I am curious about a thought exercise… if anyone had a stroke and they wanted to augment their recovery, what would your personal protocol be? Let’s assume it was blockage and not a brain bleed.
I’m not sure on the details, but my friends’ mother had a stroke at age 82 and was largely paralyzed on one side of her body. This was in Canada, and they put her into an intensive in-patient physical therapy routine for 3 or 4 months, then a follow-on 6 month program of regular out-patient physical therapy, and she got about 95% back to full functioning. It was pretty amazing what can be accomplished if you move quickly and have an intensive program. I’m not sure how common these types of programs are in the US.
Here is the program that I believe she went through:
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I’m not sure what my protocol would be but I would definitely look into hyperbaric oxygen therapy and red/NIR light therapy. Both are likely to have some potential.
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I’ve had patient’s with this and have a protocol - but the details are important. So if there is a specific case - you can message me and give me details and I’ll at least give some feedback.
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A family member, a 73 year old male, had a stroke a few days after surgery in early August to correct a hiatal hernia. Dehydration and immobility following surgery likely contributed to clot formation as well. He was transported by ambulance promptly and administered a thrombolytic followed by thrombectomy.
Much of the damage from stroke occurs when blood flow returns and then the ensuing inflammatory response in the hours and days that follow. It’s called ischemia reperfusion injury. There isn’t a drug yet approved in the US to address that. But candidates include the antioxidant edaravone dexborneol, which is used in China and Japan (edaravone). And minocycline is in trials, also.
But in his case, I helped on request and he was given glycerin based liquid Ashwagandha and Gotu Kola extracts instead with low-dose Selegiline, on the same day, and in the days that followed, in an effort to reduce this damage a little. Capsules weren’t an option due to uncertainty with swallowing following strokes. There are multiple studies supporting better outcomes in animals given ashwagandha with experimental stroke. I then devised a a supplement program for him to follow for post-stroke rehabilitation, with high-dose ashwagandha again featuring prominently due to in vivo evidence that it promotes reconstruction of damaged neuronal networks in the brain; there was also a recent study showing it promotes recovery of damaged peripheral nerves. One of the challenges with supplements following stroke, though, is that most patients post-stroke will be on blood thinners, and the warnings for particular supplements that may interfere with their action are quite liberal. For many supplements, the warning is probably not justified or only with warfarin.
This list includes most of what he has been taking: higher dose Ashwagandha and Gotu Kola, L-Ergothioneine, PQQ, lower-dose omega 3 oil, protein shakes, 1.25 mg Deprenyl, celery seed extract (used in China for this purpose), CDP Choline, 10 mg lithium orotate, general multi-vitamin and mineral supplements.
He was taking a statin. He was switched to Nexlizet instead because of limited evidence statins may impair muscle-strength recovery post-stroke.
Aside from that, I haven’t been involved in other rehab efforts he has made including physical and occupational therapy. Some people are finding substantial improvement using training gloves following stroke for better restoration of hand coordination and strength. If someone knows how to sight read at the piano at least a little, a keyboard with a new piece of easy sheet music may help with re-establishing hand-eye coordination.
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delanceyplace archive | daily eclectic excerpts by editor Richard Vague | www.delanceyplace.com"In%201959%20%5BDr.,an%20old%20man%20was%20plastic.
"In 1959 [Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita]'s sixty-five-year-old father, Pedro, had a stroke that paralyzed his face and half his body and left him unable to speak. The doctors told Paul’s brother George that Pedro had no hope of recovery. George, a medical student, was still too early in his medical studies to have learned the doctrine of the unchanging brain. So he began treating his father without preconceived ideas. After two years of daily, intensive, incremental brain and movement exercises, Pedro underwent a complete recovery. After he died (mountain climbing at the age of seventy-two!), Paul had an autopsy performed on Pedro and discovered that 97 percent of the nerves in a key pathway in his brain stem were destroyed**. Paul had an epiphany: the exercises that Pedro had done had reorganized and rewired his brain and built new processing areas and connections that worked around the stroke damage. It meant that even the brain of an old man was plastic.
First read about Paul Bach y Rita from Norman Doidge’s book.
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Initially, George felt uncertain about his next steps. Ultimately, he determined that his father’s rehabilitation model would be grounded in the developmental movement progression of infants (Doidge, 2010). He remarked, “The only model I had was how babies learn…to walk” (Doidge, 2010, p. 21). According to White et al. (2013), children start to advance to crawling between six to ten months of age, building their skills as a result of all the developmental movements that occurred since birth, which continually shape the infant’s brain and body.
And So, the Crawling Rehabilitation Began
The crawling stage also includes a markedly more advanced and intricate movement progression that engages all four limbs. This complex movement progression allows infants to navigate independently within and around their environment.
This stage represents the ongoing development of both the brain and body, ultimately leading to the point when, by the age of 12 to 15 months, infants can take their first steps without assistance, marking the onset of walking (Adolph et al., 2012).
Keeping this universal developmental model in mind, George explained to his father that infants ultimately learn to walk through crawling (Doidge, 2010). Thus, the crawling rehabilitation commenced.
Three years of daily “child development crawling” rehabilitation followed, resulting in what might be considered a full recovery (Bach-y-Rita, 1980; Doidge, 2010; Hunter, 1987; Purnell, 2015). This rehabilitation approach and the resultant recovery completely contradicted the prevailing medical wisdom of that time.