Saturday News

Contents of This Week Saturday News - October 3rd / 2015

• Definition: Neuronal Death

An axotomy (neuronal death) is the cutting or otherwise severing of an axon. Derived from axo- (=axon) and -tomy (=surgery). This type of denervation is often used in experimental studies on neuronal physiology and neuronal death or survival as a method to better understand nervous system diseases. Axotomy may cause neuronal cell death, especially in embryonic or neonatal animals, as this is the period in which neurons are dependent on their targets for the supply of survival factors. In mature animals, where survival factors are derived locally or via autocrine loops, axotomy of peripheral neurons and motoneurons can lead to a robust regenerative response without any neuronal death. In both cases, autophagy is observed to markedly increase. Autophagy could either clear the way for neuronal degeneration or it could be a medium for cell destruction. A longer definition comes from Wikipedia.

• Video: Neuronal Death

         -- Using Human Neurons to Prevent Brain Injury - Dr. Valina Dawson
         -- The Institute for Cell Engineering (ICE) at Johns Hopkins
         -- #TomorrowsDiscoveries: Keeping Memories Safe - Dr. Ted Dawson
         -- #TomorrowsDiscoveries: Brain Cells Damaged by Stroke -
             Dr. Shaida Andrabi
         -- Valina Dawson | Studying Cell Survival and Death in Human Neurons
         -- A Multi-Chamber Device for Studying Neural Degeneration
         -- Strokes and Excitotoxicity Part 1
         -- Strokes and Excitotoxicity Part 2
         -- Strokes and Excitotoxicity Part 3
         -- Strokes and Excitotoxicity Part 4
         -- Medical Researcher Talks About Evolving Stroke Treatment
         -- Excitotoxins, Neurotoxins & Human Neurological Disease Lecture -
             Dr. Russell Blaylock

• Headline Blog: Neuronal Death
• Question to Mariell L. Jessup, MD as President American Heart Association/American Stroke Association
• New Understanding of Why Brain Cells Die After Stroke Will Lead to Development of New Treatments
• Rehab From Rehab
• The Connectome: TED Talk Summary of Sebastian Seung

• Eclectic Stuff: Many articles from many Guest Bloggers about Stroke
• What Can I Do?
• Frustration is a Promise Breaker and Unsafe
• Traveling with Stroke Deficits; A Rude Awakening
• [Things I Love] The New Device I’ve Been Using to Improve Dexterity in my Affected Hand
• This Must be a High Priority Item - to Save Lives
• 50 Shades of Logic
• Using Focus and Imagination: Aphasia Speech Therapy

• Weekly Columnists
• Musing: The Science of Stroke - Mechanisms in Search of Treatments Dr. Michael A. Moskowitz
• Stroke Survival Sunday: Botox Again and the Benefit of a Teamwork Approach
• Caregiver: Unexpected Happy Memories
• Tadpole Update: Reported to September 29th
• Jester: Fat, Wine and Beer
• TED Talks - Seth Berkley: Why Vaccines are Made Too Late...If They’re Made At All
• Rick Mercer Report: What It's Like To Be A Chopper Cop
• Laid-Back Admin: Ending Ride by Tadpole RTT This Year

• Daily Comics: For Better Or For Worse, Dilbert, Mayes, Doonesbury

• Future Topics in SSTattler

Saturday News | Future Topic
--------------+------------------------------ 
Oct/31/2015   | Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks
Oct/24/2015   | Fish Oil (i.e. Omega-3)
Oct/17/2015   | Robotics for Stroke Survivors
Oct/10/2015   | Power Nap

Definition: Neuronal Death

SSTattler: Look below at Axotomy (neuronal death). Look at as well for more information by Wikipedia - Diffuse Axonal Injury and Central Nervous System.

Axotomy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This drawing compares a normal neuron to one undergoing

chromatolysis after axonal injury. Regeneration after axonal

injury may occur.

An axotomy is the cutting or otherwise severing of an axon. Derived from axo- (=axon) and -tomy (=surgery). This type of denervation is often used in experimental studies on neuronal physiology and neuronal death or survival as a method to better understand nervous system diseases.

Axotomy may cause neuronal cell death, especially in embryonic or neonatal animals, as this is the period in which neurons are dependent on their targets for the supply of survival factors. In mature animals, where survival factors are derived locally or via autocrine loops, axotomy of peripheral neurons and motoneurons can lead to a robust regenerative response without any neuronal death. In both cases, autophagy is observed to markedly increase. Autophagy could either clear the way for neuronal degeneration or it could be a medium for cell destruction.

The Axotomy Response

Peripheral (Extrinsic)

Video: Neuronal Death

Using Human Neurons to Prevent Brain Injury - Dr. Valina Dawson

Published on Jun 25, 2015

#TomorrowsDiscoveries: Millions of Americans suffer from brain injury because of stroke or diseases. Using lab-grown human neurons, Dr. Valina Dawson is working to identify what causes brain cell death. Her research may lead to new treatments to prevent brain injury. Learn more about Dr. Dawson's work: http://ow.ly/PrJIs.

Standard YouTube License @ Johns Hopkins Medicine

Headline Blog: Neuronal Death

Definition: Blog (noun). Add new material to or regularly update to a blog. (≃1990s: blog shortening of weblog)

Question to Mariell L. Jessup, MD as President American Heart Association/American Stroke Association

Amy Shissler
MyCerebellarStrokeRecovery

April 1, 2014

Dean wrote this…..

Please pass on to Mariell L. Jessup, MD in her responsibility as President American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. In your Stroke Rounds column, can you address the 5 known causes of the neuronal cascade of death and what is being done to solve them?
1.  Excitotoxicity
2.  Glutamate poisoning
3.  Pericytes strangling capillaries
4.  Inflammatory action leaking through the blood brain barrier.
5.  Lysosomal Membrane Permeabilization as a Key Player in Brain Ischemic Cell Death.

I’m just a simple stroke survivor that wants these solved before my next stroke.

Dean Reinke

Hopefully I can find email addresses for the NSA and WSO. Send these questions to every stroke association in the world and all your doctors, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, etc. etc. Everyone of these should know the answer off the top of their head. Anything less than that is pure incompetency. And we need to call them out on that. Its time to knock a few heads.

See the original article:

Question to Mariell L. Jessup, MD as President American Heart Association/American Stroke Association

in

My Cerebellar Stroke Recovery

New Understanding of Why Brain Cells Die After Stroke Will Lead to Development of New Treatments

Dean Reinke
Deans’ Stroke Musing

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Hey, only from 2003 and they give an explanation why glutamate toxicity is not really the culprit in the neuronal cascade of death - New Understanding of why Brain Cells die After Stroke Will Lead to Development of new Treatments.

Scientists at Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto have found a major mechanism that causes brain cells to die from stroke. They discovered that when brain cells are deprived of oxygen and vital nutrients, as happens to parts of the brain affected by a stroke, a special channel on the surface of those brain cells is activated, triggering a lethal chain reaction. The channel, called TRPM7, when activated causes brain cells to produce large quantities of free radicals – toxic molecules that break down the cell's DNA, proteins, and other components. Free radicals also cause TRPM7 to become even more active, causing massive overproduction of free radicals, resulting in death of the brain cell.

In a study published in the December 26 issue of Cell, an international science journal, the scientists also report that they have found a way to interfere with this lethal chain reaction. While brain cells can only survive for a few minutes without oxygen, interfering with the activity of TRPM7 allows brain cells to survive for more than three hours without oxygen and vital nutrients.

With this new understanding, there is now an opportunity to develop new medications that prevent activation of the TRPM7 channel. It will take approximately three years to develop a medication.

The CT and MR images show dead brain
tissue the day after a major stroke, caused
by a blockage in one of the arteries that
feeds the brain.

"This is a quantum leap forward in understanding how stroke causes brain damage," says Dr. Michael Tymianski, neurosurgeon at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at Toronto Western Hospital and associate professor of surgery and physiology at the University of Toronto. "Now we can see the bigger picture of why brain cells die from stroke."

"This project is a primary example of how basic and clinical scientists can come together as an effective research team to tackle the major health problem of stroke," says Dr. John MacDonald, chair of the department of physiology, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. "We are also very excited to explore the many potential functions of TRPM7 channels in the brain."

Rehab From Rehab

Marcelle Greene
Up Stroke

Saturday, October 26, 2013

I'm learning to walk all over again — again. This time, my privately hired therapist and I have the same goal: to get me walking normally.

My therapist at the insurance-provided rehab hospital where I spent 21 days in the weeks after my stroke had a different goal: to get me functional. That meant walking however I could manage it. It didn't matter that I was locking my knee; didn't matter that I contorted my torso; didn't matter that I balanced all my weight on one strong hip. Didn't matter. What mattered was getting me functional enough to send home.

Today it matters. I don't want to erode the cartilage in my knee, or develop spinal and hip problems. As I work to undo the bad habits formed over the past three years, I think about the whole post-stroke rehab industry and wonder what could be done to improve it? Why didn't someone take the time to help me recover my muscle function correctly from the beginning? Was I incapable? Would that have taken too long and cost too much? Isn't cutting corners going to cost my insurance company more later — when improper function leads to knee surgery? When drugs used to control spasticity cause complicating side effects?

One way to improve stroke recovery is to avoid permanent brain damage in the first place … climb on the Dean bandwagon and demand a stop to the neuronal cascade of death. But how do we help those for whom that’s too late? How do we align the goals of rehabilitation providers with rehabilitation patients? Because yes, after 21 days of insurance-covered room and board at rehab, I wanted nothing more than to go home — except to someday again be normal.

See the original article:

Rehab From Rehab

in

Up Stroke

The Connectome: TED Talk Summary of Sebastian Seung

Bill Yates
Brain Posts

2010 Dec 30

Here are my notes from the TED talk of Dr. Sebastian Seung from MIT.   I recommend viewing the presentation--although about 17 minutes long it is entertaining as well as showing some great graphics of the imaging and technology

• Your genome--your entire sequence of your DNA
• Small differences in genome make us who we are
• Are we more than our genes?  I would like to think so.
• Well what am I then?   I am my connectome
• C elegant was the worm that had the first mapping of all neuron connections
• But human brain has 100 billion neurons--many connections between these neurons
• Maybe our personal memories are coded in the connections
• I propose this hypothesis:  I am my connectome--my pattern of connections between neurons
• How do we find connectomes in the human brain?
• Technology provides some advances in understanding these connections
• Thin slices of mouse brain can be imaged in three dimensions
• A three dimensional model allows for imaging synapses--connections between neurons
• Neurotransmitters provide the chemical message connections
• How do we move from one synapse to looking for connectomes?
• One key challenge--who do the brains of men and women differ?
• Our brains are like spaghetti--each piece touches many other pieces
• The complexity of these connections make some feel the task is impossible
• It is easy to despair at the difficulty of the task

Eclectic Stuff

Definition: Eclectic (noun). A person who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources

What Can I Do?

Diana Smith
Beyond Reality

September 27, 2015

I am overload of deciding what to do with the tons of crapola I have brought into my house to sell. To be fair to myself, not all of it was to sell. I am trying to downsize, so I can clean easier. I feel like a need a van to haul all this stuff to goodwill. I had the nerve to list a yard sale for yesterday. I then got a reality check in the morning of how much work it is for little profit. So yesterday and today I am trying to put stuff up on craigslist and ebay. Craigslist out in this rural area is very slow. I usually only put things on there that are very hard to ship. Yesterday, I gave away for free my houseplants. That is one less thing I have to worry about taking care of. My son’s doctor also said they could be a source of allergies. So between my son and dog and the houseplants, I got rid of the plants. I also got rid of a rusty old hammock stand. I only used it a few times. Mostly because my yard to relax is on a busyish corner with no fence for privacy.

If the mood hits me, I will fill up my car with a load for goodwill. I actually have one garbage bag of stuff that is going regardless.

See the original article:

What Can I Do?

in

Beyond Reality

Frustration is a Promise Breaker and Unsafe

Rebecca Dutton
Home After a Stroke

September 27, 2015

Frustration is emotionally draining. I am talking about 15 seconds of frustration as you struggle to pull up your pants one-handed every time you go to the bathroom and 15+ minutes of frustration while cutting up food. Fatigue is common after a stroke so the energy that frustration uses is not good. Two year olds recover quickly from a tantrum because they sleep like the dead. I watched a video of a young child sleeping peacefully through the shriek of a smoke detector. If frustration exhausts stroke survivors, the person they made a promise to is going to be disappointed.

Frustration can also be unsafe. Safety awareness goes out the window as frustration mounts. Grunting and concentrating fiercely for ten minutes while struggling to open my hand during an OT session is one thing. Cutting off a piece of my finger is another. Dropping a therapy ball is not the same thing as dropping a knife. In my opinion, activities that require knives or high heat should be done by working smarter instead of harder. See one solution below.

I avoid frustration and increase safety when cutting up food. For example, I cut up an orange using a Swedish Deluxe cutting board that has a vise.

Graham Drummand has arthritis. He designed a cutting board that gives him control even though he is unable to fully close his hand around the knife handle or the food. I am sure frustration and safety issues motivated him to design the cutting board below.


Standard YouTube License @ cibocal

P.S. I struggled to peel an orange with short fingernails when I had two good hands. I could have avoided a lot of frustration if I had seen this video - Life Hack: Fastest way to peel an orange on YouTube.

See the original article:

Frustration is a Promise Breaker and Unsafe

in

Home After a Stroke

Traveling with Stroke Deficits; A Rude Awakening

Leslie
Living After Stroke

Traveling with Stroke Deficits; A Rude Awakening - Traveling with stroke deficits is bittersweet. Instead of small hiccups during fun times, it’s constant hiccups with fleeting moments of pleasure.

It’s been an interesting weekend. Not one I really want to repeat anytime soon. It more than confirmed my need to hibernate and isolate myself.

Here’s how it started (written in-car on phone):

We’re on our way out-of-town and just passed my all time favorite place.  The one place I have tremendous trouble accepting I won’t go again.

I’ve always hated Ohio but the one good thing about it was living an hour from Cedar Point.

I’m a coaster fiend. Always have been. So are my kids. Like they even had a choice. We had season passes since they could walk and go on the kiddy rides.

Traveling with Stroke Deficits; A Rude Awakening - Traveling with stroke deficits is bittersweet. Instead of small hiccups during fun times, it’s constant hiccups with fleeting moments of pleasure.

It was one of the first places Freddy and I went together. Season passes meant if it was too crowded, we could leave and return another time. It was our go-to place. At least once a year we would spend a couple of nights there. We’d throw in some Put-In-Bay time too.

[Things I Love] The New Device I’ve Been Using to Improve Dexterity in my Affected Hand

Pamela Hsieh
StrokedUP

21 September, 2015

Yesterday I mentioned I’d introduce you to a new tool I’ve been using to rewire the connections into my left hand.

I came across it online one day, randomly, and because I totally saw its potential value, immediately requested more information. It’s called the Music Glove, and it’s a device created by Flint Rehabilitation which combines game play with progress tracking, challenge setting, and technology to help stroke survivors regain dexterity and speed in their affected hands.

(The Music Glove is available in different
sizes for both left and right hands.)

In the short amount of time I’ve been working with Flint, the members of their team have been more than willing to help, to stay on the phone as long as I need to answer questions, and to work with me. I’m trying out the Music Glove, daily, until mid-October both so I actively begin to improve my own left hand’s skills, and also so I can review the product for you.

My Music Glove came in this past week, so I’ve only used it a small number of times, but I already feel the benefits.

How it works

This Must be a High Priority Item - to Save Lives

Jeff Porter
Stroke of Faith

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Photo from
Doug McCaughan via Flickr

Chances are, you have high blood pressure or you know someone with high blood pressure.

Chances are, you know that high blood pressure is the leading cause of strokes.

Now, it's even clearer that even tighter control of high blood pressure is a key to stroke prevention:

       "Our results provide important evidence that treating blood pressure to a lower goal in older or high-risk patients can be beneficial and yield better health results overall," said Dr. Lawrence Fine, chief of the Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "But patients should talk to their doctor to determine whether this lower goal is best for their individual care." 

A systolic pressure of 120, maintained under a more intensive blood pressure drug treatment regimen, could ultimately help save lives among adults aged 50 and older who have a combination of high blood pressure and at least one additional risk factor for heart disease, the researchers said. 

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a spokesman for the American Heart Association, said that "these are spectacular findings that will set us on a path to markedly reduce the risk of heart attacks, heart failure and stroke."

Stroke treatments and better methods boost recovery are important. But preventing strokes must be a high priority.

See the original article:

This Must be a High Priority Item - to Save Lives

in

Stroke of Faith

50 Shades of Logic

Sas Freeman

September 27, 2015

Autumn is here and we all see it differently some feel low at the thought of winter approaching and others, like me, love its splendour of colour and the cheerful feeling that it gives us. This aside we need to think of our immune systems and for us stroke survivors, especially. I don’t know about you but pre stroke days I had an immune system that was good, second to none, now it is poor.

I struggle with things I hadn’t ever heard of prior to stroke and pick up bugs that tend to do the rounds in the winter months. This in mind it is important, as I mention in my book, to look at what we eat. Foods that can help boost our immune system, rather than turn to vitamin pills look at what is in season and eat nuts, dried foods etc.

Also like many of you, I am sure, remember reading that as a nation we are building a resistance to some antibiotics and I sometimes hear people say that once they were feeling better they did not finish the whole course of antibiotics. This as we are told is bad for us. For this reason rather than write my version of what I have just read, I have decided to re print a page written by one of my local Doctors on this very subject. I hope you will find it as interesting as I have.

Antibotics

See the original article:

50 Shades of Logic

in

Sas Freeman

Using Focus and Imagination: Aphasia Speech Therapy

Mark A. Ittleman
The Teaching of Talking

September 30, 2015

“No matter how great an accomplishment may appear today, it had a beginning like a seed in the depth of someone’s imagination.”

This morning I came across the sports section of The Orange County Register, Orange County, California and spied an article written by Staff Columnist Jeff Miller concerning a 7-year old boy who was playing golf and achieved a HOLE in ONE the first time he used the clubs that were given to him for having perfect attendance in kindergarten. His grandparents had given him the golf clubs for having perfect attendance in kindergarten.

Just about anyone can use
their imagination
for accomplishment

The young boy stated “So I just swung and made the ball turn and go right in,” he explained. (Most golfers whether newbies or those playing for decades all have a dream of someday sinking a hole in one!)

When asked further how he did it, the little 7-year-old boy stated: “I just focused on looking at the ball, and I drew my line.” “I just hit the ball and it went the way I imagined.”

Isn’t it weird and crazy about youth thinking they can do just about anything by using their imagination?

The ability to use the imagination is the seed to achievement; ask anyone from Albert Einstein, ThomasEdison, Martin Luther King to athletes of the distant past like Babe Ruth. Accomplishment occurs when we set a goal, imagine it thoroughly and repeatedly, and anticipate its arrival.  It works in just about every human endeavor, even speech therapy and speaking improvement. Chances are it will work for you!

Weekly Columnists

Definition: Columnist |ˈkäləmnist| (noun). A blogger or a journalist contributing regularly to a blog or newspaper

Musing: The Science of Stroke - Mechanisms in Search of Treatments Dr. Michael A. Moskowitz

Dean Reinke
Deans’ Stroke Musing

Monday, March 7, 2011

When I first saw this referred to in ten steps forward in stroke research I knew I had to find it. I was unable to locate a free copy on the web so I contacted my local library and the librarian agreed to find me a copy from a partner library, but she ended up finding a free copy on the web; This is just the introduction, check out the URL if you want to read more.

Introduction

Few neurological conditions are as complex and devastating as stroke, the second leading cause of death worldwide. Also called a brain attack, victims may suddenly experience paralysis, impaired speech, or loss of vision due to interruption of blood flow (ischemia) caused by thrombosis or embolism. Less frequently (<15%), strokes are caused by hemorrhage or cardiac arrest. On average, strokes in the USA strike once every 40 s and cause death every 4 min, with an estimated 41.6% death rate in 2007 (absolute numbers are likely to rise).

Among survivors, work capacity is compromised in 70% of victims, and 30% need assistance with self-care. Hence, the disease burden is great. The estimated cost for stroke is 73.7 billion dollars in 2010 (USA) and projected to be 1.52 trillion dollars in 2050 (in 2005 dollars) are spared, and the problem is global. For example, in the Russian Federation and China, the estimated death rates per 100,000 population are five to ten times higher than in the USA mankind. For the above considerations and more, there is a compelling need to accelerate efforts to interrogate the stroke process and define the links that exist with other conditions such as vascular and neurodegenerative dementia. It is also crucial to expand the narrow repertoire of therapeutic opportunities for these devastating conditions. To accomplish this, novel approaches are required that expand upon our evolving mechanistic understanding of the fundamentals of cell survival and death processes as well as tissue repair. The future depends upon how successful we are in deciphering these mechanisms and bringing clarity to the complex interactions between the multiplicity of cell and tissue types within brain with this knowledge and its successful therapeutic application, the field of stroke could be transformed.

Sunday Stroke Survival: Botox Again and the Benefit of a Teamwork Approach

Jo Murphey
The Murphey Saga

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Had my usual round of Botox injections last week. Still at 400CCs of the poison for my spasticity. My hopes of doing away with them entirely with dry needling is still a distant hope. There's just too much high tone in the muscles to do without it totally yet.

In talking with most of the stroke survivors I know, they complain that their neurologists or therapists are useless. Offering little or no help at all. I'm happy to say that I cannot relate to this.

 Part is due to, I believe, is God's blessing and part in my attitude of looking at care/recovery providers as employees. If you have a medical provider that is not on the same page as you are in your recovery, why are you paying them. Yes, even if you are on Medicare or State Assistance, you are still paying them with your tax dollars. Now if you are in a small town, you may not have a choice, but where I am there are four or five of each specialty to choose from. Even if there only two, there is the lesser of two evils in a choice. Keep searching for a health care provider who thinks that it is possible to recover. That's what you really want, isn't it? I know I do.

I've often sung the praises of my neurology and therapy teams here on this blog. They believe like I do that nothing is impossible. They show they care about me and listen to what I have to say. This is important. It's called teamwork. Everyone is on the same page to get Jo to recover as much as possible. So what if my brain is telling the muscles to move in the wrong way. How do we fix it? How do we make it behave like it should? What can each one of us do to have a successful outcome? When I'm with my doctors or therapists (in this case) THIS is what we are talking about. When one of us hears something new, we bounce possibilities around. This is what I expect from my health care team and will accept nothing less, and why should I? Get on the same page or get out. Isn't this the way it should be?

Caregiver: Unexpected Happy Memories

Diane
The Pink House On The Corner

Saturday, September 26, 2015

One thing that I had long been meaning to do was to take our wedding video which was recorded on VHS and have it converted to a DVD. I was, in fact, planning to do this for a surprise for Bob on our wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, he died before then....

And I could kick myself for that.  (Memo to everyone: don't put things off -- you never know.)

Anyway, on our wedding anniversary, I actually dug up that VHS tape to take to a recording place and have it converted.  I found, while looking for the wedding tape, two other VHS tapes, one clearly marked as a "vintage fashion show" that I had done in 1993 and the other tape was mysteriously unmarked.  I decided to take them all.

After dropping off the tapes, I got a call from the recording place telling me that the unmarked video was a birthday party for someone named "Shirley" and I thought, hmmm.... Now, I know two Shirleys, one which would be an aunt and I couldn't imagine why I'd have a video of her party, and the other being a dear old friend, whom I haven't seen for years. So assumed it was the latter -- but still couldn't figure out why I had a party video of her birthday...

I picked the DVD's up yesterday and imagine my surprise when I popped the party DVD in and the first thing on it was Bob and me! Oh my.  I will share some clips here.  You will have to excuse the quality which because of the age of the original VHS tapes (1994) and technology is rather grainy and the audio is not perfect....  Here's the first one.


Standard YouTube License @ Pink House