Growing Up in a War Zone Permanently Damages Kids’ Brains

http://goo.gl/K5PJxS

You don’t have to be fighting in a war to suffer irrevocable brain damage from one.

That’s the finding from a new United Nations report released this week showing that an estimated 87 million children under the age of 7 have lived their entire lives in conflict zones, an environment so stressful that it has the potential to significantly impact the development of their brains.

The discovery stems from a report released Thursday by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an organization that works to bring resources to children in the 22 countries affected by conflict worldwide. This year the organization released a reportshowing that one in four of the more than 100 million school-age kids living in these zones are not in school.

“In addition to the immediate physical threats that children in crises face, they are also at risk of deep-rooted emotional scars,” said UNICEF Chief of Early Child Development Pia Britto, one of the main researchers behind the study.

The scars are not metaphorical: Stress actually rewires young brains.

Humans are born with 253 functioning neurons, nerve cells that receive and transmit information. From that point onwards, hundreds of new neurons are formed every second, until there are nearly 1 billion in most adults.

That’s just the number of circuits, but how they are wired depends on what happens in development.

Harvard researchers elaborated on the process in a 2004 paper titled Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain. In it, they explain how healthy development can be “derailed” by toxic stress.


These New Painkillers Could Replace Opioids

http://goo.gl/b3XNTq

In a study released Wednesday morning, researchers from Duke University announced the discovery of a new class of pain relievers that targets two different pain receptors. Published in Scientific Reports and funded by the National Institute of Health, the study is a crucial look into a new solution for a problem that’s getting worse daily.

According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, chronic pain can be debilitating—incurring huge health care costs, rendering daily activities impossible, making work impossible, and disrupting sleep. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 100 million people live with chronic pain—more than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined.

The new class of painkillers targets two receptors known as TRPV4 and TRPA1, which according to the Duke researchers, “function in sensory nerve cells to directly sense painful stimuli.” The first is linked to joint pain, the second is described as a “promising target in pain and itch research.”

Initially seeking a more potent version of an earlier TRPV4 blocker, the researchers discovered that the new version also blocked TRPA1, making it a powerful dual-action pain reliever. One of the drugs, referred to as “16-8” proved successful at treating pain in mice including “abdominal aches” and “pancreas inflammation.”

Dr. Wolfgang Liedtke, a neurology professor and leader of the study, said the drug could be useful in treating many conditions. “As a physician, I soon realized the enormous potential that these compounds might have, given how beneficial dual-target molecules can be in clinical medicine,” he said.

A pain specialist, Liedtke suggested that the drug could be used to treat headaches, jaw pain, osteoporosis, and nerve cell injuries. “We are very pleased with what is a first chapter in a highly promising story,” Liedtke said. “We hope to be able to develop these compounds for clinical use in humans or animals.”


Chronic pain often overlooked in patients with dementia

http://goo.gl/xUn0TU

Dr Martin Rakusa (University Clinic in Maribor, Slovenia) and his team conducted a study involving 452 patients with an average age of 65 who had been in treatment for diabetes for many years. A total of 44 percent of them (199 individuals) were cognitively impaired. About 12 percent of all study participants (56) indicated they were suffering from chronic pain in their limbs, a frequent symptom accompanying diabetes. Two thirds of the pain patients (39 out of 56 individuals) were not cognitively impaired. Dr Rakusa: "Cognitively impaired individuals or individuals with dementia evidently articulate their complaints less frequently. We therefore have to do more than just ask them about possible pain; we have to actively examine them to determine whether they are experiencing pain."


Kids' Concussion Rates May Be Higher Than Thought

http://goo.gl/vg3rI5

Because most young children who suffer a concussion aren't first seen in hospital emergency rooms, official tallies of these injuries may be greatly underreported, a new study finds.

"Four in five of this diverse group of children were diagnosed at a primary care practice -- not the emergency department," said study author Kristy Arbogast.

Also, "one-third were under age 12," she said, "and therefore represent an important part of the concussion population that is missed by existing surveillance systems that focus on high school athletes."


Changes in Humour May Be an Early Sign of Dementia

http://goo.gl/hCRhrE

The researchers found that people with both bvFTD and Alzheimer’s tended to prefer slapstick humour to satirical and absurdist humour when compared with healthy people of a similar age. In fact, friends and relatives reported seeing these changes an average at least nine years before the start of more typical dementia symptoms. This highlights that changes in humour are not only an early feature of FTD, but may also occur in Alzheimer’s.

As sense of humour defines us and is used to build relationships with those around us, changes in what we find funny has impacts far beyond picking a new favourite TV show. We’ve highlighted the need to shift the emphasis from dementia being solely about memory loss.

These findings have implications for diagnosis – personality and behaviour changes should be prompts for further investigation, and clinicians themselves need to be more aware of these symptoms as a potential early sign of dementia. As well as providing clues to underlying brain changes, subtle differences in what we find funny could help differentiate between the different diseases that cause dementia.

Humour could be a particularly sensitive way of detecting dementia because it puts demands on so many different aspects of brain function, such as puzzle solving, emotion and social awareness.”


Federal Court Requires WA Medicaid to provide HCV Cure to Patients

A trending issue in Michigan....

http://goo.gl/2dSGxG

The patients had sued the Washington State Health Care Authority to get treatment with direct acting anti-viral medications, a newly approved cure for Hepatitis C. But the Washington state Health Care Authority limited access to the cure to only patients whose liver had been irreparably damaged by the disease, even though the scientific evidence shows that the cure is more effective and produces better health results, the earlier it is provided. The plaintiffs argued that forcing Medicaid enrollees to wait until their health worsens violates clinical guidelines of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). “[C]linicians should treat HCV-infected patients with antiviral therapy with the goal of achieving an SVR [sustained virologic response or cure], preferably early in the course of their chronic HCV infection before the development of severe liver disease and other complications.” See http://hcvguidelines.org/full-report/when-and-whom-initiate-hcv-therapy (emphasis added).

Allergies: Ideas for Accommodation

http://goo.gl/h7Np2v

Service dogs improve common M.S. mobility issues(Study)

http://goo.gl/rV26US

A Pilot study from the International Journal of MS care published recently endeavored to test the efficacy of using service dogs to improve mobility for 44 M.S. patients who showed “identifiable gait abnormalities secondary to MS who were able to ambulate safely without the use of an assistive device even if they used one intermittently or on a regular basis to compensate for imbalance or motor deficits”

Statistical analysis showed that walking with a service dog improved the speed of the participant significantly.

The study’s author cites numerous examples of the other benefits of service dogs including higher self-esteem, reduced anxiety and stress, and lower blood pressure and cholesterol.


Urine tests not reliable for dehydration in older adults

http://goo.gl/sE8oPl

Urine tests should not be used to measure dehydration among the elderly - according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Water-loss dehydration happens when people don't drink enough fluid. Urine tests are widely used by medics, nurses and other health professionals to screen for water-loss dehydration among older people.

But new research published reveals that the diagnostic accuracy of urine tests is too low to be useful and that the tests should not be used to indicate hydration status in older people.

Lead researcher Dr Lee Hooper from UEA's Norwich Medical School said: "Around 20 per cent of older people living in residential care don't drink enough fluid, so are dehydrated. This figure rises to around 40 per cent among older adults admitted to hospital.

"Dehydration often goes unnoticed by carers, but it can lead to increased risk of hospital admission, urinary tract infections, disability and even death.

"Early identification, prevention and treatment of dehydration would likely improve the health of older people and reduce healthcare costs.

"Dark urine and high urine specific gravity have long been described as clinical indicators of dehydration - with nursing and medical text books, reviews, guidelines and public websites all advocating their use.

"We wanted to test their accuracy."

Dr Hooper said: "Assessing a urine sample is simple and cheap. But our research shows that urine tests for dehydration are not fit for purpose - either alone or as part of a wider tranche of tests. They are not sensitive or specific enough. Urine tests will indicate that some people are dehydrated when they are not, but the urine tests also miss some older adults who really are dehydrated.

"Urine colour for example can be altered by medical conditions, medications such as warfarin and by eating certain foods such as beetroot or blackberries.

"Urinary tests rely on normal kidney function. While urine tests do seem to be able to indicate hydration status in children and younger adults, ageing is associated with impaired kidney function. As we get older we cannot concentrate our urine as well as younger people - so urine tests are not useful in older adults for indicating hydration.

"There is a great need to develop simple, inexpensive and non-invasive tools for the assessment of dehydration in older people."


Chronic pain in the night

https://goo.gl/QbygpL

Night is the worst time, there are no distractions to help take my mind off the pain, it’s silent, it’s dark and I am just laid there battling my own thoughts.

It’s the time when my mind goes into overdrive, I think about all the things that have gone wrong, I think about the things I am unable to do and I think about how I’m going to cope with being in pain for the rest of my life. I can meditate but when the pain pushes past a certain point, I can’t get ‘in the zone’ as they say.

I laid there and then that thought pops up, it always does despite my best efforts to not think about it.
I think about whether I can keep fighting, I’m tired of waking up every day in pain and being in pain for the entire day and this cycle is going to keep on running for many years to come. This isn’t something that is going to kill me, nor is it something that will heal or can be cured and so I struggle with the endless fight and I often think about ending my life!

I have been told by a few people that I should see my GP and tell him about these thoughts, “you should see a psychiatrist”!
I have recently had appointments with the Pain Management Psychologist and I told her, she unlike most people understands that I’m not suicidal, I’m just in pain and that it’s quite common for people to think about taking their own life and yet they won’t do it.