Sudden Stroke leads Columbus Mom to Seek Second Opinion!!
Paula Manchester, a lively Columbus native, had been healthy and active her entire life. She exercised regularly and spent leisure time with her husband and their three grown children.
“Every year at my physical exam, my doctor told me that my body was in tip-top condition,” Paula recalled. “I felt great.”
But in one split second, on a chilly Ohio day in November, 2010, everything changed when one side of her body suddenly went numb and limp. Paula, at the young age of 54, was having a stroke.
“There were no signs,” Paula said of her unexpected stroke. “I was at a healthy weight. I had never been a smoker. My blood pressure and cholesterol were both at normal levels. I wondered how this could happen to someone like me.”
For nine days Paula was hospitalized while her physicians continued to run tests. A brain angiogram finally showed the possibility of fibromuscular dysplasia in her carotid arteries. The diagnosis, however, was not confirmed until a follow-up MRI three months after the initial stroke.
Fibromuscular dysplasia, more commonly referred to as FMD, is a disease that can cause stenosis of the arteries, usually those in the kidneys and those that supply blood to the brain. As a result of this arterial narrowing, a heart attack or stroke can occur.
FMD, a rare disease, often does not lead to any noticeable symptoms. Occasionally, FMD patients will experience headaches or ringing in the ears; minor symptoms that can be easily ignored or misdiagnosed.
So, while Paula’s stroke could not be linked directly to her FMD diagnosis, her neurologist at home in Columbus believed it to be the cause.
“Naturally, I was concerned about being diagnosed with a condition like FMD that has no known cause and usually presents no symptoms,” Paula said. “Was I at risk of suffering another unexpected stroke or facing other serious complications? Was I doing everything I could to manage my disease at home? I wanted Another Opinion.”
Paula surfed the Web, looking for answers to her questions about living with FMD. It was through an Internet search engine that she came across Dr. Heather Gornik’s name, a Cleveland Clinic vascular physician who specializes in fibromuscular dysplasia.
“After reading about Dr. Gornik and the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic Heart and Vascular Institute online, I knew I wanted to get a Second Opinion at Cleveland Clinic,” Paula said. “When I called to make an appointment, the Patient Service Representative informed me that I could receive a Second Opinion from Cleveland Clinic through the Internet.”
The service that the Patient Service Representative was referring to is the Online Medical Second Opinion program; a sophisticated, Web-based extension of Cleveland Clinic’s. The secure, online program provides medical second opinions from Cleveland Clinic specialists for several life-threatening and life-changing diagnoses.
“Immediately, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the Online Medical Second Opinion program,” Paula said. “I was still recovering from my recent stroke, overcoming neurological impairments that made some physical and cognitive tasks, like traveling, difficult for me. Receiving a Second Opinion from the comfort of my own home was a wonderful opportunity for someone like me.”
Shortly after sending her medical records and test results to Cleveland Clinic, Paula received her Online Medical Second Opinion report, completed by Dr. Gornik, the physician she had requested. She was pleased with how quickly she heard back and with the thoroughness of the report.
“Dr. Gornik confirmed my diagnosis of FMD and agreed with the medication routine that neurologist had prescribed to me,” Paula said. “She also recommended that I discuss undergoing a renal artery scan with my treating physicians at home to find out if FMD was affecting the arteries in my kidneys.”
Per Dr. Gornik’s suggestion, Paula’s physicians ordered the test to be done at her home medical facility in Columbus and those results indicated that her renal arteries were free of FMD, instantly lifting a weight off her shoulders.
Since her stroke, Paula has made great strides. She has started a light exercise routine and was able to celebrate her oldest son’s wedding day on May 31, 2011.
“I gained a sense of relief from the Online Medical Second Opinion I received from Dr. Gornik and Cleveland Clinic,” Paula said. “I know that FMD is always going to be part of me, but I feel confident knowing I’m as healthy as I can be and I don’t have to live in fear of having another stroke every day. I take life one day at a time and I focus on myself and my family now.”
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Explained: What Is Hydroxychloroquine, The Drug Touted As Cure To Coronavirus!!
Anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is back in the news after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday hinted at retaliation if India does not export the drug that is believed to be helpful in treating the Coronavirus.
The US President has been touting hydroxychloroquine’s potential and terming it a gamechanger. But does this anti-malaria drug have the potential to treat the disease? Could it be a possible miracle that can pull humanity out of the pandemic? That remains to be seen.
What is hydroxychloroquine?
Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria. The drug was invented during World War II. It is also prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis. According to the Johns Hopkins University Lupus Center, the anti-malarial medication has been shown to improve symptoms such as muscle and joint pain, skin rashes, inflammation of the heart and lung linings, fatigue, and fever. Hydroxychloroquine is sold under the brand name Plaquenil and is available as generics.
Is it safe to use?
The Indian Council for Medical Research Director General Balrama Bhargava has recommended the use of hydroxychloroquine for treating healthcare workers tackling the suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases and also the asymptomatic household contacts of the lab-confirmed cases. The treatment protocol recommended by the National Task Force has been approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) for restricted use in emergency situations.
Another scientist at the ICMR said: “The empiric use of hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis of SARS-Cov-2 infection is recommended only for asymptomatic healthcare workers involved in the care of suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 and asymptomatic household contacts of laboratory-confirmed cases.” he said.
Side effects of the drug can be heart block, heart rhythm disturbance, dizziness, giddiness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
In March, a man died while his wife was left in a critical condition in Arizona after they took chloroquine phosphate, an additive used to clean fish tanks that is related to the composition of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
Can hydroxychloroquine be used to treat Coronavirus?
In France, 40 coronavirus patients were given hydroxychloroquine and more than half of them experienced the clearing of their airways within three to six days. The study suggested that the anti-malarial drug can slow infections from Sars-CoV-2 — the virus behind Covid-19 — by blocking it from entering cells in the body.
“But more recent, albeit small-scale, research from China has shown that patients who were treated with the drugs fought off coronavirus no more quickly than those who didn’t get it. Indeed, one patient given hydroxychloroquine severely worsened in condition while four patients on the medicine developed signs of liver damage and experienced diarrhea,” the Guardian reported.
And it is important to note that a drug used with for treatment with subjecting it to a full and thorough clinical trial is, at the best, untested and may have severe drawbacks.
According to the European Medicines Agency, hydroxychloroquine should not be taken by coronavirus patients except for clinical trials or emergency use programs.
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What is active and passive immunity and why both matter for the treatment of COVID 19!!
Currently, the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in India is more than 18,000 out of which only 2,500 people have recovered. With no vaccine for the virus yet, the only option we have to keep ourselves safe from the virus is by keeping our immune system strong.
When someone contracts COVID 19 and heals from it, it doesn’t mean they are entirely safe from not getting the infection again. While most of the people think of the word immunity as something that protects them completely from the illness, but actually it’s much more complicated, says the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
How do we become immune to a disease?
A person achieves immunity to disease through the presence of antibodies or proteins produced by the body that can destroy or neutralize the toxins or other disease carriers. These antibodies are our attack mechanisms against invaders.
But these antibodies are specific for specific diseases, which is why even if you got the flu shot this year, you have no immunity against the current coronavirus outbreak.
Two types of immunity
Our immunity can be divided into two categories – active and passive immunity. The difference between both depends on how the body was introduced to virus or bacteria it has developed antibodies for and to what extent and for how long they can prevent against future disease. The thing to be noted is that both types of immunity can play a role in the future protection treatment of COVID 19.
What is active immunity?
According to the CDC, active immunity is developed when exposure to a disease organism triggers the immune system to produce antibodies for that disease. This can happen in two ways – through infection with the actual disease, which is called natural immunity or through vaccination (a killed or weakened form of the disease that won’t make someone ill but triggers the body to make antibodies), which is called vaccine-induced immunity.
Active immunity isn’t immediate and can take several weeks to develop. That is why most doctors recommend getting the flu shot before the flu season kicks in.
There is much more research needed in the context of immunity against COVID 19. While the vaccine-induced immunity is still a huge question mark, researchers are currently looking at the immunity gained by people who have recovered from COVID 19.
According to the World Health Organisation, it’s still unknown whether those previously infected with COVID 19 can be re-infected and what type of immunity they have against the virus.
A person who has generated a full-blown response with detectable antibodies is expected to have protection for a period of time. But we don’t know how long that period would be, added the WHO.
What is passive immunity?
While a person develops active immunity when their body produces antibodies to disease through its own immune system, passive immunity is when a person is given antibodies. This happens in utero or through antibody-containing blood products, such as immune globulin, which is administered when immediate protection from a specific disease is needed. For instance, immuno globulin can provide protection against hepatitis A in instances when hepatitis A vaccine is not recommended.
The major advantage of passive immunity is that it provides immediate protection. But passive doesn’t last long as active immunity and loses its effectiveness within a few weeks and months, as per CDC.
Passive immunity may also be helpful when it comes to COVID 19. This can be done primarily through the potential use of convalescent serum or blood plasma collected from those who have previously recovered from COVID 19. This means giving antibodies from the blood of people who have recovered from COVID 19 to people who are actively ill. This can help prevent complications and fasten the recovery.
Convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19 is still being studied and has not been yet recommended as a routine treatment. Researchers are hoping to use the technique to treat COVDI 19 patients and boost the immune system of health care providers and first responders.
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Autoimmunity Plays A Role In Parkinson’s Disease Confirms Study!!
A new study co-led by scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) adds increasing evidence that Parkinson’s disease is partly an autoimmune disease. In fact, the researchers report that signs of autoimmunity can appear in Parkinson’s disease patients years before their official diagnosis.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
The research could make it possible to someday detect Parkinson’s disease before the onset of debilitating motor symptoms—and potentially intervene with therapies to slow the disease progression.
Scientists have long known that clumps of a damaged protein called alpha-synuclein build up in the dopamine-producing brain cells of patients with Parkinson’s disease. These clumps eventually lead to cell death, causing motor symptoms and cognitive decline.
“Once these cells are gone, they’re gone. So if you are able to diagnose the disease as early as possible, it could make a huge difference,” says LJI research assistant professor Cecilia Lindestam Arlehamn, Ph.D., who served as first author of the new study.
A 2017 study led by Sette and Sulzer was the first to show that alpha-synuclein can act as a beacon for certain T cells, causing them to mistakenly attack brain cells and potentially contribute to the progression of Parkinson’s. This was the first direct evidence that autoimmunity could play a role in Parkinson’s disease.
The new findings shed light on the timeline of T cell reactivity and disease progression. The researchers looked at blood samples from a large group of Parkinson’s disease patients and compared their T cells to a healthy, age-matched control group. They found that the T cells that react to alpha-synuclein are most abundant when patients are first diagnosed with the disease. These T cells tend to disappear as the disease progresses, and few patients still have them ten years after diagnosis.
The researchers also did an in-depth analysis of one Parkinson’s disease patient who happened to have blood samples preserved going back long before his diagnosis. This case study showed that the patient had a strong T cell response to alpha-synuclein ten years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Again, these T cells faded away in the years following diagnosis.
“This tells us that detection of T cell responses could help in the diagnosis of people at risk or in early stages of disease development, when many of the symptoms have not been detected yet,” says Sette. “Importantly, we could dream of a scenario where early interference with T cell responses could prevent the disease from manifesting itself or progressing.”
Sulzer added, “One of the most important findings is that the flavor of the T cells changes during the course of the disease, starting with more aggressive cells, moving to less aggressive cells that may inhibit the immune response, and after about 10 years, disappearing altogether. It is almost as if immune responses in Parkinson’s disease are like those that occur during seasonal flu, except that the changes take place over ten years instead of a week.”
In fact, already therapies exist to treat inflammation from autoreactive T cells, and these TNF therapies are associated with lower incidence of Parkinson’s disease. Going forward, the researchers are especially interested in using a tool called a T cell-based assay to monitor patients already at risk for Parkinson’s to see if they could benefit from TNF therapies. These patients include people with REM sleep disorders and certain genetic mutations.
The researchers hope to study more Parkinson’s patients and follow them over longer time periods to better understand how T cell reactivity changes as the disease progresses.
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What is Sleep Paralysis: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment!!
People may wake in the middle of the night and find themselves unable to move or utter a sound. They might see a shadowy figure hovering in the corner, feel a pressure on their chest or sense a hand around their throat. Other times, they feel removed from their frozen bodies, as if floating out of their bed sheets. These bizarre experiences are known as sleep paralysis, a diagnosable and fairly common sleeping disorder.
Prevalence through history
References to sleep paralysis are scattered throughout history, though not usually under the name “sleep paralysis.” Folklore and myths from around the world describe the terrifying experience of being unable to move upon waking and sometimes seeing beings, being choked or being held down. Nightmares known as the “Old Hag” in Newfoundland, Kokma in St. Lucia, and tsog in East Asia may have all be borne of the same spooky experience, according to an article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. In 1664, a Dutch physician described a patient’s experience of sleep paralysis as the “Incubus or the Night-Mare,” providing the first known clinical description of the affliction.
According to a 2011 review, about 7.6% of the world’s population experiences at least one episode of sleep paralysis in their lifetime, with higher rates noted among students and psychiatric patients, particularly those with post-traumatic stress or panic disorder. Sleep paralysis is also a common symptom of narcolepsy, a condition characterized by excessive sleepiness, sleep attacks and sudden loss of muscle control, as described by the National Sleep Foundation. Sleep paralysis in the absence of narcolepsy is known as “isolated sleep paralysis,” or “recurrent isolated sleep paralysis” if it occurs repeatedly.
Sleep paralysis demons and other hallucinations
Nowadays, scientists have gained a better understanding of sleep paralysis as a neurological disorder, rather than a brush with the paranormal. Sleep paralysis arises from disrupted REM sleep, named for the rapid eye movements that occur during this stage of the sleep cycle.
“During sleep paralysis, you have two aspects of REM sleep going on when you’re awake,” said Brian Sharpless, a licensed clinical psychologist and co-author of the book “Sleep Paralysis: Historical Psychological, and Medical Perspectives” (Oxford University Press, 2015). You’re most likely to experience dreaming during REM sleep, he said, and the body actually becomes paralyzed “presumably so you don’t try to act out your dreams.”
During an episode of sleep paralysis, a person becomes paralyzed for seconds or minutes just as they’re falling asleep or waking up. While frozen beneath their bedsheets, many people also experience vivid hallucinations.
People who have experienced sleep paralysis often describe sensing an evil presence, or demon in the room with them. A study published in the journal Sleep Medicine last month reported that out of 185 patients diagnosed with sleep paralysis, about 58% sensed a presence in the room with them, usually something non-human, and about 22% actually saw a person in the room, usually a stranger.
Sleep paralysis may also cause people to feel pressure on their chest, or feel as though their body is moving without them directing it, according to the American Sleep Association. Sometimes people find the out-of-body hallucinations pleasant and feel as though they’re weightless, but more often, the sensations can be quite disturbing. Like paralysis, these hallucinations may also be a lingering manifestation of REM sleep.
“We know the amygdala is highly active in REM, which is important to fear and emotional memory,” said Daniel Denis, a postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “You have part of the brain actively responding to fear or something emotional, but nothing in the environment to account for that. So the brain comes up with a solution to that paradox.” That’s one possible explanation, he said; but the actual cause of the hallucinations is still unknown.
Risk factors and treatment
A myriad of factors, including substance use, genetic factors, a history of trauma, a psychiatric diagnosis and poor physical health and sleep quality, may increase the risk of developing sleep paralysis, according to a 2018 review. The frequency and severity of episodes has also been linked to anxiety-like symptoms and sleep deprivation.
“This may explain why [sleep paralysis] comes in waves or bouts,” Says Denis. “Episodes might coincide with a period of stress.”
There is no set treatment for sleep paralysis, but doctors usually direct diagnosed patients to improve their sleep schedule and maintain a better bedtime routine. In more extreme cases, patients may be prescribed a low dose of antidepressants, according to the National Health Society of the UK. These medications may help mitigatemediate the symptoms of sleep paralysis by suppressing certain aspects of REM sleep, Sharpless noted.
So, what should you do if you experience sleep paralysis?
“If you have rare episodes of sleep paralysis, but haven’t been seen by a sleep specialist, make sure your sleep hygiene is solid,” said Shelby Harris, director of Behavioral Sleep Medicine at the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at the Montefiore Health System in the Bronx, New York City. “For example, sleep paralysis can be a sign that you’re sleep deprived,”
Harris suggested that people experiencing sleep paralysis should make sure to get enough sleep on a regular basis, avoid alcohol, nicotine and drugs all night, starting 3 hours before bedtime. They should also limit caffeine after 2 p.m. and keep electronics out of the bedroom.
“If these things don’t help, and you’re having episodes that are becoming somewhat more frequent, see a sleep specialist to see if there’s any underlying medical disorder that might be causing the sleep paralysis,” Harris said.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/50876-sleep-paralysis.html
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Five Reasons Why You Must Drink Water From a Clay Pot or Matka in Summers!!
Many of you might be habitual with the practice of storing water in a clay pot during summers. This practice of drinking matka water is not only a substitute for steel and plastic containers, but also has its own set of health benefits. This is the reason why many households still swear by the clay pot, as it has many therapeutic benefits.
Here are some amazing health benefits of drinking water from a clay pot in summers:
Natural cooling effect
Matka water provided chilled water back in those days when there were no refrigerators. These pots work on the principle of vaporization, which helps in cooling down the water. As the clay pot is porous, it gradually chills down the water which is a quality no other container has.
Good for throat
While the fridge water is too chilled and water kept outside is too warm, matka provides the perfect drinking water in summers. With its perfect cooling effect, it is gentle on throat and can be easily consumed by people suffering from cold and cough.
Prevents sun strokes
Sunstroke is a very common problem which strikes a lot of people in summers. The vitamins and minerals from the water stored in clay pots will help in maintaining the body glucose levels and will also provide a gentle cooling effect to your body.
Alkaline in nature
The human body is acidic in nature, while clay is alkaline. Water from these alkaline pots when consumed by you reacts with the acidic nature of our body and helps in creating a proper pH balance. This is the reason why drinking matka water helps in keeping acidity and stomach problems at bay.
Boosts metabolism
When we drink water stored in plastic bottles, it contains toxic chemicals like Bisphenol A or BPA, which harms the body in many ways. It is said to bring the testosterone levels down and is also known to be endocrine disruptor. Whereas, drinking water from a clay pot balances testosterone levels and even improves your body’s metabolism.
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