Recovery Michigan

This is interesting for many reasons.....

http://bit.ly/2LgLNes

Giving children with autism a healthier mix of gut bacteria as a way to improve behavioral symptoms continued to work even two years after treatment ended.

The finding may solidify the connection between tummy troubles and autism, and provide more evidence that the gut microbiome — the collection of bacteria and other microbes that live in the intestines — can influence behavior.

“It’s a long way from saying there’s a cure for autism,” says Michael Hylin, a neuroscientist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale who was not involved in the work. “But I think it’s a promising approach. It’s one that’s worthwhile.”

Children with autism spectrum disorders often have gastrointestinal problems. In previous studies, environmental engineer Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown of Arizona State University in Tempe and colleagues discovered that children with autism had fewer types of bacteria living in their guts than typically developing children did. And many of the kids were missing Prevotella bacteria, which may help regulate immune system actions. The researchers wondered whether altering the children’s cocktail of gut microbes to get a more diverse and healthier mix might help fix both the digestive issues and the behavioral symptoms associated with autism.

In a small study of 18 children and teenagers with autism, the scientists gave kids fecal transplants from healthy donors over eight weeks. During and two months after the treatment, the kids had fewer gastrointestinal problems, including diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain and indigestion than before the therapy. Autism symptoms, such as hyperactivity, repetitive actions and irritability, also improved and seemed to be getting even better at the end of the trial than immediately after treatment ended, the team reported last year in Microbiome. But no one knew whether the improvements would last.

Krajmalnik-Brown announced the results of a two-year, follow-up study July 10 at the Beneficial Microbes Conference. The children had kept many of the Prevotella and other beneficial bacteria gained during treatment. And the diversity of bacteria in the children’s guts was even greater two years later than it was two months after the therapy ended, Krajmalnik-Brown said.

Some of the children’s stomach troubles had worsened slightly. But on average, scores on a gastrointestinal-symptoms scale were still more than 60 percent better than before kids received the transplants. The real surprise was that the kids’ autism symptoms continued to lessen two years after the therapy ended. Still, the study was small. “Don’t try this at home,” Krajmalnik-Brown cautioned.  

The children were ages 7 to 17 when the study started. Ideally, treatment would begin at younger ages, Krajmalnik-Brown said, but the researchers have not gotten approval to conduct the research in younger children.

http://bit.ly/2NNMbD5

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, the doctor might give you an overview of the common symptoms associated with your illness, but often these are physical manifestations – pain, fatigue, swelling, even brain fog. Many of us are then surprised by all of the emotional side effects that accompany our illness. For me, the many years I spent being very ill but undiagnosed triggered the onset of depression and anxiety. I felt alone, scared, and judged by my friends at school who didn’t understand why I sat out during P.E. every day.

Even though many of us experience a significant change in our mental and emotional state after developing a chronic illness, we’re not always given the same run-down of potential emotional side effects as we are physical ones. Doctors may prescribe various medications to treat bodily symptoms, but what about our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our identities? In order to get a better understanding of how chronic illness can affect a person as a whole, we asked our community to share the emotional symptoms or side effects of illness that surprised them.

Here’s what the community told us:

1. “The guilt. I feel guilty for being sick. I have no control over it, it’s not my fault, and yet it crushes me. My illness affects everyone around me.”

2. “The constant merry-go-round of feelings, going between acceptance, depression and anger. Accepting there will be always days when you just wake up sad or angry about it all.”

3. “Grief. You feel an immense sense of loss for your old self and all your previous capabilities. It feels like you have had your life robbed from you, so you essentially go into a state of mourning.”

4. “Grumpiness! I used to pride myself on emotional awareness and self-control, but lately I find myself irritable and snappy. It happens when I’m in a lot of pain or discomfort, and when I’m having sensory sensitivity issues. I’m learning to see it coming before I snap at someone I love.”

5. “Shock. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have much time to process what was happening to me. I came to terms with my mortality.”

And many more...

It takes about 18 months for the brain to recover from long term alcoholism after sobriety. I was always impressed by the similarities between PTSD and the first long period of sobriety, though I have no idea why the similarity would exist....

http://bit.ly/2LbU4Ad

Asa recovered alcoholic who has been sober for over a year and a half now, I’m frequently asked what to expect by those looking to give up the bottle.

Of course, I tell them about the good stuff: the energy (both mental and physical), the sharpened mental focus, the euphoria that comes with that happy convergence of sobriety and an uptick in physical exercise, and the waybetter sex (trust me on this one!).

But I’m also honest about the negatives. Namely, a sharp contraction in your social life, newfound awkwardness in longstanding relationships with friends and family, and, of course, the rage. The unfettered, unrelenting, oftentimes blinding anger. The kind of rage that makes you want to put your fist through absolutely everything.

I don’t care how “chill” you think you are. In your first year of sobriety there will be many, many times when you’ll fantasize about beating the shit out of absolutely everything. I know this from first-hand experience: your inner Gandhi will, upon (probably) the first month of kicking the bottle, be transformed into Floyd Mayweather. Virtually every person I’ve ever talked to who’s kicked an addiction has some version of this Jekyll-Hyde story to report. And if you’re the sort of living Buddha who can completely sidestep emotional toxicity, you probably wouldn’t have developed a dependency on booze or some other agent of stupefaction to begin with.

http://bit.ly/2NJyfd4

Focused on 6-month high-risk period after emergency department visit.

Enhanced brief intervention services administered to patients presenting with suicidal concerns to emergency departments (ED) helped reduce subsequent suicidal behaviors, a study found.

The large-scale cohort comparison study compared outcomes for 1,186 patients who received SPI+ in five Veterans Affairs (VA) ED intervention sites with 454 matched controls from four VA sites delivering treatment as usual. Patients in the intervention and control groups were mostly male and in middle-age.

The SPI+ intervention initiative and follow-up criteria included the following six steps:

• Identify personalized warning signs for an impending suicide crisis
• Determine internal coping strategies that distract from suicidal thoughts and urges
• Identify family and friends who are able to distract from suicidal thoughts and urges and social places that provide the opportunity for interaction
• Identify individuals who can help provide support during a suicidal crisis
• List mental health professionals and urgent care services to contact during a suicidal crisis
• Lethal means counselling for making the environment safer

Stanley touched upon the lethal means criteria, describing the need for such conversations as those concerning gun control as "a natural discussion when talking with suicidal patients because about 50% of all suicides in the U.S. are with firearms." She highlighted that discussions of firearm possession are not necessarily primary, but rather fit into the larger rubric of discussions that must take place, adding, "We talk about temporary removal of weapons, safe storage, etc., in much the same way we discuss access to lethal medications."

Further to the safety plan, provided prior to ER discharge, SPI+ included sustained follow-up via telephone consultation, by appropriately trained and supervised project staff (social workers or psychologists). Contact was attempted within 72 hours of discharge and included mood check and risk assessment, review of the SPI, and facilitation of treatment engagement.

Follow-up continued weekly and was generally discontinued after two calls if the patient had at least one behavioral outpatient health appointment in place or if the patient requested no further contact.

http://bit.ly/2NOcPvA

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome does not currently have a diagnostic test. But this may soon change, as researchers have developed a test that can predict it with an unprecedented level of accuracy.

Currently, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is estimated to affect more than 1 million people in the United States, and up to 24 million people worldwide.

This often debilitating condition is characterized by feelings of extreme exhaustion, muscle and joint pain, and insomnia, as well as difficulty concentrating or remembering things.

The causes of ME/CFS remain unknown, and in the absence of a proper diagnostic test for it, healthcare professionals have to exclude other disorders and examine a patient's history before they can tell whether a person has ME/CFS or not.

However, this may soon change, as a team of researchers led by those at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, NY, have engineered a highly accurate test for the disorder.

The researchers detail their findings in a new study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. Dr. Dorottya Nagy-Szakal, a CII researcher, is the first author of the paper.

Dr. Nagy-Szakal and team examined the blood samples of 50 people with ME/CFS and compared them with those of 50 age-matched healthy controls.

Using a special technique that identifies molecules by measuring their mass, the scientists found 562 metabolites that the ME/CFS patients had in common.

Metabolites are byproducts of the body's metabolism — that is, its ability to process sugars, fats, and proteins. In the recent research, the scientists excluded metabolites resulting from antidepressants or other drugs.

Laboratory tests carried out by Dr. Nagy-Szakal and team revealed that certain metabolites were altered in a way that suggested that the patients' mitochondria — which are the tiny organelles inside the cell responsible for turning nutrients into energy — were not functioning properly.

http://bit.ly/2NJDCJ9

A new paper, by Dr. Imogen Tyler and Dr. Tom Slater, contextualizes recent campaigns to end the stigma around mental health and urges readers to rethink how the concept of stigma is being used. Their article, published in The Sociological Review Monographs, takes aim at the Heads Together campaign in the UK, asking questions such as “Where is stigma produced?,” “By whom?,” and “For what purposes?”

“This is not to say that talking about mental distress with friends and families cannot lessen social stigma,” Tyler and Slater write, “rather that anti-stigma initiatives which want to remove barriers to help-seeking, but that do not simultaneously address either the erosion of public service provision or the deeper social causes of increased levels of mental distress, will be limited in their impact.”

Stigma, a word traced back to 20th century North American sociology and psychology, is defined as “the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance.” Tyler and Slater cite Hacking’s interpretation of Goffman, writing that stigma is a “‘remarkable organizing concept,’ a way of seeing, classifying, and understanding a vast array of discriminatory social attitudes and practices.”

In modern-day anti-stigma campaigns, such as the Heads Together movement in the UK, stigma tends to be defined as occurring intra-individually–as an action from one person to another that reflects individual beliefs. The solution to stigma is then positioned as occurring through face-to-face conversations to change personal attitudes and transform social beliefs.

Tyler and Slater point out that this intrapersonal concept of stigma obscures social and political context, writing, “What is frequently missing is social and political questions, such as ‘how stigma is used by individuals, communities and the state to produce and reproduce social inequality.’”

http://bit.ly/2NCAM97

A new study — led by the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom — has now uncovered how a disease that affects the brain's small blood vessels contributes to dementia and stroke.

The disease in question is called cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).

They made some important discoveries. They identified, for example, a mechanism through which blood vessel changes from CSVD harm the myelin covering of nerve fibers that carry signals between brain cells.

The scientists also showed how certain drugs reversed the blood vessel changes and prevented damage to the nerve fibers in the rats' brains.

Brain scans of individuals with dementia often show abnormalities in white matter, which consists mostly of nerve fibers and their myelin covering.

But until this study, the underlying mechanisms implicating CSVD as a driver of myelin damage in white matter were unknown.

Should the mechanism be the same in human CSVD, these findings could pave the way to new treatments for dementia and stroke.

Dr. Sara Imarisio, who is head of research at Alzheimer's Research UK — one of the organizations that sponsored the study — says that the findings point to "a promising direction for research into treatments that could limit the damaging effects of blood vessel changes and help [to] keep nerve cells functioning for longer."

Closer investigation revealed that the rats that developed CSVD had a mutated form of an enzyme called ATPase, and that this led to dysfunction of their endothelial cells. The mutation has also been found in the brain tissue of humans with CSVD.

In a final set of experiments, the scientists showed how using drugs to stabilize the endothelial cells "could reverse the white matter abnormalities in early-stage SVD in the rat model, suggesting a potential therapeutic approach."

Prof. Williams and team explain that more research is now needed to find out whether the drugs work after CSVD has established itself and whether they might also "reverse the symptoms of dementia."

http://bit.ly/2NHkZpc

Neonatal intensive care — a scary sounding place and one you are unlikely to chance upon. For eight weeks I visited my baby every day, trying to become a mother in the most medical of environments. Incubators housed tiny babies at the very edge of life, and all around me monitors beeped and alarmed as they seamlessly chimed with the uncertainty of our journey.

Given the nature of NICU, the pain of leaving your fragile baby each day, the feelings of emptiness and grief, the uncertainty and ups and downs, the lines, wires, monitors and alarms, not to mention the security buzzers at the entrance of the unit or the constant rigorous hand-washing, it came as no surprise to me that parents who have experienced premature birth are at greater risk of postnatal depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I remember the moment I first felt panicked and sick with PTSD symptoms; I was returning to the neonatal unit for my baby’s four-week follow up. Walking out of the car park and into the hospital I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and hear the beats and flow of blood throbbing in my head. I was dizzy as the sounds and feelings morphed into the beep, beep, beep of monitors and the hum of the ventilator as air filled my son’s lungs. I closed my eyes to block out the panic, but all I could see were wires and the mechanical rise and fall of my baby’s tiny chest. I felt sick to the bottom of my stomach, as if my entire body was shutting down and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

http://bit.ly/2L1CyPr

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

SSRIs include medications such as citalopram, paroxetine, and fluoxetine. Withdrawal symptoms can include:

• stomach cramps
• flu-like symptoms
• dizziness
• ringing in the ears
• difficulty with movement
• seeing, hearing, or smelling something that is not there

A person may also experience symptoms that make it feel as though depression is returning. These may include:

• anxiety
• mood swings
• suicidal thoughts
• mania
• poor concentration

Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs):

MAOIs include medications such as phenelzine, selegiline, and isocarboxazid. Withdrawal symptoms can include:

• disrupted sleep
• feeling agitated or irritable
• hallucinations
• feeling very tired
• difficulty thinking
• feeling unsteady or having difficulty moving

Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs):

TCA medications include amitriptyline, imipramine, and desipramine among others. Withdrawal symptoms can include:

• low blood pressure
• flu-like symptoms
• anxiety
• difficulty sleeping
• feeling restless
• fast or irregular heartbeat

Antidepressants are not addictive, so it is not an actual withdrawal. Addiction means that a person is reliant on something to the point of lacking control and not being able to stop taking it, even if it is causing harm. This usually occurs with a substance such as alcohol or specific drugs.

For this reason, the medical term for the withdrawal reaction to stopping antidepressants is antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

It can be both emotionally and physically challenging to stop taking antidepressants. A person may worry that symptoms of depression will return.

How to relieve symptoms

Withdrawal symptoms usually appear within a day of stopping an antidepressant. Being aware of the possible withdrawal symptoms can help a person to prepare for them. In some cases, severe withdrawal symptoms may make it necessary to take some time off work.

Choosing a suitable time to stop taking antidepressants can help with withdrawal. A person may be more at risk of a relapse of depression during periods of stress or emotional difficulty.

It is possible to treat flu-like symptoms in the same way as a typical bout of the illness. Drinking plenty of fluids, getting rest, and staying warm can all help. Taking pain relievers to ease any discomfort is usually safe, but it is advisable to check with a doctor first.

The symptoms of tiredness, disrupted sleep, and irritation can make everyday activities more difficult. Planning a quieter few days while stopping antidepressants can reduce stress.

It can be difficult to tell the difference between discontinuation symptoms and relapse. If a person is concerned that depression is returning, they might wish to seek medical advice. In some cases, a doctor may prescribe medication to help with withdrawal symptoms.

Discontinuation symptoms should not last for more than 2 weeks. Having a good support network in place or someone understanding to talk to during this time can be beneficial.

Getting sufficient rest, eating well, and doing exercise can reduce symptoms for some people.

http://bit.ly/2KVIKvg

Let’s be clear here. There are many of us who are foolish enough to ride horses, which are fine until someone lets loose the Dreaded White Plastic Bag, or a bee bites his butt. Most others who get head injuries aren’t professional athletes. We collect them during life. A brutal, abusive parent. A bad boyfriend. A car accident. A slip and fall in the bathroom which breaks a hip, but Mom also whacks her forehead on the sink on the way down.

Soon after that, she’s on her way down, too. It’s not the hip. It’s the head.

Living with post concussion syndrome can be down right nasty. Anyone who has seen the movie Concussion starring Will Smith will know what the symptoms look like. They’re terrifying. I know. I dealt with them all the time. Doctors prescribed more and more drugs, which exacerbated all the symptoms, especially the 24-hour a day suicidal thoughts. You don’t know what that’s like until you live with it. I know precisely what Junior Seau was dealing with (http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/10/sports/la-sp-sn-junior-seau-brain-2013011)0. I deal with it today. I have at times come very close to offing myself, and the meds made it vastly worse. They always do. You can count on it.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the medical community’s standard response to just about anything is to medicate. When I went to a specialist to get tested for brain damage, she told me to increase my meds. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. And it is WRONG. Just plain WRONG. Increasing my meds increased my suicidal thoughts by a factor of ten. That is part of what led me to dump my entire regime of meds- most especially anything in the anti-depressant category, the very pills my docs insisted I gobble down like candy. That’s insane. They were driving me insane.