Overcome Stroke

The American Stroke Association is running an awareness campaign called Power to End Stroke, to celebrate the lifestyle and culture of America.

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You would be pleased to know that there are ways by which you can overcome stroke.

The most important thing you need to do is speak to the doctor in charge, who is treating the stroke patient.

After understanding the extent of the brain damage and the resulting disability, you would be in a better position to care for the patient.

Coping is difficult, not just for the patient but also for those around him who are caring for him. Some patients have memory loss, some suffer facial damage, some suffer vision impairment, and some even become completely paralyzed. The extent of the damage depends upon the severity and type of the stroke.

Remember that a stroke is not just about physical damage. To overcome the effects of the patient’s stroke, you should be prepared to make a huge amount of mental and emotional effort. The important thing that you need to realize is that in most cases, a patient never completely recovers from a stroke.

The risk of developing dementia is so high in the diabetic patients, final conclusion of different studies. Researchers also said that episodes of sudden hyper or hypoglycemia may also create a life-threatening condition.

A long-term study that includes thousands of old diabetic patients found that, people with the episode of hypoglycemia have more chances of developing dementia and each episode increase the chances respectively.

The results were published in the Journal of American Medical Association and researchers showed their concern as type 2 diabetes is increasing globally and patients of dementia will increase as the population ages.

Majority of the children do not face any difficulty in learning to read. Step by step, with the process of growth, they start linking letters with sounds then sounds with words and then interpret words in thoughts. This process of learning is simple and natural. This learning to read becomes continues struggle in just one out of ten children, on average.

In children, obscurity in learning the reading and language skill are commonly found learning disabilities that affect up to 80 of children. There are many terminologies that used to define these conditions for example, reading disabilities, reading disorders, and dyslexia.

Dyslexia, a long- lasting condition, affects children around the globe, regardless of the language they speak. It is equally common in male and females and it has a hereditary origin that is why it can affect many people of the same family due to the presence of the duplicate genes.

Dyslexia is a complicated disease as no one can judge this disability in a child just by looking or hear it during the conversation with them. As a result many children which have reading disability never realize the problem and left untreated. Diagnosis of dyslexia is even more difficult because problem varies from children to children.

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Results of a new study show that different brain activities like reading books and playing games may prove quite helpful to prevent or delay memory loss related to aging.\In their study, the researchers followed up 197 those people (aged 79-89) who had some gentle cognitive impairment or suffering from memory loss. Similarly, 1,124 those people were also included who didn’t have any memory problem and belonged to the same age group.

The researchers asked the participants about their routine activities during the past year and when they were in 50-65 age group.

It was found that those who used to read books, play games, use computers as well as did some crafts like quilting or pottery in their later years had 30% to 50% lower risk for developing memory loss than the people who weren’t involved in such sort of activities. Similarly, those elderly who used to watch for six hour daily had 50% lower risk to suffer from memory loss than the people who watched TV for more than six hours daily.

The results of a new study, conducted on animal models, show that a brain protein that occurs naturally in brain may slowdown or even stop Alzheimer’s.

The entorhinal cortex in brain that offers help to memory usually produces brain driven neurotrophic factor (Known as BDNF) in brain, but its production seems to reduce in the presence of Alzheimer’s disease.  The researchers injected this brain driven neuroptrophic factor in aged (with entorhinal cortex damage) or genetically engineered lab animals, and they noticed that the animals had a boosted cognitive and memory skills. The researchers also found that degeneration and death of the cells had either reversed or stopped.

Dr. Mark Tuszynski, the lead author of the study, says: “BDNF appeared to have some powerful effects. When BDNF was administered in memory circuits after stimulating their activity, it was noticed that it had prevented death of cell because of the disease.”

According to a new study, people, who stay relax and calm, have least odds to become the victim of dementia in older age.

In the study, the researchers provided questionnaires (with personality related questions) to 500 elderly people, and they found that risk of developing dementia was nearly 50% less in the people who stayed relax and calm. The study has been published in the weekly journal of Neurology.

Experts from the UK say in this connection that the study provides enough evidence to be socially active all through life.

In UK, nearly 700,000 people are the victim of dementia and according to some estimates the number of cases would increase 1.7m by the end of 2051.

The questionnaire was developed to measure neuroticism (a term refers to easily distressed people) in these people. The researchers found that people who were not easily distressed were self-satisfied and calm, while easily distressed people were not emotionally stable and they were found nervous and negative too.

The results of a new study suggest that white matter in brain seem to play more important role in cognitive and memory loss than it was believed previously.

In their study, scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the brain scans of healthy old and young adults, and in old people’s brains, they found a relation between the decline of the white matter in different parts of the brains and loss of cognitive performance and memory.

White matter in the brain is consisted of neuronal axons that serve to connect the neurons in the brain regions. It also makes communication possible in different regions of the brain.

David Ziegler, who is lead author of the study, says in a university news release, “many people have been putting their eggs in the basket of gray matter in the previous studies. Now our study suggests that the thing that is really important is connection and the integrity of this connection.”

There are several kinds of disorders caused because of brain malfunctioning or growth impairment. One of the types of behavior disorders is Asperger Syndrome.

Asperger Syndrome, generally known as AS, is a behavior syndrome that characterizes facing difficulties in social interaction, restricted behaviors, and stereotype actions and behaviors. It is a wide spectrum of psychological disorder called ‘autism spectrum disorder’ namely ASD, i.e. a group, of children psychological disorders, commonly classified as Pervasive Development Disorders PDDs.

As far as classification is concerned, AS is a subgroup of ASD.

This syndrome begins at early childhood. Repetitive actions too are its aspect. The main difference between Autism and Asperger Syndrome is that children confronting Asperger do not face that kind of difficulties in speech which are faced by Autism patients.

A neurosurgeon reported that he has removed a unique type of tumor from the brain of a Colorado Springs infant, included a fully developed tiny foot and other undeveloped body parts.

Dr. Paul Grabb said he operated a new born child after an MRI proved a microscopic tumor was developing in the newborn’s brain at Memorial Hospital. Sam Esquibel was just 3 days old and overall he was healthy except the tumor.

Grabb explained that while removing the growing tumor, he came to know that, it contained another neonate with nearly one perfect foot and another developing foot, a hand and a thigh.

“It looked like the breach delivery of a baby, coming out of the brain,” Grabb said. “It is extremely rare to find such a perfectly formed structure, unusual, borderline unheard of case like this.”

Video games are not only for lazy children, as the results of a new study show that they can also prove quite helpful to keep older brains sharp.

The results of some previous studies have already associated a lot of positive benefits with video gaming that include improving ability to solve problems, boosting operating abilities in general surgeons etc.

However, this is the first study which indicates that older people who receive training and play different complex video games, it can prove helpful to boost their cognitive functions. It is worth mentioning that the study, published in Psychology and Aging, December issue, has not been funded by the gaming industry.