What organs cant live without?

Health Conditions Related to 5 Different Organs in Human Body

Did you know the human body consists of 78 organs, and five are considered the most important for survival?

The heart, brain, kidneys, liver and lungs are 5 such organs a human can’t live without. If either of these organs stops functioning for even 10 seconds, one cannot survive. Thus, it is always recommended by physicians to eat a healthy and balanced diet, get adequate sleep, exercise regularly and adopt healthy lifestyle habits.

Organs are made of tissues that perform functions in all living beings and collectively form organ systems. We have listed below the list of 78 different organs in the human body:

And out of all these organs, we are going to shed some light on the 5 most important organs and the health conditions that come with them.

Health Conditions Related to Heart

Various heart conditions are called heart disease. It is always wise to see your health professional in case of any discomfort in your heart and get an appropriate diagnosis.

Below are the most common heart conditions and their symptoms:

Coronary Heart Disease

The most prevalent heart condition worldwide is coronary heart disease. This occurs when the heart’s blood vessels, the coronary arteries, become narrow or get blockage and can’t dispense enough blood to the heart. This condition can lead to angina or a heart attack and require immediate medical assistance.

For most people, the first hint that they have Coronary Heart Disease is a heart attack and more symptoms like– discomfort or pain in the chest (angina), nausea, lightheadedness, weakness, cold sweat, discomfort or pain in arms or shoulders and breathlessness.

Also, this heart condition can weaken the heart muscle over time, leading to heart failure or a severe condition where the heart fails to pump blood normally.

Heart Failure

Your body fails to get enough blood and oxygen supply when your heart doesn’t pump effectively, and your heart starts developing different symptoms, such as fatigue and breathlessness. And ineffectiveness of the heart eventually leads to heart failure.

Valve Disease

Valves help to regulate blood flow throughout the heart and make it function effectively. If anything goes wrong with the valves, it can increase your heart’s workload and strain your heart, leading to symptoms such as shortness of breath, fatigue, swollen ankles, chest pain or palpitations and dizziness.

High Blood Pressure

Another most common condition, high blood pressure or hypertension, is not a disease but a disorder. It can lead to a high risk of developing severe conditions such as strokes, coronary heart disease and heart attacks.

Congenital Heart Conditions

Conginetial heart conditions happen when the heart’s structure has an abnormality or defect while a foetus is developing inside the mother’s womb. Some congenital heart defects could be life-threatening immediately after birth or over time.

Inherited Heart Conditions

The heart conditions passed on through the families are inherited conditions. They are also known as familial or genetic heart conditions. Such conditions can affect people at any age and can also be life-threatening.

Often people succumb to the inherited heart condition abruptly for no obvious reason.

Health Conditions Related to Lungs

When you take a breath, your lungs inhale oxygen and deliver it to the bloodstream. The cells of the human body require oxygen properly to work and grow. During a typical day, a human breathes almost 25,000 times, but people with lung disease have difficulty breathing without the assistance of any breathing apparatus.

Read through the three types of lung diseases:

Airway Diseases

Airway diseases directly affect the airways (tubes) that supply oxygen and other gases in and out of the lungs. They usually cause a blockage or narrow the airways and lead to airway diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis. People with airway diseases often say they feel obstructive while breathing.

Lung Tissue Diseases

Lung Tissue Diseases affect the structure of lung tissue. Lungs usually fail to expand completely due to scarring or inflammation in the lungs. Thus, it gets hard for the lungs to take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Ones with this disorder say they feel as if they are wearing something tight on the body that is suffocating them. Pulmonary fibrosis and Sarcoidosis are two significant examples of lung tissue disease.

Lung Circulation Diseases

These diseases directly affect the blood vessels in the lungs. The major causes of these diseases are clotting, scarring or inflammation of the blood vessels. Lungs get less abled while inhaling oxygen and exhaling the blood vessels. These diseases also have a direct impact on the heart as an example of a lung circulation disease is pulmonary hypertension. People with these disorders often feel breathless when they tire themselves doing some activity.

Health Conditions Related to Liver

The organ essential for you to digest your food and helps your body to get rid of toxic substances is the liver. It is about the size of a football and placed just under your rib cage on the right side of your abdomen. Liver diseases can either be genetically inherited or caused by several factors that damage the liver, such as obesity, alcohol and some viruses.

Types of Liver Diseases

Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C

Hepatitis A, B, and C are caused by various viruses. These viruses may cause similar symptoms, but they are different in several ways depending on how they are transmitted and treated. Also, Acute illness is caused by hepatitis A whereas hepatitis B and C could become chronic.

Fatty Liver Disease and Cirrhosis

Fatty liver is also called hepatic steatosis, and it happens when fat builds up in and around the liver. A smaller amount of fat in your liver is normal, but a more than normal amount can become a severe health problem. Conditions that lead to scarring (cirrhosis) can damage the liver, which can lead to a life-threatening condition that is liver. But early diagnosis can give the liver time to recover from this deadly health condition.

Several types of cancer can form in the liver. The most common type of liver cancer is hepatocellular carcinoma, which begins in the primary type of liver cell called hepatocyte. Other types of liver cancer– intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and hepatoblastoma, are not much common.

Health Conditions Related to Kidney

Kidneys help regulate your body’s pH levels, salt, potassium, and more. Lifestyle habits and genetic factors majorly affect kidney function. Kidneys are most important for a healthy body and life. They are majorly responsible for filtering waste products, excessive water and other toxicities out of the blood. All toxins are stored in the bladder and then pass through urination.

Types of Kidney Diseases

Chronic Kidney Disease

The most common form of kidney disease is chronic kidney disease. It is a long-term condition that hardly improves over time. The common cause of this condition is high blood pressure.

It is considered contagious for the kidneys as it can aggravate the pressure on the glomeruli. Glomeruli are the small blood vessels in the kidneys to clean the blood. The aggravated pressure damages these vessels, and kidney function begins to slacken.

Kidney Stones

Kidney stones are prevalent in most age groups. They occur when minerals and other substances in the blood start to crystallise in the kidneys forming solid masses or stone-like particles.

The common practice of ejecting stones from the body is urination, and they can be extremely painful and cause significant discomfort and problems.

Health Conditions Related to Brain

Your brain controls your entire body and keeps it in check. It helps control your thoughts, memory, speech, and movement and regulates the function of various organs in the body.

A healthy brain allows you to work quickly and accordingly. However, the results can be devastating when there are some health concerns related to the brain.

You lose brain cells when you suffer a stroke, affecting your ability to think clearly and carefully. Brain tumours can highly affect brain function as they press on nerves and weaken your brain.

Summing it Up

Medical emergencies can knock at your door anytime, and being fully armoured can protect against anything evil during a health crisis. The health conditions mentioned above are the most prevalent among many and can occur abruptly without any prior signal. To be safeguarded beforehand, ensure that you are fully equipped with comprehensive critical illnesses insurance that covers the critical illnesses mentioned above. Care Health Insurance offers health insurance for life-threatening conditions providing financial protection in times of medical crisis so that you don’t exhaust your lifetime’s savings on medical treatment. So, be wise before it gets too late!

Disclaimer: Underwriting of claims for critical illnesses is subject to policy terms and conditions. Please refer to your policy documents for more information.

Seven Body Organs You Can’t Live Without

The human body is incredibly resilient. When you donate a pint of blood, you lose about 3.5 trillion red blood cells, but your body quickly replaces them. You can even lose large chunks of vital organs and live. For example, people can live relatively normal lives with just half a brain). Other organs can be removed in their entirety without having too much impact on your life. Here are some of the “non-vital organs”.

Spleen

This organ sits on the left side of the abdomen, towards the back under the ribs. It is most commonly removed as a result of injury. Because it sits close the ribs, it is vulnerable to abdominal trauma. It is enclosed by a tissue paper-like capsule, which easily tears, allowing blood to leak from the damaged spleen. If not diagnosed and treated, it will result in death.

When you look inside the spleen, it has two notable colours. A dark red colour and small pockets of white. These link to the functions. The red is involved in storing and recycling red blood cells, while the white is linked to storage of white cells and platelets.

You can comfortably live without a spleen. This is because the liver plays a role in recycling red blood cells and their components. Similarly, other lymphoid tissues in the body help with the immune function of the spleen.

Stomach

The stomach performs four main functions: mechanical digestion by contracting to smash up food, chemical digestion by releasing acid to help chemically break up food, and then absorption and secretion. The stomach is sometimes surgically removed as a result of cancer or trauma. In 2012, a British woman had to have her stomach removed after ingesting a cocktail that contained liquid nitrogen.

When the stomach is removed, surgeons attach the oesophagus (gullet) directly to the small intestines. With a good recovery, people can eat a normal diet alongside vitamin supplements.

Reproductive organs

The primary reproductive organs in the male and female are the testes and ovaries, respectively. These structures are paired and people can still have children with only one functioning.

The removal of one or both are usually the result of cancer, or in males, trauma, often as a result of violence, sports or road traffic accidents. In females, the uterus (womb) may also be removed. This procedure (hysterectomy) stops women from having children and also halts the menstrual cycle in pre-menopausal women. Research suggests that women who have their ovaries removed do not have a reduced life expectancy. Interestingly, in some male populations, removal of both testicles may lead to an increase in life expectancy.

Colon

The colon (or large intestine) is a tube that is about six-feet in length and has four named parts: ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid. The primary functions are to resorb water and prepare faeces by compacting it together. The presence of cancer or other diseases can result in the need to remove some or all of the colon. Most people recover well after this surgery, although they notice a change in bowel habits. A diet of soft foods is initially recommended to aid the healing process.

Gallbladder

The gallbladder sits under the liver on the upper-right side of the abdomen, just under the ribs. It stores something called bile. Bile is constantly produced by the liver to help break down fats, but when not needed in digestion, it is stored in the gallbladder.

When the intestines detect fats, a hormone is released causing the gallbladder to contract, forcing bile into the intestines to help digest fat. However, excess cholesterol in bile can form gallstones, which can block the tiny pipes that move bile around. When this happens, people may need their gallbladder removed. The surgery is known as (cholecystectomy. Every year, about 70,000 people have this procedure in the UK.

Many people have gallstones that don’t cause any symptoms, others are not so fortunate. In 2015, an Indian woman had 12,000 gallstones removed – a world record.

Appendix

The appendix is a small blind-ended worm-like structure at the junction of the large and the small bowel. Initially thought to be vestigial, it is now believed to be involved in being a “safe-house” for the good bacteria of the bowel, enabling them to repopulate when needed.

Due to the blind-ended nature of the appendix, when intestinal contents enter it, it can be difficult for them to escape and so it becomes inflamed. This is called appendicitis. In severe cases, the appendix needs to be surgically removed.

A word of warning though: just because you’ve had your appendix out, doesn’t mean it can’t come back and cause you pain again. There are some cases where the stump of the appendix might not be fully removed, and this can become inflamed again, causing “stumpitis”. People who have had their appendix removed notice no difference to their life.

Kidneys

Most people have two kidneys, but you can survive with just one – or even none (with the aid of dialysis). The role of the kidneys is to filter the blood to maintain water and electrolyte balance, as well as the acid-base balance. It does this by acting like a sieve, using a variety of processes to hold onto the useful things, such as proteins, cells and nutrients that the body needs. More importantly, it gets rid of many things we don’t need, letting them pass through the sieve to leave the kidneys as urine.

There are many reasons people have to have a kidney – or both kidneys – removed: inherited conditions, damage from drugs and alcohol, or even infection. If a person has both kidneys fail, they are placed onto dialysis. This comes in two forms: haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. The first uses a machine containing dextrose solution to clean the blood, the other uses a special catheter inserted into the abdomen to allow dextrose solution to be passed in and out manually. Both methods draw waste out of the body.

If a person is placed on dialysis, their life expectancy depends on many things, including the type of dialysis, sex, other diseases the person may have and their age. Recent research has shown someone placed on dialysis at age 20 can expect to live for 16-18 years, whereas someone in their 60s may only live for five years.

Adam Taylor, Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre & Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, Lancaster University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Meet The Spleen, The Strange Little Organ That Can Multiply

On a crisp New England fall day, college freshman Jordan Taylor was playing Ultimate Frisbee when he collided with another player. Taylor was rushed to the hospital, where doctors realized he’d been hit hard enough to tear the delicate covering of his spleen, and he was bleeding internally. A quick surgery fixed the spleen, but doctors saw something strange while they were operating.

«As the doctor was speaking to me post-surgery, he mentioned he’d noticed I had a bunch of extra spleens,» Taylor says. We asked if the additional organs gave him spleeny superpowers.

No, alas. But «now I have a pretty good fun fact for when I meet new people,» he says. «Never fails to get a follow-up question.»

Beyond that, Taylor says, he goes about his days the same ways he always has. He tries not to think about his extra spleens too much. They sort of gross him out.

Spleens are strange organs, located on the upper-left side of the abdomen behind the stomach. They’re about the size and shape of an orange wedge, if the orange was squishy and full of blood. They’re relatively fragile, and because they contain so much blood, injuries can become serious.

A very informal poll of NPR employees, friends and random Uber drivers reveals that most people don’t have any idea what spleens are for. If they did know anything about spleens, it was this: You don’t need one to live.

The deep red, squishy spleen has been relegated to the organ bargain-basement, something to be cut out and discarded along with the appendix and wisdom teeth. But the spleen is seriously underrated, and we would like to give it a chance to redeem itself.

In ancient Greek and medieval humoral medicine, few body parts were more crucial than the spleen. People believed that the spleen was responsible for making «black bile,» one of the four humors that needed to be kept in balance to stay healthy. If a spleen made too much black bile, it would make someone sad or depressed. But the spleen also cleansed the bile, so it was associated with happiness and laughter.

Because the spleen was so important, it squirmed its way into modern language, says Alisha Rankin, an associate professor and medical historian at Tufts University. Poems were written about the organ, and 19th-century women with depression were said to be plagued by spleen.

«It’s funny — in English, the spleen has a dual function. If you have dark and angry thoughts, you can be splenetic or vent spleen. But you can also bust a spleen laughing,» says Rankin.

So when Shakespeare’s King Richard III tried to rally his troops by shouting, «Fair St. George, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!» we can only assume that his army was motivated and won the battle (spoiler alert: it didn’t).

The spleen reigned supreme for several centuries. But eventually, says Rankin, Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria and Alexander Fleming found penicillin. Doctors realized that black bile and imbalanced humors didn’t make you sick — germs did. No longer responsible for our joy or sorrow, the spleen fell into obscurity.

And for over a century, that’s where it stayed.

«Up until the 1950s, nobody knew what the spleen was for. We thought it didn’t matter,» says Dr. David Shatz, a surgical critical care specialist at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on spleen trauma.

We know that while you’re still a fetus, the spleen makes red blood cells. And as an adult, the spleen acts as a garbage can, filtering out damaged blood cells and platelets. But you can live with some old broken blood cells, so if you injured your spleen in the 1950s, doctors wouldn’t waste time trying to stitch it up. They’d cut it out in a splenectomy and send you on your way.

But modern imaging technology has left us with a different picture of the spleen, realizing that it has a role in the immune system. Blood slows down as it passes through the spleen, which gives the immune system time to recognize and make antibodies for certain types of bacteria.

«It processes encapsulated bacteria — ones that cause meningitis and ones that cause pneumonia,» says Shatz. Without the spleen to keep these bacteria in check, about 0.5 percent of people who have their spleens removed develop sepsis, a potentially deadly blood infection.

«It’s not very common, but it’s common enough to be a problem,» says Shatz. Generally, doctors try to reduce the risk of sepsis with vaccination for pneumococcus, H. influenzae type B (Hib), and meningococcus, so patients’ immune systems can recognize these bacteria without a spleen’s assistance.

But not everyone gets those vaccinations, so some doctors have tried other tactics. Because it turns out that spleens can do something no other organ can: They can make more of themselves.

Remember Taylor and his extra spleens? When a spleen is injured, cells from the organ scatter throughout the abdomen. If the cells are lucky enough to land somewhere with a lot of blood vessels, they start to grow into tiny extra spleens called splenunculi. The whole process is called splenosis, and it seems to be pretty common: about 1 in 5 people have accessory spleens. It’s likely Taylor had had a minor spleen injury earlier on in his life — not enough to need a doctor, but enough to release spleen cells.

«As far as we know, the spleen is the only organ that can do this,» says Shatz. Even livers, with their impressive regenerative powers, can’t replicate like a spleen.

To reduce the rates of post-splenectomy sepsis, some doctors have tried to deliberately make accessory spleens. Instead of removing a spleen entirely, they’ve cut spleens up into tiny pieces and left the bits inside patients to grow. Studies have also been done in animals, and according to Shatz, the procedure was fairly side-effect-free.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell whether these accessory spleens have any real benefit. Although the spleen-bits attached and grew, only a handful of cases were looked at, so it’s hard to tell whether the new spleens did their jobs as well as their full-sized counterparts — or better than no spleen at all.

Shatz hopes to one day do a large clinical trial. «We’ll assign a random number; some spleens will get cut up, and some spleens will go in a bucket.» But it hasn’t been a research priority, says Shatz. Spleens are cool, but they’re not critical.

In the meantime, cheers to the spleen, an underappreciated but impressive organ, filtering away whether you need it to or not. Count your blessings (or count your spleens), and if you aren’t in the 18.8 percent with spare splenunculi, don’t whine about it. Or, as my dad would say, «don’t get spleeny.»