How ppl die in thier sleeps?
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so many cases nowadays, sleep then die without any reasons, most of them are fit and healthly.....haiz......
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Why you want them to suffer to feel death?
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Dec 4, 2006
Take heart - there is a reason and a gene test
By Senior Writer, Andy Ho
ONE day in April, former TV journalist Derek Cher was found slumped at his desk in the office. He had died of unknown causes.
Then, in October, three others - teenager Danil Shagimardanov, 16; Dr Christopher Lim Kim Tho, 35, a registrar in orthopaedic surgery at the KK Women's & Children's Hospital; and store manager Soh Chee Yong, 25 - were each separately and on different days found dead in bed.
And just last month, Dr Toh Wei Keong, 32, a general practitioner, also died in his sleep.
All were apparently healthy individuals, with no previous history of heart problems or family history of sudden deaths.
But such devastating tragedies are not unique to Singapore. Similar cases in young Thai men are called 'lai tai'. Likewise, they are named 'bangungut' in the Philippines and 'pokkuri' in Japan.
Common to the folklore in these countries is unexplained sudden death in apparently healthy young men in their sleep, sometimes preceded by thrashing.
Excluding Danil, who was still just a boy and of Kazakh extraction, the other victims fit the profile of sudden nocturnal deaths in young South-east Asian males: Dr Lim's wife had observed him having a 'seizure' before he died, although Dr Toh's wife had not noticed anything amiss.
According to a recent Health Sciences Authority study, an average of 300 men aged between 18 and 60 die suddenly in Singapore each year. Most of these deaths are caused by heart conditions, though people also die in their sleep from an asthmatic attack, a stroke, the rupture of an enlarged blood vessel or sleep apnea, where one's breathing stops due to an obstruction in the airways.
But no cause of death can be identified in 3 per cent of these cases, while the percentage of those who die in their sleep is also not known.
Readers have asked if there is a link among all these recent cases. Though many local experts feel there is none, there is an intriguing possibility, a condition that is rare in the West but more common in young men in South-east Asia and Japan, as folklore has it.
Doctors call it the Brugada syndrome.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, about 200 apparently healthy Thai foreign workers in Singapore died from no apparent cause. These were later identified as cases of Brugada syndrome, a mysterious condition in which spontaneous abnormal heart rhythms kill victims in their sleep.
In the early 1990s, when the syndrome was first identified, the cause was still unknown. After all, the heart in such victims looked normal under the microscope. At the time, experts postulated various causes for death, such as heart rhythms going awry in some unspecified way.
But most of their hypotheses turned out to be quite mistaken. With the genomics revolution, the cause has now been identified as mutations in seven particular genes, which are specific segments of the DNA code we all carry.
This cause has been confirmed by different groups of experts in various countries, so Brugada syndrome is now regarded as an inheritable heart condition.
How does it kill? The short answer is that these mutations affect what are called 'ion channels' that are found in the living membrane that covers each heart muscle cell. These channels are really protein complexes structured like tubes running through the thickness of a cell membrane. What they do is to permit - or restrict - the movement in and out of heart cells of positively charged atoms, or ions, of potassium and sodium.
This movement of ions in and out of cells generates a voltage difference between the inside and outside of the cell.
That voltage difference, in turn, gives rise to electric signals in the membrane that go around the heart, causing the organ to beat rhythmically.
These electrical signals stimulate the heart chambers to contract in the correct order - regularly and continuously - thus pumping blood throughout the body.
Should this electric activity be disrupted, however, the heart may fail to be effective as a pump. When this happens, the patient could suffer a blackout.
Or he may notice palpitations.
Worse still, his heart could stop beating and pumping, so death would occur suddenly.
In short, if you carry mutations that produce abnormal ion channels, which regulate the flow of electrical charge, your heart's electric activity could be disrupted without warning. This is what happens in Brugada syndrome.
Since ion movements occur only in life, the heart will appear structurally normal when death strikes in such cases.
To summarise a complex process, this is a case which sees abnormal channels letting potassium ions in too slowly, or sodium ions too quickly.
But there is a small difference: Potassium channel problems are associated with sudden death that is usually brought on by exercise or if the person is startled or awoken suddenly; sodium channel problems are more likely to be associated with death while one is asleep.
Still, the illness is rare indeed. Japanese studies suggest that only 0.05 per cent to 0.6 per cent of adults have ECGs that are compatible with a diagnosis of Brugada syndrome. Published studies elsewhere show that Brugada syndrome is responsible for probably 4 per cent to 12 per cent of unexpected sudden deaths.
So should you be worried?
If you do not have an ECG that is compatible with Brugada syndrome, a history of fainting spells or a family history of sudden unexplained nocturnal deaths, you are probably not at risk.
But if you have a positive family history, you should avail yourself of not just an ECG, but also some very sensitive DNA-based tests that have just become available for routine clinical use. In fact, all immediate blood relatives of someone who has had an unexplained and unexpected sudden death should have such tests done to find out if they have inherited similar mutations.
And that goes for women relatives too. While Brugada syndrome is more common among males, females are not spared.
In 2004, Dr Hong Kui, in collaboration with Dr Ramon Brugada - both based in New York - and the latter's brother, Dr Josep Brugada of Spain's University of Barcelona, as well as other scientists, noticed that, for affected women, the immediate period after giving birth to a baby seems to be a particularly risky one.
Identifying those at risk can lead to preventive measures for some, including taking drugs called beta blockers, which modulate the heart rhythm.
Also pacemakers or cardiac defibrillators could be implanted. These gadgets prevent dangerous heart rhythms from taking over, with the latter also being capable of delivering an electric shock to reset the ticker, when needed.
Testing to identify the vulnerable will undoubtedly save lives. Five people have already perished, so hospitals in Singapore should lose no time in adopting a policy of testing the immediate relatives of such victims. One person lost to Brugada syndrome is one too many. -
there were 3 last month if I'm not wrong.
very sad. -
dun forget i have the deathnote.
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Originally posted by MooKu:
Mooku taking over Oxford Mushroom's Forum Physician position?
Dec 4, 2006
[b]Take heart - there is a reason and a gene test
By Senior Writer, Andy Ho
ONE day in April, former TV journalist Derek Cher was found slumped at his desk in the office. He had died of unknown causes.
Then, in October, three others - teenager Danil Shagimardanov, 16; Dr Christopher Lim Kim Tho, 35, a registrar in orthopaedic surgery at the KK Women's & Children's Hospital; and store manager Soh Chee Yong, 25 - were each separately and on different days found dead in bed.
And just last month, Dr Toh Wei Keong, 32, a general practitioner, also died in his sleep.
All were apparently healthy individuals, with no previous history of heart problems or family history of sudden deaths.
But such devastating tragedies are not unique to Singapore. Similar cases in young Thai men are called 'lai tai'. Likewise, they are named 'bangungut' in the Philippines and 'pokkuri' in Japan.
Common to the folklore in these countries is unexplained sudden death in apparently healthy young men in their sleep, sometimes preceded by thrashing.
Excluding Danil, who was still just a boy and of Kazakh extraction, the other victims fit the profile of sudden nocturnal deaths in young South-east Asian males: Dr Lim's wife had observed him having a 'seizure' before he died, although Dr Toh's wife had not noticed anything amiss.
According to a recent Health Sciences Authority study, an average of 300 men aged between 18 and 60 die suddenly in Singapore each year. Most of these deaths are caused by heart conditions, though people also die in their sleep from an asthmatic attack, a stroke, the rupture of an enlarged blood vessel or sleep apnea, where one's breathing stops due to an obstruction in the airways.
But no cause of death can be identified in 3 per cent of these cases, while the percentage of those who die in their sleep is also not known.
Readers have asked if there is a link among all these recent cases. Though many local experts feel there is none, there is an intriguing possibility, a condition that is rare in the West but more common in young men in South-east Asia and Japan, as folklore has it.
Doctors call it the Brugada syndrome.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, about 200 apparently healthy Thai foreign workers in Singapore died from no apparent cause. These were later identified as cases of Brugada syndrome, a mysterious condition in which spontaneous abnormal heart rhythms kill victims in their sleep.
In the early 1990s, when the syndrome was first identified, the cause was still unknown. After all, the heart in such victims looked normal under the microscope. At the time, experts postulated various causes for death, such as heart rhythms going awry in some unspecified way.
But most of their hypotheses turned out to be quite mistaken. With the genomics revolution, the cause has now been identified as mutations in seven particular genes, which are specific segments of the DNA code we all carry.
This cause has been confirmed by different groups of experts in various countries, so Brugada syndrome is now regarded as an inheritable heart condition.
How does it kill? The short answer is that these mutations affect what are called 'ion channels' that are found in the living membrane that covers each heart muscle cell. These channels are really protein complexes structured like tubes running through the thickness of a cell membrane. What they do is to permit - or restrict - the movement in and out of heart cells of positively charged atoms, or ions, of potassium and sodium.
This movement of ions in and out of cells generates a voltage difference between the inside and outside of the cell.
That voltage difference, in turn, gives rise to electric signals in the membrane that go around the heart, causing the organ to beat rhythmically.
These electrical signals stimulate the heart chambers to contract in the correct order - regularly and continuously - thus pumping blood throughout the body.
Should this electric activity be disrupted, however, the heart may fail to be effective as a pump. When this happens, the patient could suffer a blackout.
Or he may notice palpitations.
Worse still, his heart could stop beating and pumping, so death would occur suddenly.
In short, if you carry mutations that produce abnormal ion channels, which regulate the flow of electrical charge, your heart's electric activity could be disrupted without warning. This is what happens in Brugada syndrome.
Since ion movements occur only in life, the heart will appear structurally normal when death strikes in such cases.
To summarise a complex process, this is a case which sees abnormal channels letting potassium ions in too slowly, or sodium ions too quickly.
But there is a small difference: Potassium channel problems are associated with sudden death that is usually brought on by exercise or if the person is startled or awoken suddenly; sodium channel problems are more likely to be associated with death while one is asleep.
Still, the illness is rare indeed. Japanese studies suggest that only 0.05 per cent to 0.6 per cent of adults have ECGs that are compatible with a diagnosis of Brugada syndrome. Published studies elsewhere show that Brugada syndrome is responsible for probably 4 per cent to 12 per cent of unexpected sudden deaths.
So should you be worried?
If you do not have an ECG that is compatible with Brugada syndrome, a history of fainting spells or a family history of sudden unexplained nocturnal deaths, you are probably not at risk.
But if you have a positive family history, you should avail yourself of not just an ECG, but also some very sensitive DNA-based tests that have just become available for routine clinical use. In fact, all immediate blood relatives of someone who has had an unexplained and unexpected sudden death should have such tests done to find out if they have inherited similar mutations.
And that goes for women relatives too. While Brugada syndrome is more common among males, females are not spared.
In 2004, Dr Hong Kui, in collaboration with Dr Ramon Brugada - both based in New York - and the latter's brother, Dr Josep Brugada of Spain's University of Barcelona, as well as other scientists, noticed that, for affected women, the immediate period after giving birth to a baby seems to be a particularly risky one.
Identifying those at risk can lead to preventive measures for some, including taking drugs called beta blockers, which modulate the heart rhythm.
Also pacemakers or cardiac defibrillators could be implanted. These gadgets prevent dangerous heart rhythms from taking over, with the latter also being capable of delivering an electric shock to reset the ticker, when needed.
Testing to identify the vulnerable will undoubtedly save lives. Five people have already perished, so hospitals in Singapore should lose no time in adopting a policy of testing the immediate relatives of such victims. One person lost to Brugada syndrome is one too many.
[/b] -
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So treasure your life
You never know when it is going to end
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Agreed so don leave any regrets behind okOriginally posted by Mervyn>_<:So treasure your life
You never know when it is going to end 
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i have many times jolted awake out of breath.
dont understand why though. -
unlucky
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.........unlucky wont cause you death la.jus suay onlyOriginally posted by sango(POH):unlucky -
Good lor, died peacefully and no pain.
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could it be due to exhaustion?
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the victims were perfectly fit and healthy and they showed no signs of any problem.Originally posted by qwerys:could it be due to exhaustion? -
this kind of deaths v. scary lohz
