September 12th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
A common misconception is that Alzheimer’s patients are placed in a nursing home because their memory has failed. Actually, what is more disturbing and precedes placement in a nursing home are the periods of agitation and psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, suspicious thoughts) often experienced in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Traditional thinking is that psychotic [...]
September 11th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
An article in the recent issue of Pain Medicine describes possible non-medication approaches in dealing with chronic pain in older adults. The study included progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, hypnosis, tai chi, and yoga. Of the treatments in the study, none were found to have adverse effects or safety issues. All were feasible for older adults [...]
September 10th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
In a letter to The Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences, Dr En-King Tan challenges the conclusions of a study that ran recently in the publication. The original study concluded that panic attacks are a helpful tool in the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Dr Tan challenges this assumption because the study lacked longitudinal data. For [...]
September 9th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Participants in a recent study of bipolar disorder patients, who experienced manic symptoms while also suffering from depression, did not benefit from antidepressant medication when it was given in addition to a mood stabilizer. A second study also indicated that a mood stabilizer alone appeared to be just as effective as when it was given along with an [...]
September 8th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Lupus have long been suspected to have a common genetic component. Narrowing the field of possibilities to just one likely candidate has taken researchers years to accomplish. The suspected gene is STAT4, but it is too early to tell what impact it will have in therapy for both diseases. This is [...]
September 7th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Parents who have bipolar disorder face more increased challenges than those parents who do not have the disorder. As a parent they have to contend with their mood and behavior instability, impulsivity and anger problems, all of which lead to parenting difficulties. The difficulties for bipolar parents are that dealing with their children often increases the [...]
September 6th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Researchers believe that they have uncovered the reason that Alzheimer’s patients have ‘spells’ of increased confusion as their disease progresses to the latter stage. Using genetically engineered mice, that have Alzheimer’s disease, researchers discovered they suffer from ‘silent’ seizures. It is the ‘silent’ seizures that they suspect are the reason for the increased ‘spells’ of confusion [...]
September 5th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
Diagnosis of children with bipolar disorder has increased 4-fold in the past decade. The reason for the increase concerns researchers because it could be the result of one of two things. First, it could be a system correcting itself from a period when many children were under diagnosed. Second, it could be that physicians are misdiagnosing [...]
September 4th, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
The International Herald Tribune, has an article on how post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) sometimes manifest years and decades after a traumatic event. For example, some World War II and Korean War veterans did not show symptoms of PTSD for 30-years. As the Center for Disease Control (CDC) states PTSD can be very difficult to diagnose, which may be [...]
September 3rd, 2007 by Richard Brassaw
The Ortho-McNeil’s Survey of pain in the workplace shows an increase of 38% of workers reporting chronic pain from when the study was initially done in 1996. The majority of employers cited pain-related conditions as a lost of productivity in the workplace. There is a reported increase of 65% for work-site wellness programs, but only 22% of the [...]
Category :
Alzheimer - Dementia
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