Leg wraps may save stroke victims

Inflatable leg wraps may be the natural remedy for stroke victims as well as for immobile patients (deep vein thrombosis).

Doctors at Western General Hospital and the University of Edinburgh conducted a trial with 2,876 patients and found that patients who uses cheap leg wraps have fewer blood clots. Prof Martin Dennis said: "At last we have a simple, safe and affordable treatment that reduces the risk of deep vein thrombosis and even appears to reduce the risk of dying after a stroke.

Deep vein thrombosis refers to a blood clot in the leg and if the clot travels to the brain,can be very dangerous. Deep vein thrombosis is likely to strike airline passengers sitting for long period during a long flight, and also immobile patients.

Prof Martin Dennis said: "At last we have a simple, safe and affordable treatment that reduces the risk of deep vein thrombosis and even appears to reduce the risk of dying after a stroke."

Dr Dale Webb of the Stroke Association charity said the results of this research are extremely encouraging and show that using a compression device on the legs of patients at risk of developing blood clots could be an effective treatment and has potential to save thousands of lives. He would like to see it incorporated into national clinical guidelines.

"This new device has the potential to save thousands of lives and we would like to see it incorporated into national clinical guidelines."

Leg wraps are inflatable devices regularly inflated with air to squeeze the legs, improves blood circulation and forces blood back to the heart. They can easily be bought at Amazon at low prices:



Source: Leg wraps raise hopes of saved lives after stroke

Stroke natural remedy - Music song

Music with words (songs) apparently can help brain damaged stroke patience rewire their damaged brain. According to Dr. Aniruddh Patel of the San Diego Neurosciences Institiute, there is now an explosion of research on music and the brain over the last 10 years. It seemed music can engage huge areas of the brain, implying I suppose that music would have huge influence on the brain.

The results of one such research led by Gottfried Schlaug, Neurology Professor of the Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center and Boston Harvard Medical School was presented at the annual meeting of AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). Professor Schlaug's study was the first to combine "Melodic Intonation Therapy"with brain imaging which can help show what is actually going on in the brain as patients practice singing the words. "Melodic Intonation Therapy" is a therapeutic process used by music therapists and speech pathologists to help patients with communication disorders caused by brain damage. This method uses a style of singing called melodic intonation to stimulate activity in the right hemisphere of the brain in order to assist in speech production (Wikipedia: Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT))

Buy Melodic Intonation Therapy products at Amazon

The therapy involves stroke patients being taught to put words to simple melodies plus tapping out each syllable with their hands. Teaching stroke patients to sing (put words to music) helps them form crucial neural connections on the right side of their brain. According to Professor Schlaug, after just a single session, stroke patients who were unable to form intelligible words have begun to learn say simple phrases by combining each syllable with a note of the melody.

Source: BBC News: Singing 'rewires' damaged brain

Pleasant music restore vision of visual neglect patients

Here is another research which proved that music is the best medicine. Researchers from Imperial College London led by Dr. David Soto studied the effects of listening to music on stroke patients who have developed visual neglect (loss of ability to track objects in the visual field on the side opposite to the part of the brain damaged by stroke).

Visual neglect is a very distressing disability suffered by 60% of stroke patients with extreme cases where victims can only eat only the food on half side of the plate or shave only half of the face.

The researchers gave 3 visual neglect patients various tasks like identifying colored shapes or red lights in the impaired side of vision in 3 circumstances - listening to music they like, music they did not like, and in silence. It was found that the 3 patients could identify more accurately colored shapes and red lights in their impaired side of vision while listening to music they liked.

According to Dr. David Soto, "Music appears to improve awareness because of its positive emotional effect on the patient, so similar beneficial effects may also be gained by making the patient happy in other ways."

The researchers found that listening to pleasant music can restore visions of visual neglect patients.