Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Do Statins Make You Stupid?

Three years ago and I know this is a hoot. Ask your doctor about it. I know this is cheating by pointing to another blog but this is too good to pass up.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/do-statins-make-you-stupid/
February 13, 2008, 11:45 am

Do Statins Make You Stupid?

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs have had a rough time of it lately.
There was the headline-making trial of the statin-combination drug Vytorin, which rattled conventional wisdom about the value of lowering cholesterol. Business Week weighed in with a report that asked: “Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?” And my Well column in Science Times last month pointed out that there’s no data to show that statins prolong the lives of many people who use them.
Now, The Wall Street Journal has joined the fray. Health Journal columnist Melinda Beck revisited questions about whether statin drugs have cognitive side effects that leave users, particularly women, with muddled thinking and forgetfulness. “This drug makes women stupid,” Dr. Orli Etingin, vice chairman of medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, declared at a recent luncheon, according to the Journal.
Over the years, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether statins affect thinking and memory, but drug makers point out that hundreds of studies haven’t shown a causal link between statins and memory problems. However, anecdotal reports continue to suggest that some patients do develop memory loss while taking the drugs.
After I wrote about the issue several years ago, a colleague who had once memorized poetry as a hobby told me he was unable to remember poems once he started taking statins. Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb, assistant professor at the University of California at San Diego, has collected thousands of stories from patients about statin side effects. She has said common complaints from patients taking statins include being unable to remember the name of a grandchild, walking into a room and forgetting why you are there, or starting a sentence and being unable to finish. Some complain of personality changes or irritability.
The Wall Street Journal highlights one interesting example:
A San Diego woman, Jane Brunzie, was so forgetful that her daughter was investigating Alzheimer’s care for her and refused to let her babysit for her 9-year-old granddaughter. Then the mother stopped taking a statin. “Literally, within eight days, I was back to normal — it was that dramatic,” says Mrs. Brunzie, 69 years old.
Doctors put her on different statins three more times. “They’d say, ‘Here, try these samples.’ Doctors don’t want to give up on it,” she says. “Within a few days of starting another one, I’d start losing my words again,” says Mrs. Brunzie, who has gone back to volunteering at the local elementary school she loves and is trying to bring her cholesterol down with dietary changes instead.
“I feel very blessed — I got about 99% of my memory back,” she adds. “But I worry about people like me who are starting to lose their words who may think they have just normal aging and it may not be.”

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