Health TO YOUR
Mid-Valley Newspapers M
November 2013
A guide to wellness and healthy living in the Mid-Willamette Valley
STAT Quick reads about health topics in the news
Lung cancer event Salem Cancer Institute will present “Shine a Light on Lung Cancer” on Thursday, Nov. 14 to honor and remember loved ones touched by lung cancer. The event will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Salem Hospital campus courtyard, 890 Oak St. SE. The event will feature a pair of presentations from doctors: Everett Mozell will present “Is Lung Cancer Screening Right for You?” Bud Pierce will speak on “Frankly Speaking about Lung Cancer” on the first floor of Building D at the Salem Hospital campus. Sandwiched between the presentations will be a 6 p.m. candlelight vigil and moment of silence to honor and remember loves ones with a reading of names. To submit names for the ceremony, contact the Community Health Education Center. Light refreshments will be served. To register for these free events, please call the Community Health Education Center at 503-814-2432 or visit salemhealth.org/chec. — TO YOUR HEALTH
Tempering outbursts Wayne Puckett demonstrates his laser guided walker, Oct. 30 in Clermont, Fla. Puckett, 48, has a form of Parkinson’s disease, which causes him to have great difficulty walking. But a simple red laser attached to his walker helps him walk without hesitation, and keeps him up and moving. TOM BENITEZ | ORLAND SENTINAL/MCT
Walking for the mind Daily jaunt cuts dementia risk, studies show By MARNI JAMESON | ORLANDO SENTINEL RLANDO, Fla. — Everyone knows walking is good exercise, but it has another benefit: a daily 20-minute walk can also cut the risk of dementia by 40 percent, studies show. Taking those findings a step further, neurologists at Jacksonville, Fla.’s Mayo Clinic are studying whether getting patients immobilized by disease to walk can also help stave off mental decline. Dr. Jay Van Gerpen, a neurologist who specializes in gait, is recruiting Parkinson’s patients for a study to help them stay on their feet and retain brain health. “Walking is a window to the brain,” said Van Gerpen. Regular walking not only helps preserve brain function in healthy people, but also protects against further damage caused by dementia, Alzheimer’s and diseases like Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease that causes tremors, motor impairment and cognitive decline. When someone’s gait changes — steps get shorter or pace slows — that frequently indicates the brain is damaged. Thus, walking problems are common in those with dementia and Parkinson’s, because these conditions cause brain cells to die. Walking not only slows that progression, but helps brain cells recover by forming new connections, Van Gerpen said. Van Gerpen invented a laser device several years ago that helps Parkinson’s patients walk better. The device attaches to walkers or canes and shoots a red laser beam in front of the person walking. Visual cues can help Parkinson’s pa-
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HOW TO GROW YOUR BRAIN Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that walkers increased the size of their hippocampus, the region of the brain that controls new memories, by 2 percent after one year of walking 40 minutes three times a week. The researchers divided 120 older adults, average age 66, who did not have dementia, into two groups: a stretching group and a walking group. The group that walked increased their hippocampus, while the stretching group showed no improvement, according to the 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Normally, that area of the brain decreases about 1 to 2 percent a year in adults, said Dr. Jay Van Gerpen, increasing their risk for developing Alzheimer’s. tients walk without freezing. When patients focus on stepping over the line, they access the visual part of the brain, which bypasses the motor output area that isn’t working, Van Gerpen said. The device was a game-changer for Wayne Puckett of Clermont, Calif. Four years ago, the 48-year-old started having tremors, followed by difficulty walking and memory problems. Puckett said gait freezing was the biggest issue. “I would just come to a halt, especially at doorways,” he said. The former postal worker used to be able to memorize two ZIP codes worth of street addresses, but that ability was gone. In March 2010, he went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where Van Gerpen diagnosed him with a form of Parkinson’s and gave him a Mobilaser that attaches to his walker. The first time Puckett used the Mobilaser, which is now distributed worldwide and costs
$400, he couldn’t believe the difference. “I was almost walking like normal. I was in sheer amazement. It still amazes me.” It helped in other ways, too. “When I wasn’t able to move as much, I noticed my brain was much worse,” Puckett said. “With the laser I can move, get around, and am definitely able to concentrate better.” In a 2012 study, Van Gerpen’s team studied a small group of Parkinson’s patients who had difficulty walking. By using the laser, they cut in half both the time it took them to walk a course, and the number of times they came to a halt, said Van Gerpen. His new study aims to prove that the laser helps patients walk every day, over months and years. “Getting these patients walking is extremely helpful because it helps the brain’s blood flow and reduces mental and muscle decline,” said Dr. Nizam Razack, a neurosurgeon at Florida Hospital Celebration Health who performs brain surgery on Parkinson’s patients to help improve their motor impairment. But beyond helping those with Parkinson’s, a daily walk has broader implications for Americans who are developing dementia at an epidemic rate, said Van Gerpen. Dementia is on the rise not just because Americans are living longer, but because they have so much vascular disease. “Dementia is related to obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes,” he said. All these conditions impair blood flow to the brain. “When blood flow in a large vessel to the brain gets blocked, a person has a stroke,” said Van Gerpen. “When small vessels get blocked, brain tissue also dies. You just don’t notice it at that moment.” Walking reduces the risk of small vessel damage. That will delay the onset of dementia and help protect what function is left.
Dose of daring may get you unstuck Woman tries something new every day for a year BY HEIDI STEVENS CHICAGO TRIBUNE
You can understand why Lu Ann Cahn was exhausted. It was 2009. She had already stared down breast cancer at age 35 and kidney cancer at age 45. The economy was in the tank and her profession — broadcast journalism — was transforming in disquieting ways. “For the first time in my life, I felt old and out of touch,” she told me. “I was really angry.”
You can also understand why she wanted a change. “It wasn’t acceptable to waste my time being that unhappy,” she says. “I understand that every day you wake up and feel OK is a precious gift, and you better spend it doing something you feel passionate about. I wasn’t doing that, and it was time to do something about it.” She did 365 things about it. At the urging of her 23-yearold daughter, Cahn, now 56, embarked on a year of firsts. “My firsts ranged from riding a mechanical bull to rappelling into an underground cave,” she
writes in “I Dare Me: How I Rebooted and Recharged My Life by Doing Something New Every Day” (Perigree). “I spoke to a complete stranger on the street. I smoked my first cigar. I shoveled horse manure.” She made gnocchi, for Pete’s sake. Prior to her experiment, Cahn felt aced out by her colleagues and overwhelmed by the culture. “I don’t text!” she would snap at co-workers. “Facebook is for morons.” “I was resisting change all around me,” she says. “And I
needed change. “The brain loves new things. It could be reciting the alphabet backward. It could be a new dance move. By learning to take small risks, you teach yourself to do the big things you didn’t think you could do.” By chronicling her firsts in a book, Cahn hopes to inspire others. “I want you to look at your world with new eyes,” she writes, “to make your own list of firsts, to stop waiting for someone to rescue you from whatever you can’t control and to rescue yourself with something new every day.”
Scientists studying the degree to which brain function, parental involvement and environment determine antisocial outbursts in children have found that social support and intervention can successfully moderate misbehavior. Researchers at the University of Michigan studied the amygdala — the part of the brain that processes fear and impulsive reactions — for clues about extreme behavior in children. The amygdala is associated with aggressive behavior, anxiety disorders and depression. Once that region of the brain is stimulated, they found, some people become anxious and overreact to perceived threats. According to the study, if the child is not getting help from others — family, neighbors or professional — then the link between the amygdala and anxious behavior is stronger. The tendency to overreact can be altered by a child’s environment, and the same researchers found in another study that impulsive kids are at higher risk of engaging in antisocial behavior if they live in ‘dangerous’ neighborhoods. — LOS ANGELES TIMES
Swinging the bats This year’s World Series featured its share of shattered wood bats. That’s a problem many youth baseball players avoid by using metal or composite carbon fiber bats. But ever since those bats entered the game, people have debated whether and when non-wood bats make the ball fly faster. The concern is that faster hits not only make the game harder for the defense but also more dangerous. In a study now online in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics, researchers at Brown University and the Lifespan health system gathered scientific data relevant to younger teens. Joseph “Trey” Crisco, professor of orthopaedics, and colleagues recruited 22 volunteer hitters aged 13 to 18 to take about 3,400 swings with 13 different youth baseball bats. Non-wood bats did hit the ball faster overall, but that varied widely based on the bat model and the batter’s age. Among the 10 non-wood bats studied, only three allowed players to hit the ball significantly faster than the three wood bats. For the youngest teen baseball players, many of whom need lighter bats to participate, one of the most significant findings was that lighter non-wood weight bats did not launch the ball at significantly higher speeds than wood bats. — BROWN UNIVERSITY
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Tuesday, November 12, 2013
To Your Health