Peter's Place

Brain graphic Here are ten simple tips that will help keep your brain functioning well into your old age. 1) EAT ALMONDS Almond is believed to improve memory. If a combination of almond oil and milk is taken together before going to bed or after getting up at morning, it strengthens our memory power. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it. 2) DRINK APPLE JUICE Research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) indicates that apple juice increases the production of the essential neuro transmitte race tylcholine in the brain, resulting in an increased memory power. 3) SLEEP WELL Research indicates that the long-term memory is consolidated during sleep by replaying the images of the experiences of the day. These repeated playbacks program the subconscious mind to store these images and other related information. 4) ENJOY SIMPLE PLEASURES Stress drains our brainpower. A stress-ridden mind consumes m...

This is the 6th update to my blog about my niece, Jennal, and what she's been going through. Here's a link back to the 5th update on her condition . If you haven't been following this story, please read the original blog post . What a whirlwind these last few days have been. Jennal's fever really began to spike so I spent quite a bit of time down at hospital. She's doing better now, insofar as the fever is concerned. It still can run up to 101.something quite easily, however. I wish her body were adjusting to this procedure better but I guess it's just a matter of time. It is cause for concern, however, so that's something that will have to be monitored constantly. Jennal really is not doing well in the setting of a hospital. She totally does not want to be bothered about anything, by anyone. She won't let doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff approach her or do anything to her. Right now, the only people who are able to do anything for her are h...

This is the 5th update to my blog about my niece, Jennal, and what she's been going through. Here's a link back to the 4th update on her condition. If you haven't been following this story, please read the original blog post . So Jennal was moved from ICU to a regular pediatrics hospital bed. The staff there is not nearly as responsive as the staff in ICU but they have a much heavier caseload. As such, while it's not an excuse for the nurse to call on the Intercom ten minutes after pressing the call button, it is understandable as the nursing staff has an entire ward to tend to, instead of just one room (in ICU, it's one nurse per room/four patients maximum; it's probably about quadruple the patient load in the regular rooms). They started -- or should I say attempted to start -- physical therapy (PT) with my niece over the weekend but Jennal just was not having it. Putting her in a wheelchair was just about all they could coax her into doing and even that ...

This is the 4th update to my blog about my niece, Jennal, and what she's been going through. Here's a link back to the 3rd update on her condition . If you haven't been following this story, please read the original blog post . As I mentioned in my 3rd update on her condition, the second procedure that was performed on Jennal, which was the full hemispherectomy , was performed without incident. When I returned Thursday evening, my sister had left for her OB/GYN appointment. Thankfully, the twins are doing OK; they're moving around and everything her doctor told her seemed to be good, so far. So getting back to Jennal, her father was with her. She woke up when she heard me speaking with him. She was extremely grouchy and yelled at us for waking her up, so we had to whisper but even then, she could tell that we were talking about her. Jennal was in and out throughout most of the night. She did manage to fall into a deep sleep a few times (we could tell when from he...

This is the 3rd update to my blog about my niece, Jennal, and what she's been going through. Here's a link back to the 2nd update on her condition . If you haven't been following this story, please read the original blog post . My sister, her fiancé (Jennal's father), and I were there all morning right up to the point where she was taken into surgery. She was sleeping on and off. Jennal wanted her mother right next to her and me by her side. Her father came over but she actually pushed him away. She was extremely grouchy and cranky, as she knew what was coming. She kept begging us to take her home, and not let her go back. She kept saying that she didn't want another trip. Whenever the nurses would come over and and say something medical, she would use that word -- no matter what it was -- and say that she didn't want it, repeating it over and over. For example, one of the nurses said that they needed to take an oxygen tank with the bed when they transported...

See Update #1 for previous information as to Jennal's condition and also read the original post about why Jennal is undergoing this rare surgery (approximately one-hundred hemispherectomies are performed world-wide each year). OK, so the fever has come down to a normal level now. Jennal's heart rate is still elevated, however; when she's sleeping it's around 120-130 and when awake it's around 140-150. That's about double to 2.5 times what it should be, but it's better than triple and quadruple, which is what it had been running. So far, she hasn't had any more seizures. The seizure-like activity that I had reported in Update 1 were firings from her brain that caused the muscle contractions throughout her body. I had stated that this was the beginning of her seizure, and that's not entirely accurate. This physical reaction (her muscles jumping all throughout her body) is in response to firings from the neurons in her brain, in response to the ...

This is the first update on my niece, Jennal. It is being made after her partial hemispherectomy, which I described in this blog post . I just came back from the hospital. I got there around 4am, after having drinks with a friend I haven't seen in over a year. It was really good to see her -- took my mind off things for a while. I actually had two amaretto sours, and I almost never have two drinks in a night. But I think I needed it tonight, plus we were eating so it wasn't all that bad. Anyway, I got back to the hospital around 4:30am and broke all the rules. Scooted past security (just look like you know where you're going and no one pays you any mind). Went up and got myself into pediatric ICU. Jennal's father was sleeping in a chair next to her bed; I didn't see my sister anywhere so I had assumed she went back to the hotel to sleep. Jennal was WIDE awake. I bent down next to her and asked if she was OK. She told me no. I asked what was wrong, she said she...

You may recall that I last wrote about my niece, Jennal, in October 2008 when she had a really bad episode . I haven't really been keeping up with my blog lately but something just happened and I need to do a little writing to try and remain calm. So at the beginning of the month, my niece, Jennal (pictured to the right) went into hospital @ NYU Medical Center in NYC. The purpose of this hospitalization was to induce her into having seizures, while she's hooked up to monitoring equipment, to map where in the brain the seizures are originating. Hopefully, once they find out where the seizures are originating, the doctors hope to remove those sections of her brain, provided that they're "unused" sections. Basically, they're going to do a partial lobotomy or something like that (brain surgery on a 4.5-year old). I don't think it's the greatest idea in the world and it's all very experimental but I'm not her guardian, and at least finding out whe...

My father just called me. I think I posted how my grandfather had three heart attacks and a stroke last summer. I know I've posted about his melanoma. Well after his heart attacks and strokes last summer, apparently they decided to do nothing about the melanoma. On Monday, my father told me that my grandfather went to the doctors as his legs weren't working and he was getting worse, and they "discovered" that his legs were covered with the tumors from the melanoma. The oncologist decided not to do anything about it because he's lived long enough. So now my father just called and said that the priest was coming to administer last rites and he's apparently unconscious. It's going to take me around four hours to get up there, as I have to take three separate buses. Last weekend my younger brother, John, who's a paranoid schizophrenic with bi-polar disorder, decided to self-medicate as he had stopped taking his medications. He felt a need to "become ...

The Sierra Club has an interesting video/commercial out urging us to take action against Climate Change . I'm placing it here for your convenience, and also because I thought it was pretty damned cool.

I recently posted an article to my blog about a recent breakthrough in HIV research --the discovery of the TRIM22 gene in humans, and linked to it from an article on my Gather.com account . Unfortunately, a number of the responses to the post on my Gather account were somewhat negative, along the lines of "[yawn] We've heard of this before its nothing new." Take, for instance, one of these comments : old news, this has been out and about for a year now! and Even though this has been around for a little while (as so rudely mentioned early in the comments) it will still be kept relatively quiet until the pharmaceutical companies find ways they can cash in on it. I even had a few friends who read my blog post IM me that the cure for HIV/AIDS exists but is being blocked either by the US Government or various pharmaceutical interests. After receiving this sort of a response to my post and the information contained therein, I went on the 'net and...

This is the announcement we've all been waiting for . From the article: A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and in turn prevent the onset of AIDS. Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus. "When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus." Barr and his team also prevented cells from turning on TRIM22 - provoking an interesting phenomenon: the normal response of interferon, a protein that co-ordinates attacks against viral infections, became useless at blocking HIV infection. "This means that TRIM22 is an essential part of our body...