RE: Pulse Taking at PAC

["Linda B. Merims" <lbm@naisp.net>]

At 08:44 AM 8/30/01 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Speaking of electrode gel - last year I never used any gel and my HRM worked
>just fine once my mare sweated a bit under the saddle...
>Would some official electrode gel make any difference?

The trick is the salt.  Electrode gel is water gel with salts
added.  Sweat has salt in it.  Aloe vera does *not*.  Salts are
a specific class of molecule with lots of (chemists, help here)
extra electrons that make them better able to transmit electric
signals. Ions and all that.  That's what the transmitter is
doing:  picking up  the electro-chemical signal from the contracting
heart muscle.  The salts in the electrode gel (or sweat) provide
a conducting medium that helps the signal make the transition
from the horse's body to the transmitter.

That's also why you electrolyte--the body needs the electrons
in the salts to transmit its signals.  Do you remember the
ER where the guys comes in who has been splashed with a
particular chemical?  And they quickly figure out that,
despite the apparent mildness of the injury, the guy is
inevitably going to die in seven or eight hours?  This
chemical, absorbed through his skin, contained a calcium
something or 'nother that was preferentially binding with
the body's calcium-ion-heartbeat-signaller molecule, but
without the necessary ions.  The guy's whole nervous system
was going to get progressively more screwed up until his
heart would stop working.  Sort of like carbon monoxide
poisoning, but with a neurotransmitter.  My mother's high blood
pressure medicine also had something to do with the calcium
signalling cycle.
 
That doesn't sound like your problem, however.  Your
problem sounds like a problem with moving electrodes
or jiggly batteries or bad wires or something.

Linda B. Merims
lbm@naisp.net
Massachusetts, USA