Drowning In Your Own Blood!!

Its ironic how the very elements which are crucial for life can also kill in the most absurd of ways.

Take any simple element. Water and food for example, you cant live without it, and you cant live with too much of it. Water intoxication and obesity with its complications can be fatal. Glucose, is the basic energy provider to every body cell. Too much of it labels you as diabetic and then you're prone to its complications leading to death.

Dr. Hosseini (Pulmonologist at Iranian Hospital Dubai) was telling us about how you can actually drown in your own blood. This happens when you have bleeding in your lungs, either from the pulmonary vessels or bronchial vessels (the more fatal ones). The situation is compared to drowning because the changes or rather the pathology behind both is pretty much the same.

When you're drowning, you inhale water into your lungs. The water accumulates in your alveoli (tiny air sacs in your lungs). Alveoli is the site at which gas exchange happens, i.e. oxygen enters the blood and carbon dioxide moves out of the blood. When the alveoli is full of water, this exchange of gas cannot occur. this leads to reduced oxygenation of blood, and hence hypoxia to vital organs such as the brain and heart.

The same thing happens when you bleed into your lungs. The blood fills up and accumulates in the alveoli and prevents gas exchange. This results in hypoxia to vital organs and death of the patient. The interesting point to note here is that the patient did not die of the loss of blood. Rather the death was due to inability for normal respiratory process as a result of blood in the alveoli.

Sad, how your own body can kill you in so many different ways. Saddest is the autoimmune processes meant to defend you. SubhanAllah.