Health related Search
Posted: October 24, 2007 Filed under: Health | Tags: Health, Search 1 Comment »HealthVault provides good “contextual” information and comes with health center and option of downloading the drivers for various devices which can be connected to upload the data. For example if you search for asthma you will get – conditions, procedures/treatment/causes etc.
Bio-Med on other hand provides search over the papers of research journals.(not sure though which all get indexed here), he seems to be focused on image captions and citations.
Consciousness – Awakening a person after 6 years
Posted: October 11, 2007 Filed under: Health | Tags: , Health, Stroke Leave a comment »Nature’s article talks about providing stimulas to certain regions to provide hope for minimally conscious people. Very-2 hopeful for many folks I know of. Another article which talks about the similar stuff for “stimulating” the transcranial region.
What is consciosness – nah – I do not have profound insight – but I am skeptical when something like consciouness comes into medical literature which has different connotation and possibly should not be used in medical literature. It is more like blind folks analyzing the elephant from various angle to find out what is it that they are seeing. Everybody will have different perception.
Is ability to identify and eat is consciousness ?
Is ability to recognize people and talk is consciousness ?
Is ability to gather thoughts and use language consciousness ?
Is ability to provide gesture (a form of language) without speaking consciousness?
How do the facial expressions come to the fore – when the “person” is sleeping, what is sleeping, who is sleeping, person, face or the brain ? Who/what really controls what expressions come on the face, when we hide the expression contrary to the situation, what really happens inside down to the cell level of different kind? Which chemicals are responsible for the same? Are they produced on demand – is it possible that you can’t produce facial expressions but talk about them – would method actors have different composition of certain cells while they are playing out the roles ?
What is listening, seeing, talking?
When we are incoherent – is the main system broken down or “parts” gone for toss?
Food – the beginings
Posted: October 1, 2007 Filed under: Food, Friends, Health | Tags: Food, Friends 4 Comments »I believe in working on core strength, from the birth I have done full justice to temptation of eating food. From the most benign with guava with salt and chilli (raw mango, sugarcane juice – recently one of the “high end restaturant” I tried 50 Rs sugarcane juice – which must be the record fleecing of any kind – thanks to Kanua) to the complete course meals. Unfortunately I was deprived of the joy of preparing and serving the stuff to others through growing years.
Mom always believed I was qualified for cleaning vessels or at the most cleaning the rice, pealing the cover of peanuts, cutting the “shankar pale“/”karanji“/”mixing the chivda“, or at best rolling the laddus(besan, ravae).
Anyway coming to present times , I was blessed to have friends like Ram, Keshav who were urbanized version of maharaj of ancient times. Ram’s gojjus, tovve, upma, Keshava’s dosai, idli, sambhar, rasam are stuff of dreams. Prakash Anna’s paneer dishes, dosai(s) with chutney/potato filling, italian fares and suahasini’s Bengali style vegetables/rice/daal – something I have not had success of emulating to her quality levels.
One thing I learnt was that, it is labor of love, one needs to like and love cooking as an art form to do justice. I was complete nubee with all these gaints around and part of it rubbed on me and I have been giving fair shot at trying the items. I can not forget Krishkp’s pongal/avial – it was literally like god serving you the food. I am not exaggerating about the quality level here.
Imagine seattle in winter with drizzling rain and friend suggests let us cookup bhajjis 
, we have done that many of the times with various right accompaniements. So this post is for all the foodies and the host in them who takes the pain to cookup those delightful foods. BTW check out PBS’s food series.
Aphasia for the wordmaster and recovery
Posted: September 27, 2007 Filed under: Health | Tags: Books, partial immortalization, regeneration of brain tissue, Stroke Leave a comment »This makes for moving and poweful (hmm lack of right word) reading. The Brocka’s area and Wernicke’s area getting affected is never a good sign for the person planning to spend rest of life in the cultured world of language and its impacts. Suddenly words become another form of noise to be avoided and friends/near ones become as unintelligible as the aliens. It is next to impossible to understand the blessing we have for bringing our thoughts to meaningful sounds. And more subtly understand the impact the world around us and make utterances, suddenly one clings to the person who said – “vedas are all dirtied by folks who uttered them”, “god can not be described”. Words – they are just the final electromagnetic output of the some chemical reaction somewhere? It sucks to learn and talk.
BTW New book from Steve Pinker ponders more seriously over language as window into human’s nature.
I was more interested in results of the grant given for researching into regenerating blood vessels(via – Attila Chordash’s wonderful blog), cells for stroke patients. How to find it?
Cholestrol therapy results in reduced Alzheimer occurence
Posted: August 29, 2007 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »A article claims this over study of 110 subjects. Another article in same journal talks about use of statin to influence the ischemic stroke.
Stroke
Posted: July 31, 2007 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »What is it?
It induces disability of higher order and possible reason for mortality. Detailed reading is available here. Typically it is either ischemic(loss of supply of blood to brain) or heamorrhagic(rapture of blood vessel or bleeding). Stroke affected person needs immediate attention, the first hour is the most important as recurrent stroke or other problems based on the patient’s other problems could arise. In US of A and UK – newer treatment are available (tissue plasminogen activator, or t-PA – not effective for hemmoragic folks, Ancrod - snake venom ) which can be effectively used to prevent damage and recuperate faster. But usually the life of stroke affected person is changed for ever and has slower recovery(TIA – milder form of stroke is usually warning and recovers faster)
Once patient is recovering, prevention of embolism is as important. Once stroke makes an appearance, near and dear family needs to step and become caregiver to the patient and each other. Acceptance for the patient and self is the most difficult piece, once that is done, rest things fall in place. External/professional caregivers will have limitations and challenges and in general in case of Indian families - near family needs to right thinking. This could involve adjustments in approach to life and generally everything.
Treatment
Heparin does is usually the first mode depending on the patient hsitory. Warfarin is used in the earlier stages of treatment and usually stopped, aspirin in other form of Clopidogrel on other hand is continued for anti-platelet action to prevent clotting. But best way to prevent clotting or heamorrhage is physical exercise and general calmness of mind. Warfarin and aspirin dosage are to be prescribed by an expert to prevent untoward event. Vitamin K plays an important role during the treatment. While taking warf one needs constant INR monitoring. For the patients already using stamlo or similar drugs for controlling cardiovascular wellness(blood pressure), expert doctors can prescribe the dosage and timings (which are crucial). In general feet swelling is noticed in immoble folks affected with stroke. Prevention of infection due to neutropenia – is important but not controllable per se. So cleanliness, prevention of cold etc is super important while giving care. Incontinence can be overcome by use of adult diapers and regular timings and “sensitivity” towards the patient. Speech impairment and apraxia (inability to control the limb movement)/paralysis usually follows. Latter two can be treated with physiotherapy aided by the willingness of the patient to undergo the routine.
UK site has better updated information from time to time. In India btw stroke is 2nd biggest reason for mortality and age related immobility.
Can it be prevented from happening again?
Rehabilitation and family care are the most important factors which promote recovery, Many medicines prevent recurrence of stroke, but except aspirin in 1% of the cases, no medicine has been proven to enhance rehabilitation.
Research to follow up on.
Some of the research followed here sounds flimsy(spirituality, healing touch, spousal care taking pattern etc) but has roots in the difficult to handle aspects of the event.
Anticoagulants - have seperate branch of study.
Ahajournal has provided lot of information and tactical stuff but breakthrough is still awaited.
FDA has great site to follow up on medicines/sideeffects. In developing countries the local agencies are not so transparent or helpful as usual.
Healthnet too has good information.
How to take care
1) Patience with patient/self.
2) Sense of belonging to patient and self
3) Acceptance
4) Healthier food habits
Is India better place to take care of patients
Yes from personal experience as the family support system is the most critical piece in the caring of the patient. Most of the drugs (except tPa possibly) are available and treatment known to the doctors.
At home
One of the challenges for meaningful life after stroke comes from the badly designed house/apartments/common spaces, shopping areas etc. Depending on the disability minimum which is required is the need for support(railings), space, access to wheelchair(depends on disability) and stepless design to common areas. I guess here the developed world is far ahead of developing countries. One needs to use common sense at home to drive the comfort of patient.
Guidelines at strokecenter, Center for accessible environments are pretty exhaustive for local places which may need adaptations for local deployment.
