This is a site first of all about Moebius Syndrome. But it is also a site about having a facial difference in general, about living with it, about succeeding, and about life. We'll talk here about things directly related to Moebius Syndrome and facial difference, about things tangentially related to it, and about my comments concerning any and all of it.
Yes, says this interesting piece--but only if you then follow it up with some parental coaching. An interesting piece for Moebius moms and dads, and indeed all moms and dads. Read on:
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There are certain seasons in Rome, where my children were born, when
the days begin cool and end in sunshine. When we lived there, my
preschooler and I started every one of them with the following
conversation:
Me: "Here's your fleece. It'll be chilly outside."
Preschooler: "No, I don't want it."
Me: "You'll be cold without it."
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Preschooler: "No, I'll be sweaty." (Or my favorite, "No, I don't like it when it touches my hands.")
"So be it," I'd think as I
zipped up my own jacket. Because I knew what was coming. And sure
enough, the moment we stepped outside, one of us (hint: it wasn't me)
was suddenly shivering and screeching about being "soooooo cold."
Clearly, the lesson hadn't been learned -- but I had no problem letting
it sink in, one morning at a time.
The rumor: It's good to let your kids screw up because they learn
OK: A spring jacket is
one thing, but what about letting a child spend his hard-earned
allowance on something overpriced or bound to break immediately? Or
letting him quit a team? Or fight with a friend? At what point does it
make sense for a parent to step in, save your kid some pain and
discomfort and give them a bit of your grown-up know-how?
The verdict: The tactic only works if you coach your kids on what to do differently next time
Children do need to
practice making decisions -- and dealing with failure -- before the
consequences are too great. "If kids don't have the space to experiment
and periodically make mistakes, they'll never learn how to problem solve
and cope on their own," says Christine Koh, co-author of "Minimalist
Parenting: Enjoy Modern Family Life More By Doing Less."
But there's a right way
to do it. The key? Coaching kids without being critical, says Ann Marie
Albano, director of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and
Related Disorders. "I often send parents and children off to do
something on purpose that will go wrong, such as to bake cakes together
and to substitute baking soda for baking powder, just to see what will
go wrong and then how to handle the situation," she says. "Parents can
be great coaches in asking the child questions: 'Tell me about what
happened. What do you think you can do differently next time? Can you
brainstorm with me some ideas of what to do?' Parents can act as guides,
leading through problem-solving steps. But the child needs to be
encouraged to put the steps into place on their own."
Kids need practice with
finances in particular. According to Bruce Feiler, author of "The
Secrets of Happy Families," 80% of kids entering college have never had a
conversation with their parents about money: earning it, spending it,
what it means to get into debt and so on. He says that the time for your
kids to experiment with money is now, and the logic is this: It's
better to have your sixth grader be bummed that he spent five weeks'
worth of allowance on what turned out to be a fake snake on a string
(like a certain husband of mine did back in the day) than to have said
kid rack up 50 grand in credit-card debt by age 25.
The problem is, letting
our kids slip and fall -- figuratively and literally -- runs counter to
our instincts as parents. After all, our job is to keep them safe. As
comedian Louis C.K. told David Letterman, "You have this thing: You're
supposed to raise them right. It's not just, 'Make them not die.' You
make them good people."
I think we can all agree
that "making kids good people" does not mean letting them fall to
pieces every time they strike out, don't earn the grade they wanted or
get hoodwinked at the fair (snake buyers be warned). Albano, who is also
the author of "You and Your Anxious Child: Free Your Child from Fears
and Worries and Create a Joyful Family Life," says you must let your
kids make their own moves to become stable adults. Just provide the
framework. "Your child isn't sure if she wants to join a group at
school? Encourage her to ask questions of the kids in the club so she
can learn more about it," she says. "Don't do this for her, but do
rehearse with her how to approach others. The teacher mis-graded an
exam? Rather than calling up the teacher, role-play with your child on
how she can ask the teacher to take another look at the assignment."
The bottom line is this:
Don't step in and do the work for your kids. Don't line up the perfect
internship or correct a homework assignment after your child has gone to
bed. Do ask questions, though, and do coach your kids through the
possible outcomes ahead of time. If the damage is already done, take
them through a play-by-play and help them figure out what to do the next
time something like that happens.
It's spring break week this week down here, so blogging will be a little lighter than usual. But here's something you all might find interesting--five various and different health studies that you may have missed. Check it out:
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Here's a roundup of five medical studies
published this week that might give you new insights into your health.
Remember, correlation is not causation – so if a study finds a
connection between two things, it doesn't mean that one causes the
other.
Don't diss canned vegetables American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine
Researchers at Michigan State University analyzed more than 40
scientific journal studies to see if canned fruits and vegetables
provide the same nutritional benefits as fresh and frozen produce. Cans
are often cheaper than fresh or frozen products, and therefore easier
for low-income families to buy.
The scientists concluded that not only are canned products on par with
fresh and frozen produce nutritionally, in some cases they're better.
Canned tomatoes, for instance, have more lycopene and more B vitamins.
"By increasing accessibility to key nutrients many Americans need,
canned foods are a year-round solution to help families prepare
healthier, balanced meals," Steven Miller, lead researcher and assistant
professor at MSU's Center for Economic Analysis, said in a press
release. Want to prevent HIV and pregnancy? Put a ring on it
Journal: PLOS ONE
A team of researchers, led by Northwestern University biomedical
engineer Patrick Kiser, has developed an intravaginal ring designed to
prevent HIV and unwanted pregnancy.
The ring is the first device to deliver an antiretroviral drug
(tenofovir) and a hormonal contraceptive (levonorgestrel), both of which
are already used on the market. The device has been engineered to
deliver specific amounts of the antiretroviral drug and contraceptive
every day.
The researchers hope that administering this medication in an
intravaginal ring will increase effectiveness and ease of use. The ring
will be entered in clinical trials later this year.
“I think it’s a moment in women’s health to be excited about,” says
Kiser. “There are a large number of people working very hard to get
these kinds of products into the market and into the hands of women.” Take the TV out of your kid's bedroom
Journal: JAMA Pediatrics
Having a television in his or her bedroom could be increasing your
child's weight. A survey of more than 6,000 kids aged 10 to 14 showed
those with a TV in their bedroom gained more weight than those who
didn't over a four-year time period. This held true even after the
researchers adjusted the results for total TV viewing time.
The individual weight difference was small, but close to 60% of
children in that age group reported having a TV in their bedrooms. "With
the high prevalence of bedroom televisions, the effect attributable to
this risk factor among U.S. children and adolescents is excess weight of
8.7 million kg/(year)," the researchers concluded. We eat better when we're happier Journal of Consumer Psychology
Anyone who's ever downed a tub of ice cream after a rough day knows
bad moods breed bad food choices. But are we more likely to stick to
salad when we're in a good mood?
In a series of studies, researchers analyzed the food choices of
people in good, bad and neutral moods. They found those in a good mood
tended to make better choices, while those in a bad mood chowed down on
M&Ms. They hypothesized that this is because people in a good mood
are able to see past the immediate benefits of bad mood (mmmm,
chocolate) to the long-term benefits of nutritious foods.
“When we think about the future, it's almost as if we are physically
taking a step back, enabling us to see our more fundamental values –
like health and nutrition," co-author Meryl P. Gardner, an associate
professor of marketing at the University of Delaware’s Lerner College,
said in a press release. "We can use that to make wiser choices rather
than letting our moods dictate our behavior.” You may want to test both arms The American Journal of Medicine
When you go to the doctor for your annual checkup, he or she probably
takes your blood pressure reading on one arm. But new research suggests
checking both arms is a better predictor of whether you'll have a
cardiovascular event - i.e. a heart attack or stroke - in the future.
Scientists examined data from 3,390 people over 40. They found
participants who had a systolic blood pressure reading (the top number)
in one arm that was different by 10 or more digits than the reading in
the other arm had a 38% greater risk of a cardiovascular event.
In other words, a person with a 180/90 BP in one arm, and a 200/90 BP
in the other would be more at risk than someone who had a 190/90 BP in
one arm and a 195/90 BP in the other.
I thought this would interest many of you Moebius moms and dads, given that autism is sometimes--though by no means always--associated with Moebius Syndrome; and so some of you have children who have Moebius, and also are touched by autism. So if your child is autistic, how can you reach him or her? Make things better? Well, there are many possibilities. Even Disney. The following is an excerpt from a New York Times magazine piece--I will excerpt it here; to read the whole thing, go here. Meanwhile, read on:
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In our first year in Washington, our son disappeared.
Just
shy of his 3rd birthday, an engaged, chatty child, full of typical
speech — “I love you,” “Where are my Ninja Turtles?” “Let’s get ice
cream!” — fell silent. He cried, inconsolably. Didn’t sleep. Wouldn’t
make eye contact. His only word was “juice.”
I
had just started a job as The Wall Street Journal’s national affairs
reporter. My wife, Cornelia, a former journalist, was home with him — a
new story every day, a new horror. He could barely use a sippy cup,
though he’d long ago graduated to a big-boy cup. He wove about like
someone walking with his eyes shut. “It doesn’t make sense,” I’d say at
night. “You don’t grow backward.” Had he been injured somehow when he
was out of our sight, banged his head, swallowed something poisonous? It
was like searching for clues to a kidnapping.
After
visits to several doctors, we first heard the word “autism.” Later, it
would be fine-tuned to “regressive autism,” now affecting roughly a
third of children with the disorder. Unlike the kids born with it, this
group seems typical until somewhere between 18 and 36 months — then they
vanish. Some never get their speech back. Families stop watching those
early videos, their child waving to the camera. Too painful. That
child’s gone.
In
the year since his diagnosis, Owen’s only activity with his brother,
Walt, is something they did before the autism struck: watching Disney
movies. “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” — it was
a boom time for Disney — and also the old classics: “Dumbo,”
“Fantasia,” “Pinocchio,” “Bambi.” They watch on a television bracketed
to the wall in a high corner of our smallish bedroom in Georgetown. It
is hard to know all the things going through the mind of our 6-year-old,
Walt, about how his little brother, now nearly 4, is changing. They
pile up pillows on our bed and sit close, Walt often with his arm around
Owen’s shoulders, trying to hold him — and the shifting world — in
place.
Photo
Owen at 18 months, before signs of autism.Credit
From the Suskind family
Then
Walt slips out to play with friends, and Owen keeps watching. Movie
after movie. Certain parts he rewinds and rewatches. Lots of rewinding.
But he seems content, focused.
We
ask our growing team of developmental specialists, doctors and
therapists about it. We were never big fans of plopping our kids in
front of Disney videos, but now the question seemed more urgent: Is this
good for him? They shrug. Is he relaxed? Yes. Does it seem joyful?
Definitely. Keep it limited, they say. But if it does all that for him,
there’s no reason to stop it.
So
we join him upstairs, all of us, on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon
in November 1994. Owen is already on the bed, oblivious to our arrival,
murmuring gibberish. . . . “Juicervose, juicervose.” It is something
we’ve been hearing for the past few weeks. Cornelia thinks maybe he
wants more juice; but no, he refuses the sippy cup. “The Little Mermaid”
is playing as we settle in, propping up pillows. We’ve all seen it at
least a dozen times, but it’s at one of the best parts: where Ursula the
sea witch, an acerbic diva, sings her song of villainy, “Poor
Unfortunate Souls,” to the selfish mermaid, Ariel, setting up the part
in which Ursula will turn Ariel into a human, allowing her to seek out
the handsome prince, in exchange for her voice.
When the song is over, Owen lifts the remote. Hits rewind.
“Come
on, Owen, just let it play!” Walt moans. But Owen goes back just 20
seconds or so, to the song’s next-to-last stanza, with Ursula shouting:
Go ahead — make your choice!
I’m a very busy woman, and I haven’t got all day.
It won’t cost much, just your voice!
He
does it again. Stop. Rewind. Play. And one more time. On the fourth
pass, Cornelia whispers, “It’s not ‘juice.’ ” I barely hear her. “What?”
“It’s not ‘juice.’ It’s ‘just’ . . . ‘just your voice’!”
I grab Owen by the shoulders. “Just your voice! Is that what you’re saying?!”
He looks right at me, our first real eye contact in a year. “Juicervose! Juicervose! Juicervose!”
Walt
starts to shout, “Owen’s talking again!” A mermaid lost her voice in a
moment of transformation. So did this silent boy. “Juicervose!
Juicervose! Juicervose!” Owen keeps saying it, watching us shout and
cheer. And then we’re up, all of us, bouncing on the bed. Owen, too,
singing it over and over — “Juicervose!” — as Cornelia, tears beginning
to fall, whispers softly, “Thank God, he’s in there.”
We
told his various therapists about what happened. Cornelia and I could
think of little else. Owen reached out, if only for a moment, from his
shut-in world. We spoke to our child.
The
speech therapist tamped down our enthusiasm. Dr. Alan Rosenblatt, our
trusted developmental pediatrician, did, too. He explained that
echolalia is a common feature in kids like Owen. It’s something babies
sometimes do between 6 and 9 months, repeating consonants and vowels as
they learn to turn babble into words. It’s also something seen in people
with developmental disabilities who can’t speak. Just like what the
term suggests, they echo, usually the last word or two of a sentence.
“You’re a very smart and pretty girl,” a mother might say to her
daughter. “Pretty girl,” the child will respond, an echo. Do those kids
know what the words mean, we pressed Rosenblatt. “Usually not,” he said.
“They may want to make a connection, which is hopeful,” he added.
“They
just repeat the last sound,” I croaked. He nodded. Why, I persisted, in
a last stab, would he be rewinding that one part for weeks, maybe
longer, and choose that phrase from so many in an 83-minute movie?
Rosenblatt shrugged. No way of knowing.
Three weeks after
the “juicervose” dance, we are at Walt Disney World. Walt grabs Owen’s
hand, and off they go down Main Street, U.S.A. There are attractions in
Fantasyland — the Mad Tea Party, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Mr.
Toad’s Wild Ride — that echo movies they both love. The boys sit in the
flying galleon on Peter Pan’s Flight as it swirls and dips over
landscapes and figures from Never Land, the Lost Boys frolicking in
their lair, Wendy walking the plank, Peter Pan crossing swords with
Captain Hook. They look like any other pair of brothers, and in the
trick of this light, they are.
Each
time Cornelia and I feel that, we catch ourselves. After the
“juicervose” euphoria and then the cold water poured on us by doctors,
we try to make sure we aren’t just seeing what we want to see.
But
by midafternoon, it’s clear that Owen isn’t self-talking in the streams
of gibberish or flapping his hands as he usually does. Some, but not
much. He seems calm and focused — following the group, making eye
contact — and oddly settled, with a slight smile, eyes alight, just as
he is while watching the movies on our bed. Owen seems at home here, as
though his identity, or however much of it has formed, is somehow tied
to this place.
Photo
A drawing of Abu from “Aladdin” by Owen.Credit
From the Suskind family
On
the way out of Magic Kingdom, when Walt spots the Sword in the Stone
near the carousel, we can’t help indulging in fantasy. A Disney actor
dressed as Merlin is there, reciting dialogue — “Let the boy try.” As we
approach the anvil, someone flips a hidden switch that loosens the
sword. Walt pulls it out as Merlin cries, “You, my boy, are our king!”
Then
both of them turn to Owen. “You can do it, Owie,” Walt whispers. “I
know you can.” Owen looks evenly at his brother and Merlin, and then
steps to the anvil and lifts the sword true. Did he understand what Walt
was saying? Did he just imitate what he saw his brother do? What the
hell difference did it make? Today, in the sunlight, he’s the hero of
his imagination.
It’s Walt’s 9th
birthday, September 1997, in our new house near Chevy Chase Circle.
Owen is 6½. After roughhousing with buddies in the backyard at the end
of his party, Walt gets a little weepy. He’s already a tough,
independent kid, often the case with siblings of disabled kids. But he
can get a little sad on his birthdays. As Cornelia and I return to the
kitchen, Owen walks in right behind us.
He looks intently at us, one, then the other. “Walter doesn’t want to grow up,” he says evenly, “like Mowgli or Peter Pan.”
We nod, dumbly, looking down at him. He nods back and then vanishes into some private reverie.
It’s
as if a thunderbolt just passed through the kitchen. A full sentence,
and not just an “I want this” or “Give me that.” No, a complex sentence,
the likes of which he’d not uttered in four years. Actually, ever.
We
don’t say anything at first and then don’t stop talking for the next
four hours, peeling apart, layer by layer, what just happened. Beyond
the language, it’s interpretive thinking that he’s not supposed to be
able to do: that someone crying on his birthday may not want to grow up.
Not only would such an insight be improbable for a typical 6-year-old;
it was an elegant connection that Cornelia and I overlooked.
It’s
as if Owen had let us in, just for an instant, to glimpse a mysterious
grid growing inside him, a matrix on which he affixed items he saw each
day that we might not even notice. And then he carefully aligned it to
another one, standing parallel: The world of Disney.
After
dinner is over and the boys retreat upstairs to their attic lair,
Cornelia starts to think about what to do now. It’s like he peeked out
from some vast underground and then vanished. He’s done this before, but
never quite like this. “How on earth,” she says almost to herself, “do
you get back in there?”
I
feel she’s asking me. She has been the one lifting the burden each day,
driving him to therapists and schools, rocking him to sleep as he
thrashes at 3 a.m. I’m the one who tells stories, does voices, wears a
propeller hat. Her look says, “Find a way.”
Soon
I’m tiptoeing up the carpeted stairs. Owen’s sitting on his bed,
flipping through a Disney book; he can’t read, of course, but he likes
to look at the pictures. The mission is to reach around the banister
into his closet and grab his puppet of Iago, the parrot from “Aladdin”
and one of his favorite characters. He has been doing lots of Iago
echolalia, easy to identify because the character is voiced by Gilbert
Gottfried, who talks like a busted Cuisinart. Once Iago’s in hand, I
gently pull the bedspread from the foot of Owen’s bed onto the floor. He
doesn’t look up. It takes four minutes for Iago and me to make it
safely under the bedspread.
Now crawl, snail-slow, along the side of the bed to its midpoint. Fine.
I freeze here for a minute, trying to figure out my opening line; four or five sentences dance about, auditioning.
Then, a thought: Be
Iago. What would Iago say? I push the puppet up from the covers. “So,
Owen, how ya doin’?” I say, doing my best Gilbert Gottfried. “I mean,
how does it feel to be you?!” I can see him turn toward Iago. It’s as if
he is bumping into an old friend. “I’m not happy. I don’t have friends.
I can’t understand what people say.” I have not heard this voice,
natural and easy, with the traditional rhythm of common speech, since he
was 2. I’m talking to my son for the first time in five years. Or Iago
is. Stay in character. “So, Owen, when did yoooou and I become such good friends?”
“When I started watching ‘Aladdin’ all the time. You made me laugh so much. You’re so funny.”
My
mind is racing — find a snatch of dialogue, anything. One scene I’ve
seen him watch and rewind is when Iago tells the villainous vizier Jafar
how he should become sultan.
Back
as Iago: “Funny? O.K., Owen, like when I say . . . um. . . . So, so,
you marry the princess and you become the chump husband.” Owen makes a
gravelly sound, like someone trying to clear his throat or find a lower
tone: “I loooove the way your fowl little mind works.” It’s a
Jafar line, in Jafar’s voice — a bit higher-pitched, of course, but all
there, the faintly British accent, the sinister tone.
I’m
an evil parrot talking to a Disney villain, and he’s talking back.
Then, I hear a laugh, a joyful little laugh that I have not heard in
many years.
A
week after the Iago breakthrough, we decide to try an experiment. Owen
usually picks the animated movie whenever we gather in front of the
26-inch Magnavox in the basement. On this night, we pick it for him:
“The Jungle Book.” It’s a movie that the boys have long loved and one
that Cornelia and I remember from our childhood: Disney’s 1967 rendition
of Rudyard Kipling’s tales of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the
jungles of India, schooled by Baloo, the obstreperous bear, and
Bagheera, the protective black panther.
We
watch the movie until, a few minutes along, we get to its signature
song, “The Bare Necessities.” We turn down the sound, and in my best
attempt at the voice and inflection of Phil Harris, who voices the bear,
I say: " ‘Look, now, it’s like this, little britches. All you’ve got to
do is. . . . ' ”
Then we all sing, trying to get the words right:
Look for the bare necessities,
The simple bare necessities. . . .
When you look under the rocks and plants
And take a glance at the fancy ants, and maybe
try a few.
Just
as Baloo looks at Mowgli, I look at Owen; he looks squarely back at me,
and then it happens. Right on cue, he says, " ‘You eat ants?’ ” That’s
Mowgli’s line; he speaks it as Mowgli, almost like a tape recording.
I’m poised with Baloo’s next line: " ‘Ha-ha, you better believe it! And you’re gonna love the way they tickle.’ ”
A
few minutes later, when King Louie, the crazy orangutan, voiced by the
jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Prima, sings to Mowgli about becoming a
man, Walt’s ready. " ‘Teach me the secret of man’s red fire,’ ” he says,
pulling on his ear, waiting for the whispered secret from the boy. Owen
recoils, just as Mowgli does in the movie, and says, " ‘I don’t know
how to make fire.’ ” Cornelia catches my eye; I shake my head. The
inflection and ease of speech are things he can’t otherwise muster. It’s
almost as though there’s no autism. Mimicry is one thing. This isn’t
that. The movements, the tone, the emotions seem utterly authentic, like
method acting.
When
Owen was 3, his comprehension of spoken words collapsed. That’s clear
from every test. But now it seems that as he watched each Disney movie
again and again, he was collecting and logging sounds and rhythms,
multitrack. Speech, of course, has its own subtle musicality; most of
us, focusing on the words and their meanings, don’t hear it. But that’s
all he heard for years, words as intonation and cadence, their meanings
inscrutable. It was like someone memorizing an Akira Kurosawa movie
without knowing Japanese. Then it seems he was slowly learning Japanese —
or, rather, spoken English — by using the exaggerated facial
expressions of the animated characters, the situations they were in, the
way they interacted to help define all those mysterious sounds. That’s
what we start to assume; after all, that’s the way babies learn to
speak. But this is slightly different because of the way he committed
these vast swaths of source material, dozens of Disney movies, to
memory. These are stored sounds we can now help him contextualize, with jumping, twirling, sweating, joyous expression, as we just managed with “The Jungle Book.”
So
begin the basement sessions. During daylight, we go about our lives.
Walt rides his bike to school each morning, back home each afternoon.
Cornelia manages the house, the bills, the overloaded schedules of the
kids. I am editing and writing for The Journal, putting on my suit and
subwaying to the bureau.
No one knows we’re all living double lives. At night, we become animated characters.
Obesity may have harmful effects on the brain, and exercise may counteract many of those negative effects, according to sophisticated new neurological experiments with mice, even when the animals do not lose much weight. While it’s impossible to know if human brains respond in precisely the same way to fat and physical activity, the findings offer one more reason to get out and exercise.
It’s been known for some time that obesity can alter cognition in animals. Past experiments with lab rodents, for instance, have shown that obese animals display poor memory and learning skills compared to their normal-weight peers. They don’t recognize familiar objects or recall the location of the exit in mazes that they’ve negotiated multiple times.
But scientists hadn’t understood how excess weight affects the brain. Fat cells, they knew, manufacture and release substances into the bloodstream that flow to other parts of the body, including the heart and muscles. There, these substances jump-start biochemical processes that produce severe inflammation and other conditions that can lead to poor health.
Many thought the brain, though, should be insulated from those harmful effects. It contains no fat cells and sits behind the protective blood-brain barrier that usually blocks the entry of undesirable molecules.
However, recent disquieting studies in animals indicate that obesity weakens that barrier, leaving it leaky and permeable. In obese animals, substances released by fat cells can ooze past the barrier and into the brain.
The consequences of that seepage became the subject of new neurological experiments conducted by researchers at Georgia Regents University in Augusta and published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. For the studies, the scientists gathered mice bred to overeat and grow obese, which, after a few weeks of sitting quietly in their cages and eating at will, the animals had obligingly accomplished. As they grew rotund and accumulated more fat cells, the researchers found, their blood showed increasingly hefty doses of a substance called interleukin 1 that is created by fat cells and known to cause inflammation.
In these mice, as interleukin 1 migrated to the head, it passed the blood-brain barrier and entered areas such as the hippocampus, a part of the brain critical for learning and memory. There, it essentially gummed up the works, the researchers found when they examined tissue from the animals’ brains, which had high levels of interleukin 1 together with widespread markers of inflammation. While inflammation can represent a healthy response to invading molecules, it hurts cells if it persists.
The researchers also noted extremely low levels in these mice brains of a biochemical associated with healthy synapse function. Synapses are the structures that connect one neuron to another and shunt messages between them. Healthy synapses respond to demands on the brain by slowing or speeding messages, keeping the brain’s nervous-system traffic manageable. But low levels of the marker of synapse health suggested to the researchers that in these obese animals’ inflamed brains, synapses were no longer functioning properly and messages between neurons likely jerked, hiccuped or stalled.
That possibility was borne out by subsequent tests on the memory and thinking of some of the remaining obese mice. They performed miserably.
But whether excessive fat cells alone were the underlying cause of the changes in the animals’ brains was not clear. Other physiological factors “could have been contributing,” said Alexis Stranahan, a professor at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents, who oversaw the study. So, to isolate the impact of the fat, the researchers simply removed most of it, surgically excising the large bands of fat that each mouse bore around its middle.
After recovery, these slenderized mice showed almost no interleukin 1 in their bloodstreams and, Algernon-like, soon were acing cognitive tests that had stumped them before surgery.
Conversely, when the scientists implanted the preserved fat pads into previously lean mice — and haven’t we all had nightmares about something like that happening to us in our sleep? — the animals almost immediately grew dimmer, performing far worse than previously on cognitive tests, although nothing else in their lives had changed.
The results convincingly implicated fat cells as the primary cause of the mice’s cognitive decline.
But while provocative, the findings had little practical value for people, the scientists realized, since even the most extensive liposuction procedure in humans would remove far less fat than had been excised from the obese mice.
So the scientists turned, as a less-invasive alternative, to exercise. Gathering more of the obesity-prone mice, they allowed all of them to grow heavy, but then started half on a daily 45-minute program of treadmill running, with encouragement provided by small puffs of air if they began to flag. The other mice remained sedentary.
After 12 weeks, the running mice still weighed about the same as the unexercised animals. But they had lost significant amounts of fat from around their middles, while adding lean muscle. More telling, they did much better on cognitive tests than the sedentary mice and, when the researchers examined tissue from their hippocampi, showed little evidence of inflammation and robust levels of the chemical marker of synaptic health. The results suggested that, as the scientists write in the study, “treadmill training normalized hippocampal function,” even in animals born to be fat and that remained heavy.
Of course, these studies were conducted in mice, not people, whose brains may respond very differently. But the possibility that humans, too, may respond in similar ways is tantalizing, Dr. Stranahan said, and the takeaway from her study worth repeating. “Get out and move,” she said, even — and especially — if you carry extra weight. Talk with your doctor about a safe and tolerable exercise program, and then try to stick with that routine so that extra pounds won’t weigh too heavily on your mind.
Actually, this article says: drop everything you're doing and focus on one thing, and that is--stop multi-tasking now! Here's why:
***********************
We all do it: Texting while walking, sending emails during meetings,
chatting on the phone while cooking dinner. In today’s society, doing
just one thing at a time seems downright luxurious, even wasteful.
But
chances are, you’re not doing yourself (or your boss, or your friends
and family) any favors by multitasking your way through the day.
Research shows that it’s not nearly as efficient as we like to believe,
and can even be harmful to our health. Here are 12 reasons why you
should stop everything you’re doing—well, all but one thing—and rethink
the way you work, socialize, and live your life.
1] What you call multitasking is really task-switching, says Guy Winch, PhD, author of Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries. “When it comes to attention and productivity, our brains have a finite amount,” he says.
“It’s
like a pie chart, and whatever we’re working on is going to take up the
majority of that pie. There’s not a lot left over for other things,
with the exception of automatic behaviors like walking or chewing gum.”
Moving back and forth between several tasks actually wastes
productivity, he says, because your attention is expended on the act of
switching gears—plus, you never get fully “in the zone” for either
activity.
2] Contrary to popular belief, multitasking doesn’t save time. In fact, it
will probably take you longer to finish two projects when you’re jumping
back and forth than it would to finish each one separately. The same is
true even for behaviors as seemingly automatic as driving: In a 2008 University of Utah study, drivers took longer to reach their destinations when they chatted on cell phones.
“What
tends to save the most time is to do things in batches,” says Winch.
“Pay your bills all at once, then send your emails all at once. Each
task requires a specific mindset, and once you get in a groove you
should stay there and finish.”
3] Experts estimate that switching between tasks can cause a 40% loss in productivity.
It can also cause you to introduce errors into whatever you’re working
on, especially if one or more of your activities involves a lot of
critical thinking.
A 2010 French study
found that the human brain can handle two complicated tasks without too
much trouble, because it has two lobes that can divide responsibility
equally between the two. Add a third task, however, and it can overwhelm
the frontal cortex and increase the number of mistakes you make.
4] When University of California Irvine researchers
measured the heart rates of employees with and without constant access
to office email, they found that those who received a steady stream of
messages stayed in a perpetual “high alert” mode with higher heart
rates. Those without constant email access did less multitasking and
were less stressed because of it.
And it’s not only the physical
act of multitasking that causes stress; it’s the consequences, as well,
says Winch. “If you do poorly on an exam because you studied while
watching a baseball game on TV, that can certainly trigger a lot of
stress—even self-esteem issues and depression.”
5] Forget seeing the forest for the trees or the glass half full—people who
are busy doing two things at once don’t even see obvious things right
in front of them, according to a 2009 study from Western Washington University.
Specifically,
75% of college students who walked across a campus square while talking
on their cell phones did not notice a clown riding a unicycle nearby.
The researchers call this “inattentional blindness,” saying that even
though the cell-phone talkers were technically looking at their
surroundings, none of it was actually registering in their brains.
6] It makes sense that if you try to do two things at once—read a book and
watch television, for example—that you’re going to miss important
details of one or both. But even interrupting one task to suddenly focus
on another can be enough to disrupt short term memory, according to a 2011 study.
When
University of California San Francisco researchers asked participants
to study one scene, but then abruptly switched to a different image,
people ages 60 to 80 had a harder time than those in their 20s and 30s
disengaging from the second picture and remembering details about the
first. As the brain ages, researchers say, it has a harder time getting
back on track after even a brief detour.
7] “This is an area where I think multitasking has a much bigger effect
than most people realize,” says Winch. “A couple is having a serious
talk and the wife says ‘Oh, let me just check this message.’ Then the
husband gets mad, and then he decides to check his messages, and
communication just shuts down.”
One recent study
from the University of Essex even shows that just having a cell phone
nearby during personal conversations—even if neither of you are using
it—can cause friction and trust issues. “Do your relationship a favor
and pay your partner some exclusive attention for 10 minutes,” says
Winch. “It can make a big difference.”
8] Being distracted during mealtime can prevent your brain from fully processing what you’ve eaten, according to a 2013 review
of 24 previous studies. Because of that, you won’t feel as full, and
may be tempted to keep eating—and to eat again a short time later.
Experts
recommend that even people who eat alone should refrain from turning on
the television while eating, and to truly pay attention to their food.
Eating lunch at your computer? Slow down and take a break from the
screen to focus on each bite.
9] Yes, you. You may think you’re a master multitasker, but, according to a 2013 University of Utah study, that probably means you’re actually among the worst.
The
research focused specifically on cell phone use behind the wheel, and
it found that people who scored highest on multitasking tests do not
frequently engage in simultaneous driving and cell-phone use—probably
because they can better focus on one thing at a time. Those who do talk
and drive regularly, however, scored worse on the tests, even though
most described themselves as having above average multitasking skills.
10] Multitasking requires a lot of what’s known as "working memory," or
temporary brain storage, in layman’s terms. And when working memory’s
all used up, it can take away from our ability to think creatively,
according to research from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Too much focus can actually harm performance on creative problem-solving tasks,” the authors wrote in their 2010 study.
With so much already going on in their heads, they suggest,
multitaskers often find it harder to daydream and generate spontaneous
“a ha moments.”
11] No, not the state! Psychiatrists and productivity experts often recommend OHIO: Only Handle It Once.
“This is a rule of thumb for many people with ADHD, but it can also be
practiced by anyone who wants to be more organized,” says Winch. “It
basically means if you take something on, don’t stop until you’ve
finished it.”
The problem with multitasking, though, is that it
makes Only Handling It Once a near impossibility—instead, you’re
handling it five or six times, says Winch. “If you’re going to stick to
this principle, you need to be disciplined and plan out your day so that
when a distraction arises or a brilliant idea occurs to you, you know
that there will be time for it later.”
12] Texting or talking on a cell phone, even with a hands-free device, is as dangerous as driving drunk—yet that doesn’t stop many adults from doing it, even while they have their own children in the car.
It’s not just driving that puts you at risk for the consequences of multitasking, either. Research
also shows that people who use mobile devices while walking are less
likely to look before stepping into a crosswalk. And in one study, one in five teenagers who went to the emergency room after being hit by a car admitted they were using a smartphone at the time of the accident.
Here's a roundup of five medical studies published
this week that might give you new insights into your health, mind and
body. Remember, correlation is not causation – so if a study finds a
connection between two things, it doesn't mean that one causes the
other.
Your nurse needs a break. I wouldn’t complain if I were you
Journal: The Lancet
An overworked nursing staff raises the risk of patients dying, while
hiring better-educated nurses reduces those odds, a study of European
Union hospitals that have undergone recent staffing cuts concludes.
Adding one patient to a nurse’s workload raises the chances of a
patient dying by 7%. But a 10% increase in nurses with bachelor’s
degrees reduced those odds by the same amount, researchers from several
EU countries reported in The Lancet.
“Nurse staffing cuts to save money might adversely affect patient
outcomes. An increased emphasis on bachelor's education for nurses could
reduce preventable hospital deaths,” they concluded.
The study examined discharge data from more than 400,000 patients over 50 from 300 hospitals in nine European countries. Read more from The Guardian Mice skin cells transformed into liver cells
Journal: Nature
In a development that could give hope to patients awaiting
transplants, researchers at the University of California-San Francisco
and its affiliated Gladstone Institute have been able to reprogram skin
cells into working liver cells in mice. The scientists caution that the
results are early, but the cell growth showed no signs of slowing down
after nine months.
“In the future, our technique could serve as an alternative for
liver-failure patients who don’t require full-organ replacement, or who
don’t have access to a transplant due to limited donor organ
availability,” UCSF scientist Holger Willenbring said in announcing the results.
The study involved using reprogramming genes and chemical compounds
to take skin cells back to a form that resembles endoderm cells, which
mature into many of the body’s major organs. Willinbring and Gladstone
senior investigator Sheng Ding cultivated the cells in a petri dish,
then “coaxed” them into growing into liver cells through another set of
genes and chemicals.
“Many questions remain, but the fact that these cells can fully
mature and grow for months post-transplantation is extremely promising,”
Willenbring said. Read more from UT-San Diego Twins’ brains show same marks of Alzheimer’s
Journal: Brain Pathology
Twins who died after suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
had similar areas of damage to their brains, a project by researchers in
California and Sweden concluded.
The scientists studied the brains of seven pairs of twins who died
after years of diagnostic tests - among them the brains of identical
twins who died at age 98 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The
results support previous findings that genetics may determine how
vulnerable someone is to Alzheimer’s and other conditions, said
University of Southern California psychologist Margaret Gatz, who led
the study.
"We looked not just at the hallmark indicators of Alzheimer's, but at
all the other damage in the brain. Across the whole array of
neuropathological changes, the identical twins appeared to have more
similar pathologies," Gatz said in announcing the findings. "This is
fascinating. It's not just a key pathology related to the twins'
diagnoses but the combination of things happening in their brains.”
Gatz and Diego Iacono of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute drew their
subjects from the Swedish Twin Registry, which Gatz has delved into for
decades to study aging. The findings add more data to suggest that
rather than a single cause, Alzheimer’s develops from a range of factors
that genetics may affect. The kids are all right: The rest of you, hit the gym
Journal: Journal of the American Medical Association
Despite years of warnings about obesity, the number of severely
overweight Americans hasn’t changed in a decade. On the bright side, it
hasn’t gotten any worse, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service found.
Researchers calculated that 17% of children and 35% of adults were
obese in 2011-2012. The figures show “no significant changes” since
2003, they reported.
There is one bright spot in the study: a “significant decrease” in
obesity rates in children between the ages of 2 and 5, from 14% in 2003
to about 8% in the 2011-2012 figures. But that drop was offset by a
sharp increase in women over 60, the researchers found.
“Obesity prevalence remains high, and thus it is important to continue surveillance,” they noted. Read more from The Washington Post New knowledge literally reshapes your mind
Journal: Nature Neuroscience
University of British Columbia researchers have found that learning
brings together a fatty acid and a brain protein that combine to connect
brain cells - a finding that may provide an explanation for some mental
disabilities.
The biochemical change “is essential in producing the changes in
brain cell connectivity associated with learning,” the Vancouver-based
university said in announcing the results. And it’s the first time
scientists have described the role of that protein, known as
delta-catenin, in the process of forming memories.
Animals who were exposed to new environments had almost twice the
amount of modified delta-catenin in their brains, co-authors Shernaz
Bamji and Stefano Brigidi reported. Learning more about the role the
protein plays in building brain cells could help understand how
degenerative illnesses like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s Disease work,
they say.
Meet Moebius hero Dawson Barnett--he is a young man who recently had the "smile surgery", and his story made ABC's "Good Morning America." Cool! Read on:
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Dawson Barnett is the class comedian – an unlikely role for the boy born unable to smile.
Dawson, 6, has Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that
paralyzes the muscles that control facial expression. But thanks to
surgery that rerouted a nerve and “borrowed” muscle from his thigh, the
“happy-go-lucky” first grader finally has a fitting grin.
“He loves to be the class clown,” said Dawson’s mom, Sarah Barnett. “And now he has the expression to go with it.”
In two 10-hour operations, plastic surgeons at Children’s Hospital of
St. Louis transplanted muscle from Dawson’s legs into his cheeks,
tethering his temples to the corners of his mouth. They then redirected a
nerve normally used for chewing and “hooked up” a new blood supply,
according to lead surgeon, Dr. Alison Snyder-Warwick.
“Obviously for patients and their families, this can be quite an
emotional roller coaster,” said Snyder-Warwick, director of the
hospital’s Facial Nerve Institute, explaining how it can take up to six
months for the relocated muscles and nerves to start working. “It’s not
an immediate transformation. But when they get to see a smile, you can
just imagine how satisfying that is.”
Dawson cracked his first smile just six weeks after the second surgery in August – just in time for his school picture.
“I was so happy,” Sarah Barnett said. “He healed beautifully and was cheerful throughout the whole process.”
Sarah Barnett
Dawson Barnett can finally smile after muscle and nerve surgery.
But it took time for Dawson to learn how to control his smile. Unlike
his classmates, he has to think about smiling and bite down to curl up
the corners of his mouth.
“We just have to remind him when to smile,” said Sarah Barnett. “We say, ‘Are you happy? Then what should you be doing?”
Over time, Dawson will likely learn to smile spontaneously, according to
Snyder-Warwick. He had a hint of a spontaneous smile after playing a
prank on his physical therapist.
“We all screamed and he said, ‘What?’” Snyder-Warwick said. “He really has a big personality for such a little person.”
Sarah Barnett
Dawson Barnett was born with Moebius syndrome, a rare disease that paralyzed his facial muscles.
Dawson has also had surgery for webbed fingers and gastroschisis – a
birth defect in which the intestines protrude from the baby’s belly. But
now he’s looking forward with a smile.
“At first he didn't like it because it’s different from other smiles,”
said Sarah Barnett. “But I think he’s getting used to it now.”
