Dr. Michael Baah Biney: Dead in the bedroom
Many have quotes related to sleep. Some say sleep is a similitude of death.
Others say you should make peace before sleep so that when you fail to wake up you would have made amends for offences.
We wake up early in the morning but others don’t. They go to be with the Lord while we are all enjoying our night sleep.
Relatives and sympathizers have wondered if they could have prevented the death of their loved ones if they engaged them throughout the night. While others are having sex for warmth, others turn their eyes towards death to say good bye.
When some are preparing at dawn to face the day, others face and hear crying from their neighbors houses. It may have crossed your mind the agony and pain relatives go through tossing the cold lifeless body of their dead loved ones just to hear their voice one more time.
That might be the appointed time for their death with no or little explanation while others may have medical underpinnings. Today, we discuss causes of death at night and within the early minutes to hours of waking up like binge alcohol drinking, abuse of sex enhancing pills and some underlying health issues like heart diseases.
Binge alcohol drinking
Alcohol drinking is a long aged activity that has transcended generations. From Noah who had a hangover after the flood, right to the blue kiosks and pubs near us we’ve always seen people drink alcohol. Alcohol is served during festivities and occasions.
Some take it for relaxation and with the aim of killing stress and depression because alcohol induces a short-lived amnesia and memory disturbances. On the back of these numerous reasons, overdrinking of alcohol (binge alcohol drinking) can be detrimental to your health.
Binge alcohol drinking according to Centre of Disease Control (CDC) is drinking more than 5 glasses of alcohol for men and 4 for women in 2hours. This totals to about 1.5 to 2L in 2hours. More than 21 shots of alcohol in 4hours also amounts to binge alcohol drinking.
After an episode of binge drinking, this is what the alcohol does to your body. Alcohol attains levels that aids increased permeation into the brain to depress the respiratory centre (pneumotaxic centre). This depresses and can even stop your normal breathing in and out. It is like having pillow put over your face to suffocate you to death. That is the effect of binge alcohol drinking curtailing breathing.
Secondly, alcohol is converted to toxic level of acetyldehyde. Acetyldehyde plunges binge alcohol drinkers into coma, a state of unarousable loss of consciousness and even death.
To add-on, binge alcohol drinkers, go long periods without drinking or eating anything because large volumes of alcohol fills the stomach enhancing satiety. This feeling of fullness almost like drinking loads of water, encourages long periods of food and water deprivation and causes hypoglycemia and dehydration, thus further worsening the above effects of binge drinking.
This is because the part of the brain that regulates being awake and sleep needs glucose from food taken in as its main source of of energy and proper functioning. When the brain is starved of glucose, it is unable to fire impulses to stimulate us to recover from sleep.
Aside the above listed direct effects of binge drinking, a growing trend is the lethal combination of energy drinks and alcohol. These energy drinks contain caffeine, a stimulant while the alcohol is a downer. Your guess is as good as mine with regards to its effects on your consciousness. This dangerous alcohol-energy-drink combo jeopardizes your blood pressure and the pumping activity of your heart. This invariably affects your ability to wake from sleep time.
Desist from peer competition on who can stay awake after outrageous number of shots of alcohol. You may meet your untimely death due to that. You are not weak if you cannot gulp shots of alcohol. Social media gives us a pictorial view of what binge alcohol drinking has done to people. Beware, binge alcohol drinking kills.
Sex enhancing drugs.
The order of the day is men and women going the extra mile to please each other during sex. The debate of how good sex can be ranges from how long the sex can last and how large genitals are. These are the expectations of users of sex enhancing drugs.
Now these are my worries; overdose and the counterfeit ones. Counterfeit ones slip into the market without going through measured regulations of the Food and Drugs Authority(FDA). These counterfeit enhancers sometimes contain banned product or have unregulated amount of the enhancing substance. They are easily identified because they don’t have the logo of the FDA.
These sex enhancing agents affect indices of life, including Blood Pressure and Pulse Rate (heart rate). Blood Pressure and Pulse Rate in disarray is not compatible with life. Consult your health provider if you want to use a sex enhancer and have any of these: a heart condition, hypertension or have had a stroke before or with a family history of stroke. I know you want to be “chairmo” but be measured when using these products.
Documented events of sexual partners dying on top of their bed mates during a sexual act are sometimes due to overdose of these enhancers. Always look for the FDA logo before you patronize them.
The above stated cause of death are preventable. Just be responsible and measured in your dealings.
Source: Ghana News
