‘Down’s Syndrome is not going to stop my son from leading a wonderful life’
was 33 years old when Alan was born. He had a flat nose, almond-shaped eyes, and short limbs. He looked like a doll. I felt blessed. A few hours later, I was told that he had Down’s Syndrome and was born without an anus.
I wept uncontrollably. But even before I could absorb what Down’s Syndrome meant, he was whisked away to a neo-natal intensive care unit for his first pull-through surgery. His second and third were performed at intervals of a few months each. He was the first baby to undergo laparoscopy in Chennai under the guidance of a group of surgeons from Switzerland.
Everyone, including doctors, told me that I would not be able to cope and that life as I knew it would be over if I kept Alan. But I refused to give up my baby and vowed to raise him myself.
They were wrong: having Alan is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He changed my life for the better; he made me a stronger person.
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Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Monday, 14 November 2016
Fighting to be fit? Don’t
You are not living to your full potential if you don’t take care of the four foundational pillars of being
The word ‘holistic’ has made its way into common vocabulary, especially in the health and wellness industry. What does it mean?
It’s a basic and intuitive concept on which our very existence should rest, not just health and fitness. It is a multidimensional web of our foundational pillars and their interconnections.
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but we need to go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired.
So, holistic fitness includes physical, emotional, mental and spiritual fitness. It should be clear that a lacuna in one is bound to affect the whole chain and strip ‘holistic’ of its meaning.
A whole can be viewed as a sum of its parts. But it would be flawed to not recognise that it’s not just the adding up that delivers a functional equation. The health of each part will impact the health of the whole.
Full Story
The word ‘holistic’ has made its way into common vocabulary, especially in the health and wellness industry. What does it mean?
It’s a basic and intuitive concept on which our very existence should rest, not just health and fitness. It is a multidimensional web of our foundational pillars and their interconnections.
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but we need to go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired.
So, holistic fitness includes physical, emotional, mental and spiritual fitness. It should be clear that a lacuna in one is bound to affect the whole chain and strip ‘holistic’ of its meaning.
A whole can be viewed as a sum of its parts. But it would be flawed to not recognise that it’s not just the adding up that delivers a functional equation. The health of each part will impact the health of the whole.
Full Story
Thursday, 28 January 2016
Sounding the Alarm on a Future Epidemic: Alzheimer's Disease
We’re living longer. The number of U.S. adults 65 and older — roughly 40 million as of the 2010 census — is expected to nearly double to 71 million by 2030 and to reach 98 million by 2060. In much of the rest of the world, the story is the same. But if the aging trend illustrates the success of public health strategies, it also raises the specter of a major public health crisis — a sharp rise in the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Ron Brookmeyer, a professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics, has called attention to the looming Alzheimer’s epidemic through widely cited studies in which he has employed sophisticated computer models to project the number of cases, as well as the potential positive impact of future therapies and other strategies to prevent or delay the onset and progression of symptoms.
Brookmeyer’s work in this arena began nearly 20 years ago with a paper he wrote in the American Journal of Public Health projecting that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States would nearly quadruple by the middle of this century, by which time approximately 1 in 45 Americans will be afflicted. His 2007 study also projected that 1 in 85 persons worldwide will be living with the disease by 2050, with nearly half of them requiring a level of care equivalent to that of a nursing home.
Brookmeyer’s development of statistical models to make forecasts on epidemics began in the late 1980s with HIV/AIDS, but after becoming involved in a study on aging, he turned his attention to the threat posed by Alzheimer’s disease. “Obviously it’s not a transmissible epidemic like the ones I had been looking at, but with the aging of the population, it was clear that the numbers were going to explode,” he explains.
As part of his modeling, Brookmeyer and his colleagues consider both demographic trends and the severity of the progression of the disease. “This is a long illness,” he says. “Once you’re diagnosed, you might live with it for 10 or more years, and the intensity of the care required will vary during that time. From a public health point of view, it’s very important to look at where people will be in different stages of the disease and the needs we will be facing as a society.”
Read the full story
Ron Brookmeyer, a professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics, has called attention to the looming Alzheimer’s epidemic through widely cited studies in which he has employed sophisticated computer models to project the number of cases, as well as the potential positive impact of future therapies and other strategies to prevent or delay the onset and progression of symptoms.
Brookmeyer’s work in this arena began nearly 20 years ago with a paper he wrote in the American Journal of Public Health projecting that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States would nearly quadruple by the middle of this century, by which time approximately 1 in 45 Americans will be afflicted. His 2007 study also projected that 1 in 85 persons worldwide will be living with the disease by 2050, with nearly half of them requiring a level of care equivalent to that of a nursing home.
Brookmeyer’s development of statistical models to make forecasts on epidemics began in the late 1980s with HIV/AIDS, but after becoming involved in a study on aging, he turned his attention to the threat posed by Alzheimer’s disease. “Obviously it’s not a transmissible epidemic like the ones I had been looking at, but with the aging of the population, it was clear that the numbers were going to explode,” he explains.
As part of his modeling, Brookmeyer and his colleagues consider both demographic trends and the severity of the progression of the disease. “This is a long illness,” he says. “Once you’re diagnosed, you might live with it for 10 or more years, and the intensity of the care required will vary during that time. From a public health point of view, it’s very important to look at where people will be in different stages of the disease and the needs we will be facing as a society.”
Read the full story
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