Your Weekly Dose of #5ThoughtsFriday: A description of what we think is important at BIAMD
  #5ThoughtsFriday
The "South Pole" Edition
12/14/2018
#5ThoughtsFriday is Powered By :

Maryland families are struggling because they are unable to access the home health care their doctors have prescribed and their insurance has approved. Home care nursing is important to so many families across the state—those with medically complex children, aging adults, brain injuries, and more. The Maryland Legislature recently created a Task Force to Study Access to Home Health Care for Children and Adults with Medical Disabilities

While this is a great start, it isn’t enough. This issue to be top-of-mind for both the public and the state.

If you or a family member are experiencing issues accessing the home nursing care you are prescribed and would like to help bring increased attention to the issue, please email Hearts for Homecare today at dvocacy@bayada.com or
call 267-592-4855.
Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
A new gene therapy can turn certain brain glial cells into functioning neurons, which in turn could help repair the brain after a stroke or during neurological disorders like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases.
A new gene therapy can turn certain brain glial cells into functioning neurons, which in turn could help repair the brain after a stroke or during neurological disorders like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases.

In a series of studies in animals, a team of Penn State researchers led by Dr. Gong Chen developed a new gene therapy to reprogram glial cells -- which surround each neuron and can be activated when neurons die -- and turn them into healthy, functioning neuron cells.

Chen -- professor and Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences, who presented the findings Nov. 4 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego -- said that while more research is needed, he hopes the innovative technology may eventually be able to help patients with brain injury and degenerative neurological disorders.

"There is a huge unmet medical need to treat severe neurological disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, among others," Chen said. "Neuronal loss is the common cause of these functional deficits in the brain and spinal cord. Therefore, simply targeting cell signaling pathways affected by these neurodegenerative disorders without regenerating new neurons will not be most effective to restore the lost brain functions."

In addition to neurons, the human brain is also composed of glial cells, which surround each neuron and help support healthy brain function. Chen said each of these glial cells contains neural genes that are silenced, or switched off, during early brain development.

CLICK HERE for more WOW!.
In the first floor of a modern office block in Amsterdam, and in the shadows of the stadium where Abdelhak Nouri lived his dreams, the eldest of the Ajax midfielder’s six siblings delivers a brave and moving message. “Being angry doesn’t help,” Abderrahim Nouri says. “Being sad doesn’t help. Crying all day doesn’t help. Being positive helps. Praying for him helps. When I’m next to his bed, talking with him, saying good things to him, those things help.”

Speaking eloquently and emotively for more than an hour, Abderrahim has been reflecting on the  tragic chain of events  last summer that left his 20-year-old brother, who was one of the most talented young footballers in the Netherlands, with severe and permanent brain damage.

Nouri, or “Appie” as he is commonly known, collapsed on the pitch during a pre-season friendly against Werder Bremen in July and remains in a low level of consciousness in a hospital in Amsterdam, in the hearts and minds of everyone in the city and permanently surrounded by the people that love him most. Every day and every second of the last five months, a member of his family has been at his bedside. “We’re with my brother 24-7,” Abderrahim says.

As light turns to dusk at the end of a bitterly cold afternoon, Abderrahim talks at length about the inner strength that the family draw from being devout Muslims and how their faith has helped them to find comfort and relief throughout such a traumatic experience, yet their pain is never far from the surface.

CLICK HERE to learn more about this amazing talent.
Ask a Stroke Doctor Webinar,
TODAY
Friday, December 14,
11:30am to 1pm ET.

Simple things can be difficult after a stroke. How can you work around slurred speech, trouble swallowing, difficulty expressing yourself or understanding things, and limited mobility around the holiday season?

To join the videoconference:
                     
·        Go to:  Zoom.us
·        Select: Join a Meeting
·        Meeting ID: 213-672-1709
·        Select: Join
·        Select: Join with Computer Audio

OR  if you want to join by phone, dial 929-205-6099, meeting id 2136721709#, no participant id.
Photo Credit: Capt. John Farme
Serious brain injuries may not immediately cause detectable symptoms, and that this should be considered carefully
 in any recovery plan
​ Using a rat model of bTBI, researchers show how even mild exposure to a single blast shock wave is able to induce small but potentially very meaningful pathogenic effects that accumulate with time. These effects, detected at the microscopic level, included microvascular damage, injury to nerve axons and signs of neuroinflammation in various brain regions. Brain function also changed, as shown by impaired short-term synaptic plasticity.

As many as 300,000 United States service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 have suffered traumatic brain injury due to explosions. The vast majority of these blast-induced traumatic brain injuries, or bTBIs, were classified as mild.

Unlike severe or moderate bTBIs, a mild bTBI shows no overt brain injury, such as bleeding, hematomas or bruising, and people with a mild bTBI do not lose consciousness or show concussion symptoms. Nevertheless, these injuries can eventually lead to cognitive impairment, loss of attentional function, drug addiction, and anxiety or depressive disorders.

CLICK HERE  to find out more about this new study.
Congratulations to #5Thoughts Fanatic
Julie Gardner
the winner of this week's
Kindle Reader Giveaway.

You can win one, too.
(See Below)
2) What We Are Using To Read That You Might Enjoy



In the spirit of the season, we will be giving away a Kindle Reader to one lucky
#5Thoughts Fanatic
each week for the
next three weeks



All you have to do to enter is send us an email to
with the
Subject Line:"I Like to Read on a Kindle".
Please include your
Name, Address, and telephone number.

We will randomly select the winner
from all eligible entries.
One entry per person.
All rights reserved.
Void where prohibited.
Past performance is no indication of future returns.
No shoes, no shirt, no problem.
Who put the "bop" in the the "bop-she-bop-she-bop"
  If you decide to buy anything on your Holiday Shopping List, 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...
“ Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines."

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.