Medical Problems

Posts Tagged ‘Stroke’

High cholesterol can lead to heart disease, and that’s terrible news, because heart disease is America’s leading killer!Watch More Health Videos at Health Guru: www.healthguru.com

www.iHealthTube.com Robert Kowalski advises taking plant sterols with your meal to fill your body’s cholesterol receptors, which will block the actual cholesterols from the blood stream. Also watch Part 1-Diet and Part 2-Niacin from iHealthTube.

For the next few weeks, I’m turning over my articles to my husband, Dr. Craig Thomas, D.C. so that he can post and share with you entries about his month-long journey to India for Ayurvedic treatment.

After recently suffering from a stroke and seeking help from Western medicine, Dr. Craig chose that more could be done to improve his condition if he went to India, the heart of Ayurvedic medicine, to work with Ayurvedic practitioners in facilities that specialize in this ancient healing science.

I’ll let him tell you more about this himself…

Hello, friends. This is Dr. Craig Thomas here, husband and partner of Dr. Helen Thomas. Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you a very personal tale of healing and Ayurveda. The following is only a beginning: as you will see, the tale is not finished.

On August 13, 2008, our world changed completely in an instant. I had a stroke. I was visiting our son in Puerto Rico where he is currently attending medical school. That night, I was feeling tired and chose to go to bed early. As is my usual practice, I was laying in bed meditating when suddenly, I felt as if I was hit in the back of my head with a baseball bat. I blacked out.

When I came to the next morning, I crawled out of bed and stumbled into my son’s living room. I was wobbly on my feet, the left side of my body was numb, and my speech was slurred. For a moment, my son thought I was drunk, but he soon realized that something serious had happened to me. My symptoms persisted for the day, and I chose to cut my trip small and glide back home to California.

The day before I left for Puerto Rico, I had been to see a cardiologist. I’d been feeling a small tired and small of breath for a few weeks, and the doctor scheduled me for cardio testing after my trip.

A CT scan at the local hospital confirmed our worst fears: I had indeed suffered a stroke, and that tiny part of my brain that it affected was now ischemic (dead).

For those of you not familiar with medical terminology, there are two kinds of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. Ischemic, like mine, is where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted for a period. Hemorrhagic is when a blood vessel, or vessels, bursts and causes bleeding or swelling.

Over the next two weeks, I underwent a series of tests and exams. I had multiple blood tests, an echocardiogram, a stress EKG with contrast dye injections, an MRI of both my brain and brain circulatory system, and I med with a neurologist.

The medical analysis is that I have diasystolic disfunction of the heart which causes less blood, and hence, less oxygen to get to the brain, putting me at risk for strokes and further cardiac problems. This was likely caused by hypertension, and that was most likely related to my weight. I was surprised to learn that I have neither clogged arteries nor high cholesterol (although the medics wanted to place me on Statin drugs…as a precaution!).

The past month has been maybe the most challenging of my life. There is improvement: I no longer slur my words – unless I’m very tired – and the numbness on my left side is nearly all gone. What I’m left with is extreme fatigue, muscle aches and pains throughout my body, and an inability to concentrate or focus. My head feels like it’s one mass of cotton, and I walk like the proverbial drunken sailor.

The doctors say that there is nothing more they can do. There is no surgery to be done on my heart, and apart from basic high blood pressure medication, there are no drugs that I can be given to help me. I was told to lose 50 pounds, exercise every day, and hope for the best. In six months, we’ll know if any of my symptoms are permanent.

Well, that’s not excellent enough for me! I aspire to be more in life than a potted plant! I’ve been getting fantastic Ayurvedic herbs and world-class chiropractic adjustments, and I’m still not back to my ancient self.

Fortunately for me, our friend and colleague, Dr. Narendra Pendse, has offered to supervise and direct my recovery through intensive Ayurvedic treatments known as Medical Panchakarma – if I will come to his clinic in India! The reason that this treatment must be done in India is that it will be done in a hospital setting, and they do things there that aren’t done outside of India. I’ve witnessed firsthand the miracles that Ayurvedic physicians perform in India, so I’m jumping at the chance! I’m leaving on Monday, September 22nd for a month in Pune, India, so by the time you read this, I’ll already be there.

As I know it, the goals of treatment will be several: first, lowering the blood pressure. Second, rebuilding the muscles of the heart. Finally, reworking the metabolic mechanisms so that I can lose weight and utilize food more efficiently. I’m not sure what procedures will be used, but I’m going to report back and let you know exactly what’s happening every step of the way.

The next four aticles of this series will be devoted to my progress reports, so stay tuned!

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Title: Should you take a statin? The c… More >>

Should you take a statin? The cholesterol-lowering drugs have been shown to help prevent heart attack and stroke with minimal side effects.: An article from: Women’s Health Advisor

Cholesterol isn’t inherently “terrible,” but too much of it can cause a plethora of problems! Keep watching for the cholesterol basics.Watch More Health Videos at Health Guru: www.healthguru.com

A stroke is a blood clot in the brain, which blocks blood flow to a small or large area. The blockage in blood flow can cause death of the brain tissue, depending on how long the blockage deprives the tissue of oxygen. If a critical area of the brain is affected, like the parts which control involuntary functions such as breathing and circulation, the patient will die. If strokes are caught early enough, hurt can be minimalized. It may be limited to a partial paralysis, especially of the facial muscles, problems with speech, movement problems, appetite loss, vision loss, difficulties in dealing with or expressing emotions, such as depression, mania, apathy, or even psychosis.

Strokes are differentiated from aneurysms, which occur when a blood vessel inside the brain bursts, causing bleeding in the brain.

Surgeons have developed a new device which could help prevent strokes, called the wingspan stent system. Stents are small pieces of metal which help hold open a blood vessel. They are often used to treat coronary artery disease, as they push arterial plaque to one side to allow blood free passage through. While stents themselves have been around for quite a while, these new wingspan stents are lighter and more flexible, and much better suited to the curvy arteries that are encountered in the brain. Traditional mechanical stents are designed for arteries in the heart or neck, and are much more rigid and hard to maneuver.

This is not only vital for the surgeons who are performing the operation. If a stroke has occurred in a smaller blood vessel in the brain, sometimes a heart stent will simply not be able to fit in there. Potentially perilous operations must be undertaken without success, and further hurt to brain tissue might occur.

The last thing that you want is further hurt to the blood vessels in your brain, especially if they have already been weakened by an event such as a stroke. But, until now the only treatment options for stroke victims who have intracranial atherosclerotic disease were aspirin and other blood thinning drugs, or the stiffer stents used in the heart and neck, which could hurt the artery walls in the brain.

These wingspan stents are inserted through the femoral artery, the body’s largest artery, found in the leg. Neuroradiologists guide the stent up using a catheter and digital x-rays for image guidance, to its position in the brain. An angioplasty balloon is blown up inside the brain, to push the artery walls away from each other. Then the stent’s protective covering is removed and it expands under its own pressure. Even if the stent is crushed manually (although this is unlikely, while inside the brain), it will pop back into position.

Brain function is greatly improved in patients who have these new wingspan stents inserted. This is due both to the increased blood flow to the area of the brain, and the greatly reduced risk of a recurring stroke.

Medical tourism is currently making this life-saving surgery available to more and more people. The cost of medicine in the US, and some European countries without socialized healthcare, can be prohibitive. But, life-saving operations like insertion of a wingspan stent can be performed in many Asian countries at a cost up to 8 times less than in a patient’s home country. As medical tourism grows in popularity, the wingspan stent operation will become more mainstream and available to greater numbers of people.