STROKE: HANDS-ON APPROACH TO TACKLING THE EFFECTS

VITAL: But many patients aren't offered physio

Tuesday March 9,2010

By Adrian Lee

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CATHERINE Shelley had just set out on a run when she noticed a tingling in her lip. She ignored the feeling, which reminded her of having an anaesthetic at the dentist and forced herself forward. However within a few seconds all the power drained from her legs and she slumped to the ground in a country lane.

Struggling to her feet she managed to stumble to her mother’s home half a mile away. “I was covered in scratches because I kept falling into the hedgerow,” she recalls. “At one stage an elderly couple saw what was happening and asked if I was all right. I insisted I was fine.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Catherine tried to eat breakfast but was unable to hold a spoon and although she had no idea what was happening, began talking gibberish to her mother and sister. At the age of 42 she was showing classic symptoms of a stroke, later verified in hospital.

“My feeling was almost one of embarrassment because I was so young,” she says. “Everyone was astounded because I seemed so fit and healthy. I was running three times a week, going to the gym and eating sensibly.”

Tests revealed Catherine, who had previously run a London Marathon, had a hole in her heart. She had just returned from a climbing holiday in the Alps, spending several days at altitude which had caused a blood clot to develop in her leg. The clot had passed through the hole and travelled to her brain, causing the stroke. Scans revealed she’d previously suffered a series of mini-strokes.

“Looking back, I’d had the odd flickering in my eye but there was nothing to suggest anything was wrong,” says Catherine. “I burst into tears because it felt like the end of my world.”

Over the next week her speech and movement began to return. Six weeks later she had surgery to repair the hole in her heart but was given no speech therapy or physiotherapy to aid her recovery.

A campaign launched today by The Stroke Association is highlighting the lack of physiotherapy offered to patients. There is strong evidence that the more treatment provided, the better the recovery. In some areas of the UK patients are offered only 40 minutes a week. In countries such as Germany, it’s up to six hours a day.

In Catherine’s case it was only when she returned to work in Singapore that she was offered physiotherapy. “Apart from the physical side, my confidence had been knocked but now I had goals,” she says. “In the UK, the treatment I first received was great but after that I was left to fend for myself.”

I t was a long haul back to fitness and Catherine still suffers some symptoms. She says: “I feel more tired and there is some permanent damage to my brain but running made me feel normal again.”

Next month Catherine, who now lives in Limehouse, east London, where she works for a bank, will run the London Marathon for the first time since the stroke. “Last time I ran it in three hours 40 minutes,” says Catherine, now 45. “There’s no reason why I can’t match that.”

In a third of cases stroke patients are left with some disability but one survey suggests almost half don’t get enough physiotherapy.

“The research shows that the more physiotherapy treatment people get, the better they do,” says Dr Fiona Jones, principal lecturer in physiotherapy at St George’s, University of London and Kingston University. “Also, the earlier it starts the better.”

Recovery from a stroke can take months and undamaged parts of the brain can be taught to compensate in other ways. This can take many hours of arduous, repetitive practice. There’s also evidence good physiotherapy can reduce the chances of another stroke.

“It’s very important to get a good physiotherapy programme to do at home,” says Dr Jones.

However in many areas there are waiting lists for physio and some patients need therapy every day but that’s rarely offered. Aquarter of patients are of working age and intensive physiotherapy can hasten their return to jobs.

Visit www.justgiving.com/Catherine-Shelley to learn more about Catherine’s fundraising.

Contact The Stroke Association on 0845 3033100 or visit www.stroke.org.uk

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NOT A SINGLE WORD ON....

09.03.10, 1:58pm

the well documemted prevention of arterial narrowing, the main cause of stroke, and misnamed heart disease.

No, not a disease at all, but a vitamin and antioxidant deficiency,, and carb. excesses.

Causative high blood homcysteine is lowered with vitamins B6, .B12 and folates. Studiies showed that just a high butter comsumption synthesized sufficient vitamin B6 through the gut bacteria, to reduce heart disease incidence. Malhotra S L Dr. Lancet 1973.

Studies in China in the 1990s showed folic acid supplemnts of 3mgs a day reversed carotid arterial narrowing, that being the one that takes blood to the brain. That is the equivalent of 7 large daily salads, well chewed and all the folic acid fully absorbed. Anti oxidants such as vitamins C and E, selenium etc. lower causative lipo protein alpha.

And, causative high blood tri glycerides are lowered by reducing the intake of carbs, especially sugars, and alcolhol.

Something the daft food pyramid doe NOT advise.

Further,, ther cholesterol hoax, based on a faulty 1953 study in Framingham MA USA, has scared many of protective, healthgiving butter, eggs yolks, liver etc.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/12/05/Does-High-Cholesterol-REALLY-Cause-Heart-Disease.aspx

• Posted by: ThomaT • Report Comment