Your Weekly Dose of #5ThoughtsFriday: A description of what we think is important at BIAMD
  #5ThoughtsFriday
Edition
02/08/2019
#5ThoughtsFriday is Powered By :
and by

"Making Your Best Move"

The 2019
Brain Injury Association of Maryland Annual Conference

Registration is now
​LIVE!
Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
Electric scooters are behind a rash of visits to hospital emergency rooms, a new study finds.

More electric scooter riders showed up with injuries in the emergency rooms of two hospitals on Los Angeles' scooter-heavy Westside than either bicyclists or pedestrians, the study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open found.

While 94 percent of the 249 scooter-related cases were discharged without being admitted, the injuries were significant: Some 40.2 percent were admitted for head injuries, 31.7 percent for fractures and 27.7 percent with sprains, cuts or bruises.

"There is high risk factor there," said Tarak Trivedi, a physician at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center who co-authored the study.
The study is significant because while limited in scope, it shows the public health threat when electric scooters flood a community. In Los Angeles, startups like Lime and Bird have inundated streets in parts of the city with dockless electric scooters.

The authors say it is the first study to look at the injury patterns and clinical outcomes involving electric scooters.

CLICK HERE but only after making sure a scooter isn't heading your way.
Researchers have identified a cellular response to repeated concussions that may contribute to seizures in mice like those observed following traumatic brain injury in humans. The study, published in JNeurosci, establishes a new animal model that could help improve our understanding of post-traumatic epilepsy.

\Stefanie Robel, Oleksii Shandra and colleagues induced mild traumatic brain injury in mice to mimic blows to the head that result in human concussions. A unique population of astrocytes responded to these injuries and the researchers observed spontaneous recurrent seizures in some mice within one month. These results highlight the role of astrocytes in the development of epilepsy following the most common type of traumatic brain injury in humans.

CLICK HERE to see how it all connects.
In the United States, deaths due to suicide and unintentional overdose pose a major, and growing, public health concern. The combined number of deaths among Americans from suicide and unintentional overdose increased from 41,364 in 2000 to 110,749 in 2017 and has exceeded the number of deaths from diabetes since 2010. 1  The increase represents more than a doubling in the age-adjusted rate of deaths from suicide and unintentional overdose ( Table 1 ), according to data from national surveillance systems. 2  Accordingly, both suicide and unintentional overdose have been the focus of large-scale prevention efforts, such as the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention 3  and the State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis grant program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Both problems have connections with pain and opioid use. 4-8  The use of potentially lethal drugs such as opioids has a clear, direct relationship to the risk of unintentional overdose. Perhaps less well known, opioids also are linked to suicide risk. 9  Furthermore, opioid use disorders have a distinctly strong relationship with suicide as compared with other substance use disorders. 10  In all, more than 40% of suicide and overdose deaths in 2017 were known to involve opioids , with many more likely to have had unrecorded opioid involvement.

The common theme of opioid use underlying suicide and overdose poses questions of how these problems may be related to one another. 6  This review describes what is known about the links between suicide and overdoses, with a focus on pathways through opioid use, issues of intent, risk factors, prevention strategies, and unresolved issues.

CLICK HERE to see why we need to address this NOW.

2) What We Are Reading That You Might Enjoy
The calming feeling when someone gently brushes your hair. The deep comfort and connection you feel when a friend whispers in your ear. The tingly sensation experienced from the personal attention of a hairdresser, a clinician, or even watching and listening to Bob Ross…

With Brain Tingles, it’s now possible to stimulate—and even share—those feel-good tingles every day, and in real life! ASMRUniversity.com founder Craig Richard, PhD, explains what ASMR is, why it happens, and how to trigger it at home. No special training or fancy equipment required! Inside, you’ll learn the most common auditory, visual, and tactile triggers and how to create person-to-person ASMR scenarios (from a mock eye exam to a pretend manicure) with a partner, client, or friend. The end result? That calming, tingly euphoria that can be used for comfort, relaxation, restfulness, or even to set the tone for sleep—on demand!

CLICK HERE for More

 If you decide to buy this book, please don't forget to use  Amazon Smile  and select the Brain Injury Association of Maryland as your donation beneficiary.
5) Quote We Are Contemplating...

  “Endurance is patience concentrated."

Stay Safe. Stay Warm.
HAVE A TERRIFIC WEEKEND. 

Did you enjoy #5ThoughtsFriday? If so, please forward this email to a friend! 

Got a story we need to follow or share? Send it to info@biamd.org .  

Want to find a story from a past #5ThoughtsFriday blog posts, visit the archive by clicking HERE .

  Please let us know your requests and suggestions by emailing us at info@biamd.org or contacting us on Twitter. 

  Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Let us know! Just send a tweet to  @biamd1 and put #5ThoughtsFriday in there so we can find it.

  Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.