PANCREATITIS

My mom was diagnosed of pancreatitis resulting to mild heart attack last January 2. I've learned she became extremely exhausted selling pertinent stuffs for the holidays. Enthusiastically, she would wake up very early to manage her store but she would go home late at night, just to sleep. For the entire month of December 2008, she was so focused with her profitable activities so it wasn't really a surpise when she suddenly became sick after the New Year's Eve. Thank's God...I can't thank HIM enough for keeping her safe now.

Try to "google" pancreatitis and definitely you'll see it's detailed description . Generally, according to research this can be attributed to salty diets, alcoholism or stress; also there are two forms of pancreatitis--acute and chronic which are both potentially fatal.

Among Filipinos, we're quiet familiar with "acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis" which is popularly linked to "bangungot" or in local terms a sudden death while at sleep as caused by a nightmare. Surprisingly, almost all reported deaths are common among men. We've heard about Rico Yan and Marky Cielo-- both are young actors who died of "acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis". What have caused male Filipinos susceptible to this folklore disease remains unexplainable.

In the province, there was this household wherein almost all male siblings in their family died because of "bangungot" when each of them reached the age of 35-40. In fact,their father and uncles also died of the same condition when they were still young. We could only imagine a family of widow and their kids grew up without a father.

Some older folks advise that if a male victim is being attacked, you have to pull his genitalia to wake him up.I don't know how true is this but in the province my grandmother usually let other members of the family watch over my uncles who would go to sleep drunk.Somebody should wake them up when they start to moan. She believes that when a man eats too much and drowns himself to alcoholic beverage he becomes prone to bangungot. However, scientific explanation for "Acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis" never really mentions that the attack would really start to attack in a form of a nightmare.

In normal situation, it's weird that the person who is having a nightmare could be consciously aware he just had a bad dream. Apparently, he would try to shout for help but nothing really comes out of his mouth. There seems to be a vacuum-like force that tries to drown him so that he couldn't move his body. In order to break this, there's a need to exert an effort to move even just one finger or toe; rise and drink a glass of water; then lie to the opposite direction when going back to sleep; or else the same thing's gonna happen.

There are mysteries that do not have scientific explanations but whatever the truth is, the moral of the story to avoid "acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis" is effective stress management and a healthy lifestyle.