A 35-year-old man who had been in a persistent vegetative state
(PVS) for 15 years has shown signs of consciousness after receiving a pioneering
therapy involving nerve stimulation.
The treatment challenges a widely-accepted view that there is no
prospect of a patient recovering consciousness if they have been in PVS for
longer than 12 months.
Since sustaining severe brain injuries in a car accident, the
man had been completely unaware of the world around him. But when fitted with
an implant to stimulate the vagus nerve, which travels into the brain stem, the
man appeared to flicker back into a state of consciousness.
He started to track objects with his eyes, began to stay awake
while being read a story and his eyes opened wide in surprise when the examiner
suddenly moved her face close to the patient’s. He could even respond to some
simple requests, such as turning his head when asked–although this took about
a minute.
Angela Sirigu, who led the work at the Institut des SciencesCognitives Marc Jeannerod in Lyon, France, said: “He is still paralysed, he
cannot talk, but he can respond. Now he is more aware.”
Niels Birbaumer, of the University of Tübingen and a pioneer of
brain-computer interfaces to help patients with neurological disorders
communicate, said the findings, published
in the journal Current Biology, raised pressing ethical issues.
“Many of these patients may and will have been neglected, and passive
euthanasia may happen often in a vegetative state,” he said.
“This paper is a
warning to all those believing that this state is hopeless after a year.”
The vagus nerve, which the treatment targeted,
connects the brain to almost all the vital organs in the body, running from the
brain stem down both sides of the neck, across the chest and into the abdomen.
In the brain, it is linked directly to two regions known to play roles in
alertness and consciousness.
In surgery lasting about 20 minutes, a small implant was placed
around the vagus nerve in the man’s neck. After one month of vagal nerve
stimulation, the patient’s attention, movements and brain activity
significantly improved and he had shifted into a state of minimal consciousness.
Recordings of brain activity also revealed major changes, with
signs of increased electrical communication between brain regions and
significantly more activity in areas linked to movement, sensation and
awareness.
Similar stimulation has already been shown to help some patients
with epilepsy and depression.
Sirigu and her team now hope to apply the same technique to
patients with less serious brain injuries, where even more substantial
improvements might be possible. There may even be patients, she said, whose
cortex (the part of the brain used for cognitive tasks) is intact, but who have
brain stem injuries that have led to limited awareness or consciousness.
The findings offer hope to the families of patients in PVS that
it may one day be possible to re-establish some basic form of communication.
However, some might also question whether such patients would wish to be made
more acutely aware of being in a severely injured state.
“I cannot answer to this question,” said Sirigu. “Personally I
think it’s better to be aware, even if it’s a bad state, to be conscious of
what’s happening. Then you can have a decision if you want to go on or if you
want [euthanasia].”
Damian Cruse, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of
Birmingham, described the findings as “pretty exciting”, adding that in future
it might be possible to combine vagal nerve stimulation with other forms of
rehabilitation.
“If you can just push the patient over the threshold so they can
start responding to external stimulation you can maybe help them follow speech
therapy and get them to a level where they can start to communicate,” he said.
During the past decade, scientists have made major advances in
communicating with “locked in” patients using various forms of brain-computer interface.
These have allowed paralysed patients, some of whom had been
assumed to be in PVS, to answer “yes” or “no” to questions to let their family
and friends know their wishes and their state of wellbeing.
But there may be something even more powerful than Vagus Nerve stimulation and it comes in a pill. It's a fat soluble B Vitamin that comes in a pill, called Benfotiamine. Bill Sardi has the details. See this graph:
But the only B vitamin that works on nerve regeneration is the fat soluble B Vitamin called Benfotiamine. Don't forget that name. Look for it online and in your health food store. The nice thing about this product is that the brand name does not matter. Several foods deplete our Vitamin B stores, coffee, tea, and alcohol are among them. Still, even if you drink these beverages, if you take the Benfotiamine it means that you're still getting something. Know, too, that we don't naturally make B1, that we need to get this from our diet. But if you want to maintain your health, then take the Benfotiamine.
Largest study
on physical activity involving 130,000 people in 17 countries showed that household
chores such as vacuuming, or walking to work, provided enough exercise to
protect the heart and extend life, with 30 minutes of physical activity five
days a week reducing the risk of death by 28%
Not bad. From the New Scientist. One in 12 deaths could be prevented with 30 minutes of physical
activity five days a week. That’s the conclusion from the world’s largest study
of physical activity,
which analysed data from more than 130,000 people across 17 countries.
At the start of the
study, participants provided information on their socioeconomic status,
lifestyle behaviours and medical history. They also answered a questionnaire
about the physical activity they complete over a typical week. Participants
were followed-up at least every three years to record information about
cardiovascular disease and death for almost seven years.
Over the period studied, Scott Lear, from McMaster University in
Canada and his colleagues found that 150 minutes of activity per week reduced
the risk of death from any cause by 28 per cent and rates of heart disease by
a fifth.
Being highly active was
associated with even greater benefits: people who spent more than 750 minutes
walking briskly each week reduced their risk of premature death by 36 per cent.
Results showed that it was not necessary to run,
swim or work out at the gym. Household chores such as vacuuming or scrubbing
the floor, or merely walking to work provided enough exercise to protect the
heart and extend life.
“Going to the gym is
great, but we only have so much time we can spend there. If we can walk to
work, or at lunch time, that will help too,” says Lear.
The World Health
Organisation recommend that adults aged 18 to 64 do at least 150 minutes of
moderate physical activity throughout the week, as well as muscle strengthening
exercises at least two days a week.
The study found that if
the world’s population met these guidelines, 8 per cent of global deaths over
seven years would be prevented.
“The clear-cut results reinforce the message
that exercise truly is the best medicine at our disposal for reducing
the odds of an early death,” says James Rudd,
senior lecturer in cardiovascular medicine, at the University of
Cambridge. “If a drug company came up with a medicine as effective
as exercise, they would have a billion-dollar blockbuster on their hands
and a Nobel prize in the post.”
Poor diet is a factor in one in five deaths around the world,
according to the most comprehensive study ever carried out on the subject.
It's the 20% that I found stunning. I mean I realize that a poor diet, like a fast-food diet, will wreak havoc on our hormones, nerves, muscles, digestion, stamina, and cognition. But what constitutes a bad diet? And can a good diet not only eliminate that one in five deaths but can it reverse it, say, to increase one's lifespan by 20%?
As to what a bad diet is, the Guardian has an answer:
Millions of people are eating the wrong sorts of food for good
health.
Uh-oh. How many of us have doubted whether that whole grain bagel with cream cheese was not good for us? I know I did. I avoid bread like the plague. It has a sticky effect on my muscles.
Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and
fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the
huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.
It finds that people are living longer. Life expectancy in 2016 worldwide was
75.3 years for women and 69.8 for men. Japan has the highest life expectancy at
84 years and the Central African Republic has the lowest at just over 50. In
the UK, life expectancy for a man born in 2016 is 79, and for a woman 82.9.
I am sure that there are many factors for the differences, but certainly iron management [here, here, and here] is one reason why women tend to outlive men.
This was stunning--
Diet is the second highest risk factor for early death after
smoking.
But there are other deadly conditions that are related to eating the wrong foods. I know that it's not good to eat meat with grains or refined carbohydrates. Your body actually really, really needs the enzymes in vegetables to help you digest that meat. And I would not advise the ketogenic diet where you eat a high-fat, adequate meat all the time. I am sure that coconut oil is good for you. How much and how often is another thing, regardless if these are "ancient foods."
Other high risks are high blood glucose which can lead to diabetes,
high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI) which is a measure of obesity,
and high total cholesterol. All of these can be related to eating the wrong
foods, although there are also other causes.
The good doctor agrees with me.
“This is really large,” Dr Christopher
Murray, IHME’s director, told the Guardian. “It is amongst the really big
problems in the world. It is a cluster that is getting worse.” While obesity
gets attention, he was not sure policymakers were as focused on the area of
diet and health as they needed to be.
So Dr. Murray wants less attention given to obesity and more to specific foods eaten for specific conditions or purposes, like energy, weight loss, etc.? If that is the case, then why not read Dr. Barry Sears books on the Zone Diet?
“That constellation is a really, really
big challenge for health and health systems,” he said.
Okay. No argument there with that extremely general statement.
The
problem is often seen as the spread of western diets, taking over from
traditional foods in the developing world. But it is not that simple, says
Murray. “Take fruit. It has lots of health benefits but only very wealthy
people eat a lot of fruit, with some exceptions.”
Sugary
drinks are harmful to health but eating a lot of red meat, the study finds, is
not as big a risk to health as failing to eat whole grains. “We need to look
really carefully at what are the healthy compounds in diets that provide
protection,” he said.
Well, like most of these health articles they don't really commit to much in the general press, and if they do the claims are often so general so as to not mean much. In fact, from a psychological standpoint, the ambiguity in the articles themselves misleads people away from precision eating for precise healthy goals and toward binge or junk eating. Note what Dr. Murray just said, "Sugary drinks are harmful to health but eating a lot of red meat, the study finds, is not as big a risk to health as failing to eat whole grains." The article started out by saying
Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.
And now Dr. Murray, the IHME’s director, calls for people to eat "whole grains." Phenomenal. Phenomenally bad. Is this typical of The Guardian to gas its readers?
Prof John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England,
said the studies show how quickly diet and obesity-related disease is spreading
around the world. “I don’t think people realize how quickly the focus is
shifting towards non-communicable disease [such as cancer, heart disease and
stroke] and diseases that come with development, in particular related to poor
diet. The numbers are quite shocking in my view,” he said.
That sounds like a sales pitch for sustainability.
The UK tracks childhood obesity through the school measurement program and has brought in measures to try to tackle it. “But no country in
the world has been able to solve the problem and it is a concern that we really
need to think about tackling globally,” he said.
No one has "tackled it" because food, like so many personal decision a person makes in his daily life is, well, personal.
Today, 72% of deaths are from non-communicable diseases for
which obesity and diet are among the risk factors, with ischemic heart disease
as the leading cause worldwide of early deaths, including in the UK. Lung
cancer, stroke, lung disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) and
Alzheimer’s are the other main causes in the UK.
So what? That paragraph reads like something dated in 1982. There is some news of optimism here:
The success story is children under five. In 2016, for the first
time in modern history, fewer than 5 million children under five died in one
year – a significant fall compared with 1990, when 11 million died. Increased
education for women, less poverty, having fewer children, vaccinations,
anti-malaria bed-nets, improved water and sanitation are among the changes in
low-income countries that have brought the death rate down, thanks to
development aid.
See, the last part of that paragraph, particularly the part about development aid, sounded to me a lot like a pitch for sustainability.
People are living longer but spending more years in ill health.
Maybe because they've not managed the accumulation of heavy minerals, like iron and calcium, well.
Obesity is one of the major reasons. More than a billion people worldwide are
living with mental health and substance misuse disorders. Depression features
in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries.
“Our findings indicate people are living longer and, over the
past decade, we identified substantial progress in driving down death rates
from some of the world’s most pernicious diseases and conditions, such as under
age-five mortality and malaria,” said Murray “Yet, despite this progress, we
are facing a triad of trouble holding back many nations and communities –
obesity, conflict, and mental illness, including substance use disorders.”
By adding a reference to "conflict," it has become clearer that this article is less about health than it is about a call for more Development Aid or Farm Aid or Aid by any other name from the UK or the US. And as Dr. Murray calls for more aid, he does not heed the cautionary tale on aid from experts on the ground. Aid does not work, one, to develop those countries. See here. And if development is stymied because of the aid, then how is aid going to reduce obesity? On US Aid, see Michael S. Rozeff
If the U.S. government props up client states with aid, floods
their markets with American agricultural goods, underwrites military purchases,
introduces Keynesian economic practices, and provides disaster aid, this is
supposed to make the people wealthier and reduce political strife. If the
country becomes more indebted to the IMF and World Bank, building unprofitable
signature projects, this is supposed to raise living standards, making people
content and happy. And all of that improvement, which actually doesn’t happen,
is supposed to make Americans more secure and prosperous, a very far-fetched
theory.
Intra-domestic
wealth transfers in the U.S. likewise have done more harm than good, producing
greater dependency, worse education, more red tape, and higher debt while
undercutting private capital growth that might have involved job creation. Why
are we not to expect that foreign wealth transfers are likewise doing more harm
than good?
USAID was
enacted under the theory that reducing poverty would reduce the appeal of
communism. That theory was wrong even when communism was viewed as a threat to
America. It’s completely out of date now.
This is why for me any discussion about the insertion or the insinuation of foreign is fraught with suspicion. What measurable good comes from it and to whom is that good accountable?
In the UK, the concern is particularly about the increase in
ill-health that prevents people from working or having a fulfilling life, said
Newton.
Okay, this is just startling. Since when did pundits or bureaucrats or politicians ever worry about its citizens from, and let me quote, "having a fulfilling life"? Really? Laughable.
A man in the UK born in 2016 can expect only 69 years in good health
and a woman 71 years.
Same for the U.S. So what?
“This is yet another reminder that while we’re living longer,
much of that extra time is spent in ill-health. It underlines the importance of
preventing the conditions that keep people out of work and put their long term
health in jeopardy, like musculoskeletal problems, poor hearing and mental ill
health. Our priority is to help people, including during the crucial early
years of life and in middle age, to give them the best chance of a long and
healthy later life,” he said.
"Our priority is to help people"? Really? Which people? Those cronies connected to Aid and Development programs or former Prime Minister, Tony Blair?
It is hard
to deny any longer the remarkable protective benefits of Vitamin D3.
There is even a website dedicated to its information and application,
called the VitaminDCouncil.
The very first remedy that I'd heard improved by Vitamin D3 was
the seasonal
affective light disorder or SAD for short. Always with the
acronyms. The prescription for this condition ranges between 1,000 to
4,000 IUs. I don't know what is enough, but I do know that taking a lot
more during the day is more beneficial. Now you don't take 10,000 IUs all
at once. But taking 3,000 to 5,000 IUs three times a day will put your
skin, your bones, and your brain in excellent condition.
Why do we take vitamins to begin with? To
improve conditions without using pharmaceutical drugs, right; that, and to see
if supplements can help us circumvent surgery. Bill Sardi has an 2010
article on just this topic, "How
to Avoid Ten Common Surgical Procedures With Dietary Supplements."
In this article he explains the cause why some women require a C-Section
and why their
Tonsillectomy has long been considered a “cash cow” for throat surgeons. For more than seven decades physicians have
debated whether surgical removal of tonsils in young children is beneficial. Clearly, many needless
tonsillectomies continue to be performed.
A recent hypothesis links tonsillectomy with low levels of Vitamin D. With the realization that modern
medicine offers nothing in regards to prevention, Vitamin D therapy and
prevention should be explored and practiced.
