Recovery Michigan

In the sex education class for adults with intellectual disabilities, the material is not watered down. The dozen women and men in a large room full of windows and light in Casco, Maine, take on complex issues, such as how to break up or how you know you're in an abusive relationship. And the most difficult of those issues is sexual assault.

Katy Park, the teacher, begins the class with a phrase they've memorized: "My body is my own," Park starts as the rest join in, "and I get to decide what is right for me."

When you’re an older person in a wheelchair or walking with a cane, people treat you differently. Sure, some might be quicker to open doors for you, but most of the behavioral reactions aren’t positive ones. The combination of being old and disabled causes what many refer to as “invisibility.”

Frank Bruni, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, explored this idea in a recent columnthrough the lens of 82-year-old Nancy Root, a woman with post-polio syndrome Bruni met while giving a lecture on a cruise. Root taught Bruni how it felt to be seen as invisible because of her age and perceived ability.

“People looked over her, around her, through her. They withdrew,” Bruni wrote.

An Intersection of -Isms

The concept of invisible older people — specifically older women — is not new. Novelist and screenwriter Ayelet Waldman discussed with us the invisibility of turning 50 as a woman.

“I had no idea that as soon as I got to his age, to be a 50-year-old woman, the sexism gets completely complicated by this idea that not only are you incompetent as a woman, but you’re incompetent because you’ve reached your senescence! Or something,” Waldman told Next Avenue. “I really do feel like they don’t even see you.”

Many of Ron Fleming’s fellow soldiers have spent the past five decades trying to forget what they saw — and did — in Vietnam.

But Fleming, now 74, has spent most of that time trying to hold on to it. He’s never been as proud as he was when he was 21.

Fleming was a door gunner in the war, hanging out of a helicopter on a strap with a machine gun in his hands. He fought in the Tet Offensive of 1968, sometimes for 40 hours straight, firing 6,000 rounds a minute. But he never gave much thought to catching a bullet himself.

“At 21, you’re bulletproof,” he said, as he sat on the edge of his hospital bed at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. “Dying wasn’t on the agenda.”

Now it is. Fleming has congestive heart failure and arthritis, and his asthma attacks often land him in the hospital. Ten years ago, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which makes him quick to anger and hypervigilant, as if he’s still in that helicopter.

Good Overview....

https://goo.gl/hdhj9H

Complex trauma is still a relatively new field of psychology. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) results from enduring complex trauma.

Complex trauma is ongoing or repeated interpersonal trauma, where the victim is traumatized in captivity, and where there is no perceived way to escape. Ongoing child abuse is captivity abuse because the child cannot escape. Domestic violence is another example. Forced prostitution/sex trafficking is another.

Complex PTSD is a proposed disorder which is different to post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of the issues and symptoms endured by complex trauma survivors are outside of the list of symptoms within the (uncomplicated) PTSD diagnostic criterion. Complex PTSD does acknowledge and validate these added symptoms.

The impact of complex trauma is very different to a one time or short-lived trauma. The effect of repeated/ongoing trauma – caused by people – changes the brain, and also changes the survivor at a core level. It changes the way survivors view the world, other people and themselves in profound ways.

The following are some of the symptoms and impact most felt by complex trauma survivors.

Physically and mentally active'

The guideline says that while that there is no evidence that approved drugs or dietary changes can treat MCI, patients "should be physically and mentally active" and ought to undergo regular checks for symptoms of dementia.

"Because MCI may progress to dementia," says lead guideline author and Fellow of the AAN Dr. Ronald C. Petersen, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, "it is particularly important that MCI is diagnosed early."

He also explains that sometimes, symptoms that may present similar to MCI are due to other treatable causes, such as depression, the side effects of medication, or disturbed sleep.

"It is important to meet with your doctor to determine the root cause," he urges, adding, "Early action may keep memory problems from getting worse."

This study is not easy to follow, mostly because we are used to focusing on the bug (C. diff.), not the way it evolved. The idea is that this sugar (trehalose) gave the worst C.Diff bug the ability to out-compete all the other less dangerous C. Diff bugs. In addition, this sugar gives this bug the ability to create more dangerous toxins that cause the worst symptoms of C. Diff. While trehalose is a naturally occurring sugar, it isn't something we are normally exposed to, except as a food additive. We ALL have it in our guts, so the question of whether we get the symptoms has to do with the ecology of our gut, and how well different strains of C. Diff. compete with one another in our gut. I assume trehalose is listed as an ingredient on food labels. I know I will be checking food labels for trehalose, and avoiding foods that contain it.

https://goo.gl/JHeL31

Trehalose is a naturally occurring sugar. It is a disaccharide, meaning that it is made up of two individual sugar molecules — in this case glucose. Trehalose can be found in fungi, algae, and other plants. The food industry uses the sugar to improve the texture and stability of food products.

Prof. Britton explains in his article that the use of trehalose was somewhat limited before the turn of the century; it cost approximately $7,000 to produce just 1 kilogram. However, the discovery of an enzymatic process that allows trehalose to be extracted from corn starch brought this number down to just $3 per kilogram.

"Granted [the] 'generally recognized as safe' status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] in 2000 and approved for use in food in Europe in 2001," Prof. Britton reports, "reported expected usage ranges from concentrations of 2 percent to 11.25 percent for foods including pasta, ground beef, and ice cream."

I asked Prof. Britton whether he thought that the use of trehalose in food will be restricted based on these data. He didn't think so.

"What this work does suggest is that if a hospital or long-term nursing care facility has an outbreak of C. difficile caused by a RT027 or RT078 strain, then patients' diets should be modified to restrict trehalose consumption," he suggested instead.

The biggest group of people at risk of C. difficile infection are over 65s, and particularly those who are taking antibiotics and find themselves in a healthcare setting such as a hospital.

For the rest of the population, C. difficile poses less of a threat. However, the CDC are very clear in their objective that "preventing C. difficile is a national priority."

Prof. Britton and his colleagues are certainly doing their bit. "We are working now to understand how trehalose increases disease severity of C. difficile strains that can metabolize low concentrations of trehalose," he told me.

"We are also screening," he continued, "emerging C. difficile strains from hospitals for their ability to consume trehalose and other dietary sugars to further investigate the link between the diet and C. difficile infection."

While there are many questions still to be answered by the scientists, the link between trehalose and C. difficile is part of an emerging theme showing that our diet seems to play an increasingly crucial role in how our gut microbes behave in sickness and health.

Previous studies have indicated an overactive stress system in individuals with increased suicide risk. In the current study, researchers report that epigenetic changes in the CRH gene, which are linked to serious suicide attempts in adults, could also be found in adolescents with high risk of psychiatric illness.

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The problem is, many people hide it well. Among those who’ve completed the act, 80% denied such thoughts at their last visit with a mental health professional. Because of this, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University wondered if they could find an objective way to detect such thoughts, by picking up the brain activity patterns that coincide with them.

The need is great. 44,000 Americans commit suicide each year, and it’s the second leading cause of death among young adults. Having an objective way to measure for such thoughts could help us develop more effective intervention methods.

Using a machine learning algorithm and an MRI scanner, Carnegie Mellon University researchers believe they’ve isolated the brain signature for suicidal thoughts. The scientists found they could predict who was thinking about suicide with 91% accuracy. They could even separate who’d attempted suicide previously and who had just thought about it. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

After a season of indulgence, many Americans resolve to drink less in the new year. It’s a common pledge — many of us can recall cringe-worthy texts sent after a raucous night out or a regrettable comment uttered after that third glass of wine.

These intentions are rooted in a stark reality. For all the deserved attention the opioid crisis gets, alcohol overuse remains a persistent public health problem and is responsible for more deaths, as many as 88,000 per year. While light drinking has been shown to be helpful for overall health, since the beginning of this century there has been about a 50 percent uptick in emergency room visits related to heavy drinking. After declining for three decades, deaths from cirrhosis, often linked to alcohol consumption, have been on the rise since 2006.

The pattern has been years in the making. Rick Grucza, an epidemiologist who has been studying alcohol consumption patterns for more than a decade, says the numbers are incontrovertible. Since the early 2000s, according to five government surveys Dr. Grucza has analyzed, binge drinking — often defined as five per day for men and four per day for women — is on the rise among women, older Americans and minorities.