Do you know why we have heartburn?

Prof. Know Why answers:

Before you start thinking something else, let me clarify what is heartburn! Heartburn has nothing to do with ‘heart’. Also known as pyrosis, heartburn is a form of indigestion. It is a painful burning sensation in the esophagus below the breastbone, caused by regurgitation of gastric acid.

Now let’s see how we have heartburn! Heartburn happens when acid from your stomach gets forced upwards into the oesophagus (gullet). This is called acid reflux. The stomach wall is coated with a layer of mucus that protects it from digestive acid. The oesophagus does not have this protection, so any acid that leaks up, irritates and damages its lining. This causes the burning pain associated with heartburn.

But why do we have heartburn? Heartburn is becoming the single most important factor behind the rise in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) that nowadays largely affects the urban population, mostly due to their long working hours, erratic lifestyle, bad posture (the way you sit and stand) and bad eating habits.

Foods that may cause heartburn are:

• Alcohol (especially red wine) and Tobacco (in any form).
• Caffeinated and carbonated beverages like Coffee, tea, cola and soda.
• Chocolates and ice creams.
• Citrus fruits and juices; tomatoes and sauces.
• Spicy foods; fatty foods; dry foods like peanuts.
• Red pepper; peppermint and spearmint.

Remedies: Drink lots of water and maintain a proper diet. If heartburn occurs when lying down, raising the head with pillows or sitting up frequently may provide some relief. Doctors treat heartburn with antacids or H2-receptor antagonists and proton pump inhibitors (in that order).

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Do you know why broken heart can be fatal?

Prof. Know Why answers:

You feel great when you are in love and it shows, because your health glows. But why and how does your health react in case of an undesired break-up? Scientists say, intense stress caused by bereavement can make someone ‘die of a broken heart’.

While it has always been suspected that emotional problems can put the heart under pressure, this was believed to have been caused by ‘primitive’ brain regions, such as the brain stem sending messages to heart tissue. Bereavement has been one such unexplained problem.

Researchers say, that in such a situation, the regions of the brain responsible for learning, memory and emotion can destabilize the cardiac muscle of someone who already has heart disease. So, when we are under stress like this, the ‘higher regions’ of the brain take part in a vicious circle of activity which can trigger harmful rhythms in the heart.

Doctors say, the activity in ‘higher level’ regions, such as the cortex make the heart to stress, often worsening the situation. And thus, the brain areas responsible for regulating heart function can be unbalanced, which in turn can increase the risk of sudden death through cardiac arrest.

So now, do you know why broken heart can be fatal? Just take care and take things easy, if and when you are going through such a situation in life!

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Do you know why we see a rainbow?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Witnessing the history, throughout the ages, mankind has always been fascinated by rainbows. And their arched splashes of color have been the subject of numerous songs and poems, stories and mythology. Even, in the Bible, the rainbow is seen as a sign of God's promises.

What makes rainbows so mysterious is the simple but often puzzling fact that rainbows are light and they exist only in the eyes of the beholder! To unlock this amazing secret of the nature and explore how water and light work together to produce the magnificent colorful work of art, we have to understand a little bit of physics, because that’s what it is – pure science!

You need three factors to work together to see a rainbow. Firstly, the sun must be shining. Secondly, the sun must be behind you, and thirdly, the air in front of you must have water drops in it. When the sunlight enters a water drop, it is refracted, or bent, and reflected out from the drop in such a way that the light appears as a spectrum of colors. Actually, the rays of light bend twice. As they enter the drops, the rays of light bend, then reflect off the back of the drops. Then they bend again, this time while exiting the drops. That's when the light appears before our eyes. Each drop reflects only one color of light, so there must be many water drops to make a full rainbow. You'll see the brightest rainbows when the water drops are large, usually right after a rain shower.

When a raindrop bends light, the light exits the raindrop at an angle of 40 to 42 degrees away from the angle it entered the raindrop. As a result, the only beams of light you see are from raindrops that are 40 to 42 degrees away from the shadow of your head. This gives the rainbow its curved appearance.

Do you know why lightning happens?

Prof. Know Why explains:

In one line, lightning is a bright flash of electricity that is produced by a thunderstorm.

Within a thundercloud way up in the sky, many small bits of ice (frozen raindrops) bump into each other as they move around in the air. All of these collisions create an electric charge. After a while, the whole cloud fills up with electrical charges. The positive charges or protons form at the top of the cloud and the negative charges or electrons form at the bottom of the cloud. Lightning results from the buildup and discharge of this electrical energy between positively and negatively charged areas. Lightning can occur within the cloud or between the cloud and the ground as well. In the second case, this electrical charge strikes around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, people, or single trees.

When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once the light is gone, the air collapses back in and creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder. The reason we see lightning before we hear thunder is because light travels faster than sound!

Remember, lightning is approximately six times hotter than the surface of the sun! So, don’t play around during lightning and always look for a safer place or stay indoors.

Do you know why does it rain?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Let me simplify it first - warm air turns the water from rivers, lakes, and oceans into water vapor that rises into the air. That water vapor forms clouds, which contain small drops of water or ice crystals. When the water vapor in the cloud becomes too heavy, it falls back to the ground as rain or snow.

Now let’s get into a detailed explanation. When warm, wet air rises, it cools, and water vapor condenses out to form clouds. As said above, cloud is made up of small drops of water or ice crystals, depending on its height and how cold is the surrounding air. Height and temperature also determine whether any ‘precipitation’ (Latin for 'to fall from') will be rain or the hail associated with thunderstorms, or the snow, or the sleet and freezing rain.

To form rain, water vapor needs a ‘condensation nucleus’, which can be tiny particles of dust, or pollen, swept up high into the atmosphere. When the condensing droplets that form the cloud get large and heavy enough to overcome the upward pressure of convection, they begin to fall. If the temperature all the way to the ground is above freezing, then, it ‘rains’! And when ice crystals form high up in the cloud, and it's below the freezing point of water all the way down, then you get snow.

Thus, rain and snow are the two sides of the same coin!

Do you know why trees shed leaves?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Like people, the leaves of trees also age, but do so much more rapidly. Each spring the young leaves develop from buds and then rapidly mature to full size to carry on photosynthesis (the process that provides food needed for the tree to grow and maintain itself). By autumn, the leaves of many hardwood trees reach old age and do not function well. At this time a tree must also prepare for the harsher weather conditions of winter. Signals to the tree indicating it is time to prepare for winter include shorter days, less intense sunlight and cooler temperatures. Prior to the leaves falling, nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus move from the leaf into the adjacent stem to be reused during the next growing season. The following spring a new crop of leaves are produced and the cycle is repeated.

To sum up, in early autumn, in response to the shortening days and declining intensity of sunlight, leaves begin the processes leading up to their fall. The veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf gradually close off, as a layer of cells forms at the base of each leaf. Once this separation layer is complete and the connecting tissues are sealed off, the leaf is ready to fall.

Thus while trees can live for decades and even centuries, some parts of the tree like the leaves, live for only a few months or years (in certain varieties of trees).

Do you know why lizards lose their tails?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Lizards can lose their tails, but not all lizards can grow them back, though. Lizards that lose their tails also lose an important source of energy because they store fats at the base of their tails.

In lizards, the tail bones have central regions that break away easily when the tail is pulled. The muscles of the tail pull apart and the blood vessels constrict to stop the wounded tail from bleeding. So, if a predator attacks a lizard, the tail is designed such that it separates from the body allowing the lizard to escape while the predator gets the tail. Lizards that lose their tails grow them back but the replacement tail is never as long or as colorful as the original one. Replacement tails grow back in as little as three months or as long as two years.

In short, in order to defend it in a threatening situation, the lizard chooses to detach its tail by contracting a special muscle near a weakness in its vertebrae.

In lizards, especially big ones like Iguanas and Komodo Dragons, the tail bones are not designed to break easily and the tail muscles are also not designed to pull apart smoothly. These lizards however can also lose their tails, but it takes a much stronger pull to make this happen. With these types of lizards, the wound heals like others though, but the tail does not grow back.

Do you know why we cry?

Prof. Know Why explains:

Women cry 64 times a year on average, while men just 17, says a recent study. Actors and politicians do it on demand though! But why does crying happen in the first place?

When we become upset, our brains and bodies overreact and work overtime, producing chemicals and hormones. Crying helps eliminate t,hese extra chemicals that we don't need, in the form of tears. These tears are formed in tiny glands present in the upper eyelids of our eyes, called lachrymal glands.

Scientifically, emotional tears contain high levels of manganese and a chemical called prolactin.

As our tears flow, they sooth our sadness or distress by disposing of these chemical agents. That is why generally, we feel calmer or more refreshed after crying, because the tears get rid of these hormones that are produced when we are sad, happy, or distressed.

Do you know why people snore?

Prof. Know Why explains:

This is one of the most common problems worldwide. Snoring occurs when the muscles at the back of the throat relax during sleep and narrow the passage through which you breathe. As the air passes through this narrowing, the soft palate and uvula vibrate and produce the sound of snoring. The airway can be further narrowed due to:

- Poor muscle tone (after alcohol or sedative use).
- Enlarged tonsils and adenoids.
- A long soft palate or uvula.
- Blocked nasal airways from polyps, a deviated septum, allergies or a cold.
- Excessive weight causing tissue at the neck to be bulky and flaccid.
- Tissue swelling from cigarette smoking.
- Hypothyroidism.

However, snoring can be treated medically.

Somnoplasty is a new technique to treat snoring painlessly. It involves placing an electrode for a brief moment into the soft palate to locally reduce the quantity of tissue. As it heals over the next few weeks and the soft palate shortens and stiffens, the vibration of the soft palate decreases and snoring is eliminated.

In selected cases, laser treatment is the best choice. It is done using a high-intensity laser beam to trim and reshape the uvula and soft palate.

Wearing a dental appliance at night can also offer another solution. Molded to the teeth, this appliance keeps the lower jaw in a forward position during your sleep therefore decreasing your snoring. This appliance is often used to treat obstructive sleep apnea.

Do you know why camels survive without water?

Prof. Know Why explains:

The humps on a camel's back are actually huge heaps of fat and flesh that can weigh as much as 80 pounds in a healthy camel. These humps help camels survive for weeks without food and water.

When water and food become scarce in the deserts where camels roam, the fatty humps serve as stored food and are used for nourishment. As the camel's body metabolizes or uses up the humps' stored fat, the hump becomes smaller and flabbier. So the longer the camel goes without eating, the smaller its hump gets. The size of a camel's hump helps determine a camel's health, food sources, and overall well-being.

These humps, or reserves of fat, are the reason why camels can go for days without water and food. While humans are supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day, camels can go without water for nearly 2 weeks!

Do you know why we have gallstones?

Prof. Know Why explains:

In medicine, gallstones (choleliths) are crystalline bodies formed within the body by accretion or concretion of normal or abnormal bile components. In easier words, they are small, hard, pathological concretions, composed chiefly of cholesterol, calcium salts, and bile pigments, formed in the gallbladder or in a bile duct.

Researchers believe that gallstones may be caused by a combination of factors, including inherited body chemistry, body weight, gallbladder motility (movement), and perhaps diet.

Cholesterol gallstones develop when bile contains too much cholesterol and not enough bile salts. Besides a high concentration of cholesterol, two other factors seem to be important in causing gallstones. The first is how often and how well the gallbladder contracts. Incomplete and infrequent emptying of the gallbladder may cause the bile to become over concentrated and contribute to gallstone formation. The second factor is the presence of proteins in the liver and bile that either promote or inhibit cholesterol crystallization into gallstones. In addition, increased levels of the hormone estrogen as a result of pregnancy, hormone therapy, or the use of birth control pills, may increase cholesterol levels in bile and also decrease gallbladder movement, resulting in gallstone formation.

Low-fiber, high-cholesterol diets, and diets high in starchy foods are suggested as contributing factors to gallstone formation. Other nutritional factors that may increase risk of gallstones include rapid weight loss, constipation, eating fewer meals per day, eating less fish, and low intakes of the nutrients folate, magnesium, calcium, and vitamin C.

On the other hand, coffee, wine, fish, and whole grain bread may decrease the risk of gallstones.