Brain
damage from injury and illness significantly decreases the quality of
life while increasing medical costs. Obviously growing new brain
tissue to replace that lost to bring recovery and full normal brain
health is a good idea. I wondered how much work is being done in that
area of research.
Football
players, schizophrenics, the Alzheimer's afflicted, casualties of
war, accident survivors and victims of crime may show brain quantity
loss/reduction in size that could be repaired with new brain tissue
growth. Aging too presents some brain size reduction, though a brain
may function well qualitatively even so in that case.
Schizophrenia
patients examined with magnetic resonance imaging show substantive
brain area loss. The brain may short circuit and communicate with
itself independently and inappropriately of the personality of the
individual who may experience the phenomena with substantial
discomfort. Drugs to counteract the effect may cost $3000 monthly,
and that sort of cost can be afforded just by the rich and government
printing out deficit dollars at the Federal Reserve. Thus it would be
cheaper over time to regrow damaged brain tissue in such individuals
than to dope them.
I
wonder if the public generally wouldn't have better health if
magnetic resonance brain scans were available one every five years or
so to all Americans at no charge in order to help people determine
the state of their own brain health. I think that breast scans are
available free to most women (they should be if not); the brain is
perhaps of more importance even than boobs, that obviously are of
great value too.
Alzheimer's
patients care is very costly. The families are challenged to keep a
good face on long term decrease of health. Stopping Alzheimers from
increasing is a valuable goal, yet so too would be restoring brain
tissue lost to the disease.
Maybe
DARPA is funding research on how to regrow brain tissue lost to
combat casualties that could be given over to the regular medical
research community if successful. Football players that have suffered
brain damage; perhaps O.J. Simpson is an example, may act with less
than full rational thought or take their own life because of the
negativity of the state of being they exist in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_healing
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/new-87-deceased-nfl-players-test-positive-for-brain-disease/
No comments:
Post a Comment