) don’t get properly “recharged” resulting in diminished or depressed neural activity. Whatever the reason, this reduced activity slows down normal body functioning. If the affected neuron complex happens to control the sight centers (visual cortex) then visual disturbances or losses may occur.

However, as these neurons begin to react to or recover from the CSD, they may become hyper excitable, resulting in visual phenomena such as flashing lights and zig zag lines. (It’s sort of like the neuron’s compensate by rebounding and going into overdrive!)

This hyper excitability then activates the major nerve complex behind the eye (trigeminal nerve). This initiates migraine headaches by activating the highly pain-sensitive “dura mater” – the membrane sheet wrapping around the brain.

Calcium Channel Blocker Drugs

Researchers speculated that blocking the ion channels flowing through the neuron cell membranes would help reduce migraine pain. Some suggested using drugs to slow down and block these channels for example “calcium channel blocker” medications.

Calcium channel blockers (such as verapamil) are widely used to treat heart disease and high blood pressure. They’re also now extensively used to prevent migraine headaches. Unfortunately, their effectiveness in migraine prevention is minimal at best.

A Better Method

There is another option a migraine cure. Cure the migraine and never worry about their associated auras or pain again.

Recent reports indicate migraine headaches can indeed be totally abolished as a number of elite medical clinics catering to women have testified. Under their treatment protocols, migraines are completely eliminated in 80% of their patients.

These successes are limited to women only, as addressing a women’s hormones is the basis of the cure. Some clinics have published their treatment protocols and even made them available to the public.

The Women’s Health Institute of Texas believes that a migraine cure certainly eliminates the migraine auras altogether – and concern over the ensuing migraine headache may no longer be necessary at least in women.