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Two sudden and involuntary contractions within the diaphragm cause hiccups. You can get hiccups if you eat too much or too fast or if you eat victuals disagreeable to your system Hiccups, occasionally, can indicate serious conditions which include pneumonia, pancreatitis, bladder irritation, uremia, stomach disorders etc. Mild ones not lasting more than thirty minutes are never cause for concern.

Granny’s gambols for mild attacks comprise holding your breath for a tolerably long spell, drinking a glass of water while holding your breath and swallowing in rapid successions three times a glass of water duly holding your breath.

If these methods do not work hold a paper bag tightly over your nose and mouth and breathe in and for a minute or two. The relatively high level of carbon dioxide in blood shall inhibit hiccups. 

 

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Infants born with congenital heart defects turn blue and such babies are ‘blue babies’. It occurs when the blood carried to the body contains, a less than normal amount of oxygen due to congenital heart defects. The most common defect is a hole in the septum separating two ventricles (ventricular septal defect - VSD). Normally, deoxygenated blood returns from the body to right atrium from where it flows to the right ventricle. From the right ventricle deoxygenated blood flows to the lungs where it is oxygenated.

The oxygenated blood from the lungs flows to the left atrium then to the left ventricle from where it is distributed to all parts of the body. In the case of VSD, deoxygenated blood instead of flowing to the lungs from the right ventricle, flows to the left ventricle (through the septal hole) from where is distributed to the body parts. Deoxygenated blood causes the body to turn blue (oxygenated blood is red). Blue baby disease was discovered by an American cardiologist, Hellen Brooke Taussig (1898-1986).

Infants who are fed on milk containing water contaminated with high ,nitrate content turn blue and is commonly referred to as ‘Blue baby syndrome’ (BBS). The skin of infants turn blue when there is insufficient oxygen supply to the body through the blood. Nitrates reduce the oxygen carrying capacity of haemoglobin present in the red blood corpuscles (RBC). Infants of less than six months of age are more prone to BBS. Their haemoglobin has poor chemical equilibrium and hence restoration of haemoglobin cannot take place as quickly as in adults.

 

Atrial fibrillation is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia. In arrhythmia the atria beats rapidly, chaotically and ineffectively. It is a kind of heart malformation that occurs due to abnormal rhythm of the heart.

A coordinate contraction of all the heart muscles at once, which is required for the pumping cycle leads to a normal rhythm of the heart. But abnormal rhythm of the heart results from cardiac impulses that have gone wild and violent with the auricular muscle mass and ventricular muscle mass, which are respectively called Atrial fibrillation and Ventricular fibrillation.

 Since auricular muscle mass is entirely separated from the ventricular muscle mass and insulated from each other by fibrous tissue, these two fibrillations are entirely independent of each other.

 The mechanism of atrial fibrillation is identical with that of ventricular fibrillation except that the process occurs in the atrial muscle mass instead of ventricular mass. A very frequent cause of atrial fibrillation is atrial enlargement. It results due to heart valve lesions that prevent the atria from emptying adequately into the ventricles.

 In atrial fibrillation the atria become useless as primer pumps for the ventricles. Even so, blood flows positively through the atria into the ventricles and the efficiency of ventricular pumping is decreased only 20 to 30 percent.

 Therefore in contrast to the lethality of ventricular fibrillation, a person can live for months together or even years with atrial fibrillation though at a reduced efficiency of overall heart pumping. The onset of atrial fibrillation can cause palpitation. It may precipitate or aggravate cardiac failure in, patients with an abnormal heart, especially that with mitral stenos is or poor left ventricle function. 

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