Posts Tagged ‘education,’

Since I have come to live in in the convalescent home  I have had to learn many new things.  Since my last stroke in 2005 I have much difficulty getting everything to move around on my body.  At first I couldn’t even speak clearly, but after much speach therapy I got  better.  I still have trouble , but I have gotten sorta used to the different feeling.  To See what this was like  just pretend sometime  that you can’t move around.  All of the things, you used to do  you now can’t do.
especialy going to the bathroom  The thought is very scary.  Basically that’s what happens when you have a stroke.  One of the things people don’t realize about a stroke is you have to change your thinking.  As you once moved around without giving it a thought  now requires a great deal of thought and attention to move certain parts of your body.

In fact you have to relearn completely new steps inside your mind to move around.  God  has given us a great machine called the brain.  Believe it or not, you can actually re-program  things that have been damaged.  As for myself, I have chosen to do this. This thinking requires a great deal of effort .  Typically we are not programmed to do this.  So, those who are helping you need to be patient and understanding with you.

I heartily recommend this attitude.  This challenge gives your mind something to focus on.  Mentally, you begin to realize that you can be in control again.  Now, granted the control is not what you are used to having but it is the beginning of a great life adventure.

Early Language Abilities May Protect Memory Decades Later
Language Skills May Ward Off Alzheimer’s, Dementia
By CRYSTAL PHEND
MedPage Today Staff Writer

July 9, 2009—

Women with sophisticated language as young adults were less likely to suffer the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in old age — even when the characteristic brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s were present at death, researchers found.

The importance of these skills — measured by the “idea density” in an essay they wrote early in adulthood — held for women with intact cognition, regardless of whether a brain autopsy showed the hallmark plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s, Dr. Juan Troncoso of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues reported online in the journal Neurology.

The findings add to the evidence for a so-called “cognitive reserve” that protects against the effects of neurological disease, according to Dr. Robert Stern, a professor of neurology and Alzheimer’s expert at Boston University, who was not involved in the study.

Language abilities — like other measures of this reserve, such as years of education — appear to be linked to “bigger and better brains,” with more connections between neurons, he said. Rather than decreasing the likelihood that a person will develop Alzheimer’s, it apparently staves off some clinical symptoms of the underlying disease, such as memory loss.

Exercising the mind early in life may help build a protective cognitive reserve, although studies like this cannot prove that these mental exercises are effective, added Dr. Samuel Gandy of Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York.

“The notion of recommending language acquisition as a kind of mental exercise that might lower one’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease follows logically,” Gandy said.

And even if it doesn’t help in the end, language skills certainly can’t hurt, he said.

Alzheimer’s disease has puzzled researchers because the same degree of damage to the brain causes severe symptoms in some people, but not in others, Troncoso’s group noted.

To determine what factors earlier in life might produce these differences, the researchers looked at a particularly Alzheimer’s-vulnerable area of the brain during autopsies of 38 Roman Catholic nuns.
Language Skills May Stave Off Cognitive Impairment

Autopsies showed that women with known Alzheimer’s disease in this group had significant shrinkage of certain parts of the brain compared with those who had no symptoms or brain lesions.

But the women with asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease — who showed no cognitive impairment before death but showed Alzheimer’s disease-type brain lesions during an autopsy — had markedly larger compartments of key cells in their brains compared with all the other groups of women.

These features may indicate that the neurons in the brains of these women repaired themselves or grew and made new connections to compensate for damage, the researchers said.

Across these groups, there were no differences in age at death, education level, or time from last cognitive evaluation to death that could explain the results.

However, language ability earlier in life did appear to correlate with whether these women showed Alzheimer’s symptoms.

The researchers also analyzed essays that 14 of the women had written as they entered the convent five or six decades earlier.

What they found was that women without old-age cognitive impairments — including two with asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease — had expressed a significantly higher number of ideas for every 10 words in the essay than did the one patient with mild cognitive impairment and the five with Alzheimer’s disease.

Still, while the researchers called this a fascinating observation, they cautioned that the study is probably far too small to draw any solid conclusions about the benefits of a limber mind when it comes to warding off Alzheimer’s.

But though Gandy agreed that the study could not get at the mechanism behind the association, he noted that language skills are complex and exercise sensory, cognitive and motor areas of the brain at the same time.

Live long and prosper!  Learn how with this book.

Secrets-Worlds-Longest-Living-People

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

May 27, 6:05 PM (ET)

By MARIA CHEN

LONDON (AP) – Special stockings commonly given to stroke patients to prevent blood clots don’t work, a new study reported Wednesday.

Doctors often prescribe the tight, thigh-high stockings to patients who have suffered a stroke, seeking to prevent blood clots in patients’ legs – which could prove fatal if they break off and reach the heart or lungs.

About two-thirds of stroke patients can’t walk when admitted to hospital, and up to 20 percent of those patients develop a blood clot in their legs. The stockings squash the legs and force the blood to circulate better, and can be used in place of, or alongside, anti-clotting drugs like heparin.

But in a study of more than 2,500 stroke patients in Australia, Britain and Italy, doctors found the stockings did nothing to reduce the chances of a clot. Not only that, but they caused problems like skin ulcers and blisters.

The results were simultaneously published in the Lancet medical journal and presented at the European Stroke Conference in Stockholm on Wednesday.

Some experts were surprised by the findings.

“We have used these stockings because we assume they work,” said Dr. Ralph Sacco, president-elect of the American Heart Association, who was not linked to the study. “But sometimes you’re surprised when you find out the truth with a randomized trial.”

The stockings have been proven to reduce clots in surgery patients, so experts had long thought the low-cost solution might also help stroke patients.

In the study, about half of the patients got standard care in addition to the stockings. The other half just got standard care. Experts took an ultrasound of patients’ legs after about 7 to 10 days, and then again after 25 to 30 days. About 10 percent of patients in both groups developed blood clots.

In the group wearing stockings, 5 percent reported side effects like skin problems and blisters. That compares to 1 percent in the group not given the stockings.

The study was paid for by Britain’s Medical Research Council, the Scottish government, the health charity Heart and Stroke Scotland, Tyco Healthcare in the United States and the U.K. Stroke Research Network.

In Britain, draft guidelines recommend patients wear the stockings and they are used to treat an estimated 80,000 patients per year. Martin Dennis, of the University of Edinburgh and one of the study authors, said he has contacted British officials to suggest they reconsider their advice.

“This should cause a big change in how patients are treated,” Dennis said, noting that in 2002, 90 percent of stroke units in Britain used the stockings.

In the United States, stockings for stroke patients are far less popular than in the U.K.

Dr. Marc Mayberg, co-director of the Seattle Neuroscience Institute, said he hadn’t recommended the stockings for patients in about 20 years. He said the stockings were cumbersome and difficult for many patients, whose legs were paralyzed, to put on and take off.

Recommendations from the American Heart Association published in 2005 advised doctors to consider using the stockings in addition to an anti-clotting drug, or for patients who can’t take such drugs.

Sacco said American doctors were more likely to use drugs instead of stockings to prevent clots. He thought the guidelines promoting stockings might now have to be revised.

“With this lack of effect, doctors may be much less inclined to use them,” he said.

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On the Net:

The Lancet http://www.lancet.com