Archive for the 'Nervous System Disorders' Category

Did you ever experience any violent blow to your head? Have you ever heard about traumatic brain injury? When your head violently hits any huge object or when any object suddenly pierces your skull and enters into your brain tissue, then it results in traumatic brain injury!

The severity of brain injuries can greatly vary from one individual to other, depending on the part of the brain affected and the extent of the damage caused to brain.

A mild brain injury can affect you by creating a temporary confusion and headache. But, sometimes certain serious brain injuries can possibly turn fatal for your health and often leads to death.

Identify whether the injury caused to brain is mild or moderate!

Most of the symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury appear immediately after any traumatic incident such as a sudden blow on head.

However, in many cases, the symptoms are actually mild and become quite easy to miss after treating the injury. Some of most the common mild symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury include:

• A brief period of unconsciousness.
• Headache, dizziness, frequent mood changes, confusion are also certain manifestations involved with traumatic brain injury.

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Do you feel uneasy to take medications for your migraine problem? Then you can try various other alternative treatments for treating migraine problems.

These alternative methods are mainly included with natural ways to cure the disturbing pain and suffering caused due to migraines.

Now-a-days, natural treatments are becoming more and more popular with doctors, particularly if they are combined with appropriate medicines.

There are several factors, which can lead you to prefer natural ways to deal with your migraine problem.

Possibly, these factors are something like, your body tendency to react adversely towards migraine medications, cost of the medications, unwilling to take medicines. These reasons can certainly make you to prefer natural ways to cure migraine problems.

Natural remedies for migraine problem!

• Relaxed breathing: This is one of the effective ways to deal with your migraine problem naturally. To increase your heart rate and blood circulation in your body, practice more breathing exercises. Initially you can face a little problem, but gradually these relaxed breathing exercises can help you a lot in treating migraine problems.

A new study from University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UHCMC) finds that elderly patients – 75 years old and older– with malignant brain tumors are not treated as aggressively as patients between 65 and 75 years old.

Furthermore, the researchers find that if patients over 75 years old are treated aggressively, such as with surgery and radiation, they have better survival rates. The findings appear in the April issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.

Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Medicare-linked database, the researchers led by Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan, Ph.D., of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals, looked at the records of 1753 patients who were treated for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and of 205 patients treated for anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) between 1991 and 1999.

GBMs are the most common malignant brain tumors in adults. AAs are less common, but are treated similarly to GBMs. Both have a poor prognosis, and as the American population ages, the incidence of these brain tumors is on the rise.

The researchers looked at whether patients received a biopsy only, surgery only, biopsy and radiation, surgery and radiation, or surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. These findings suggest that older patients with brain tumors do not receive the more aggressive, effective therapies and hence have worse survival.

Neuroblastoma mainly affects children. It is comparatively a rare form of cancer which affects the nervous system of your child.

It has been estimated that every year about 600 children will develop neuroblastoma.

Children below 10 years of age are more prone to this rare form of cancer. The cells of this cancer normally resemble more like primitive nerve cells found in newly developing embryo or fetus.

Neuroblastoma mostly begins in the nerve tissue of the adrenal glands in your child. These glands are more important in the production of hormones which mainly controls the heart rate and blood pressure in your child. These hormones are also responsible for controlling the blood sugar and also the way in which the body of your child reacts to stress.

Sometimes, there are chances for your child to develop neuroblastoma in their chest or also in nerve tissues near the spine or it can also develop in their spinal cord.

Possible manifestations associated with neuroblastoma:

When the neuroblastoma tumor presses on a nearby tissue or if it spreads the cancer to the bone [Preventing bone cancer], then it shows the following symptoms of cancer in your kid.

Neuralgia is a sharp severe pain that usually takes place along a nerve or group of nerves.

The pain of neuralgia usually reoccurs in irregular periods. Most of the times this stabbing pain is brief or concise, but it can be serious sometimes.

In which particular areas of skin, this pain is more prominent?

Neuralgia usually occurs because of the irritation caused by the damaged nerve. You can experience different types of nerve pains depending upon the reason for the irritation or damage to the nerve. The pain is felt in that particular areas of skin that is supplied by damaged and irritated nerve. Basically there are two most common types of neuralgia, which you can experience.

Trigeminal neuralgia:

In this case, the affected nerves of your body become more sensitive to touch, temperature and also to pressure sensation, especially in the facial areas from jaw to fore head. This particular nerve disorder is responsible for short episodes of unbearable pain.

You can experience the stabbing pain for normally less than 2 minutes and takes place only on one side of your face. This is most uncommon type of neuralgia and only 5 individuals out of 100,00 can experience this particular type of nerve disorder.

When compared to the tumors of different parts of the body, treatment of brain tumor is very difficult because brain surgery requires highly sophisticated instruments.

Side effects from these therapeutic drugs are quite complicated and the brain itself does not allow the therapeutic drugs to enter it.

However, the modalities of treating the brain tumor include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and combination of all treatments.

According to the new publication, people who received treatment with the high doses of chemotherapy drugs for certain types of brain tumors seemed to have longer life than those people who received other treatments.

Role Of Methotrexate In Treatment Of Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma

Primary central nervous system lymphoma is a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which affects the brain. This type of brain tumor is difficult to treat, but it can be cured or it can drive into long remission.

The most common method of treatment now-a-days is a combination of radiation and chemotherapy. The patient receives chemotherapy first and then will wait for radiation therapy until the results of chemotherapy treatment are seen.

Methotrexate is reported to be the most effective drug with fewer side effects in treating primary central nervous system lymphoma, a rare form of brain tumor.

Is your migraine headache troubling you? This painful migraine headache is often accompanied with certain sensory warning signs like flashes of light and tingling of arm or legs.

It can also come with other symptoms like vomiting, extreme sensitivity to light and sound and also nausea.

Potential triggers of migraine headache!

The exact cause of the migraine head ache is still unknown, but most of the experts believe that it can be caused due to expansion of the blood vessels in combination with release of certain chemicals, which are the potential causes of the inflammation and also pain.

The chemicals which are capable of developing the migraine pain include dopamine and serotonin. Usually these chemicals are found in brain and can lead the blood vessel to act abnormally, provided they are released in abnormal amounts.

If your blood vessels are sensitive towards these chemicals then they can result in migraine headache.

Most of the triggers responsible for migraine headache differ from person to person. Some of those potent triggers include:

• Certain foods like chocolates, alcohol, nuts, cheese and also MSG (Monosodium Glutamate, food enhancer used in many kinds of foods including Chinese foods) can be responsible for developing migraine pain.

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is one of the genetic disorders.

This disorder is mainly referred to as the inability of your body to consume the vital amino acids and phenylalanine (Phe).

Amino acids are essential for building body proteins. Your body will get the amino acids from the food you consume.

Phenylketonuria is the condition which affects one out of 12,000-15,000 live births in the US. This disorder can affect you inheriting two copies of the mutated gene, one from each parent.

In Phenylketonuria, the enzyme, phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH), that breaks down is completely deficient. Normally this enzyme is used to convert phenylalanine into another amino acid and tyrosine. The deficiency of this can cause high levels of phenylalanine.

The high levels of Phe can damage the brain and it results in severe mental retardation, behavior abnormalities, inability to focus and organize information, seizures and some other neurological disorders.

The deficiency of this enzyme can cause phenylalanine and its breakdown chemicals from other enzyme get accumulated in the body tissues and blood. This disorder can affect both males and females equally.

Sciatica is a debilitating condition. Although it is considered as a common type of low back pain, exactly it means set of symptoms including pain.

Compression of the lumbar nerve root, sacral nerve root, or sciatic nerve itself can be the source of sciatica.

If the sciatica is caused by lumbar nerve root, it will be considered as lumbar radiculopathy.

What Are The Leading Issues Of Sciatica?

Disc herniation (lumbar bulging), lumbar spinal stenosis, piriformis syndrome, spondylolisthesis, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, trauma, spinal tumors, trigger points, and pregnancy are some of the illnesses that can lead to sciatica.

Disc herniation is also called as disc disease. It means when the disc bulges, it presses on the adjacent nerve roots and compresses the delicate nerve tissue causing sciatica. Herniated disc causes the direct compression of the nerve roots adjacent to the interior of the bony spinal canal.

It is not only the disc that causes nerve root compression, but also the material present inside the disc that contains acidic and chemical irritants can cause nerve inflammation.

In both the above-mentioned cases, the inflammation and compression leads to numbness and tingling of the extremities and muscle weakness.

Tourettes syndrome is a quite common neurological condition that is linked to features of many other conditions.

Tourettes syndrome makes you to do unusual sounds or movements which are called as tics.

Some times, you cannot control them.

The most common tics which are associated with tourettes syndrome include blinking and throat clearing.

The exact cause behind tourettes syndrome is unknown, but according to some research this condition is due to the problem in nerves which communicate in the brain.

This condition is most common among boys when compared to girls.

Usually the tics begin in childhood and they can become worst in the early teens. It can affect people from all backgrounds. Most of the people will eventually outgrow from the symptoms. There is no need of any treatment unless the tics interfere with your everyday life.

If you have undergone to any worries or excitement, your tics can become worse more frequent or longer. Some of you can suppress your tics for a short time. If you are seriously trying to control your tics, then it will be very difficult for you to concentrate on anything else.