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A TIME columnist bears witness to an operation to help triplets with cerebral palsy walk like other boys. Cindy Hickman nearly bled to death the day she gave birth — three months prematurely — to her triplet sons. Weighing less than 2 lbs. each, her babies were alive, but barely. They clung so tenuously to life that her doctors recommended she name them A, B and C. Then, after a year of heroic interventions —brain shunts, tracheotomies, skull remodeling — often requiring emergency helicopter rides to the hospital nearest their rural Tennessee home, the Hickmans learned that their triplets had cerebral palsy. Fifteen years ago there wasn"t much that could be done about cerebral palsy, a disorder caused by damage to the motor centers of the brain. But pediatric medicine has come a long way since then, both in intervention before birth, with better prenatal care and various techniques to postpone delivery, and surgical interventions after birth to correct physical deficiencies. So although the incidence of cerebral palsy seems to be increasing(because the odds of preemies surviving are so much better), so too are the number of success stories. This is one of them. Lane, Codie and Wyatt(as the Hickman boys are called)have spastic cerebral palsy, the most common form, accounting for nearly 80% of cases. "We first noticed that they weren"t walking when they should," Cindy recalls. "Instead they were only doing the combat crawl." Their brains seemed to be developing age appropriately, but their muscles were unnaturally stiff, making walking difficult if not impossible. Happily, spastic cerebral palsy is also the most treatable form of CP, largely thanks to a procedure known as selective dorsal rhizotomy, in which the nerve roots that are causing the problem are isolated and severed. Among the first to champion SDR in the U.S. in the late 1980s was Dr. T.S. Park, a Korean-born pediatric neurosurgeon at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., who has preformed more than 800 of these operations and hopes to do an additional 1,000 before he retires. Peering through a microscope and guided by an electric probe, we were able to distinguish between the two groups of nerve roots leaving the spinal cord. The ventral roots send information to the muscle; the dorsal roots send information back to the spinal cord. The dorsal roots cause spasticity, and if just the right ones are severed, the symptoms can be greatly reduced. Nearly half a million Americans suffer from cerebral palsy. Not all are candidates for SDR, but Park estimates that as many as half may be. He gets the best results with children between ages 2 and 6 who were born prematurely and have stiffness only in their legs. He is known for performing the operation very high up in the spine, right where the nerve roots exit the spinal cord. It"s riskier that way, but the recovery is faster, and in Park"s skilled hands, the success rate is higher. Cindy and Jeremy Hickman will testify to that. Just a few weeks after the procedure, two of their sons are walking almost normally and the third is rapidly improving. When the triplets were born, ______.
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Children are getting so fat they may be the first generation to die before their parents, an expert claimed yesterday. Today"s youngsters are already falling prey to potential killers such as diabetes because of their weight. Fatty fast-food diets combined with sedentary lifestyles dominated by televisions and computers could mean kids will die tragically young, says Professor Andrew Prentice, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. At the same time, the shape of the human body is going through a huge evolutionary shift because adults are getting so fat. Here in Britain, latest research shows that the average waist size for a man is 36-38in and may be 42-44in by 2032. This compares with only 32.6 in in 1972. Women"s waists have grown from an average of 22 inches in 1920 to 24 inches in the Fifties and 30 inches now. One of the major reasons why children now are at greater risk is that we are getting fatter younger. In the UK alone, more than one million under-16s are classed as overweight or obese — double the number in the mid-Eighties. One in ten four-year-olds are also medically classified as obese. The obesity pandemic—an extensive epidemic—which started in the US, has now spread to Europe, Australia, Central America and the Middle East. Many nations now record more than 20 per cent of their population as clinically obese and well over half the population as overweight. Prof Prentice said the change in our shape has been caused by a glut of easily available high-energy foods combined with a dramatic drop in the energy we use as a result of technology developments. He is not alone in his concern. Only last week one medical journal revealed how obesity was fuelling a rise in cancer cases. Obesity also increases the risk factor for strokes and heart disease. An averagely obese person"s lifespan is shortened by around nine years while a severely obese person by many more. Prof Prentice said: "So will parents outlive their children, as claimed recently by an American obesity specialist" The answer is yes—and no. Yes, when the offspring become grossly obese. This is now becoming an alarmingly common occurrence in the US. Such children and adolescents have a greatly reduced quality of life in terms of both their physical and psychosocial health. So say No to that doughnut and burger. What does the author mean by "So say No to that doughnut and burger"
Having a few too many drinks can mean more than just a blackout or a bad hangover. People who engage in binge drinking are courting danger, experts warn. Binge drinking is most common at colleges and universities, where many adults treat drinking to excess as a rite of passage. A 1997 study from the Harvard School of Public Health reports that 42.7% of all college students engage in binge drinking. The well-publicized deaths of several college students from binge drinking in 1997 highlights the risks. An 18-year-old freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drank himself into a coma and died. A 20-year-old fraternity pledge at Louisiana State University died from alcohol poisoning. "Alcohol is always toxic. It"s really a poison," said Steven Schandler, professor of psychology at Chapman University and chief of addiction research at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Health Care System, who added that binge drinking can lead to alcohol poisoning. "Because it"s a poison, like any other poison, if you take in a little bit, you might tolerate it, but if you take in a lot, you might die." Administrators and doctors say that college freshmen are especially at risk for alcohol poisoning, in part because they often lack the maturity to refrain or stop. And for some who may be new to drinking, their bodies have a relatively low tolerance for alcohol. But problems with alcohol aren"t limited to teenagers and young adults. A 39-year-old Buena Park man recently recalled that two days of steady imbibing on a trip to Las Vegas several years ago left him in bad shape. Doctors say blood alcohol levels of about 4%— five times the legal intoxication limit of 0.8%—can induce potentially lethal side effects in most people. Alcoholics have higher limits. Although not well understood, enzymes that break down and expel alcohol in the liver and kidneys do so more effectively in seasoned drinkers, allowing them to tolerate more, Schandler said. Regardless of a person"s tolerance, alcohol exerts its influence when the amount of alcohol taken in exceeds the amount that the body can digest. At that point, alcohol passes from the bloodstream into the brain and begins its attack. Alcohol first affects the brain"s cortex, which controls more sophisticated thought processes. That"s why people generally become less inhibited under the influence of alcohol, and some are more willing to try things that could be dangerous to themselves or others. Coordination, mainly controlled by the cerebellum, is the next to go, leading to slurred speech and difficulty walking in a straight line. As excessive drinking continues, alcohol moves deeper into the brain until "it gets to the very basic structure of the brain stem that affects things like respiration and heart beat," said Dr. Bret Ginther, an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at UC Irvine. At that point, people may pass out or fall into a coma. Their vital signs may weaken. "The most common cause of death from alcohol poisoning is respiratory arrest," said Ginther. Eventually, the heart simply stops. Getting to that point is fairly unusual. But Ginther said that at least once or twice a month, patients are brought into the emergency room at UCI Medical Center in Orange suffering from alcohol poisoning. College officials say they are always on the lookout for alcohol abuse but say there is no fail-safe method to keep students from drinking. Many colleges try to educate students, especially those caught drinking illegally or causing disruptions. The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention in Newton, Mass, advocates a community-based approach that includes administrators, faculty, police and businesses in the fight to curb binge drinking, in part by being on alert for people abusing alcohol. The center also stresses the importance of parental guidance and urges parents to have frank discussions with their children about excessive drinking. Binge drinking may most seriously lead to______.
Researchers at Yale University Medical School and the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., have taken a pretty good look at what happens in the brain of a drunken driver. And it isn"t pretty. Using【C1】______scans, the scientists compared the neural activity that【C2】______on and off like lights on a police car as both sober【C3】______game. The maps of activity in different areas of the brain【C4】______in new detail the impact that drinking has on a complicated【C5】______task such as driving. "No one had seen that in a scanner【C6】______." said Dr. Godfrey Pearlson, a Yale psychiatrist and director of the Olin Center. Pearlson and Vince Calhoun, a researcher at Yale and Olin, first conducted brain scans on【C7】______drivers as they played the driving simulation game and then as they watched others play the game. Those scans gave the researchers a baseline of【C8】______activity in the unimpaired driver. Subjects were then given a low dose or a high dose of booze—enough to get their blood alcohol content to either 0.04 percent or 0.10 percent. An inebriated driver often will speed because alcohol has affected the cerebellum, a primitive area of the brain involved in【C9】______function, the researchers found. But drunken drivers【C10】______in and out of traffic because of errors in the front parietal cortex, which translates sensory information and helps in the decision-making process, Pearlson said. Drinking did not seem to change activity in five other areas of the brain associated with driving, such as vision centers, the researchers found. But to the surprise of no one, the more the subjects drank, the more trouble they had with their driving. 【C8】
Researchers at Yale University Medical School and the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., have taken a pretty good look at what happens in the brain of a drunken driver. And it isn"t pretty. Using【C1】______scans, the scientists compared the neural activity that【C2】______on and off like lights on a police car as both sober【C3】______game. The maps of activity in different areas of the brain【C4】______in new detail the impact that drinking has on a complicated【C5】______task such as driving. "No one had seen that in a scanner【C6】______." said Dr. Godfrey Pearlson, a Yale psychiatrist and director of the Olin Center. Pearlson and Vince Calhoun, a researcher at Yale and Olin, first conducted brain scans on【C7】______drivers as they played the driving simulation game and then as they watched others play the game. Those scans gave the researchers a baseline of【C8】______activity in the unimpaired driver. Subjects were then given a low dose or a high dose of booze—enough to get their blood alcohol content to either 0.04 percent or 0.10 percent. An inebriated driver often will speed because alcohol has affected the cerebellum, a primitive area of the brain involved in【C9】______function, the researchers found. But drunken drivers【C10】______in and out of traffic because of errors in the front parietal cortex, which translates sensory information and helps in the decision-making process, Pearlson said. Drinking did not seem to change activity in five other areas of the brain associated with driving, such as vision centers, the researchers found. But to the surprise of no one, the more the subjects drank, the more trouble they had with their driving. 【C10】
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