bones

Headbone [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged bones / brain bleeds / cranium / crazy stories / fractures / skull / soft spots / sutures by

Headbones Basics

Your skull is made up of 22 bones.  2/3 of it consists of cranial bones, even though there are only 8 of them.  The other 1/3 is your face.

Two main goals of the cranial bones:  protects your brain, acts as an anchor for neck and face muscles.

The 8 bones are connected together by sutures (because they look like they’ve been sewn together) – and it is a tight fuse that doesn’t allow anything through.

The frontal bone – at your forehead, it’s on the FRONT.  When babies are born, this bone is actually in 2 pieces to allow baby’s head to smush during delivery.  It fuses together so tightly, that it becomes one bone by eight years old.

Fontanels = soft spots that babies have that allows for rapid brain and head growth.  Babies have 6 total soft spots.  All of them close up by 3 months old except the big one in the front.

Steve’s Story

His daughter’s soft spot would sink in and she would cry.  His mother-in-law would fill her mouth with water and then suck the baby’s soft spot out.  *DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!*

Sunken in soft spots can be a sign of dehydration because there is lots of blood vessels in that area.

The bones in your face and head have cavities and tunnels (called sinuses) that allow nerves and blood vessels to travel through, as well as keep air pressure stable.

Questions

Question 1: Skull fracture? Can possibly happen on a suture where two bones separate, but more often an actual crack in one bone.

Question 2: Is brain bleeding always dangerous? Always potentially fatal?  Yes, because your brain is closed in. Brain bleeds are classified into levels, and part of it has to do with how deep in the brain it happens, and how much pressure it puts on the things around it.  Blood vessels are found all throughout your brain, and the blood that flows through them has its designated space.  If the blood comes out of the blood vessels, then it starts crowding out the things around it (which can be important parts of your brain).  Sometimes people may have a brain bleed and they will remove part of the skull bone to relieve the pressure.

Another Story

Orbital hemorrhage caused vision loss and feeling loss in lower extremities.  If the nerve signal is interrupted temporarily, then the functions of those parts will return.  If the nerves are damaged permanently, then those functions will be lost permanently.  This was caused by blunt force trauma. As long as the rest of you is healthy, and the injury is fully healed, I would not expect it to happen again out of the blue.

Party Trick

Where does the bottom of your brain sit?  Your cranium has a floor.  One of the bones that make up the floor is called the Sphenoid bone (my favorite bone).

You can reach it and wiggle it and help with sinus pressure and drainage (it’s a neat trick!)  It works by creating tiny pressure differences in your sinuses.

The outside of your skull bones are rather smooth.  The inside of those bones are bumpy and jagged because it gives places for the membranes to anchor and keep the brain buoyant and centered.

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Music Credit: “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Feed You Bones [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged bones / calcium / diet / food / osteoporosis / recommendations / supplements / vitamin D by

Basics

Calcium is a natural element (yep, one of those periodic table guys).  Our teeth and our bones are made strong by it.

For most healthy adults, daily recommended amount is 1000 mg.  For females approaching 50 years old, recommendation increases to 1200 mg to 15oo mg per day.

The trick to supplementation is knowing that your body can only absorb 500 mg of elemental calcium at a time.  So you gotta split it up.  When you get it from your diet, then this is NBD because it will naturally be spread out between your meals and snacks.

These supplements always go with Vitamin D.  Vitamin D is responsible for helping with calcium absorption.  If you’re low on D (and more people are than might realize b/c very few jobs have you working out in the sun – and Vitamin D is synthesized and activated by UV exposure), calcium can’t be absorbed and used like it should.

2 types of OTC supplements

  1. Calcium carbonate (Caltrate) – a base (also what makes up OTC antacid tablets [i.e. Tums] so a bonus if you have heartburn); requires the acid in your stomach to break out of the tablet for your body to use.
  2. Calcium citrate (Citracal) – an acid; doesn’t require extra stomach acid to be absorbed. A good supplement for those who had gastric bypass, because the stomach has been shrunk and there are less acid pumps to break down medications that require acid to work.  Bad for people with reflux or ulcers.

The labels can be tricky.  It will say “600 mg Calcium Carbonate”, but you have to look for the hint of how much elemental calcium that is equal to.  This is because your recommended daily dose is in milligrams of elemental calcium.  So, doctors don’t always tell you that when they recommend it.  Your calcium-rich foods are going to provide you with 250-300 mg of elemental calcium per serving (about 25% of your daily requirement).

Random dietary sources (between 6-20% of your daily requirement)

  1. White Beans
  2. Black-eyed Peas
  3. Sardines (cuz you eat their bones?!)
  4. Dried Figs
  5. Bok Choy
  6. Molasses
  7. Kale
  8. Turnip Greens
  9. Almonds
  10. Oranges
  11. Sesame Seeds

Calcium-fortified foods

  1. Instant Oatmeal
  2. Mainstream orange juices
  3. Soy products (because you’re using them instead of dairy and animal products)
  4. Cheerios

Vitamin D helps your stomach absorb the calcium into the blood.  And then in the blood, keeps the calcium from binding with other things, so it’s free when the body needs it in other places.

Unfortunately, pounding supplements is not going to reverse osteoporosis.

Recommended dose for kids

  • 1 to 3 years old — 700 milligrams daily
  • 4 to 8 years old — 1,000 milligrams daily
  • 9 to 18 years old — 1,300 milligrams daily

Usually not hard for kids to get the right amount with their diet plus a vitamin.  Babies don’t need supplementation since their main source of nutrition is milk (breast milk or formula).

Seasonal Affective Disorder – is partly due to a Vit D deficiency, because Vit D also helps with mood.  The sun exposure is the best way to supply your body with Vit D.  A bonus is that sunlight stimulates serotonin production in your brain which is also responsible for good mood.

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/