Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 33,153 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain!trillions and trillions of neuronsthatDIEeach day because there areNOeffective 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.
And your competent? doctor and therapists took you on rounds to see all the art in the hospital?
Could Art Help Slow Biological Aging?
Onur Kurt/Unsplash
Painting A Picture: Your friend who always has to stop and stare at every single piece when you're visiting an art museum may be onto something. A new study from University College London suggests that regularly engaging with arts and culture could actually slow down the pace of biological aging. Researchers even found effects comparable to what exercise does for the body.
The Study: Researchers analyzed blood test and survey data from 3,556 adults in the UK, comparing arts engagement with DNA changes that influence biological aging. People who did an arts activity at least weekly appeared to age about 4% more slowly than those who rarely participated. That's the same effect seen in people who exercised once a week compared to those who did no exercise at all.
The Takeaway: Protecting time for creative and cultural activities may do real things for the body, not just the soul. The researchers also found that variety matters, so mixing up the types of activities someone engages in seems to amplify the benefit. (We’ve actually been goofing around with these kits in addition to personal writing and crocheting.)
Keep in Mind: The researchers controlled for factors like income and education level, and the links still held up, though the study found an association rather than proven cause and effect.
Did your competent? doctor give you protocols on social connections, diet and exercise? NO? So, your doctor, hospital and board of directors ARE FUCKING INCOMPETENT?
Summary: A major randomized clinical trial established that structured lifestyle interventions—such as healthy eating, regular exercise, and social activities—directly slow the biological aging process.
The study utilized data from the landmark U.S. POINTER trial to demonstrate that while self-guided wellness efforts yield minor health improvements, a structured program featuring accountability, coaching, and goal-setting significantly accelerates the reduction of systemic frailty and protects cognitive performance in aging adults.
Key Facts
The Frailty Metric: Frailty reflects the body’s accumulated health challenges over time and serves as a vital marker for the biological aging process, tightly linked to chronic disease, disability, and mortality.
The U.S. POINTER Trial: The two-year clinical trial monitored more than 2,100 adults between the ages of 60 and 79 who carried an increased risk for cognitive decline.
Structure vs. Intuition: Participants were divided into two cohorts: one following a structured program packed with health coaching, rigorous goal-setting, and regular check-ins, while the other group relied on a self-guided approach to health.
The Accountability Dividend: While both cohorts experienced improvements in their baseline health, the adults enrolled in the structured, guided program showed significantly greater reductions in biological frailty.
Multiple Pathways to Longevity: Although the structured group showed powerful gains in cognitive performance, researchers discovered that the reduction in frailty alone did not fully account for the brain benefits, proving that multi-domain interventions unlock separate, parallel pathways to healthy aging.
The Power of Multi-Targeting: The study reinforces growing evidence that simultaneously targeting multiple areas of health, rather than focusing on an isolated single behavior, is the ultimate key to maintaining independence and high quality of life during late-stage aging.
Source: Wake Forest University
Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine found evidence of slowed aging from lifestyle behaviors like healthy eating and exercise as part of a major clinical trial.
The new finding, published in this month’s edition of The Journals of Gerontology, is based on the Alzheimer’s Association’s U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER), which was the first large-scale clinical trial to demonstrate that accessible interventions that make up a healthy lifestyle can protect cognitive function.
A structured, coached approach to multi-domain lifestyle interventions significantly accelerates the reduction of biological frailty and safeguards cognitive performance compared to self-guided health changes. Credit: Neuroscience NewsIn the new paper, researchers found these healthy behaviors also reduced frailty, a key measure in aging research and a marker of the aging process. Frailty reflects the body’s accumulated health challenges over time and is strongly linked to risks like chronic disease, disability and mortality.
“These findings suggest that adopting accessible healthy behaviors may help slow important aspects of aging,” said Mark A. Espeland, Ph.D., lead author and professor of gerontology and geriatrics and internal medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
In the two-year, randomized U.S. POINTER trial, more than 2,100 adults between the ages of 60 and 79 who were at an increased risk for cognitive decline were split into two groups. One group followed a structured program with coaching, goal setting and regular checks to incorporate health eating, regular exercise, along with brain-stimulating and social activities. The other group followed a more self-guided approach to health.
Researchers at the School of Medicine, the academic core of Advocate Health, found those that followed the structured program experienced greater improvements in overall health and frailty compared to the other group. While both groups improved their frailty scores, those that followed the structured program had greater improvement.
“This shows the benefits of taking a structured approach to a healthy lifestyle,” Espeland said. “We know exercising and eating right is going to improve our health, but making efforts to participate in programs that offer guidance and accountability could be especially effective at keeping us healthy as we age.”
While participants in the structured program also showed stronger gains in cognitive performance, researchers found that improvements in frailty alone did not fully explain the brain benefits also found in the trial, suggesting multiple pathways to healthy aging.
“The results also add to growing evidence that targeting multiple areas of health at once, rather than focusing on a single behavior may be the key to maintaining independence and quality of life later in life,” Espeland added.
Key Questions Answered:
Q: We already know that eating right and exercising is good for us, so what makes this study a breakthrough?
A: The breakthrough lies in the power of structure over intention. We all know we should be healthier, but this study proves that just trying to do it on your own isn’t enough to maximize longevity. Adults who entered a structured program with coaching and strict accountability checks physically aged slower, showing far less systemic frailty than those who tried to figure it out by themselves.
Q: What exactly is “frailty” in a medical sense, and why is it used to measure how fast I am aging?
A: Frailty isn’t just a general feeling of being weak; it is a clinical metric that tracks the sum total of all the health challenges your body has accumulated over your lifetime. It serves as a direct mirror for your biological age. The higher your frailty score, the higher your statistical risk for chronic disease, disability, and mortality. Lowering this score means you are physically slowing down the aging clock.
Q: Does fixing my physical body automatically protect my brain from cognitive decline as I age?
A: Not directly, and that was one of the most exciting twists in the data. While the structured group saw massive boosts in both body strength and brain power, the researchers found that the drop in physical frailty didn’t fully explain the cognitive upgrades. This means that a structured lifestyle acts like a multi-pronged armor—improving your physical framework while simultaneously using entirely separate, hidden biological pathways to protect your mind.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this aging and neuroscience research news
Author: Kate Thayer Source: Wake Forest University Contact: Kate Thayer – Wake Forest University Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Ready does not mean recovery; so this place is still a failure! If you don't publish these three statistics no one should go there because they aren't even trying to improve their work.
Mercer Health has earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® and the American Stroke Association’s Heart-Check mark for Acute Stroke Ready Certification.
Mercer Health underwent a rigorous onsite review on February 6, 2026. During the visit, a team of Joint Commission reviewers evaluated compliance with related certification standards including program management and supporting self-management. Joint Commission standards(Your standards are shitworthy if you are not measuring 100% recovery; the only goal in stroke!) are developed in consultation with health care experts and providers, measurement specialists and patients(You obviously didn't listen to patients who were demanding recovery, not just 'care'!). The reviewers also conducted onsite observations and interviews.
“Acute Stroke Ready Certification recognizes healthcare organizations committed to striving for excellence and fostering continuous improvement in patient safety and quality of care,”(But nothing about actual recovery statistics!) says Ken Grubbs, DNP, MBA, RN, executive vice president of Accreditation and Certification Operations and chief nursing officer, The Joint Commission. “We commend Mercer Health for using The Joint Commission certification process to reduce variation in clinical processes and to strengthen its clinical program to drive safer, higher quality and more compassionate care(NOT RECOVERY!) for individuals served.”
“We congratulate Mercer Health for this outstanding achievement,” says Nancy Brown, chief executive officer, the American Stroke Association. “This certification reflects its commitment to providing the highest quality of care(NOT RECOVERY!) for stroke patients.”
“Achieving Acute Stroke Ready Certification strengthens our commitment to provide lifesaving care(NOT RECOVERY!) close to home,” says Jenny Conn, Director of Emergency Services and Disaster Preparedness at Mercer Health. “Our team collaborates across disciplines and is prepared every moment to respond when minutes matter. This recognition reflects the dedication of our providers, nurses and staff, and our promise to the community we serve.”
Did your competent? doctor give you a protocol on sleep, diet and exercise? NO? So, your doctor IS FUCKING INCOMPETENT? No question about it! You lost 5 lost years of brain cognition due to your stroke , at a minimum your doctor can provide these protocols!
Sleeping, eating, and exercise are crucial to health — and improvements in any of those categories can have big impacts. Now we’re learning that minimal changes to all three can improve health better than focusing on just one area alone.
That’s the takeaway from new work from Australian researchers that suggests strong synergistic effects. The research is among the first to calculate the effects of lifestyle changes in combination. Findings suggest that adding just 5 minutes of sleep, 2 minutes of moderate activity, and half a serving of vegetables a day can add a full year to your life.
Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD
“The central clinical message is that modest combined changes across three behaviors may matter more than trying to overhaul one behavior in isolation,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, a professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney and Monash University in Australia.
In 2025, Stamatakis gained notice with a Nature Communications paper that showed each dose of 60 seconds of daily vigorous exercise could add years to lifespan and reduce the risk for cardiometabolic disease and cancer.
Now, drawing from UK Biobank data, his team’s latest findings show a synergistic effect that “argues against an all-or-nothing approach,” Stamatakis said. “If a patient is struggling to make a large change in one area, it may still be worthwhile to pursue smaller gains across several domains at once.”
The Bare Minimum for Longer Life
The researchers started from a low baseline, creating a composite score for diet, physical activity, and sleep for study participants in the fifth percentile. These people slept about 5.5 hours a night, logged 7.3 minutes of daily moderate activity, and received a diet quality score of 36 out of 100. From there, the researchers set out to find the bare minimum improvements needed to improve lifespan and healthspan.
Here are some conclusions, from the paper published in eClinicalMedicine:
The minimum: People who added 5 minutes of sleep, 2 minutes of at least moderate activity, and a small diet change such as a half serving of vegetables daily lived 1 year longer than those with the lowest baseline.
The optimum: Getting 7.2-8 hours of sleep, 43 minutes of moderate activity, and a high-quality diet (score, 57.5-72.5 out of 100) was linked to more than 9 years of additional healthspan and lifespan.
The synergy: The math shows that these changes multiply each other’s powers. For example, if you rely on sleep alone to add a year to your life, you need an extra 25 minutes a night. But if you combine it with 2 minutes of activity and half a serving of veggies, you need only 5 minutes of additional sleep to get that same extra year.
“What stood out most was how small the estimated combined changes were for a meaningful signal,” Stamatakis said. “We are used to lifestyle advice sounding large, difficult, and sometimes discouraging. Seeing that a few extra minutes of sleep, a couple of minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity, and a modest diet improvement were associated with an extra year of lifespan was striking.”
“Equally striking was that the combination mattered so much,” he said. “Scientifically, that reinforces the idea that everyday behaviors interact in the real world, and practically it suggests a more hopeful, less overwhelming message for patients and clinicians.”
The researchers published a separate analysis in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology that showed similarly small synergistic changes in sleep, activity, and diet lowered the risk for major cardiovascular events.
Call It ‘Progress Over Perfection’
That mindset, plus the flexibility of making several small changes, can be important, said Meagan L. Grega, MD, a lifestyle and family medicine physician in Easton, Pennsylvania, and chief medical officer of the Kellyn Foundation, a healthy neighborhood nonprofit initiative that she co-founded. She serves on the governing board of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine and wasn’t involved in the study.
Meagan L. Grega, MD
Increased moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, is the strongest driver of improvement in lifespan and healthspan, she said, noting dramatic lifespan gains for each 5 minutes daily. Adding improvements in sleep and nutrition could achieve similar benefits with lower amounts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity — “a more flexible and attainable path for many patients.”
To coach your patients toward small changes, start by asking, “What matters most to you?” Grega suggests. It could be strength and vitality to stay active with the family, or protecting cognitive health. Choosing the behavior gives the patient autonomy and helps them access their internal motivation.
From there, examine barriers and strategies, Grega said. Improving sleep might mean “creating a consistent wind-down routine or setting a reminder to transition toward bedtime,” she said. “Reviewing a typical day together can uncover opportunities for brief ‘exercise snacks,’ or short bursts of movement woven into existing routines.”
For diet, take a cue from the recent study and suggest adding half a serving of vegetables a day. That’s about one medium carrot, half a bell pepper, or 4 ounces of vegetable juice.
Stamatakis made the following relevant disclosure: He is a paid consultant and holds equity in Complement 1, a US-based startup whose products and services relate to physical activity promotion and other lifestyle changes. Grega had no relevant disclosures.
If this doesn't get in your hospital in the next month to objectively determine your recovery protocol needs; THEN EVERYONE IS MASSIVELY INCOMPETENT!
You need to get them all fired and the hospital reconstituted! Obviously no one in your hospital has any brains at all if this doesn't immediately trigger; 'Let's get this for stroke rehab.'
We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.
Abstract
Background
Clinical assessment of movement smoothness during reaching in children is often based on subjective, ordinal-scaled therapist ratings. Markerless 3D motion tracking using an RGB-D camera offers a promising avenue for more objective and fine-grained smoothness evaluation. This study investigated the use of a new markerless RGB-D-based tracking method, SMPLify-KiDS, for the quantitative assessment of upper limb movement smoothness in a heterogeneous population of children with neurological impairments.
Methods
Thirty-eight children with neurological diagnoses performed three reaching tasks from the Melbourne Assessment 2 (MA2) MA2 with their more affected arm while being recorded with an RGB-D camera. Upper limb kinematics were extracted using SMPLify-KiDS, and two widely used smoothness metrics—the log dimensionless jerk (LDJ) and the modified spectral arc length (SPARC)—were computed. The same movement sequences were independently scored by two therapists according to MA2 guidelines. Correlations between quantitative smoothness metrics and therapist scores were evaluated using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, and smoothness metric differences between ordinal therapist score levels were analyzed using non-parametric statistical tests for individual items and averaged values.
Results
Quantitative smoothness metrics showed moderate to strong correlations with therapist scores per item (for LDJ:0.666 ≤ p ≤ 0.836; for SPARC:0.556 ≤ p ≤ 0.674 ), and very strong to excellent correlations for averaged values (for LDJ: p= 0.843, for SPARC:p= 0.755). Both metrics revealed statistically significant differences between ordinal therapist score levels, and LDJ strongly correlated with task duration.
Conclusions
Smoothness metrics derived from markerless RGB-D motion tracking are able to discriminate between clinically assigned smoothness levels in children with neurological impairments. LDJ showed closer alignment with therapist scores than SPARC, potentially due to its relationship with movement duration—a factor that also appears relevant to clinical perception of smoothness. These findings support the integration of markerless motion capture into clinical assessments to provide objective, quantitative, and fine-grained information on movement quality, complementing established therapist-based evaluations.
Ask your competent? doctor EXACTLY how to have a youthful brain! No knowledge, fire them and have them fired for incompetence! Dead wood needs to be removed unceremoniously! They do know exactly why Bernadette the nun was able to function quite well even with Alzheimers? NO? They incompetently know nothing about Bernadette? That's a game changer showing complete incompetence!
Preserved global brain structure appeared to buffer cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer's pathology.
Younger-appearing brains had weaker links between pathology and poorer outcomes in multiple cognitive domains.
Other measures of brain reserve or cognitive reserve showed no clear protective cognitive effect.
Greater structural brain integrity appeared to buffer the cognitive consequences of Alzheimer's disease pathology, cross-sectional data suggested.
The study evaluated two markers of brain reserve -- brain-predicted age difference (brain-PAD) and a volumetric Alzheimer's disease signature -- in cognitively unimpaired older adults. Brain-PAD, a marker of overall structural brain health, uses MRI data to determine how much older or younger a brain appears relative to chronological age.
Two markers of cognitive reserve, socioeconomic status and years of education, also were assessed.
Brain-PAD moderated the association between Alzheimer's pathology and multiple cognitive domains, including episodic memory (β = -0.09), processing speed (β = -0.08), working memory (β = -0.10), and executive function/attentional control (β = -0.08), reported Kelsey Sewell, PhD, of Murdoch University School of Allied Health in Perth, Australia, and co-authors."Specifically, the negative association of greater Alzheimer's disease pathology with poorer cognition was weakest in individuals with younger-appearing brains," the researchers wrote in Neurology.
A latent socioeconomic status score also appeared to influence the relationship between Alzheimer's pathology and episodic memory (β = 0.08), but the association did not remain significant after correction for multiple comparisons, Sewell and colleagues noted. Neither years of education nor the volumetric Alzheimer's signature moderated pathology-cognition associations, they added.
"Our main finding was that maintaining good overall brain health may help reduce the impact of Alzheimer's‑related changes on cognitive function," Sewell said in a statement. "Things like exercise, maintaining a healthy diet, sleeping well, and finding new cognitive challenges can help to maintain a healthy brain."
About 20% to 30% of adults ages 65 to 75 show evidence of Alzheimer's pathology despite having no measurable cognitive impairment, Sewell and co-authors said. "This phenomenon is often attributed to resilience, a general term describing multiple reserve-related processes that enable the brain to maintain higher levels of cognitive performance and function with aging or disease," they wrote."Within this framework, two key concepts are 'cognitive reserve' defined as a property of the brain that allows for cognitive performance better than expected given the degree of brain changes and pathology, and 'brain reserve' defined as the neurobiological capacity of the brain at a given point in time," they stated.
The findings of this study support "the idea that preserved global brain structure reduces vulnerability to cognitive decline in the face of emerging pathology," noted Maria Carrigan, MSc, and Colin Groot, MSc, both of Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, in an accompanying editorial.
"For clinicians, the key message is that preserved global brain health seems to matter even before symptoms emerge," Carrigan and Groot wrote.
"The study also raises important questions for future research," the editorialists added. "What biological processes underlie a younger-appearing brain? To what extent is brain-PAD modifiable through interventions targeting physical activity, vascular risk factors, or other lifestyle exposures? In addition, how does brain-PAD interact longitudinally with amyloid and tau accumulation to influence cognitive trajectories?"
Sewell and colleagues examined whether cognitive and brain reserve modified the relationship between Alzheimer's pathology and cognition in 621 cognitively unimpaired, physically inactive participants in the IGNITE exercise trial in the U.S.
Mean age was 70 years and 71% were women. The mean brain-PAD of the cohort was -4.05, indicating that participants' brains appeared younger than their chronological age, on average.
Alzheimer's pathology was assessed using plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau)-217. A subgroup of 355 participants also underwent tau PET imaging. Brain age was estimated from T1-weighted images.
The researchers noted several limitations. The study was cross-sectional and could not determine causality: while accelerated brain aging might worsen the cognitive effects of Alzheimer's pathology, it's also possible that people with more advanced brain ages are more vulnerable to accumulating pathology.
Emerging evidence suggests that p-tau217 may not be entirely specific to Alzheimer's pathology, they acknowledged. Findings from participants who had tau PET imaging supported the associations seen in the study.
Judy George covers neurology and neuroscience news for MedPage Today, writing about brain aging, Alzheimer’s, dementia, MS, rare diseases, epilepsy, autism, headache, stroke, Parkinson’s, ALS, concussion, CTE, sleep, pain, and more. Connect:
Disclosures
Sewell had no disclosures. One co-author disclosed being an inventor on a University of Pittsburgh patent regarding the IPMS assay for Aβ peptides and serving as a consultant for Quanterix.
