How to Yawn #11
Why is heartburn more common among the elderly and pregnant?
Perhaps if the elderly would stretch and yawn more often they wouldn’t be so elderly anymore.
Yawning and stretching won’t make a pregnant woman less pregnant, but it will relieve her heartburn.
“Elderly” is often a code word for central obesity, overcrowding the abdomen and squeezing the stomach and other organs, including the heart..
An enlarged uterus overcrowds the abdomen and does the same.
A truck tire filled with air can feel just as “hard” as one made of solid rubber.
Heartburn is a systemic event, not just a local one.
It owes its globalism to gaseous pressurization (doctor-speak for “gas pressure”).
Here are comments gleaned from cyberspace …
“It’s amazing how bad reflux can be on our other systems.”
“My stomach ballooned out and my ears popped.”
“GERD will cause a feeling of pressure in the ears if you fill your stomach too much.”
“Have you had these pressure problems or the heartbeat-in-the-ear problem with your GERD?”
“Heartburn due to stomach problems may cause hoarseness, swallowing difficulties, throat pain, and sinus infections.”
“Ear pain and heartburn sometimes go hand in hand.”
“Upper back pain is not uncommon when suffering from acid reflux/heartburn.”
“When my throat pain gets bad the back pain comes on.”
“Chest pain is a classic acid reflux symptom.”
Our internal organs need to inhale and exhale too.
They suffer if excess gas pressure restricts them from dilating and constricting.
Ludimar Hermann (Elements of Human Physiology, 1878) wrote …
“Not only the lungs, but the heart and vessels also, contribute towards the filling up of the thoracic cavity. The pressure of the air acts upon the inner surface of all these organs; it acts directly (through the trachea) on the lungs; it acts indirectly on the heart, for the whole body, and therefore all the vessels situated outside the thorax, and communicating with the interior of the heart, are under atmospheric pressure. The same pressure then tending to enlarge all the hollow organs within the thorax, these organs will expand according to their degree of expansibility, and hence the most expansible organs, the lungs, will contribute most towards the filling up of the thorax (they will be dilated the most beyond their original volume), the thick-walled ventricles the least, while the thin-walled auricles and the venous trunks will be perceptibly dilated. The atmospheric pressure acting equally upon the external surface of the thoracic walls, their more yielding parts will likewise contribute towards the filling up, or rather the diminution of the thorax: hence the diaphragm and the intercostal spaces will arch in towards the thorax.”
According to the same source …
“The influence of the passions affects not only the frequency but also the depth and the form of the respiratory movements; the latter producing thereby sometimes characteristic sounds or murmurs in the tubes which conduct the air to the lungs. To this category of characteristic sounds belong: sobbing, when the inspirations succeed each other quickly; sighing, when a deep inspiration is followed by a forced expiration; yawning, when there is slow and prolonged inspiration while the mouth is kept spasmodically opened; laughing, where there is a jerking, interrupted expiration; &c.”
(To Be Continued)