Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,710 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.
Friday, September 22, 2017
Experimental brain technology can rewind Alzheimer’s disease
This will probably not be available yet when you get dementia/Alzheimers. And you likely will get it, bet your doctor has no protocols to prevent it.
Alzheimer’s disease is considered a global challenge of the century.
Alzheimer’s disease is a thief. It comes and takes away the most
precious memories with which people identify themselves. It is a very
clever thief. People whom it affects don’t even remember what they have
lost — they just feel lost; lost in space and time.
Alzheimer’s can affect anybody: intellectuals, professors, artists,
musicians and handymen. My mother’s Alzheimer’s motivated me to start
the very first Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)
treatment for Alzheimer’s in Canada.
The treatment is a non-invasive procedure that doesn’t involve any
medication. This technology has been used to successfully treat
depression, and it is also being studied for a number of other
neurological conditions (for example, Parkinson’s, concussion and
stroke).
In rTMS, an electromagnetic coil is placed on the scalp and uses
magnetic pulses to cause neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to activate.
The goal is to train the neurons to perform better in the future. The
rTMS treatment has no, or only mild side effects: some people report a
slight headache that is easily treated with a pain relief pill. And the
risk of seizure is very low. (Individuals with a history of epilepsy
and/or seizures are excluded from rTMS treatments for that reason.)
‘I remember’
Our very first patient was a challenging 82-year-old lady at a
relatively advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, who hated the treatment. Every
time I asked her if she had children, she said: “Not yet; I’m still in
my twenties!”
On the seventh day of the treatment, in the middle of session, she
asked us to stop. Her husband tried to calm her and convince her to
continue, saying: “Didn’t you want to remember our children?”
She replied: “But I do remember Susan, Sam and Dona; why do I need this stupid treatment?”
That moment was what I had dreamed to see in my late mother: the way
she used to be, even for a few minutes. That patient’s cognitive state
did not show any significant improvement over the course of treatment.
However, her short moment of memory retrieval encouraged me to continue
the rTMS treatment study on others as well — particularly on those at
earlier stages of Alzheimer’s.
One thing to note and remember is that Alzheimer’s is a progressive
degenerative disease. If we intervene to plateau the state of the
patient or slow the progression, that is indeed an improvement and can
be considered a positive effect of the treatment.
How rTMS treatment for Alzheimer’s disease works and is administered. (Zahra Moussavi)
In our pilot study, we gave a maintenance treatment every three
months, to seven of our initial 10 participants, for up to a year and a
half. Our results showed that as long as patients were receiving the treatment, they did not decline. Some improved slightly.
As soon as we stopped the treatment (due to lack of funding), all
patients started to show some decline. Three of them declined so
severely that, within three months of stopping treatment, they ended up
in a nursing home and passed away within a year.
Overall, our pilot study and similar small-sample studies around the
globe showed encouraging results of rTMS treatment on Alzheimer’s,
especially when it was applied at early and moderate stages.
Encouraging steps to new Alzheimer’s treatment
As a result of those pilot studies, the Weston Brain Institute has
now funded the very first large placebo-controlled double-blind study of
rTMS treatment on Alzheimer’s. This is a collaboration of three
universities: University of Manitoba, McGill University and Monash
University. The team includes engineers, psychiatrists, clinical
psychologists, neurologists and statisticians.
The study is to investigate the effect of rTMS treatment on
Alzheimer’s patients at early and moderate stages. All participants have
to be diagnosed by one of the study doctors. And there are several
assessments for before and after treatment to assess the efficacy of the
treatment and how long it may last.
Dr. Zahra Moussavi (centre) tests the rTMS unit with a single pulse, aided by members of her research team.(Zahra Moussavi), Author provided
While this current study is an encouraging step towards finding new
treatment methods for Alzheimer’s, there are several other parameters in
the rTMS treatment protocol whose investigation is not currently
funded. They include: the method by which rTMS pulses are delivered, the
location of the stimulation and the duration of treatment. Our current
study investigates only the standard protocol of rTMS treatment. We
hope after some preliminary results to apply for, and receive, more
funding to continue the research.
The number of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise.
Alzheimer’s not only steals precious aspects of life from affected
individuals but also from their families. Alzheimer’s forces the
relatives of a patient to hopelessly watch a tragedy progress over a
prolonged period of time, day after day.
Alzheimer’s disease is a multifold condition that requires a
multidisciplinary approach for its treatment. It is only through our
collective efforts that we can hope to find a solution for such a grim
and dreadful disease. Despair may fly on the wings of morning; out of
the heart of darkness comes the light.
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