Cognitive Therapy + Exercise Relieves Stroke Fatigue (VIDEO)

General Posted by anthony Date April 23, 2012

Link Between Sleep and Alzheimer’s?

General Posted by anthony Date April 23, 2012

Start good sleeping habits young!
@Laurence Monneret

A preliminary study being presented this month and reported in Web MD suggests that the poorer your sleep, the more likely you may be to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

“We found that if people had a lot of awakenings during the night, more than five awakenings in an hour, they are more likely to have preclinical Alzheimer’s disease,” says researcher Yo-El Ju, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease is the term given to people who have normal mental skills but show brain changes associated with the degenerative disorder.

One hundred men and women aged 45-80, free of dementia at the study start, half with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease were studied.

About 25% had evidence of pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease. Those who woke up most frequently, more than five times an hour, were more likely than the others to have these abnormal biomarkers.

Animal studies have found that sleep changes drive the accumulation of amyloid, which cause the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s.

The importance of getting a good night’s sleep has been increasingly shown as important. I am not sure if improving your sleep habits reduces any other predisposition to the disease. The lack of sleep may increase brain inflammation and that could be one association with the disease.

In any case, try to improve your sleep habits. Here are some tips.

Cognitive Therapy + Exercise Relieves Stroke Fatigue

General Posted by anthony Date April 20, 2012

The persistent fatigue that can linger for months and even years following a stroke currently has no treatment.

A new study suggest a combination of talk therapy and exercise might help. Researchers in the Netherlands recruited 83 stroke patients suffering from chronic fatigue and assigned them to one of two groups: one group underwent 12 weeks of cognitive therapy that was conducted in small groups; the other group underwent cognitive therapy plus exercise training.

At the end of the 12 weeks, 58% of the participants in the cognitive therapy plus exercise group experienced a ÛÏclinically relevantÛ improvement in fatigue, compared to only 24% in the group that received just cognitive therapy.åÊ

Once again, exercise to the rescue. Frankly it only makes sense that the benefit of exercising in reawakening and invigorating the mind and body can help many people no matter what their condition.

Quality of Life for Disabled Elderly Tied to Dignity and Autonomy (VIDEO)

General Posted by anthony Date April 19, 2012

[embed_youtube”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/PrsbShSEzDo”]

Quality of Life for Disabled Elderly Tied to Dignity and Autonomy

General Posted by anthony Date April 18, 2012

Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), studying multi-cultural residents at San Francisco’s On Lok Lifeways program, concluded that quality of life for disabled elderly people is most closely tied to two factors: a sense of dignity and a sense of autonomy.

Said lead author Jennifer King, MD: ÛÏBecause of disability, not all of them are able do to all activities on their own, but they want to feel they have some say in how those activities progress throughout the day.Û

These seniors, average age of 78, rated their quality of life higher than some might assume it would be for older people with disabilities.

ÛÏAs the number of elders from diverse backgrounds with late life disability increases, we need to learn how to assess their quality of life, and develop an assessment scale that will adequately reflect what they tell us is important,Û said King.

Four areas were considered important to their quality of life: physical (e.g., pain), psychological (e.g., depression), spiritual or religious (e.g., religious coping), and social (e.g., life-space).åÊ

Dignity and a sense of control were identified as themes that are the most closely tied to overall quality of life.

On Lok is a model community so it is not clear if seniors there enjoy a better quality of life overall. That said, isn’t this all logical? Who doesn’t want dignity and autonomy?

And that gives me an excuse to shamelessly plug an organization of which I am on the board called CCAL – the Consumer Consortium for Advancing Person-Centered Living.

Person-centered living (PCL) is a way of life centered on personal preferences and values that stress dignity, choice, self-determination and individuality. Many of our nationÛªs aging and disability services and support have been all too lacking in understanding the need for this humanistic dimension. The new federal health care reform law will begin to change this. More can be done.

We spend a lot of time talking about patient experience in hospitals and person-centered care in nursing and assisted living facilities. But there is more to the continuum of aging services than these settings.åÊ

Some of the initiatives were are working on from the consumer perspective include:

Helping empower and engage consumers through a national initiative for consumers to create their own PCL Bill of Rights.
Partnering with leading national organizations to host Town Hall Forums to bring together aging consumers with aging professionals, providers, and government leaders to discuss needs, interests, and challenges in numerous cities every year.
Launching a national Û÷by consumers-for consumersÛª awareness campaign so that aging service and support providers clearly know what consumers want.åÊ

Check us out. Thanks

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