In the middle of the night, the ambulance roared to a stop on the front lawn of the emergency department, the door opened, and the medical staff pushed out a flat car, shouting that everyone should give way.
Lying on the flat car was a 42-year-old man, who had fallen into a deep coma at this moment.
According to the man's family reaction, it was about one o'clock in the morning, the man woke up, and then said that he was dizzy and had a headache, at first he thought he had a cold, and his wife got up to find him cold medicine, just found it, and when he returned to the bedroom, he found that the man had been unable to call, and hurriedly dialed 120 for help.
42 years old, not too old, but why did he suddenly fall into a coma?
Through examination, the doctor found that the culprit that caused the man to fall into a coma was actually a cerebral infarction. Unfortunately, the site of infarction in men is located in the brainstem, which is known as the center of life because a series of important physiological functions, including heartbeat, breathing, and digestion, are related to the brainstem.
At the age of 42, he suddenly suffered from a brain stem infarction, was admitted to the ICU, and was given a critical illness notice, the man's family is difficult to accept such a heavy reality.
When people reach middle age, they must be vigilant against a disease, that is, cerebral infarction. According to data from The Lancet, there are 13.7 million new cerebral infarction patients in the world every year, of which 40% are in the mainland, about 5.51 million people, and the number of deaths is as high as 2 million every year.
It is no exaggeration to say that the number of new cases of cerebral infarction in the mainland every year ranks first in the world, and many people have such questions, in fact, there are not many fat people in China, but why is the incidence of cerebral infarction in China so high?
Some people have compared the United States with the United States, saying that there are more fat people in the United States than in China, but why is the incidence of cerebral infarction in the United States very low? A study in the New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that the obesity rate in the United States has been increasing year by year, but the incidence of cerebral infarction has continued to decline, and the reason may be related to the fact that the United States has made it mandatory for the masses to supplement folic acid in the past 10 years.
Therefore, everyone takes it for granted that the main reason why there are more and more cerebral infarctions in China is that there is too little folic acid supplementation. You must know that folic acid supplementation in China is basically only thought of supplementing when you are pregnant, and most of them are supplemented by women, and very few folic acid supplements are made by men.
But is that really the case?
In our body, there is a substance called homocysteine, which is a sulfur-containing amino acid and an important intermediate product produced during the metabolism of methionine and cysteine. Normally, homocysteine is catabolized in the body and its concentration is kept low. However, in daily life, due to primary and secondary causes, blood homocysteine metabolism will be affected, resulting in an increase in homocysteine concentration. High homocysteine significantly increases the risk of coronary heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease. Therefore, homocysteine is an important indicator of human health.
Folic acid can reduce the level of homocysteine, so it can indeed prevent the occurrence of cerebral infarction.
However, in fact, not all cerebral infarctions are related to high homocysteine, and many patients with cerebral infarction do not have high levels of homocysteine, so even if these people supplement with more folic acid, they cannot completely avoid cerebral infarction.
The mechanism of cerebral infarction is very complex, and in addition to high homocysteine, there are the following three banes.
1. Long-term high-salt diet
Chinese especially love to eat salt, the daily intake of salt exceeds most countries in the world, high salt diet and blood pressure increase is proportional, the mainland every 4 adults have 1 hypertensive patient, hypertension and cerebral infarction is closely related, try to ask, how high the incidence of hypertension, how can the incidence of cerebral infarction be low?
The World Health Organization recommends that adults should not consume more than 5 grams of salt per day, but unfortunately, the salt intake of Chinese people can reach as much as 10 grams.
2. The mainland has the largest number of smokers in the world
It's no exaggeration at all, the number of smokers on the mainland is as high as 350 million, the highest in the world, and many Chinese movies and TV dramas will show scenes of smoking.
In fact, smoking not only hurts the lungs, but also the harmful substances in cigarettes, such as nicotine and tar, can also damage blood vessels, so the occurrence of cerebral infarction is actually closely related to smoking.
3. Failure to pay attention to the control of underlying diseases
Chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes are closely related to cerebral infarction, unfortunately, although many people have these chronic diseases, they do not pay attention to it, and even the most basic blood pressure and blood sugar are not well controlled.
Because cerebral infarction is often menacing, cerebral infarction is a disease with a high mortality and disability rate.