This is the beginning of a journey to form an association to offer help, support and information to those with chronic illnesses. Each one following their own path, each one running their own marathon of life in a victorious way.
I'm an ESL teacher, a translator,an artist and a lover of peace, life and beauty. I have been fighting and living with different chronic illnesses since 1999 when I was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor. Words like Cushing's, hypothyroidism then Hashimoto's, metabolic syndrome and recently generalized postictal epilepsy ,pineal calcification and cortical atrophy have been very real to me.......I have won many battles and have lost a few but I do plan to finish the marathon of life in triumph I expect to reach the finish line,already traced for me by God's finger.
Philippians 3:13-14
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Dioko in greek means to follow or press hard after, to pursue with earnestness and diligence in order to obtain, to go after with the desire of obtaining.
As we face many storms faith is like an anchor that keeps us from drifting and casting away in order to continue our journey, sometimes facing frightening waves, sometimes on dry desert land or cold inhospitable weather .
This young girl really inspires and motivates us all to do the best we can in spite all circumstances. Her words and optimistic attitude after a living all her life fighting against epilepsy and leading a winner's life, her web site where she declares her refusal to be classified as a child with idiopathic benign epilepsysaying "It is not who I am" can be of motivation and inspiration to others. She has inspired me and taught me new valuable priceless lessons as I read about her life and words.
"It is not who I am"
Of course not .....you are a blessing!
Sara-Elizabeth Clark
"Epilepsy hasn't changed my life in any way besides the fact that I'm helping others with it," she said. "It's a good thing, if you put it to the right use."
This is a story about the 13-year-old girl who put it all together.
Sara-Elizabeth Clark, a seventh-grader at New Paltz Middle School, is organizing the third annual Sara's Walk for Epilepsy at the SUNY New Paltz campus Saturday to benefit the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York.
She said she got the idea when she saw her family participating in events to raise money for autism, breast cancer and other conditions.
"I wanted to know why there weren't any epilepsy walks," she said.
Clark has idiopathic benign childhood epilepsy, but the address for her Web site - www.itsnotwhoiam.com - underscores her refusal to be defined by it. She'd rather be known for what she does; hence the walk.
When planning for the first walk, she met with SUNY New Paltz President Steven Poskanzer and college staff in November 2005 to discuss her idea.
"Sara conducted her meeting, and every person there said 'Absolutely,' " said her father, Shawn Clark.
She heads the seven-person committee that runs the event, and has final say over all decisions.
Imus pledges $1,000
The walk has raised a combined $25,000 in 2006 and 2007, and Sara's goal is to make another $25,000 with this year's walk alone. Radio talk show host Don Imus has pledged $1,000 and mentioned the walk several times on his show, she said. An estimated 300 people came last year.
"I didn't think it would get this big this quickly," she said.
In March, she participated in the National Walk for Epilepsy in Washington and met with staffers of the offices of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, and Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Hudson. She used that time to push for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act Restoration Act of 2007, which aims to ensure protection against discrimination for people whose medical conditions are controlled by medication.
At 4, she was taking an adult's dose of medication to control her seizures. Clark has been seizure-free since she was 5, and medication-free since she was 6. She still experiences occasional short-term memory lapses, but nothing that prevents her from making the high honor roll at school - or organizing major fundraisers.
"Epilepsy hasn't changed my life in any way besides the fact that I'm helping others with it," she said. "It's a good thing, if you put it to the right use."
I have learned about autoimmune conditions along the way, in my case the original diagnosis of hypothyroid (after the pituitary adenoma which left me with a "buffalo's hump") was changed toHashimoto's Thyroiditis because of labile thyroid hormone production, sometimes too much, sometimes too little, staying on the hypo state most of the time but giving us quite a scare when it turned hyper, specially during change of seasons. I have heard my doctors mention the possibility of lupus, fibromyalgia and diabetes type 2, insulin resistance really, I have dark blotches of skin on my elbows and a little bit on my neck, this condition is called Acanthosis nigricans. It is really quite more complicated than what one can think. I've had a couple of severe Asthma attacks since last year and they come surprisingly without any kind of notice, and have caused a little damage to my lungs so I have to carry my inhaler everywhere I go, and take Montelukast to prevent further crisis. All this issue of autoimmune disease has many ramifications to investigate and learn from, on the physical and emotional areas and as well as in the spiritual realm. It is a fact that when I feel strong in my emotions and in my spirit, my body definitely feels better and has experienced important healing breakthroughs.
Two of the most compelling features of the last twenty years have been dramatic achievements in the laboratory and striking advances in biomedical technology. Together, they have literally extended the frontiers of the mind by embodying emotions in the biology of the brain more successfully than ever before and by creating the possibility of identifying the intricate interconnections between brain-based emotions and the functioning of the neuroendocrine and immune systems. Spectacular developments in laboratory science and visualization technology have been essential components of the explosive development of neuroscience, a field which has quickly become one of the most respected, exciting and actively pursued in medicine.67">67 Within the neurosciences an area variously called "psychoneuroimmunology" and "neuroimmunomodulation"68">68 has recently emerged which seems on the verge of tracing the pathways between emotions and disease whose connections had long been glimpsed in clinical contexts by physicians ranging from Galen to Freud and from Maimonides to Alexander.
The modern grounding of emotional expression in the biology of the brain began with the work of the American neuroanatomist James Papez. In 1937, Papez argued from anatomical and clinical evidence that an "ensemble of structures" in the lower, subcortical areas of the brain constituted the "anatomic basis" and "harmonious mechanism" for the elaboration and expression of emotions. Rejecting the possibility that emotion is "a magic product," Papez insisted that it is "a physiologic process which depends on an anatomic mechanism."69">69 Papez’s ideas were effectively promoted by Paul MacLean, a physician and neurophysiologist. In 1949, MacLean proposed a hypothesized "visceral brain" as an anatomical and functional system intermediate between the "intellectual" cortex and the "discharging" hypothalamus. This system was "largely concerned with visceral and emotional functions."70">70 In the 1950s, MacLean generalized his ideas into a theory of the "limbic system," an integrated set of subcortical structures in the brain including the hippocampus and amygdala whose precise role in emotional expression and modulation he explored through the electrical and chemical stimulation of specific anatomical regions and structures.71">71 Other investigators added human clinical evidence and the results of surgery on the brains of laboratory animals, which also pointed to the role of the limbic system in the expression of emotions.
The help of my loved ones has been crucial and the care of very special doctors I'm deeply grateful to the doctors that have applied their wisdom, knowledge and expertise in my case, their care and encouraging words, I sure they will reap all the goodness and care they have planted in my life and other people's lives. I have met very serious professional doctors , they keep their distance but do their best for the patients wellbeing, so it is a matter of integrity and love for their profession and patients.
Doctor Lourdez Aleman ( R. I. P ) had an immense love for people and did lots of charity work Dr. Ignacio Delgado saved my daughter's life during birth, he saw the danger of the situation and intervened before his shift had started
For those who have spoken words of pessimism, death and defeat into my life, those who have not shown any kind of human compassion to the needs of people with disease, those who do not even read the patients files, or the ones that look at the file and never look at the patient in the eye and rather look at the clock because they wonder how much time is left fot their shift to be over and go home. Those I forgive and pray for ...... It is necessary to remember their oath to society and patients. They can plant seeds of death and depression with their uncaring coldness. I actually had a doctor tell me to accept the fact that I had an irreversible progressive condition and there was nothing I could do to stop the process of becoming a disabled person...... 5 years ago... and I'm still active and living a wonderful life! I demanded a change of doctor at the institution of course!
Hippocratic Oath—Modern Version
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.
An autoimmune disease is a disorder of the immune system, whereby it produces antibodies (immune cells and cell particles) that actually attack specific tissue and proteins belonging to the person. This causes tissue damage, and subsequent loss of function, pain, and in severe cases, death. Common autoimmune conditions include Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia, Crohn’s Disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and perhaps most commonly of all - Coeliac Disease (or celiac). Natural/Alternative Treatment is difficult and unproven - at present there is no known reliable cure for the condition.
Following is a list of many disease conditions which are classified as, or are caused by, autoimmune diseases:
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)
Crohn’s Disease (CD)
Ulcerative Colitis (UC)
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)
Acute Allograft Rejection
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Coeliac Disease
Thyroid Disease
Graves'
Fibromyalgia
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Sarcoidosis
Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP)
Alzheimer’s Dementia
Type 1 Diabetes
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Alopecia
Parkinson’s Disease (PD)
Psoriasis
Recurrent abortions/Frequent miscarriage
Auto immune Disease
Scleroderma
Sjogren’s Syndrome
Raynaud’s
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Natural Treatment
Vitiligo
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Guillain-Barre Syndrome
Haemolytic Anaemia
Myasthenia Gravis
Acute Polyneuropathy
Landry's Ascending Paralysis
Shepparton, Wangaratta, Albury, Wodonga, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Wollongong, Hobart, Cairns The following diseases are primarily allergic conditions, but they may have an autoimmune component to them as well:
Asthma
Scleroderma
Systemic Sclerosis
Dermatitis
Grave’s Disease
Fibrosing Alveolitis
Hayfever
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Tumors
Rhinitis
Auto immune Disease
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Infections (except parasitic)
Bronchitis
Endometriosis
Haemolytic Anaemia
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, SLE
Fibromyalgia
Thrombocytopenia
Diabetes Type 2
There is very little solid scientific evidence supporting any autoimmune disease cure, however there are several anectodotal reports. Those people who claim to have cured themselves have done so using a variety of different therapies, including homeopathy and guided visualisations/guided imagery. Autoimmune diseases (sometimes spelled auto immune) develop due to suppression of the immune system, which then loses its ability to efficiently identify self from non-self. A common trigger prior to the onset of the condition is exposure of the immune system to an exogenous protein (a particle that enters the body from outside itself), part of the structure of which resembles a part of the body itself. The person's immune system reacts against this protein (or proteins) and retains a memory of it as being foreign, and then atacks other protein particles which are normal parts of the human body, which the immune system has now mistakenly identified as being foreign.
This video talks about many of the things my neurosurgeon explained to me, I had to seek private help because the endocrinologist( from my country's social security system) said he couldn't help me with anything concerning brain or short/long memory problems because that wasn't his area, and the the internist said something like who is the one with the wild imagination that decided to send you to me when it is probably menopause and the normal aging process. Thank God the institution's family doctor kept pressing so I could have all the required exams.
I really wanted to participate in this marathon, I have really worked hard at the gym for some years increasing my endurance and strength which was practically non existent after the pituitary adenoma, and thyroid problem, I achieved great personal goals, not much to other people's eyes but I was able to walk long distances again. Well, with everything that has been happening with my health lately I haven't been able to exercise for a couple of months... except jumping rope with my students this week! I'm taking pain killers, something against vertigo, diazepan, flouxetine ( prosac) magnesium valproate (depakote) and levothyroxine (syntroid) of course. There'll be another time maybe next year..... I 'm going to walk the minimum distance tomorrow just to know, and have an idea if I can do it, without the pressure of the marathon and all that. If I feel bad and can't make it. I'll stop for a delicious cappuccino by the seashore!
THE H. XII AYUNTAMIENTO DE LA PAZ
THROUGH THE DIRECTION OF MUNICIPAL SPORTS
AS PART OF THE FESTIVITIES FOR THE FOUNDATION OF LA PAZ
INVITES ASSOCIATIONS, CLUBS, TEAMS AND ATHLETES IN GENERAL, TO PARTICIPATE IN
“MEDIO MARATÓN COSTERO “LECHE CARACOL LA PAZ 2008
“HALF COAST MARATHON “ CARACOL MILK LA PAZ 2008, UNDER THE FOLLOWING BASES:
1. PLACE: La Paz, Baja California Sur, México, (Malecón Costero).
2. DATE AND HOUR: Saturday May 3rd 2008, starting at 08:00 hrs.
MALE AND FEMALE DISTANCE
JUVENILE 16-19 YEARS 5 Kms.
FREE 20 YEARS AND MORE 21.097 Kms.
VETERANS 35-39 YEARS 21.097 Kms.
MASTER 40-44 YEARS 10Kms.
MÁSTER PLUS I 45-55 YEARS 5 Kms.
MASTER PLUS II 56 YEARS OR MORE 5 Kms.
SPECIAL 20 YEARS OR MORE 5 Kms.
WHEELCHAIRS 20 YEARS OR MORE 10 Kms.
PRIZE:$223,000.00 pesos m/n to be divided between the winners of the different categories of the half marathon
For more information: Dirección del Deporte Municipal Nicolás Bravo entre Aquiles Serdán y Guillermo Prieto Teléfono: 1227717 Fax: 1231737 E-mail: deporte_lapaz@prodigy.net.mx
What are parafollicular cells and where are they found?
Parafollicular cells are also called "C cells". They are found in the interstitial spaces outside the thyroid follicles in the middle third of the lateral lobes. As all endocrine cells, they lie next to capillaries so they can secrete their hormone into the bloodstream.
The Thyroid Gland has a very characteristic look that no other structures look like. The red dotted lines are outlining individual Thyroid Follicles, whose center is filled with the Colloid or Thyroglobulin.
The hormone they produce is "calcitonin". They respond to high blood levels of calcium. When calcium levels are too high, they secrete calcitonin and this hormone inhibits osteoclastic activity. What is the function of osteoclasts? Osteoclastic activity releases calcium that goes into the blood stream for use by the cells in the body. How does it do this?
Calcitonin is a polypeptide so it is produced by rough endoplasmic reticulum and stored in secretory granules. The cells can only be identified with certainty by immunolabeling for calcitonin.
C Cells or parafollicular cells labeled for calcitonin. You can see the outlines of the thyroid follicular cells lining the follicles.
CALCITONIN
Calcitonin (CT) is a peptide hormone produced by the parafollicular cells of the thyroid gland in mammals and by the ultimobranchial gland of birds and fish. Salmon calcitonin (sCT), which is more potent and longer lasting than human CT, has been used widely for the treatment of osteoporosis, paget's disease, hypercalcemic shock and chronic pain in terminal cancer patients. sCT is one of the many bioactive peptides that require C-terminal amidation for full biological activity. In this study we describe the over-expression and over-production of C-terminal amidated sCT in recombinant Streptomyces avermitilis. With this approach the utilization of expensive peptide synthesis can be circumvented.
Calcitonin is secreted by the parafollicular C-cells of the thyroid gland. Its primary physiological effect is to lower serum calcium levels. Elevated levels of calcitonin (>100 pg/mL) may be encountered in a variety of pathological conditions including leukemias and myeloproliferative disorders. The most notable condition expressing elevated calcitonin levels is medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). Swiss-Prot Accession Number: PO 1258.
Follicles of the thyroid. The follicles are made up of Follicular cells indicated by the red arrows. The center of the follicle is filled with the Colloid (blue arrows) which contains the thyroglobulin. The yellow arrow is pointing to special cell types called Parafollicular "C" cells. These cells are found under the basal lamina and are responsible for secreting the hormone Calcitonin .
Calcitonin is a hormone known to participate in calcium and phosphorus metabolism. In mammals, the major source of calcitonin is from the parafollicular or C cells in the thyroid gland, but it is also synthesized in a wide variety of other tissues, including the lung and intestinal tract. In birds, fish and amphibians, calcitonin is secreted from the ultimobrachial glands.
The blue arrows are pointing to the low cuboidal Follicular Cells that line the follicle. The red arrow is pointing to the pale staining Parafollicular "C" cells.
Calcitonin is a 32 amino acid peptide cleaved from a larger prohormone. It contains a single disulfide bond, which causes the amino terminus to assume the shape of a ring. Alternative splicing of the calcitonin pre-mRNA can yield a mRNA encoding calcitonin gene-related peptide; that peptide appears to function in the nervous and vascular systems. The calcitonin receptor has been cloned and shown to be a member of the seven-transmembrane, G protein-coupled r
A large and diverse set of effects has been attributed to calcitonin, but in many cases, these were seen in response to pharmacologic doses of the hormone, and their physiologic relevance is suspect. It seems clear however, that calcitonin plays a role in calcium and phosphorus metabolism. In particular, calcitonin has the ability to decrease blood calcium levels at least in part by effects on two well-studied target organs:
Bone: Calcitonin suppresses resorption of bone by inhibiting the activity of osteoclasts, a cell type that "digests" bone matrix, releasing calcium and phosphorus into blood.
Kidney: Calcium and phosphorus are prevented from being lost in urine by reabsorption in the kidney tubules. Calcitonin inhibits tubular reabsorption of these two ions, leading to increased rates of their loss in urine.
It seems clear that there are species differences in the importance of calcitonin as a factor affecting calcium homeostasis. In fish, rodents and some domestic animals, calcitonin appears to play a significant role in calcium homeostais. In humans, calcitonin has at best a minor role in regulating blood concentrations of calcium. One interesting piece of evidence to support this statement is that humans with chronically increased (medullary thyroid cancer) or decreased (surgical removal of the thyroid gland) levels of calcitonin in blood usually do not show alterations from normal in serum calcium concentration.
The most prominent factor controlling calcitonin secretion is the extracellular concentration of ionized calcium. Elevated blood calcium levels strongly stimulate calcitonin secretion, and secretion is suppressed when calcium concentration falls below normal. A number of other hormones have been shown to stimulate calcitonin release in certain situations, and nervous controls also have been demonstrated.
Disease States
A large number of diseases are associated with abnormally increased or decreased levels of calcitonin, but pathologic effects of abnormal calcitonin secretion per se are not generally recognized.
There are several therapeutic uses for calcitonin. It is used to treat hypercalcemia resulting from a number of causes, and has been a valuable therapy for Paget disease, which is a disorder in bone remodeling. Calcitonin also appears to be a valuable aid in the management of certain types of osteoporosis.
I found this interesting article about an epileptic cat, and it's natural instinct to reach for security, love and comfort along with a comparison to our human reactions.
Once again we can see the importance of Love! The importance of art and beauty!
Looking for an image to ilustrate this article I found this wonderful painting full of all the loving tenderness that can be expressed by a child and a her pet
"Voltaire says that animals have no idea of death. I disagree. When our epileptic cat has a petit or grand mal seizure, he wants to be alone in an enclosed area, secure that he won’t explode all over the place. However, for days before and after the seizure, he seeks touch and comfort many times each day. He knows when he will have a seizure, days ahead. He seeks the security he wants and needs ahead of time.
People seldom know they are about to have an epileptic seizure until it happens, or maybe just a brief period before. Cats are more sensitive to their bodies. Most of the time they do what they must to heal themselves. Only their owners insist upon taking them to vets.
Voltaire says that animals have no idea of death. I disagree. When our epileptic cat has a petit or grand mal seizure, he wants to be alone in an enclosed area, secure that he won’t explode all over the place. However, for days before and after the seizure, he seeks touch and comfort many times each day. He knows when he will have a seizure, days ahead. He seeks the security he wants and needs ahead of time.
People seldom know they are about to have an epileptic seizure until it happens, or maybe just a brief period before. Cats are more sensitive to their bodies. Most of the time they do what they must to heal themselves. Only their owners insist upon taking them to vets.
Now, while you think about it, go give someone you love a hug. Do it several times a day if you can. Don’t miss a day.
One of the mysteries of love is that we can’t measure it. Think not? Most of us, without being aware of it, measure how much others love us by the amount of loving touch we receive from them.
Remember, it’s not just the amount of touch we receive from others that’s important. It’s just as important to those we love that we give loving touch to them so that they can keep track of how much we love them. It works both days. We measure love by the amount of touch we receive, they measure love by the amount they receive.
Now you can understand why the so-called Empty Nest syndrome of parents whose children have grown and left home can be so severe. And why people who consider divorce do so because their partners and they have “grown apart.”
Love is an emotional word we use to describe our basic need for loving touch. Celibate nuns and priests receive little human touch, but when they devote their lives to God and to prayer the parts of their brains that trigger the feel-good response activate the same way that ours does when we are hugged by a loved one. Loving God fully can give people the same physical effect as receiving loving touch.
Thefirst time I heard about guardian dogs was shortly after being diagnosed with epilepsy, since most of my seizures were happening at night, and my breathing would stop, my sister suggested me to get a guardian dog. I remember that was the day that reality really hit me, that was the day I cried...... days after receiving the unexpected news, I actually fell on my knees and cried, there's nothing wrong or shameful about crying, it doesn't mean you don't have faith or hope, or that you are having a pessimistic attitude. It just hurts a bit. The important thing is to get up and keep going. Thank God I have been responding to treatment quite well, so I don't think a canine assistant will be necessary for me, but I'm relieved to know of the existence of these wonderful trained dogs. I wouldn't mind having one. They can make a difference in one's life.
I have found articles about young boys whose life will be blessed by having a canine assistant.
Spencer Wyatt, who has epilepsy, hugs Carly the seizure response dog
A young boy living with epilepsy soon will have a new tool to help him deal with his medical condition: a seizure response dog. These dogs are taught to respond in the event of a seizure in various ways, such as barking to alert family members or helping lower their human partner safely toward the ground. Reporter Stephanie Lecci was at the ceremony in Chicago when Spencer Wyatt was introduced to one of these special dogs.
Jennifer Arnold, the group's executive director, explains that each recipient decides how they would like the dog to respond. "One of the things they do is run and pick up medication, so when you come out of the seizure, you have meds there to take. They also will just stand guard if you need them to, just stay by you so you're not as vulnerable. Some of them we send to go get help. Then sometimes we have them call for help. Carly, you can call for help." Carly demonstrates with an enthusiastic bark.
Jennifer Arnold, the group's executive director, explains that each recipient decides how they would like the dog to respond. "One of the things they do is run and pick up medication, so when you come out of the seizure, you have meds there to take. They also will just stand guard if you need them to, just stay by you so you're not as vulnerable. Some of them we send to go get help. Then sometimes we have them call for help. Carly, you can call for help." Carly demonstrates with an enthusiastic bark.
Jennifer Arnold, the group's executive director, explains that each recipient decides how they would like the dog to respond. "One of the things they do is run and pick up medication, so when you come out of the seizure, you have meds there to take. They also will just stand guard if you need them to, just stay by you so you're not as vulnerable. Some of them we send to go get help. Then sometimes we have them call for help. Carly, you can call for help." Carly demonstrates with an enthusiastic bark.
Spencer's new friend may be able to do much more than just sound the alarm when a seizure occurs. Canine Assistants' Jennifer Arnold says many of the group's dogs – between 80 and 95 percent – can actually detect major seizures before they happen.
It's already been suggested that dogs can pick up on other medical conditions, like cancer, high blood pressure, heart attacks and low blood sugar. Arnold thinks the ability is likely related to dogs' heightened sense of smell. But she says so far, there hasn't been much research on dogs' ability to detect the onset of a seizure.
"These dogs hold people's lives in their paws," Arnold says. "Right now we don't have a machine that can do this. We don't have a human being that can do this. Every person who has epilepsy needs to have a dog that can tell them when it's going to hit."
That's why Canine Assistants is planning to partner with some sponsors to research the ability.
Spencer's mom, Amy Wyatt, says she's hoping her son's response dog will have the ability to detect his seizures. As for Spencer, he simply can't wait to get his dog. "He will be my new best friend forever!" he promises. And he says he already knows the most important thing about having a dog: walking and feeding it.
Dog Becomes Guardian Angel For Boy With Epilepsy
by patgarcia | February 14, 2008 at 09:39 am | 308 views
Jacob Larwood
BOSTON (CBS) ― It was a day of making new friends at Hanscom Air Base in Massachusetts. Jacob Larwood, 10, suffers from epilepsy, and soon, a dog will help watch for seizures.
"Right now, we rely on video cameras," said Jacob's father, Sgt. Rob Larwood. "So that part's going to be easier…That we can actually have something in the room with him."
Jacob met with a golden retriever named Fay on Wednesday. Later this year, Jacob will meet a canine like Fay in Atlanta, Georgia, who will be his new companion.
You can watch Jacob Larwood's video at the link above
Jacob Larwood’s new dog won’t have to worry about getting kicked off his bed at night.
Fay, a golden retriever, will be sleeping with the epileptic 8-year-old and alert the boy’s parents if he has a seizure.
Jacob played with his new best friend yesterday at a ceremony at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. Jacob’s dad is away on active duty making the service dog even more timely.
Fay, with a difficult-to-obey “Don’t Pet Me” vest, was all Jacob’s to enjoy yesterday. But the retriever also is acting as a temporary stand-in for the dog now being trained to care specifically for Jacob. Source: bostonherald.com
Personal Quotes "I firmly believe that the only disability in life is a bad attitude."
" With what I've endured, if I can be happy, anyone can. [laughs] I'm a short, bald, half-neutured, chemo-ed, radiated male figure skater. What choice do I have but to be optimistic?"
Along with oldest son Aidan McIntosh, 4 ½, Olympic champion figure skater Scott Hamilton, 49, and his wife Tracie, 38, introduce their second boy, Maxx Thomas, in the latest issue of People. Now 3 months old, it's a miracle the littlest Hamilton is here at all.
Scott fought off testicular cancer in 1997, with no effect on his fertility. However, in 2004, he was diagnosed with a nonmalignant brain tumor near his pituitary gland, requiring radiation to shrink -- and that took its toll. Scott's body stopped producing testosterone.
The couple tried for a year to conceive naturally. Seeing no results, they considered in-vitro as a last resort. Instead, they visited UCLA endocrinologist Dr. Christina Wang, who prescribed two different hormones to spike Scott's testosterone and therefore stimulate sperm production, a method which has a success rate of over 80%.
However, like fertility treatments for women, they're anything but easy. One of the medications Scott kept in the home refrigerator and had to mix himself. The two hormones were self-injected three times a week, back-to-back, into Scott's stomach and thigh. By April 2007, the couple had spent $23,000 on treatment -- insurance didn't cover the expenses.
" We always knew we'd like a couple of kids."
" You have one for you and have a second one for the first one."
"I did it first thing in the morning. The [stomach shot] always stung, even though it was the smaller needle. The [thigh] shot required a 5/8 needle and a full insulin-type syringe. If I hit a vein, I could cause a gusher of blood, so I had to be careful. People say you can't give yourself a shot, but when you're faced with it, you do whatever it takes."
" It was 1 ½ years of nothing. I thought it just wasn't meant to be."
I told Tracie we're done with fertility treatments and I can't do it anymore -- and bam! She got pregnant.
Olympic Gold medalist skater and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton serves as Honorary Chairman of the Board of Governors for the Pituitary Network Association. Scott is also a Pituitary patient who was diagnosed with a non- cancerous tumor and has recovered . His profile in PEOPLE MAGAZINE this week tells the story of an incredible athlete, husband, father, survivor and role model. As a role model, he contradicts the saying that "good guys finish last." As a humanitarian, he avails himself to any plight that will improve mankind. But, more important, as a cancer survivor he is a constant reminder that with fortitude and determination, anything is possible. Scott's much publicized bout with testicular cancer in 1997, and his November, 2004 diagnosis of a benign, non-cancerous pituitary brain tumor, from which he is successfully recovering, has touched him with a special insight into life and the human condition.
Diagnosing pituitary disease and disorders in the past has been difficult. Doctors are now beginning to recognize symptoms such as unexplained depression, mood swings, memory loss, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, excessive hair growth and weakness in limbs.
“1 in 5 individuals may have an abnormal growth on their pituitary gland, causing significant health complications. If left undiagnosed and untreated, this can impair normal hormone function resulting in a reduced lifespan.”, explains Dr. Shereen Ezzat, Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto and member of the Board of Directors of the Pituitary Network Association.
The pituitary is a pea-sized gland at the base of the brain that functions as the “MASTER GLAND.” It sends signals to the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, ovaries and testes, directing them to produce thyroid hormone, cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, and more. These hormones have dramatic effects on metabolism, blood pressure, sexuality, reproduction and other vital body functions. In addition, the pituitary gland produces growth hormone for normal development of height and prolactin for milk production.
The Pituitary Network Association (PNA) is an international non-profit organization founded in 1992 that serve patients with pituitary tumors and hormonal disorders. The network interfaces closely with physicians and health care providers who treat these patients. The PNA staff provides public awareness programs, seminars and assists the medical community in developing uniform standards for diagnosis, screening, surgery, radiation, and treatment. PNA is supported by a network of the world’s finest Encrinologists, Pathologists, Scientists and Neurosurgeons. The interactive PNA website (www.pituitary.org) provides valuable, up-to-date information and links and has a readership of over 2 million people per month in over 130 countries. American Scott Hamilton was a four-time world champion and the 1984 Olympic gold medal winner in men's figure skating.
Olympic Gold medalist skater and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton serves as Honorary Chairman of the Board of Governors for PNA. Scott is a Pituitary patient who was diagnosed with a tumor and has recovered from the non-cancerous pituitary tumor.
Diagnosing pituitary disease and disorders in the past has been difficult. Doctors are now beginning to recognize symptoms such as unexplained depression, mood swings, memory loss, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, excessive hair growth and weakness in limbs.
“1 in 5 individuals may have an abnormal growth on their pituitary gland, causing significant health complications. If left undiagnosed and untreated, this can impair normal hormone function resulting in a reduced lifespan.”, explains Dr. Shereen Ezzat, Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto and member of the Board of Directors of the
Pituitary Network Association.
The pituitary is a pea-sized gland at the base of the brain that functions as the “MASTER GLAND.” It sends signals to the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, ovaries and testes, directing them to produce thyroid hormone, cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, and more. These hormones have dramatic effects on metabolism, blood pressure, sexuality, reproduction and other vital body functions. In addition, the pituitary gland produces growth hormone for normal development of height and prolactin for milk production.
The Pituitary Network Association (PNA) is an international non-profit organization founded in 1992 that serve patients with pituitary tumors and hormonal disorders. The network interfaces closely with physicians and health care providers who treat these patients. The PNA staff provides public awareness programs, seminars and assists the medical community in developing uniform standards for diagnosis, screening, surgery, radiation, and treatment. PNA is supported by a network of the world’s finest Encrinologists, Pathologists, Scientists and Neurosurgeons. The interactive PNA website (www.pituitary.org) provides valuable, up-to-date information and links and has a readership of over 2 million people per month in over 130 countries.
Olympic Gold medalist skater and cancer survivor Scott Hamilton serves as Honorary Chairman of the Board of Governors for PNA. Scott is a Pituitary patient who was diagnosed with a tumor and has recovered from the non-cancerous pituitary tumor. Adversity has motivated and strengthened Scott’s outlook on life. It has created and molded his courageous character. Six weeks after his birth on August 28, 1958, Scott was adopted by Ernest and Dorothy Hamilton, both professors at Bowling GreenStateUniversity. When Scott was about two, he contracted a mysterious illness that caused him to stop growing. For the next six years, doctors prescribed a variety of unsuccessful treatments. After his illness was mistakenly diagnosed as cystic fibrosis and he was given six months to live, the Hamiltons took their son to Boston's Children's Hospital where his ailment began to correct itself by special diet and moderate exercise. From the beginning, Scott skated with great confidence and uncommon speed. He began taking formal lessons, joined a hockey team and within a year, his illness disappeared and he began growing again ‑although he would always be considerably smaller than his peers. His miraculous recovery was attributed to the effects of intense physical activity in the cold atmosphere of the rink. At thirteen he began training with Pierre Brunet, a former Olympic gold medal winner
Scott and his wife will be honored by the PNA at the "GENTLE GIANT" Award ceremony during the DECEMBER IN THE DESERT Conference on December 15, 16 and 17 in Rancho Mirage, California. Complete Conference information will be available at www.pituitary.org.
Scott Hamilton and wife Tracie Photo by: Jon Kopaloff FilmMagic Ice Skater Scott Hamilton & His Wife Have a Boy
Maxx Hamilton arrived at 7:51 a.m. He weighed in at 7 lbs., 8 oz., and measured 20 inches long, Hamilton said. He joins big brother, 4-year-old Aidan.
Hamilton, 49, and Tracie, 38, have been married since 2002, and they reside in Nashville, Tenn.
Hamilton won the gold medal in men's ice skating at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984.
The champ played a skating announcer in last year's comedy Blades of Glory starring Will Ferrell and Jon Heder. Last fall, Hamilton completed taping a series of episodes for the ABC TV series Wanna Bet? and AOL Television's Jury Duty.
Hamilton continues to co-produce Stars on Ice, which he conceived and co-founded in 1986. He retired from full-time touring with the production during its 2000-2001 season. Known the last several years as Smucker's Stars on Ice, the show entered its 22nd consecutive U.S. touring season this month.
"Luis Motte Sanchez finished La Paz marathon 2008 running with a leg protesis, he lost his leg due to diabetes, when I asked him what was the force behind his victory.... he answered something quite simple yet so powerful! Love. The love of my wife, children and grandchildren!"
What makes the impossible possible? LOVE Originally uploaded by KurobaneWhat makes the impossible possible?LOVE Originally uploaded by Kurobane
Love is an abstract concept that is easier to experience than to explain.
A picture of the chemistry of love is the following:
Love, which means “el amor” in Spanish, has many different meanings.
One of my favorite love songs in Spanish.
From something that gives pleasure (like in English you would say “I love that perfume or that food”) to something one would die for (like patriotism).
Love can also describe an intense feeling of emotion, affection or an emotional state. It usually refers to interpersonal love.
Love is one of the most common themes in art due to its psychological relevance. It is inherent in all human cultures and because all cultures are different the definition of love is difficult to establish.
Interpersonal love refers to the love between human beings; exists between family members, friends and couples. Some feelings that are related to interpersonal love are:
Affection: feelings of tenderness usually wanting physical closeness. Friendship: which basically mean the spirit between friends. Reciprocation: the need and desire of mutual love. Commitment: it is a desire and effort to maintain love. Kinship: the family bonds. Passion: it is a desire, a wholehearted desire. Altruism: it is a selfless or unselfish concern for another. Emotional intimacy: basically sharing intimate emotions and feelings. Physical intimacy: it is a sharing of intimate personal space. Attachment: the need of satisfying basic emotional needs. Service: the need and desire to help others.
Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. The medial section of the brain's prefrontal cortex has been associated with empathy and regulation of negative emotion. Researchers are learning more... Over years I've learned that as I give away, I receive much pleasure. Hopefully I will rewire my brain in this direction over the next few years.
Loves peace and serenity. When I am in an environment with chaos or strife, it shoots Cortisol to my brain and disturbs mental peace. In the last few years as I've learned so much more about the brain's serenity, I use tactics to turn it around negative barbs, into positive high points.
Sensitive to others... Loves to serve others... As I help others, or extend hospitality around a meal, it brings a sense of calm and serenity to me. That's because it primes the pump of Serotonin, a chemical of well-being, to begin flowing through my brain.
Trustworthy.Since I was raised in a loving family, in whom I built a deep sense of trust. By living what was modeled in my life, the schema for this is deeply embedded in my brain's basal ganglia.
In layman’s terms, nerves are comprised of branch-like structures called dendrites. Each dendrite branches into twig-like protrusions called dendritic spines–up to 10,000 of them. These spines are formed by your real-life experiences, so that if one is consistently exposed to similar experiences they literally grow and take shape within our brains.For example, from the moment you were first born, you had millions of micro experiences you called “mother”: her touch, her voice, her eyes, her skin, her warmth, her spirit. . . everything good, bad, and indifferent that you have ever experienced about her resulted in a unique dendritic structure in your brain that is the repository of the idea, Mother. When you hear the word “mother”, your brain goes to that dendrite to retrieve “her”. So it is with “love”: a dendrite composed of your joys, your pain, your dreams, your disappointments . . . and, scientists postulate, all other ideas.
"I recently went through a passage in 1 Corinthians all about what LOVE is and what LOVE is not. Well, LOVE IS KIND!" Chistine Adolph
Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, it always trusts; it always hopes, it always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:5-7
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of Peace. –William E. Gladstone
I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you loveand then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you. –Oprah Winfrey
"Love is unconditional acceptance. That quality is also our essential nature, who we really are. It is love of parents for child; also the non-possessive love of partners; also the caring love for all people that enables forgiveness. It is not the emotional lust of being 'in love' though that may well be in alignment with true love - or unaligned, as in jealousy. It's above energy, though it may be expressed energetically; it's Spirit itself, the nature of God, the quality we share with God; and it is the binding force of the Universe, necessary for all Creation." —Peter Shepherd
"Love is much more fundamental than any kind of thinking or believing. It is the root and basis of who you are, at the most fundamental level. This means that anything other than love as an expression of your being is artificial and unnatural and is a result of not knowing who you are." —Bill Harris
"Speaking with kindness creates confidence, thinking with kindness creates profoundness, giving with kindness creates love." —Lao Tseu
"I have mentioned before about the importance of prayer in my life, the abundance of that peace that goes beyond any understanding, the surrounding love that has immersed me in an ocean of hope and faith. I have had times of stormy weather, times of dryness and famine where I have experienced the power of love holding me, surrounding me and keeping me alive and fighting. As my journey continues I have didactically learned through personal investigation and experience about perfect balance in our body, mind and spirit." patgarcia
If a person is said to suffer from hypertension, this expression means that the average arterial pressure of that person is above the level which is accepted as normal. The increase in blood pressure is an interesting health problem for three resons; it is frequently seen, its effects are sometimes destructive and its symptoms are not recognizable even in the laters phases of the clinical course. Its effects are common and seen in all organs and it is determined as the only and most important factor of risk for especially both the coronary heart attacks and the cerebrovascular diseases. Despite the fact that hypertension tends to be much more severe for young adults, the frequency of hypertension increases with age.
Approximately 90% of hypertension is idiopathic and it is specifically seen as primary (essential) hypertension. 10% of the rest is secondary for most renal diseases and coarctation of the renal artery (renovascular hypertension) which is generally caused by an atheroma plaque. Secondary hypertension develops as a results of primary aldosteronism at a low rate, and some surrenal disorders such as Cushing’s syndrome and feochromositoma.
Clinical presentation:The 50 year old male patient presented with a typical history of intermittent headaches, which were worse on bending forwards. There is an oval high density well-circumscribed lesion in the third ventricle, anterior to the calcified Pineal gland and associated with some dilatation, particularly of the right lateral ventricle. This density did not have a detectable change on enhancement.
The pineal gland, which weighs 0.10 - 0.18 in human beings, is in the sulcus between the colliculi superior and it is composed of cellular lobules which are seperated from each other by means of a connective tissue septum. It consist of two types of cells which are called pinealocyte and neuroglia. It develops calcification which varies in degree with age. In radiologic studies, the determination of calcification is regarded as the sign of that the pineal is in its postpubertal period. The activation of the pineal gland continues during the life time inspite of the calcification.
The continuty of the endocrinous function of the pineal glanddepends on neural innervation on a great scale. Therefore it is regarded as a neuroendocrinous organ. That the sensorial knowledge concerning light and darkness of the environment by eyes plays an important role in the secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland. Generally, light decreases the secretion of melatonin, on the contrary darkness increases it. Therefore, melatonin is called the hormone of darkness. In healthy people, melatonin is secreted more at nights. Generally, the secretion of melatonin begins between the hours 21:00 and 22:00 and it decreases between the hours 07:00 and 09:00. In adults, its average maximum levels in plasma are between 50-70 pg/ml. Its maximum concentration in plasma is observed between the hours 02:00 and 04:00. -It is proved that the ilnesses become more serious at nights as a result of the increase in the tonus of the vagus. That the concentration of melatonin increases at 2 A.M. gives us a clue about the necessity of research and thinking about this subject. -For human beings, 1000-2500 lx light causes decrease in the secretion of melatonin. Melatonin is released in the general circulation. As soon it is exposed to darkness, its secretion increases and the secretion stops in the light.
In the norm between epiphysis and adrenal cortexthe unstable functional relations are established. During pathologic enhancement of adrenocortical activity, that causes the stress and psychic depression-related disorders in an emotional sphere, the epiphysial effects assume a stable restrained character. The major epiphysial hormone, melatonin, under pathology starts limiting the secretion of glucocorticoids eliminating in addition the behavioral disorders.
The concentration of melatonin in the blood varies according to the age. It reaches its maximum level in the blood at nearly eighth age and it obviously begins to decrease in the period of puberty. An increase in the level of melatonin has been observed in some cases where puberty is delayed. Melatonin level of the blood continuously decreases after puberty. That the secretion of melatonin, which is high in sick males who lacks GnRH, arrives at its normal level with a testosterone treatment is proved to regulate the secretion of melatonin by the fact that the gonadal steroids probably affect the spesific receptors those available in the pineal gland. -That’s to say, it puts the fact forward that epiphysis has a great effect on the development of the organism and the protection of the mutual balance of hormons of the endocrine glands.
Also, seasonal differences are very effective on the secretion of melatonin. In months of winter and summer, the levels of plasma melatonin are higher when they are compared with the ones in months of spring and fall.
The continuity of the rhythm of melatonin in human beings depends on the availability of the sympathetic innervation of the tractus retinohypothalamicus and the pineal. If the tractus retinohypothamicus is sectioned, it results in the disorder of the circadien cycle. During the degenerative sympathetic neuropathies, the rhythm of melatonin is lost. For example; in the peripheric diabetic neuropathy with sympathetic degeneration and when the cervical cords is sectioned, the rhythm of melatonin is lost.
Among the substances which are biologically active in thepineal the biological amins (norepinephrine, serotonin, histamine, melatonin and other indolamins, dopamine and octapamine) and peptides (TRH, LHRH, somathostatine and vasotocin which is the analogue of oxytocin) might be included. Also, the pineal has a protein named as inhibitor neurotransmitter GABA and epiphysin which resembles neurofusin. Also, some peptides which have not been identified yet, it may result in some gonodotrophin inhibitor effects on the pineal. -As it is understood from what we have said, the substances prepared by the epiphysis help the protection of the compensatory ability of the human organism and the protection of the resistance of the organism against diseases.
In conclusion, the increasing degree of pineal calcification might be established in the future as an indicator of the intra-individual decrease of the pineal gland's melatonin production. If it will be confirmed that pineal DOC is a vulnerability-marker of disturbances of the sleep-wake cycle and/or the circadian timing system, pineal DOC might also prove to be an indicator of the outcome of melatonin replacement therapy.
Epiphyseal Hypertension develops as a result of the high rate of serotonin. Serotonin directly constricts the vessel walls (of skin, kidney, stomach, uterus, brain, placenta vessel walls and umblical vessels) excluding the ones in the skeletal muscles. During the constriction of vessels by 5-HT, the direct effect of vessel smooth muscles generally plays a role depending on their activation of 5-HT1 and/or 5-HT2 receptors. During the constriction of vessels by serotonin, secondarily, its potentialization or “amplification” of the effects of the endogenous vasoconstrictor substances such as angiotensin II, PGF2, adrenaline, noradrenaline play a role, too. (It is also said that serotonin is synthesized in the pineal paranchimal cells and taken by the sympathetic nerve endings in the gland). -As we mentioned above NE plays a role during the transformation serotonin into melatonin. In case of absence or inadequacy of NAT, NE increases more as serotonin can not be transformed into melatonin. This results in an increase in tension.
MIGRAINE
The serotonin secreted by epiphysis may scientifically and logically be said to play a role in etiopathogenesis of migraine. As it is known, there are two hypothesis about the etiopathogenesis of migraine, which have not been proved yet. The first one is that the cause of pain stemming from migraine is the inadequate blood flow in the capillary as a result of the folded precapillary arteriovenous shunts and of the discharge of serotonin from the tissue and thrombosits which lie at the cerebral vessel walls nourished by the carotid arteria. Secondly, the migraine fit stems from the local inflammation resulting from the proinflammatory peptides released from the trigominovascular afferent nerve endings according to the hypothesis on the neurogenic inflammation of the pathogenesis of migraine. -In addition, I claim a hypothesis which is appropriate for the clinic of migraine. I support the thesis that migraine occurs as a result of the increase in the concentration of serotonin in epiphyseal disorders. Because, patients suffering from migraine prefer relaxing in dark and quiet atmosphere. During this period, a great part of serotonin in the epiphysis is transformed into melatonin and serotonin in the periphery decreases partially. This decrease, in the concentration of serotonin in the periphery relaxes the patient and results in a partial recovery of the pain. This type of patients generally suffer from photophobia.
At the beginning phase of migraine, both extracranial and intracranial vessels are contracted. This contraction takes 5-45 minutes and then vasodilatation begins.
Cluster Headache, Dreaming & Neurogenesis (fourteenth in a series) by Peter May A Malfunctioning Pineal Gland? The pineal gland has been implicated in a number of disorders including amongst others, cancer, sexual dysfunction, hypertension, epilepsy and Paget’s disease. If we consider the underlying hypothesis that the pineal gland is malfunctioning amongst CH sufferers; either through an inherent abnormality or through other internal and/or external influences, then how so? The answer may possibly lie in pineal calcification. The pineal gland contains several calcified concretions called "brain sand" or acervuli, known as corpora arenacea. Predominantly composed of calcium and magnesium salts, corpora arenacea are numerous in older people but they can be present in smaller numbers in children as well. The presence of calcified concretions is not thought to indicate a pathological condition except when they are found in young patients when they then may suggest the presence of pineal germinomas. Pineal calcification used to be an important landmark of an intracranial mass in the pre-CT era, when only plain films were available but it has now lost almost all of its diagnostic value. I wonder if it should be re-visited to assist in the future pathophysiology of cluster headache. Interestingly, more recent studies suggest that abnormal melatonin functions may be implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Since there is evidence that the presence of pineal calcification may relate, amongst other factors, to disturbances in melatonin secretion, one study looked at the relationship of pineal calcification size by CT scanning a number of schizophrenic sufferers. The findings suggested that the nature of onset of schizophrenia may be influenced by the activity of the pineal gland. I wonder how many cluster sufferers, if any, have had their pineal glands scanned, particularly both before and after the onset of their condition? Unfortunately though, it appears that the actual size of pineal calcification is not actually directly associated with melatonin secretion. This is in line with the lack of association between the size of calcification and pathogenesis of disease (including, I would guess if applicable, cluster headache). Also, there is no association with pineal size and age, which suggests that the size of the gland is genetically pre-determined, that is, the adult shape and size are determined early in life and reach their final stage at around the first year of life. Similarly, the weight and dimensions of the pineal gland are highly variable – up to a 20 fold difference between individuals; therefore the notion of an ‘averaged size’ is probably inadequate. However, one recent study that actually focussed of the “degree of calcification” within the pineal gland showed for the first time that an approximation of the size of uncalcified pineal tissue (representing active pinealocytes – the stuff that makes the gland tick) is significantly and positively associated with the total amount of melatonin secretion in urine. More interestingly, the well-known negative correlation between age and melatonin secretion did not persist when data were adjusted to uncalcified tissue. Accordingly, it was safe for the researchers to conclude that the decrease of melatonin secretion with age is predominantly due to increasing pineal calcification and not determined by the aging process per se. Another possibility is that CH sufferers may have a natural imbalance of the catalyst enzymes that help convert serotonin into the other dream transmitters; particularly NAT, HIOMT and INMT which have been discussed previously. If the pineal is malfunctioning in any way, it may not be producing enough of these naturally occurring pineal enzymes, or they may not be catalysing effectively, leading ultimately to lower levels of dream transmitters. It is interesting to note that 5-HTP, the precursor to serotonin, is sometimes used effectively in the treatment of CH, but can actually appear to make the condition worse amongst some sufferers. Perhaps an imbalance of these enzymes amongst sufferers is the reason for this? So, apart from genetics and hereditary issues, what might cause these enzymatic imbalances? Perhaps controversially, one recent study suggests that increased fluoride consumption (by adding to drinking water) may adversely affect the pineal gland although the final results are largely hypothetical and yet to be completed. Perhaps even more controversially, an even more recent study suggests that watching too much television (in adolescence) may also have an adverse affect on melatonin secretion, and therefore possibly the other dream transmitters. Other areas of investigation may also warrant further investigation in respect of pineal dysfunction; for example the pineal nerve, the retinohypothalamic tract or even the function of the eye itself. If any of these are malfunctioning in association with the hypothalamus it may even help explain the strictly unilateral (one-sided) nature of CH attacks amongst the majority of sufferers. Given that there is a tremendous, genetically determined, inter-individual variability as to the amount of melatonin excretion, the question arises whether there is an individual threshold for the amount of melatonin required to maintain a healthy system. Moreover, it remains unexplored as to what degree the circadian timing system may actually adapt to decreased melatonin production as the result of increasing pineal calcification; and perhaps this adaptation is markedly skewed in cluster headache, leading us back nicely to the hypothalamus. If the degree of calcification is an accurate indicator to pineal functionality then presumably it may also relate to the production of the other dream transmitters, which in turn, may or may not influence neurogenesis as previously discussed.
Appropriate help, love and motivation from parents, friends, devoted teachers and professionals along with an intrinsic desire can nourish children with dyslexia to achieve goals that are worthy of praise and be a blessing to the world and society like Thomas Alva Edison, Agatha Christie, Woodrow Wilson, Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, Benjamin Franklin and Mozart just to mention a few successful persons, who were dyslexics.
Many people are dyslexic and have no history of Epilepsy, there are those persons who are Epileptic are not Dyslexic. These are two unrelated conditions but some people have both, and dyslexia can be caused after a period of time by epilepsy--the seizures decrease the amount of oxygen to the brain, which can cause damage that can affect reading.
Morgan Jubok example of courage and diligence.
Morgan Jubok, 18 years old and dyslexic, had never chosen to read a book for enjoyment. Yet there she was, surrounded by other entertainment options, eight chapters into Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," the third book she's picked up this school year.
"A friend of mine turned me on to the movie, and I've seen it a few times," Jubok said. "I knew I had to read the book. It's amazing."
More amazing is the array of obstacles that Jubok, a senior at Lee Middle and High School, has overcome throughout her academic and athletic careers.
Jubok's physical appearance
— 4-foot-9 in height, with one purple sock and one orange sock on Tuesday morning — doesn't conjure traditional images of toughness. But over the past year, she's skied and played lacrosse on a pair of surgically repaired anterior cruciate ligaments, has read through jumbled letters and words, and has lived through seizures that cause her to shake and turn blue.
The Becket resident skis at the varsity level for Lenox Memorial High School as a co-op athlete, plays lacrosse on a regional club team, is a member of the Lee drama club, serves as an active Girl Scout, and works as the managing editor of Lee's school newspaper.
All this from a girl who, according to her mother, couldn't read "fluently" until last year and took eight years of special-education classes.
Work with her mother, teachers and doctors has allowed Jubok to limit the impact that epilepsy and learning disabilities have on her life. Extensive physical therapy allowed her to qualify for this year's State Alpine Ski Championships after she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her knees in February of 2006 and 2007.
She spent all of last season in goal for the Southern Berkshire club lacrosse team despite wearing bulky braces to protect her knees until surgery. She's back this year as the team's only goalie, and she started her season with a win on Wednesday.
Nothing, from damaged knees to a brain disorder to learning disabilities, has slowed Jubok.
"We knew a family back in New York where the daughter had epilepsy," said Mary Kay Pinkham, Jubok's mother. "They wouldn't let her do anything other than go to school — not even ride a bike. I wasn't going to let it stop Morgan, and she's never let it stop her.
"At this point, it's just a part of her life."
Jubok has found that none of her issues is a big deal, unless she allows them to be.
She tore her left ACL while snowboarding the week after her ski season ended in 2006. A year later, during February break, she tore her right ACL while demonstrating to a ski class how to go over a jump.
Two six-month rehabilitation sessions with a physical therapist followed, allowing Jubok to maintain her abilities. She finished the winter as the 10th-best skier from Berkshire County, a spot that allowed her to qualify for the state championships for the first time. She placed 73rd out of 171 skiers in the slalom and 129th in the giant slalom.
"The biggest thing (is that) she is always positive," said Jubok's physical therapist, Todd Lewis, who noted that Jubok constantly tried to speed the recovery process. "You see a lot of moping. She had a wonderful attitude."
Jubok's knees, though, likely were the least of her concerns while she followed a path littered with roadblocks.
Seizures are fatal only in extreme circumstances, so Jubok's epilepsy isn't a life-threatening condition, but it is a limiting one.
Epilepsy, also called seizure disorder, causes Jubok to suffer through five or six seizures a year, normally when she's stressed or overly tired. Abnormal bursts of electrical energy in her brain disrupt normal brain functions, causing the seizures, which began at age 3.
Before that, she could recite the entire alphabet. Afterward, her mother had to teach her from scratch.
The seizures occur with little warning, often with a few sentences that might be garbled or out of place. Jubok then can fall to the ground, her body shaking, her eyes rolling back into her skull and her face contorting violently.
"No one can prepare you to see your child's face turn blue," Pinkham said.
The seizures usually last a few minutes, with no way to stop them. They'll pass on their own, but Jubok instructs friends to roll her onto her side and hold her head, just in case her shaking causes her to knock things over or to bump her head against the ground.
Epilepsy can be managed with medications, but Jubok's doctors haven't found the right combination. She currently takes 10 pills a day and sees a doctor once a month. Both numbers are higher than normal because Jubok is in the middle of a medication change. Ideally, she sees a doctor every six months.
During each of the past three years, Jubok has suffered at least one seizure during the drama program's tech week, a period during which intense rehearsals last from 3 to 9 at night.
As a tech manager working in a booth overlooking the stage, Jubok often resorts to sipping coffee during the rehearsals to stay alert, occasionally drawing reprimands from her peers.
"She's a trooper," said friend Mike Quinlan, a fellow drama club member. "No matter what happens, she troops through it. We know she fights it."
Jubok's learned to do without the luxuries that many teenagers treat as necessities, things like a driver's license and late nights with friends. Her bedtime is two to three hours before David Letterman begins his monologue each weeknight.
Her primary regret is that she can't get her license. Becket, an isolated, rural town, is about 20 minutes from Lee, where most of Jubok's friends live.
"That's probably been the hardest thing for her to deal with," her mother said. "She always feels like she has to ask people for a ride."
Epileptics must show they've gone six months without a seizure to get a driver's permit. Jubok has gone that long just once since turning 16. On that occasion, she failed the written exam. Two weeks later, she suffered a seizure during a rehearsal for "Once Upon A Mattress."
Jubok can't be as spontaneous as her friends, changing plans at the last minute or spending long periods away from home because she needs both regular medication and rest to keep the seizures at bay.
"There are times that I get angry and I feel like I can't be a regular teenager," Jubok said. "I can't be spontaneous and just go to a party. I need to plan everything out, make sure I have my meds. Sometimes if I try to change my plans at the last minute, I'll call my mom and she'll often say 'No.' "
While epilepsy isn't fatal, dangers are associated with the condition.
A blow to the head, either during skiing or lacrosse, could do further damage to Jubok's brain or bring on a seizure. A seizure brought on by the stress of an event such as a drama production could last longer than normal, leading to permanent brain damage.
Jubok, though, hasn't let the possibility of injury rule her life. Nor has she let her learning disability deter her aspirations.
Dyslexia and epilepsy often go hand in hand, and Jubok must deal with both.
She stopped taking advantage of special-education tutoring at the end of her sophomore year, doing her work independently and entering a mainstream English class. The only advantages she currently receives are unlimited time on tests and grace on her poor spelling.
But even now, the epilepsy is evident in her work.
She types most of her papers in Microsoft Word on a laptop. Before using the spellcheck function, the screen is awash in red underlines. Pinkham estimates about half the words are misspelled.
Until moving to Becket three years ago, Jubok had spent her life in Somers, N.Y. She was uncomfortable in its larger setting, where other students knew her by reputation rather than by reality.
She fell behind her class in kindergarten and was entered into a remedial reading program in first grade. By second grade, she'd been diagnosed with dyslexia.
For most of her youth, she had to read every sentence three times to get any meaning from it. The first look helped the words come into focus, the second put them together as a sentence, and the third provided meaning. It was nearly impossible to finish her work on her own, meaning that her mother spent many nights reading to Jubok from her textbooks.
Jubok said she was never teased about being in special education — which included a smaller English class and a resource period during which she was free to get extra help — but she was concerned about how other students looked at her.
"I was aware of it," Jubok said. "I worried that people would think I was stupid. But I knew that I just learned differently than they did."
Pinkham's divorce from Jubok's father, and the pair's subsequent move to Becket — where they'd always maintained a second home — provided the fresh start that Jubok needed.
She began attending Lee, where she instantly felt more comfortable among her peers. Her academic abilities improved, and she seemed to participate in everything.
She excelled in her English class with former Lee teacher Frank Tempone to such an extent that he recommended she take honors English in her junior year.
"You teach four or five classes a day, and when you talk about a book you get the same answers," said Tempone, who now works at Miss Hall's School in Pittsfield. "I'd hear all the same answers, and then she'd say something with a totally different slant. I thought she was special. You could tell that she was thinking. You could see how bright she was."
Jubok did well in that class and has moved on to a creative writing course this year.
On Tuesday, Jubok, who spent much of her life reluctant to read aloud, pointed to a computer screen, reading a caption during her environmental science class.
"The four members of the kiwi family are ... 'something' ... to New Zealand," Jubok read to a classmate, inserting "something" for "endemic," a word she didn't know.
"Introduction of exotic species has contributed to the threatened status of the greater spotted kiwi," she continued, her purple mechanical pencil moving under the words as she spoke them.
In June she'll graduate from Lee, likely with a low-B average, and begin her trek toward what she hopes is a career as a photographer for a snowboarding magazine.
Jubok recently received an admittance letter from Chester College of New England, a small school in New Hampshire that she'll begin attending in the fall.
"When she got that acceptance letter, her eyes just lit up," her mother said. "She couldn't believe it. She said, 'I'm actually going to college.' "
That will be the next test. Jubok will bring the same liabilities to a venue where she won't know how her peers will react to her condition, a place where all-nighters can be standard and the amount of reading increases exponentially.
"I think I'm much more worried about it than she is," her mother said. "She's ready to go. I know how difficult it's going to be."
But judging from the past year — when Jubok went from hating reading to tackling "The Perks to Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, "Light on Snow" by Anita Shreve and "Fear and Loathing" — she's confident the transition will be just another obstacle to tackle successfully.
"She's been an eye-opener for a lot of people at this school," said Lee teacher Mary Verdi, who served as the drama director the previous two years and taught honors English to Jubok during her junior year. "People have learned a lot from her. She doesn't see the injuries, the epilepsy or the learning disabilities as disabilities.
"She sees them as challenges."
Quotes of Famous People That Didn't Quit!
I was one of the 'puzzle children' myself -- a dyslexic . . . And I still have a hard time reading today. Accept the fact that you have a problem. Refuse to feel sorry for yourself. You have a challenge; never quit!
--Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979) was the forty-first Vice President of the United States, the forty-ninth governor of New York, a philanthropist, and a businessman.
Nelson Rockefeller’s academic achievement is even more impressive when you consider his handicap, dyslexia. Remember, in the late 1920s the condition had not been diagnosed and special education for children with learning disabilities was not available. In addition to his reading problem young Nelson’s father believed that left-handedness could be cured with proper training and discipline. In later years Rockefeller would wonder what psychological problems might have been caused by his father’s aversion to using the left hand.
I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the "slow one" in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day. --Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the world's best-known mystery writer and all-time best selling author of any genre other than William Shakespeare. Christie has been called — by the Guinness Book of World Records, among others — the best-selling writer of books of all time and the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four billion[1] UNESCO states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions superseding her. copies of novels.
When Agatha was 11, her father died. Before his death, he had begun teaching her arithmetic. Agatha never went to school. Her mother believed education destroyed the brain and ruined the eyes. She taught Agatha history and something called "general knowledge". Agatha read newspaper articles. The house was filled with books, and all three children were encouraged to read.
I had to train myself to focus my attention. I became very visual and learned how to create mental images in order to comprehend what I read." --Tom Cruise
"I want a world without war, a world without insanity. I want to see people do well. I don't even think it's as much as what I want for myself. It's more what I want for the people around me. That's what I want." Tom Cruise
Kids made fun of me because I was dark skinned, had a wide nose, and was dyslexic. Even as an actor, it took me a long time to realize why words and letters got jumbled in my mind and came out differently. --Danny Glover, actor
My problem was reading very slowly. My parents said "Take as long as you need. As long as you're going to read, just keep at it." We didn't know about learning disabilities back then. --Roger Wilkins, Head of the Pulitzer Prize Board
Beautiful sunset captured during our family camping trip to a deserted beach close to Las Cruces Baja California Sur. Quite a relaxing time for me before being scheduled for a new electroencephalogram and axial tomography to diagnose what was causing me to forget things and "lose time" sometimes falling into a strange deep sleep at different times during the day, and sometimes not being able to breath at night, waking up desperately gasping for air. One of the most alarming things I experienced happened as I was driving, I felt strange for a few seconds and then I "came to" not knowing where I was or what I was doing, and I said "Oh my God I'm driving!" so I slowly stopped the car and was shocked to realize that I had lost consciousness. My daughter Nathalia drove for the first time in her life taking me to the hospital and doing all the paperwork. I'm so proud of her! I would have never imagine the diagnose would be epilepsy, on top of everything else...... epilepsy. It took me a while to assimilate it, I shed many tears, I was angry too, but finally I decided to get up and keep going through this majestic, beautiful experience of life with all it's wonders. I'm convinced that if you really look beyond your circumstances, life itself can invigorate you with fullness and plenitude of joy and love as you tune in and flow with God's impressive creation.
UCSF neurologists William Seeley, MD, and Bruce Miller, MD, director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, recently reported a fascinating link between the minds of Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist turned artist, and music composer Maurice Ravel, famous for his composition "Bolero." The New York Times wrote about the finding in today's Science Times.
Clinical monitoring of the progression of the disease that caused her death -- Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) -- has provided scientists with hitherto unknown details of how the brain changes during this form of dementia and produces spurts of artistic activity.
Adams was a former UBC scientist who abandoned the microscope in 1986 for an artist's palette and produced more than 1,000 paintings, including the seminal Unravelling Bolero.
If Rod Serling were alive and writing episodes for “The Twilight Zone,” odds are he would have leaped on the true story of Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist turned artist who died of a rare brain disease last year.
Trained in mathematics, chemistry and biology, Dr. Adams left her career as a teacher and bench scientist in 1986 to take care of a son who had been seriously injured in a car accident and was not expected to live. But the young man made a miraculous recovery. After seven weeks, he threw away his crutches and went back to school.
According her husband, Robert, Dr. Adams then decided to abandon science and take up art. She had dabbled with drawing when young, he said in a recent telephone interview, but now she had an intense all-or-nothing drive to paint.
“Anne spent every day from 9 to 5 in her art studio,” said Robert Adams, a retired mathematician. Early on, she painted architectural portraits of houses in the West Vancouver, British Columbia, neighborhood where they lived.
In 1994, Dr. Adams became fascinated with the music of the composer Maurice Ravel, her husband recalled. At age 53, she painted “Unravelling Bolero” a work that translated the famous musical score into visual form.
Unbeknown to her, Ravel also suffered from a brain disease whose symptoms were identical to those observed in Dr. Adams, said Dr. Bruce Miller, a neurologist and the director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco. Ravel composed “Bolero” in 1928, when he was 53 and began showing signs of his illness with spelling errors in musical scores and letters.
“Bolero” alternates between two main melodic themes, repeating the pair eight times over 340 bars with increasing volume and layers of instruments. At the same time, the score holds methodically to two simple, alternating staccato bass lines.
“ ‘Bolero’ is an exercise in compulsivity, structure and perseveration,” Dr. Miller said. It builds without a key change until the 326th bar. Then it accelerates into a collapsing finale.
Dr. Adams, who was also drawn to themes of repetition, painted one upright rectangular figure for each bar of “Bolero.” The figures are arranged in an orderly manner like the music, countered by a zigzag winding scheme, Dr. Miller said. The transformation of sound to visual form is clear and structured. Height corresponds to volume, shape to note quality and color to pitch. The colors remain unified until the surprise key change in bar 326 that is marked with a run of orange and pink figures that herald the conclusion.
Ravel and Dr. Adams were in the early stages of a rare disease called FTD, or frontotemporal dementia, when they were working, Ravel on “Bolero” and Dr. Adams on her painting of “Bolero,” Dr. Miller said. The disease apparently altered circuits in their brains, changing the connections between the front and back parts and resulting in a torrent of creativity.
“We used to think dementias hit the brain diffusely,” Dr. Miller said. “Nothing was anatomically specific. That is wrong. We now realize that when specific, dominant circuits are injured or disintegrate, they may release or disinhibit activity in other areas. In other words, if one part of the brain is compromised, another part can remodel and become stronger.”
Thus some patients with FTD develop artistic abilities when frontal brain areas decline and posterior regions take over, Dr. Miller said.
An article by Dr. Miller and colleagues describing how FTD can release new artistic talents was published online in December 2007 by the journal Brain. FTD refers to a group of diseases often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease, in that patients become increasingly demented, Dr. Miller said. But the course and behavioral manifestations of FTD are different.
In the most common variant, patients undergo gradual personality changes. They grow apathetic, become slovenly and typically gain 20 pounds. They behave like 3-year-olds in public, asking embarrassing questions in a loud voice. All along, they deny anything is wrong.
Two other variants of FTD involve loss of language. In one, patients have trouble finding words, Dr. Miller said. When someone says to the patients, “Pass the broccoli,” they might reply, “What is broccoli?”
In another, PPA or primary progressive aphasia, the spoken-language network disintegrates. Patients lose the ability to speak.
All three variants share the same underlying pathology. The disease, which has no cure, can progress quickly or, as in the case of Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who announced his retirement last fall because of an FTD diagnosis, over many years.
Dr. Adams and Ravel had the PPA variant, Dr. Miller said.
From 1997 until her death 10 years later, Dr. Adams underwent periodic brain scans that gave her physicians remarkable insights to the changes in her brain.
“In 2000, she suddenly had a little trouble finding words,” her husband said. “Although she was gifted in mathematics, she could no longer add single digit numbers. She was aware of what was happening to her. She would stamp her foot in frustration.”
By then, the circuits in Dr. Adams’s brain had reorganized. Her left frontal language areas showed atrophy. Meanwhile, areas in the back of her brain on the right side, devoted to visual and spatial processing, appeared to have thickened.
When artists suffer damage to the right posterior brain, they lose the ability to be creative, Dr. Miller said. Dr. Adams’s story is the opposite. Her case and others suggest that artists in general exhibit more right posterior brain dominance. In a healthy brain, these areas help integrate multisensory perception. Colors, sounds, touch and space are intertwined in novel ways. But these posterior regions are usually inhibited by the dominant frontal cortex, he said. When they are released, creativity emerges.
Dr. Miller has witnessed FTD patients become gifted in landscape design, piano playing, painting and other creative arts as their disease progressed.
The ABC of invertebrates. This is hard to describe – you really need to go there. For each letter in the alphabet there is an associated drawing and short rhyme. In the last few minutes I've learned stuff about all sorts of creatures (e.g. Flatworms, Inchworms, Moonsnails, Nudibranchs, ...) that I never even knew existed.
Dr. Adams continued to paint until 2004, when she could no longer hold a brush. Her art, including “An ABC Book of Invertebrates,” a rendering of the mathematical ratio pi, an image of a migraine aura and other works, is at two Web sites: members.shaw.ca/adms and memory.ucsf.edu/Art/gallery.htm.
A is for Anemone that lives down in the sea. It's not a plant that's rooted there but animal that's free To glide along the ocean floor in search of tiny prey It grasps within its tentacles to eat along the way.
Two years ago, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists reported they had suppressed epileptic seizures in rats by giving them a glycolytic-inhibitor, inhibiting the brain’s ability to turn sugar into excess energy and blocking the expression of seizure-related genes. The discovery was greeted with excitement and hope for a new class of drugs for epilepsy, which afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide.
Now, in a presentation at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego, Dr. Avtar Roopra describes a next step in this research that may mean a drug already widely used by people with diabetes could also be an effective and safe therapy for epilepsy, especially for that one third of patients who have recurrent seizures despite therapy with the best available antiepileptic drugs.
Although the earlier work by Dr. Roopra and his colleagues marked the first time a compound had been used for metabolic regulation of neuronal genes, epilepsy patients had been attempting to achieve the same goal - fewer seizures - for centuries through severe dietary restriction, in some cases with near starvation, more often with a high-fat, high-protein diet completely free of starches and sugars. Half of all drug-resistant people with epilepsy experience seizure control with this kind of severe ketogenic diet (although even a mild lapse can sometimes result in seizures).
The mechanism was completely unknown but the researchers reasoned it had to involve glycolysis, the recognition of sugar and its conversion to energy. And if that were correct, they asked, could they tap into this same biological pathway, bypassing dietary requirements altogether? The answer, published in Nature Neuroscience in October 2006, was 2-Deoxy-D-glucose, a compound that tricked the body into thinking it was sugar so that the cells stopped using the real thing as an energy source.
Temporal lobe epilepsy is a common form of drug-resistant epilepsy that sometimes responds to dietary manipulation such as the 'ketogenic diet'. Here we have investigated the effects of the glycolytic inhibitor 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) in the rat kindling model of temporal lobe epilepsy. We show that 2DG potently reduces the progression of kindling and blocks seizure-induced increases in the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and its receptor, TrkB. This reduced expression is mediated by the transcription factor NRSF, which recruits the NADH-binding co-repressor CtBP to generate a repressive chromatin environment around the BDNF promoter. Our results show that 2DG has anticonvulsant and antiepileptic properties, suggesting that anti-glycolytic compounds may represent a new class of drugs for treating epilepsy. The metabolic regulation of neuronal genes by CtBP will open avenues of therapy for neurological disorders and cancer.
Now, in the new work reported at Experimental Biology, the researchers have identified a small molecule in the neurons that senses how much energy in available.
Glucose turns on this sensor – but so does Metformine, a FDA-approved prescription drug used by millions of people with diabetes to control their blood sugar. Dr. Roopra and his colleagues are now testing Metformine in the brains of mice to see how it affects the functioning of the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved with learning and memory and also the seat of seizures for many patients with epilepsy. The goal is to tamp down a mechanism called Long Term otenciation enough to reduce the rate of epilepsy but not enough to affect the brain’s ability to learn and remember.
Part of the hippocampus of the brain of a genetically modified 'brainbow mouse'.
At this early stage of the research, it appears to be hitting the right balance, says Dr. Roopra. In the meantime, he points out, there have been no reports of learning and memory side effects in any of the adults or children who have used Metformine for years.
The next step will be to take Metformine to a mouse model of epilepsy. It’s still early, says Dr. Roopra, but the researchers already are pleased with the increased understanding of the likely mechanism of the positive effect of the ketogenic diet on epileptic seizures and the focus on new drug targets for this often-devastating disease.
In the early 1900s, doctors recommended ketogenic diets -- which are high in fat and protein and low in carbohydrates, Dr. Roopra said. And they seemed to help epilepsy patients avoid seizures.
"When you take the sugar away from the diet, genes in the brain that normally promote epilepsy shut down," said Dr. Roopra. "By shutting down genes in the brain that promote epilepsy, we can actually stop epilepsy from progressing."
The only problem with a ketogenic diet is it can be very difficult for patients to avoid sugar. This is particularly problematic for children, who may sneak away to eat sweet and starchy foods, ruining the effects of the sugar-free diet.
This is where Dr. Roopra hopes 2DG can come in.
"We think 2DG might be an effective sugar substitute in humans," Dr. Roopra said. "That would be great news because patients could eat normal food and have the same beneficial effects."
Pursue your dreams! Going after one's desired dreams and visions with passion can be the strength that compels us to conquer! Jenna said: "This is my dream job and I won't let anything stand in my way - not even cancer.
"I was originally told I would only have three months to live and I sat there and thought if I ever made it past three months I would make sure I finished training."
Although her cancer is incurable, Jenna was eventually able to find maintenance drugs to hold the cancer at bay, allowing her to finish her training.
Fighting crime while fighting for her life: Hero girl cop battles terminal cancer A young woman has incredibly realised her dream of becoming a police officer - despite fighting terminal cancer.
Jenna Seaton, 22, was diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer two years ago - just after she had started training with Essex Police.
Shell-shocked Jenna, of Barking, Essex, had to put her dream on hold as she underwent gruelling courses of radiation and chemotherapy.
She started intensive treatment after doctors at London's St Bartholomew's Hospital dropped the devastating bombshell.
The former Barking Abbey student had to put her dream on hold while she bravely faced the gruelling treatment to keep the cancer at bay.
Brave Jenna recovered so well that she was able to resume training at the end of last year.
Last month she achieved her life ambition, became Police Constable Seaton and is now walking the beat as she fights crime in neighbouring Grays.
Although her cancer is incurable, Jenna is determined to live her life to the full.
The amazingly courageous girl cop is now planning to take part in the Race for Life, a 5km run for cancer research, with her best mate, Jennifer McCree, 22.
Jenna said: "I love my new job there's a lot of paperwork but no two days are the same.
"I remember when I used to work as a sales assistant I would know what I was going to be doing before I got to work - now every day is a surprise.
"There are certainly a lot of dangers when you~re a police officer and I think a lot of criminals think I'm going to be a bit soft because I'm a woman and I'm slightly built. But boy are they wrong!"
She added: "My family were all so happy when I graduated from Chelmsford.
"You're only supposed to have two people at the ceremony I think I had about 12!
"I have started a new round of chemotherapy and medication at Marsden Hospital in Fulham which deals specifically with cancer.
"I'm responding well to the treatment and I haven~t felt sick which is great.
"I'm really looking forward to the run, I think I might even try to run instead of walking it this year if I feel up to it."
Doctors found a lump on Jenna's thyroid and referred her to a specialist who performed an operation to remove her thyroid, some lymph glands and a tumour on her chest.
Jennifer, of Barking, has been Jenna's best friend since infant school.
She said: "Jenna has amazed us all with her determination to succeed in the police and not let cancer get to her.
"Once she was well enough, she returned to training, and passed out last month.
"Her friends couldn't be more proud of her."
Epping Race for Life 2007
Jennifer and Jenna both ran the 2007 Epping Race for Life at North Weald and have signed up for this year's event on July 9.
Jennifer added: "I didn't realise until we got to the event how emotional it was - seeing everyone's messages as they were running was very sad as many were there for people they had lost to cancer."
An Essex Police spokesperson said: "Jenna's story is a truly inspirational one.
"She has battled long and hard against her illness demonstrating her will power and energy.
"Jenna is a credit to herself, her family and the force."
The term aromatherapy refers to the therapeutic use of essential oils, which are the volatile organic constituents of plants. Essential oils are common ingredients in pharmaceuticals, perfumes, and foods and as such are experienced by most persons on a daily basis.
Aromatherapy is gaining popularity in the general population, possibly because many essential oils have calming and soothing properties. It is also gaining popularity among nurses who would like a more holistic approach. The use of familiar scents and gentle touch can be extremely comforting and an enhancement to nursing care, because “the intention of promoting relaxation and comfort is an essential part of nursing.” The hands-on approach of administering aromatherapy can also bring nurses back in touch with patients after technologically induced distancing. This aspect can be particularly relevant in critical care, in which both patients and nurses may feel separated and therefore distanced by the presence of technical equipment.
Aromatherapy is thought to work in harmony with the body, balancing it and encouraging healing to take place where necessary. Aromatherapy is recognized as a complementary therapy that meets the goals of nurses and patients for increased comfort, relief of pain, relaxation, improved coping, reduction or moderation of stress, and an increased sense of well-being.
Aromatherapy is one of the gentlest of complementary therapies that uses two of the most powerful nonverbal methods of communication: smell and touch. The importance of communication with patients in critical care is highlighted by Ashworth, who comments on the importance of the quality of human interaction to patients’ mental and physical well-being. The introduction of complementary therapies, especially aromatherapy, into a critical care setting can have far-reaching effects not only for the patients but also for the staff. Smell and touch can have rapid therapeutic effects that can be used to decrease stress levels,enhance parasympathetic responses, and improve patients’ comfort.
The Effects of Aroma The effects of aroma are instant, and sometimes just thinking about a scent can be as powerful as smelling the actual scent itself. Essential oils are composed of many different chemical components or molecules. These molecules travel via the nose to the olfactory bulb and on to the limbic system of the brain, an inner complex ring of brain structures below the cerebral cortex, arranged into 53 regions and 35 associated tracts.14 Of these regions, the amygdala and the hippocampus are of particular importance in the processing of aromas. The amygdala governs emotional response.
The hippocampus is involved in the formation and retrieval of explicit memories.16 This area of the brain is the place where chemicals in an aroma trigger learned memory. Smell is important in the lives of humans, beginning with the newborn infant’s identification of his/her mother18 and continuing into old age. Studies have indicated that the aromas of fruit and flowers can reduce depression in the elderly in residential facilities.
Aromas have measurable effects on many aspects of our lives. The aromas of jasmine, lemon, lemongrass, peppermint, and basil have psychologically stimulating effects. In contrast, the aromas of bergamot, chamomile, sandalwood, rose, and lavender have relaxing effects. The scent of eucalyptus can increase creativity, the aroma of citrus fruits can enhance immune function, and the odor of spiced apple can increase slow-wave electroencephalographic activity and reduce depression.24
Certain smells, such as those of lavender and clove, which are considered “nice,” also can improve the cognitive process by increasing the speed with which subjects complete an analytical task. The odor of pyridine, which is found in coal tar and is not considered “nice,” can slow the cognitive process.
The effect of odors on the brain has been mapped by using computer-generated topography. These maps of electrical activity in the brain indicate how a subject (linked to an electroencephalograph) psychometrically rates odors presented to him/her.26 Scents can have a psychological effect even when the aroma is below the level of human awareness. For example, the subliminal smell (below the level of consciousness) of vanilla can elicit beneficial alterations in mood.
I have been on sodium valproate and aspirin for a while but yesterday I went to see a neurosurgeon privately ( not through our Social Security System) and he added diazepam and dextropropoxfeno to my treatment in order to prevent further seizures and mitigate pain around my forehead and eyes, cause of constant dizziness and vertigo. Diazepam is used for the short-term relief of symptoms related to anxiety disorders. Diazepam is also used for the treatment of agitation, tremors, delirium, seizures, and hallucinations as a result of alcohol withdrawal. Diazepam is also used for relief of muscle spasms in certain neurological diseases. Diazepam is used to abort active seizures and can be combined with other drugs in treating severe recurrent seizures.
The Schwartz-Bloom laboratory has completed 18 years of research investigating novel pharmacologic approaches to prevent neuronal death caused by cerebral ischemia associated with cardiac arrest and stroke. The group studied how GABA neurotransmission dysfunction contributes to the death of hippocampal neurons after ischemia in vivo or in vitro. Clinical trials based on her research findings are now in progress to prevent neuronal damage after acute stroke in humans.
The ability of diazepam, a benzodiazepine full agonist, and imidazenil, a benzodiazepine partial agonist, to protect hippocampal area CA1 neurons from death for at least 35 days after cerebral ischemia was investigated. Diazepam(10 mg/kg) administered to gerbils 30 and 90 minutes after forebrain ischemia produced significant protection of hippocampal area CA1 pyramidal neurons 7 days later. In gerbils surviving for 35 days, diazepam produced the same degree of neuroprotection (70% 30%) in the hippocampus compared with 7 days after ischemia. The therapeutic window for diazepam was short; there was no significant neuroprotection when the administration of diazepam was delayed to 4 hours after ischemia. The neuroprotective dose of diazepam also produced hypothermia (32°C) for several hours after injection. To assess the role of hypothermia in neuroprotection by diazepam, hypothermia depth and duration was simulated using a cold-water spray in separate gerbils. Seven days after ischemia, neuroprotection by hypothermia was similar to that produced by diazepam. However, 35 days after ischemia, there was no significant protection by hypothermia, suggesting that hypothermia does not play a significant role in long-term diazepam neuroprotection. Imidazenil (3 mg/kg), which produced only minimal hypothermia, protected area CA1 of hippocampus to the same degree as that by diazepam 7 days after ischemia. At 35 days after ischemia, significant protection remained, but it was considerably reduced compared with 7 days. Like diazepam, the therapeutic window for imidazenil was short. Imidazenil neuroprotection was lost when the drug was administered as early as 2 hours after ischemia. The ability of ischemia to produce deficits in working memory and of benzodiazepines to prevent the deficits also was investigated. Gerbils trained on an eight-arm radial maze before ischemia demonstrated a significant increase in the number of working errors 1 month after ischemia. The ischemia-induced deficits in working memory were completely prevented by diazepam but not by imidazenil.
Neuroprotection afforded by diazepam against oxygen/glucose deprivation-induced injury in rat cortical brain slices
The aim of the present investigation was to assess neuroprotection exerted by diazepam (0.1-25 μM) in rat cortical brain slices subjected to oxygen-glucose deprivation and reoxygenation. Neuronal injury and neuroprotection were assessed by measuring the release of glutamate and lactate dehydrogenase and tissue water content. Results demonstrate that diazepam exerted neuroprotective effects according to a "U-shaped", hormetic-like, concentration-response curve, with an efficacy window of 0.5-5 μM concentration. Flumazenil (20 pM) fully antagonised neuroprotection afforded by 5 μM diazepam. In conclusion, the hormetic response of diazepam should be taken into consideration when designing experiments aimed at assessing diazepam neuroprotection against ischemia/reoxygenation injury.
Diazepam increases chloride influx through channels associated with GABA receptors
Following cerebral ischemia, certain populations of neurons degenerate. Excessive accumulation of excitatory amino acids in the synaptic cleft, activation of excitatory amino acid receptors, and influx of calcium into neurons play a key role in the development of ischemia-induced neuronal death. We hypothesized that neuroprotection may be achieved by enhancing inhibitory (i.e., gamma-aminobutyric acid, GABA) neurotransmission to offset excitation. Diazepam, a drug that increases GABA-induced chloride channel opening, was administered (10 mg/kg, i.p.) to rats 1 and 2 hr following 15 min of transient global ischemia, when hippocampal GABA levels, increased during ischemia, returned to basal. Rats were maintained normothermic during ischemia and became hypothermic following the injections of diazepam. Four days later, rats were sacrificed and the brains were examined for neuronal degeneration and the presence of GABAA receptors labeled by 35S-t- butylbicyclophosphorothionate (35S-TBPS). There was substantial neuroprotection of striatal neurons and pyramidal neurons in the CA1 area of the hippocampus. In addition, diazepam prevented the loss of 35S-TBPS binding sites in the striatum and in the dendritic fields of the CA1 hippocampus following ischemia. Since hypothermia, itself, is neuroprotective, we determined if hypothermia was required for the ability of diazepam to produce neuroprotection. Diazepam was microinjected into the CA1 hippocampus 1 and 2 hr following ischemia, and rats remained normothermic. Four days later, diazepam still produced substantial protection of hippocampal neurons. Thus, postischemic hypothermia may have contributed to the neuroprotection by diazepam when it was administered systemically, but the neuroprotective effect of diazepam did not require hypothermia. We conclude that delayed enhancement of GABAergic neurotransmission directly at the site of vulnerability following an ischemic event protects the vulnerable neurons from death.
Postischemic seizures and necrotizing ischemic brain damage
Insulin has recently been shown experimentally to modify ischemicbrain damage when administered either before or after the episodeof ischemia. In controlled studies in the rat, high doses ofinsulin ( 8 IU/kg) result in seizures and early death. The presentstudy was undertaken to determine whether diazepam, a potent,centrally penetrating GABAmimetic, alone or in combination withinsulin, could mitigate postischemic seizures or regional selectiveneuronal necrosis and infarction. Forebrain ischemia was inducedin rats for 10 minutes by carotid clamping and hypotension.The animals were observed clinically until elective perfusion-fixationand quantitative pathologic examination at 1-week recovery.Diazepam, either alone or with insulin, reduced regional brainnecrosis and reduced the seizure rate. Insulin alone also ledto reduced regional necrosis. However, the combination of diazepamplus insulin yielded the greatest proportion of undamaged brainsin the hippocampus, thalamus, and midbrain. In the neocortex,the diazepam-only group showed the greatest number of normalhemispheres. Hypothalamic infarction was eliminated by all threetreatments. Seizures per se were associated with increased damagein the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brainstem, irrespectiveof treatment group. The findings indicate that ischemic brainnecrosis can be mitigated by diazepam and insulin treatmentbegun in the immediate postischemic period.
Neuropharmacology Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110 029.
Release of prostaglandins in brain after spontaneous and experimentally induced seizures, has been demonstrated. The possible role of prostaglandins in modulation of seizure activity is still inconclusive. In the present study, the effects of aspirin and its interaction with the anticonvulsants (diazepam and sodium valproate) were studied in pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) and maximal electroshock (MES) induced seizures in mice. Aspirin 50, 100, and 500 mg/kg, i.p. was administered 45 min before the pentylenetetrazole (60 mg/kg, i.p.) and MES (60 mA, 0.2 s duration via car clip electrodes) challenge. In MES seizures significant protection was seen with aspirin 100 mg/kg where as higher dose of aspirin 500 mg/kg was required to elicit maximum protection against PTZ seizures. Sub anticonvulsant dose of sodium valproate 150 mg/kg, i.p. and aspirin 50 mg/kg i.p. showed complete protection in MES seizures and the same dose of sodium valproate offered superior protection in PTZ seizures than either drug used alone. When mice were pretreated with combination of diazepam 0.5 mg/kg and aspirin 50 mg/kg protection was significantly enhanced in PTZ seizures. However, aspirin did not show any significant protection with subanticonvulsant dose of diazepam against MES seizures. The present study suggests that prostaglandins may have anticonvulsant potential and also may have modulatory effect on anticonvulsant effect of conventional antiepileptic drugs.
Going after one's desired dreams and visions with passion can be the strength that projects us to conquer! Each of us is a unique work of art with unmeasurable opportunities to use our God-given talents, acquired knowledge, and valuable experience, we are not on this earth without a purpose. Everything we've lived, everything we've done has the potential to be used to plant goodness in this world. Whatever I do, specially during difficult times, I do it reminding myself of all the things I'm passionate for, my family, my students, good friends and beautiful people I've had the privilege of crossing paths with , I embrace on to my faith and hope, I firmly anchor myself until the storm has past, and when it does.......... I keep pressing on.
Pat Garcia
“Each of you has been blessed with one of God’s many wonderful gifts to be used in the service of others. So use your gift well.” 1 Peter 4:10
"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort." Sydney Smith
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." Henry David Thoreau
I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom. Les Brown
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents. John W. Gardner
This is how I define talent; it is a gift that God has given us in secret, which we reveal without knowing it. Charles De Montesquieu
"God's gift to us is our talents. How we use those talents is our gift TO GOD".
"I've always believed it's a myth that women can't play against men. The ball doesn't know whether it is a man or a woman hitting it," Beisiegel said, repeating a phrase long associated with her. "It's still my dream to get out there, because I know it's within me to do it."
Beisiegel's next attempt begins early next month when she will try to qualify for the men's U.S. Open, to be held June 12-15 at Torrey Pines in San Diego. Also on her schedule in mid-May is qualifying for the women's U.S. Open, which will be held June 26-29 at the Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minn.
Beisiegel was forced to cancel plans to attend the Canadian Tour's Winter Qualifying School because of a lingering hamstring injury, but she expects to be ready soon for what lies ahead.
"It's a strain that's lasted a bit longer than I expected, but I'm getting back to where I want to be," Beisiegel said on the telephone from home near Tulsa, Okla., after attending church with her husband, Daniel.
"As far as everything else, I'm totally healthy," she said. "I got perfect lab results in February."
Beisiegel's career on the LPGA Tour was blindsided shortly after it began when she was diagnosed with Graves' Disease in November 2005. Ironically, the first symptoms were traced back to 2004.
The auto-immune disease is considered rare and primarily affects women older than 20. It causes hyperthyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid produces too much of the hormones that control the body's metabolism, which has a negative effect on heart rate as well as muscle and bone strength.
In Beisiegel's case, the disease - which resulted in her resting heart rate routinely climbing to 130 beats per minute - went undetected for nearly a year. .
Beisiegel underwent surgery to have her thyroid removed in March 2006, and at the same time doctors discovered she had been suffering from Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, a rare second type of auto-immune thyroid disease where the immune system destroys the thyroid gland. The subsequent recovery from surgery forced her to withdraw from the LPGA final qualifying tournament later that year.
Can You Believe?
I believe it is a myth that women can't play against the men. The ball doesn't know whether it is a man or a woman hitting it. As an athlete, my desire is to keep pushing myself as far as I can go. I believe golf is a unique sport and that 95% of a shot’s result is determined in the mind. I believe physical strength is only a small component of the game, and that skill, mental toughness, course management, and equipment make up the remaining aspects of the game. I believe women are at a disadvantage to some men when it comes to strength, but I believe gender has no play in the other areas.
I wrote something similar to this a few years ago and this description still seems just as accurate to me today except for the most influential component of all. Gary Player once said that the next barrier in golf would be in the mind. But I believe the next barrier is in the Spirit. How is the shot’s outcome affected by our faith, our imagination, and our vision for the shot? What is God’s role, if any, in determining the outcome of the shot?
I believe it is everything! I believe the mind can only go so far without faith and belief. Without faith and belief, the mind can only see and imagine what has been done, what is possible. With faith and belief, there is vision. Vision to challenge what seems impossible to others.
I believe God has given me the desire to persevere in this walk of faith. I believe He has given me the vision to see what others cannot see. I believe that when my dreams come to pass, it will be supernatural… because I believe God is the only one who can provide the kind of strength, endurance and courage necessary to achieve them. The only thing I have to do is believe.
"Mrs Garcia welcome into our hearts.Your site is beautiful and inspiring.Naigation is great and the history is a reminder of your quest.Congratulations on your wedding anniversary and keep telling your story.The world needs more people with your will and determination.Keep up yhe good work.Pierre from the THEE QUEST team of Pierre & Pierrette.Montreal Canada.Married 37 years,3 children and 6 grandchildren."
"Beautiful and inspirational. Your blog is lovely. I imagine writing it is a very therapudic excersize. Keep up the wood work. Postitive thoughts for you!"
"Your site is very inspiring and I really loved it. Being disabled myself, even though I was just looking at your site so I could get credit for mine I still enjoyed looking and reading. Keep writing because people are reading"
"Gostei do teu website. Tem muitas informações, e conta um pouco da tua doença. Desejo que sejas vencedora. O aspecto visual do blog é bonito e a navegação é rápida. Boa sorte. "
"This is the testimony of a true winner at life who doesn't focus only on her amazing struggle but sheds her lucidness and wisdom to help and encourage others."
"Hi Patricia, I have sent your foot patches and pads. Please let me know that you received them. thank you I enjoyed visiting your site, how powerful your messages were. Your drive and determination, plus others is admirable. I wonder, I have natural detox foot patches on my site. If you are interested in trying them, I will send you a 10 detox foot patches and 10 foot detox pads for free. No obligation, I want to offer you my help. Please let me know if you are interested. thank you for sharing"
"I really liked your site. The title page loaded fast and took my attention very quick. Good information and a lot of work has been put into this. Great work!"
"What a wonderful inspiring website. I will put a link on my other site allaregodschildren.com I think everyone should take the time to come and read the testimonys on this page. Maybe then they will want to fight, and LIVE> Bless You for sharing! Bonnie Eagle"
"I found your articles interesting to read. You had verious topics and many clinical studies to learn about. It shows how messed up this world is with illness and disease. It is nice to see a site that people can share their story with one another."
"This is a very well designed blog with great content..I would like to help you with your problems, rather then see you live with them. A man with a 3rd stage prostate cancer was treated and reversed in 3 weeks. The clinic that does these things like this is in Educador."
"I like the look of your site - nice format and organization. It also takes a lot of courage to write about personal health - good job and I wish you the best."
"This website opened very quickly. The layout is Great. And it touched my heart. I have seen a lot of websites, but this is a very Strong person. God Bless you."
"Your Website is absolutely wonderful. I really enjoyed reading about how living with a chronic illness buids courage in someone's life. Thank you for having such a positive blog in the Internet. I bookmarked your site. Congratulations."
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) 
Crohn’s Disease (CD) 
Ulcerative Colitis (UC) 
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) 
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) 
Acute Allograft Rejection 
Coeliac Disease 
Thyroid Disease 
Graves' 
Fibromyalgia 
© 2008 Kay Crain
The continuty of the endocrinous function of the 
Melatonin is released in the general circulation. As soon it is exposed to darkness, its secretion increases and the secretion stops in the light.
30%) in the hippocampus compared with 7 days after ischemia. The therapeutic window for diazepam was short; there was no significant neuroprotection when the administration of diazepam was delayed to 4 hours after ischemia. The neuroprotective dose of diazepam also produced hypothermia (
32°C) for several hours after injection. 
8 IU/kg) result in seizures and early death. 
minutes by carotid clamping and hypotension. The animals were observed clinically until elective perfusion-fixation and quantitative pathologic examination at 1-week recovery. Diazepam, either alone or with insulin, reduced regional brain necrosis and reduced the seizure rate. Insulin alone also led to reduced regional necrosis. However, 
