“Concussions and their effects on the rise in children and adults”

If the NFL has begun to educate their players on concussion awareness, maybe all sporting enthusiasts should follow suit. In schools at all levels there is no agreed upon care for head injuries. A concussion can change a player’s life and a player’s family lives forever.

Concussions can happen to anyone who injures their brain through a blow to the head; that can result in loss of consciousness. Trauma to the brain when mild can be called mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), mild head injury (MHI), minor head trauma and concussion.

Factors that contribute to increasing the risk of TBI include:
* A previous concussion or head injury
* Sex: being a male
* Specific  age groups: ( 1) Children age o to 5 years, teens, (2) young adults 15 to 24 years of age, and (3) older people over 75 years of age
* Contact sports, such as football, soccer, rugby, hockey or boxing
* Work that involves farming, logging, , or construction
* Traveling by vehicle at a high rate of speed
* Alcohol use
* Lack of sleep
* Medications that cause drowsiness

Symptoms that may appear in a person with a concussion include:

* Listlessness, memory problems or tiring easily
* Irritability, hypersensitivity of the senses, or lack of patience with self or others
* Changes in normal habits: eating or sleeping patterns, behaviors, school performance, decrease motivation
* Decreasing interest in being with friends, playing with favorite toys, activities, or sports
* Loss of new skills, such as toilet training, jumping, bike riding, spelling or reading
* Change in balance, dizziness, visual field disturbances, unsteady walking, ringing in ears

Concussions among high-school athletes occur with alarming frequency. The report from the Government Accountability Office finds that three national databases of concussions among high school athletes are too low. Surprisingly only Texas, Oregon and Washington have enacted laws to meaningfully tackle the issue, the GAO reports. Oregon and Texas require athletes to be removed from play the day of the injury, while Washington gives coaches responsibility for removal.

Just taking an injured person off the field is not enough. All coaches need training to recognize and be able to administer several cognitive tests to test for memory and physical impairment. recovery often takes much longer. The Concussion Clinic at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio estimates 400,000 concussions occurred among 7.5 million student athletes who participated in high-school sports during the 2008-2009 school year.

A recent clinical study by the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington found that more than 80% of student athletes who experienced concussions reported a significant worsening of symptoms over the first four weeks after attempting to return to school academics. Typically when the stress of school activities increases concentration and the ability to remember and respond appropriately overload the brain’s biological software and the result is an increase in post-concussion symptoms. These symptoms would only be exasperated for an individual with learning or behavior challenges.

Next:  how integrated medicine can augment tradition care of TBIs.

Resources
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“Testing of US Drugs in third world – Pfizer is the poster child”

Almost 15 years after the fact, Nigerians are officially allowed to sue Pfizer over the company’s illegal use of a test antibiotic drug on their children. Surprisingly, The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to send the Pfizer (PFE) Trovan case to trial

Pfizer is accused of illegally testing a drug, Trovan, in Nigeria that killed 11 children and injured 181 others during a meningitis epidemic in 1996. Trovan banned in the EU in 1999 and in the U.S, but the FDA still allowed its’ use in adult emergency care.

This compensation case has been dragged out for years in the courts, because Pfizer has the money to do it. There is more at stake.

The heart of the problem that may be exposed is not the fact that people have died,

but that the entire procedure of drug testing on foreign soil may be brought into the light of day.

What will be seen?

• the corporate greed
• the backwoods mentality that it is okay to test new drugs on uneducated poor ignorant third world peoples,
• the pay off of corrupt foreign government officials is condoned
• the fudging the test results is acceptable.
• Once the “test results” are compiled and possibly reviewed by FDA (Federal Drug Administration) -only 1 percent of trials conducted outside the U.S are reviewed.

The trail of greed and corporate manipulation behind the scenes needs to officially be exposed and all parties need to be held accountable.

Americans assume and wrongly so, that all there drugs have been tested under US standards and proven safe.

Resources

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“Cool treatment for Sudden Cardiac Arrest”

When someone suffers cardiac arrest, the heart suddenly stops beating due to an abnormal heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation. Within seconds, the victim loses consciousness, collapses and has no pulse. The blood and oxygen supply to the brain and body dminishes.

Only immediate emergency treatment to restart the heart, such as CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and external defibrillation (electrical shock), can prevent death. Time is the key factor in survival for these victims. The American Heart Association recommends resuscitation within five minutes of collapse or sooner.

In two research studies Researchers have found that survival with good outcomes can be increased if certain cardiac arrest patients have their bodies cooled for 12 to 24 hours.
The effectiveness of the cooling treatment  called therapeutic hypothermia  was shown in two 2002 New England Journal of Medicine studies of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who were cooled to a body temperature of about 33 degrees Celsius (around 91 degrees Fahrenheit) for 12 to 24 hours. Today most hospitals still do not use this life saving treatment.

Click to see which facilities are using this “cool treatment”.

Resources

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“Communication without words after trauma or disease”

There is a new machine that can help individuals that have lost the ability to speak talk again.

Cathy Wolf  lost her ability to speak, but through a new speech assist machine called the Brain-Computer Interface system, she can communicate again.

Cathy Wolf of Katonah, N.Y., is able to manage only a small amount of muscle movement in her face and neck. Still, she’s helping test an alternative communication system that, it’s hoped, will help her and others with ALS compensate for this loss of voluntary muscle control.

Wolf currently uses the WiViK onscreen keyboard, E-triloquist speech program software and a switch she can operate with her eyebrow. When the time comes, she says, she will use BCI full time.

The Brain-Computer Interface system reads electric currents created by nerve cells talking to each other in the brain. It allows users to control a computer and communicate through e-mail, other computer-based communication systems, or synthetic speech.

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is under development by researchers at the Wadsworth Center, an arm of the New York State Department of Health, in Albany, N.Y. The BCI system — comprising a small laptop computer, an amplifier, a 20-inch monitor and a cap fitted with electrodes — “reads” the electric currents created by cellular activity in the brain, allowing the user to control a computer and communicate through e-mail, other computer-based communication systems or synthetic speech.

Brain signals instead of muscles It’s hoped that BCI will be made widely available for in-home use by people unable to communicate by other means as a result of disease or injury. Although it has potential for use by people affected by spinal cord injuries, stroke or other diseases, Wolf and the four other people currently testing the system all have ALS.

The BCI system is calibrated to the individual, and its use in anyone with advanced ALS requires a caregiver or someone else who can first put the cap containing the electrodes on the user’s head, and then start the system. From there, the user can control everything using brain signals instead of muscles, up to and including shutting down the computer.

In fall 1997, Wolf learned she has ALS. Since then, management of the disease has included a tracheostomy and ventilator, and a feeding tube. Unable to speak, Wolf communicates with her husband Joel and the rest of the world using a WiViK onscreen keyboard; E-triloquist speech program software; and a SCATIR switch that works through detection of a reflected beam of light and which she operates with her eyebrows.

***Compmed’s Director has been arrested****

by the MDA police.

Please help me post bail so I can continue my blogging work for you.

Arrested for a good cause. Please listen to my story and help me post bail.

All money goes to Jerry’s Kids for camp and to further research. http://bit.ly/cTzj3e

Resources

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“Forest breathing – can improve your health”

Forests, parks, botanical gardens and other places with plenty of trees and plants can increase your immune function while improving your health and reducing your stress.

What is the secret to their healing properties?
Scientists claim that plant phytoncides, or odor that a plant gives off to protect itself from disease and insects damage also benefits humans. this confirms the use  by integrated people and medicine practitioners and doctors for thousands of years.

People who visited nature parks for therapy, “Shinrin-yoku,” or “forest bathing.” have:
1. lowered concentrations of cortisol, dropped their pulse rate, and lower blood pressure
while raising levels of white blood cells.
2. in 2007 men who took two-hour walks in a forest over two days had a 50-percent increase in the levels of natural killer cells.
3. Another study found an increase in white blood cells that lasted a week in women exposed to phytoncides in forest air.
Various plants, mint, lavender, frankincense, rose, onion, garlic, tea tree, oak and pine trees, and many other plants give off phytoncides. Oak contains a substance called greenery alcohol; garlic contains allicin and diallyl disulfide; and pine contains alpha-pinene, carene, myrcene and other terpenes. More than 5000 volatile substances defend the surrounding plants from bacteria, fungi and insects.
While they protect themselves with these chemicals or volatile oils and resins they help to reduce our stress and boost our immune system. For more information on the therapeutic uses of plant oils contact CMA.

Resources
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Images  courtesy of  naturescrusaders.com

“Hope for traumatic brain injury”

“Brain injuries differ dramatically from patient to patient depending on the location, type, intensity, and duration of the injury. An injury can immediately cause rips in the white matter, brain hemorrhage, swelling, and, most commonly, bruising. One insult (i.e. hitting head, swelling, bleeding or residual trauma from an old injury to the brain)) is superimposed on another as, following the injury, the brain begins to experience reduced blood flow and oxygen deficiency…

Within minutes or hours after an injury, tiny holes rip through neuronal membranes and ion channels get stuck open, leaking proteins and neurotransmitters. Free radicals and calcium spread, causing cell death and tissue damage. Early gene activation of apoptotic enzymes sends more cells into a death spiral. Mitochondria sputter, then fall silent. Astrocytes swell. The damage can be isolated or extensive.

Researchers and doctors to date have had a very antiquated system of classification for TBIs. A new, validated system has now been devised which divides TBI patients into subgroups based on the type and location of injuries, not based on their consciousness. Then, therapies that benefit specific injury types can be targeted to those subgroups. It is the initial step toward a positive clinical trial for TBI.

Another ray of hope for the treatment of TBIs is the use of progesterone. It seems to pose the possibility of becoming the magic bullet for the treatment.

Through  Don Stein’s 27 years of research on progesterone is has been shown that progesterone  produced in the brain as well as the ovaries and can easily cross the blood brain barrier. Both men and women have progesterone receptors in their brains and it  prevents the expression of inflammatory cytokines in the brain, block apoptosis, stimulate growth-promoting factors, and even have a role in remyelination of neurons.

Thus progesterone decreases the accumulation of fluids in the brain after injury, reduces secondary neuronal loss, and improves outcomes in rats. “It’s the Swiss army knife of therapies,” laughs Douglas Smith, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair. “It can take care of everything.”

Human trials are soon to get under way.

Natural integrated care and medicine like homeopathic remedies and acupuncture and neuro- kinesiology can be used to augment traditional care. These energetic forms of care can monitor the trauma, by the changing pulses and the meridian flows to determine how the body’s energetic systems are dealing with the trauma and then homeopathy can neural-kinesiology can de-stress the neuronal circuitry to enhance the healing and recovery process.

For more information on integrated medicine’s care of brain trauma contact.

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of       http://www.the-scientist.com

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