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Approach anemia
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A very common nutritional disease is anemia. Anemia is a condition that can develop when a person’s body lacks healthy red blood cells or hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the way red blood cells receive oxygen. Four percent of the children in the United States between three and five years old are anemic. Anemia can run in families and it can be passed down through generations and it can affect your whole life. On a positive note anemia can be treated and those with this nutritional disease can live regular lives.
Cause of Anemia
Anemia has three main causes. The most common cause of anemia is blood loss. Anemic women usually lose a large amount of blood with heavy menstrual cycles. When blood is coming from the digestive or urinary tract blood can also be lost. Surgeries and caner also can cause blood loss. If a large amount of blood is lost the body may lose a lot of red blood cells causing anemia. Another cause is when red blood cells can’t be produced. You can inherit having a small amount of red blood cells, meaning your parents passed the disease to you. Or having few red blood cells can be acquired, which means you weren’t born with the disease. You can acquire anemia by having a poor diet, having off balance hormone levels, having an ongoing diseases, or pregnancy. Lastly if a person has a red blood cell destruction can cause anemia. If too many red blood cells are destroyed you are still losing red bloods cells. This can happen if someone has an enlarged or diseased spleen. The spleen removes old red blood cells out of the body. If the spleen is enlarged or diseased, it could remove more red blood cells than necessary which would lead to having anemia. Also if too many red blood cells are destroyed that can lead to sickle cell ...
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Conclusion
Anemia is a condition that can develop in anyone of any age. It can range from being minor or warning signs of something more serious. When a person lacks enough healthy red blood cells anemia can occur. Anemia can be treated with medication and changes in one’s diet.
References
Nordqvist, C. (2009). What Is Anemia? What Causes Anemia? .MedicalNewsToday.com. Retrieved December 14, 2013, from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ 158800.php
Edmundson, A. (2013, May 13). Understanding Anemia - the Basics. WebMD.com. Retrieved December14, 2013, from http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/understanding-anemia basics
(N.A.). (2012, May 18). What Causes Anemia?. nhlbi.nih.gov. Retrieved December14, 2013, from http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/anemia/causes.html
Vitamin B12 is an essential water soluble vitamin that must be carefully regulated to prevent deficiency related complications in the nervous, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular systems (e). This review begins with a discussion of B12 absorption and role as a cofactor for L-methylmalonyl-CoA mutase and methionine synthase (e). Laboratory findings are interpreted along with associated disease conditions. Finally, assay methods are discussed including blood smear and complete blood count, B12 competitive-binding immunoenzymatic assay, homocysteine tandem mass spectrometry, methylmalonic acid liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, and the Schilling test.
Vitamin B12 deficiency limits selenium methylation and excretion resulting in higher tissue selenium levels and subsequent toxicity. It occurs in people whose digestive systems do not adequately absorb the vitamin from the foods they eat. Vegetarians who eat eggs and milk products are the most at risk because, on average, they consume less than half the adult vitamin B12 Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) while strict vegans (who don't eat any animal products, including meat, eggs, or milk) are at an even greater risk. Vitamin B12 is important since it works with the vitamin folate to make the body’s genetic material and help keep levels of the amino acid homocysteine in check which helps to decrease heart disease risk. It is also essential in the production of red blood cells which carry oxygen through the blood to the body’s tissues. Life Extension gives offers some of selenium supplements. Babies who are born of parents with low selenium and vitamin B12 rich foods are at risk of anaemia.
Anemia is a disease that is commonly seen in veterinary medicine. This disease can be described as having low amounts of red blood cells and a reduced amount of hemoglobin in the circulating blood, which reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. It develops from loss, destruction or lack of production of red blood cells. Anemia is usually a secondary disease caused by another disease or medical condition. There are three different types of anemia; regenerative, non-regenerative and relative.
Anaemia, which is a low level of oxygen in the blood due to a lack of red blood cells or lack of haemoglobin heart failure, which means your heart is having problem pumping enough blood around your body, usually because the heart muscle has become too weak or stiff to work properly a problem with your heart rate or rhythm, such as atrial fibrillation.
Sickle cell anemia occurs when an abnormal form of hemoglobin (HbS) is produced. HbS molecules tend to clump together, making red blood cells sticky, stiff, and more fragile, and causing them to form into a curved, sickle shape. Red blood cells containing HbS can go back and forth between being shaped normally and being sickle shaped until they eventually become sickle shaped permanently. Instead of moving through the bloodstream easily, these sickle cells can clog blood vessels and deprive the body's tissues and organs of the oxygen they need to stay healthy.
The spleen, an organ on the left side of the abdomen across from the liver, is responsible for filtering the blood for infections and other abnormalities. Normal red blood cells can change shape and squeeze through this filter, but sickled cells get stuck and cannot recirculate through the body, so that the number of circulating blood cells goes down. Meanwhile, the bone marrow, where red blood cells are made, pitches in by making more cells. It can't keep up with the destruction, though, so the total number of red blood cells drops to a low level and the body becomes anemic. ("Anemic" is the medical word for having a low number of red blood cells.)
There are many causes of anemia in the body. Some factors include genetics and deficiencies in the diet. Ms. A claims that for the past 10 – 12 years menorrhagia and dysmenorrheal have been a problem for her. Menorrhagia is abnormal and heavy menstrual bleeding during menstruation (Mayoclinic, 2013). Menorrhagia can deplete iron levels in the blood and increase the risk of an individual to have iron deficiency anemia. This is the cause of Ms. A’s anemia. Moreover, Ms. A says that she constantly takes aspirin especially in the summer to prevent stiffness in the joints. Aspirin affects and hinders the production of red blood cells (Mayoclinic, 2013). From the description of anemia given above, the lack of red blood cells, leads to low levels of iron and therefore low levels of hemoglobin which in turn affects the transportation of oxygen and thereby causing shortness of breath. Ms. A’s initial complains of shortness of breath and fatigue is the reason why she went to see the physician.
Sickle cell anemia is a disease that reforms the patient’s red blood cells, which makes the red blood cells has an abnormal shape like a sickle. Sickled red blood cells can result to severe anemia; decrease causes numerous painful symptoms in patients. A defective protein called hemoglobin is what cause the abnormal shape of the red blood cells in the sickle cell patients.
Blood transfusions allow for infected blood cells to be cycled out and replaced by fresh new blood cells in hope that hemoglobin levels will be restored within the body. When treating a person with liver disease it’s almost routine for them to experience several blood transfusions a month in order to help restore properly working blood cells back into their bodies. Blood transfusions are also a more structurally sound medical procedure when compared to several medications or radiation therapy alternatives, which can in turn cause a number of other problems. Another example of a disease that can be supported by the cycling of blood is Anemia. There several different types of anemia including aplastic, fanconi, hemolytic, and sickle cell anemia. The Mayo Clinic describes Anemia as “condition in which you don't have enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to the body's tissues”. Hematologists have been prescribing their anemia patients with several blood transfusions a month in hopes of training their bodies to make proper working blood cells once again. A study posted in the Journal of Palliative Medicine was conducted on 64 volunteer patients with several different forms of anemia to see if blood transfusions would benefit their hemoglobin values over a 15-day period. It turns out that 95 percent of the patients had some
The problem is that sickle cell anemia affects about 72,000 Americans in the United States. Sickle cell anemia is an inherited disease in which the body is unable to produce normal hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein. Abnormal hemoglobin can morph cells that can become lodged in narrow blood vessels, blocking oxygen from reaching organs and tissues. The effects of sickle cell anemia are bouts of extreme pain, infectious, fever, jaundice, stroke, slow growth, organ, and failure.
Iron is a mineral that is found the in hemoglobin of the Red Blood Cells. It facilitates in the transport of oxygen all over the body. Without this mineral, oxygen cannot be carried to its full capacity. 1 out of 10 women and small children have iron deficiencies. Lacking iron causes lethargy and a weakened immune system. Children who do not have an adequate intake of iron put themselves at risk for intellectual developmental problems. However, an iron deficient person is not necessarily anemic. 7.8 million women are iron deficient, while only 3.3 million women are anemic (http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9704/iron_def.htm). When the deficiency becomes so severe that the circulating Red Blood Count and the minerals Ht, Hg, and Hem drop below normal, anemia occurs (See Figure 1). The hormone androgen causes men and women to have different normal values of the hemogram (http://www.medstudents.com.br/hemat/hemat4.htm). Low ferritin (iron storage molecule) and high TIBC (tota...
Vitamin B12 deficiency is common in the United States and often responsible for anemia and neurologic symptoms, particularly in the elderly.
Red blood cells are carriers of oxygen. A percentage of these cells contain hemoglobin, which has the capacity to combine with iron. It's the iron-hemoglobin molecular structure that helps carry oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to your tissues and in return, delivers carbon dioxide back to the lungs to be expelled. A CBC with Differential that shows low red blood cell levels can indicate anemia. RBCs comprise about 40% of total blood volume; the RBC count is the number of red blood cells per cubic millimeter of blood (Rauen, 2012). Normal red blood cells values vary a...
Crime has a substantial influence on everyday life. Theories for criminal behaviour are as old as the types of behaviours themselves. Amongst these theories is the idea of anomie. The sociological notion of anomie is used as a theoretical tool to understand the intersection of social structure, culture and criminal or deviant behaviour. Although the concept of anomie theory has varied between scholars, central to the different versions of anomie theory is the premise that human are normative beings; that people think and act on the basis of commonly held beliefs and traditions. Anomie theory was popularised by the classic works of Emile Durkheim and further explored by Robert K Merton.
Thalassemia is a blood disorder transferred through families. It occurs when the body makes less hemoglobin than needed or an unusual form of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carry oxygen. The disorder makes an excessive amount of destruction of red blood cells. This eventually leads to anemia.