What Are The Neurological And Mechanical Components Of Stroke Recovery?
With Dr. Nick Housley 2nd Sep, 21Transcript
What Are The Neurological And Mechanical Components Of Stroke Recovery?
The stroke recovery process and timeline differ from patient to patient. Neurological and mechanical factors, including age, the severity of the stroke, the degree of rehabilitation, etc., play a role in this process.
How Much Time Does The Rehabilitation Take To Show The Results?
In the stroke recovery process, there is a spectrum of possible outcomes. For instance, some people respond very quickly, and some take more time.
However, when we look at the distribution from the clinical trials, we usually see clinically meaningful improvements in people’s function after around 90 to 100 days, that is around 3 months. For instance, patients can do more tasks that they had trouble with before; or do it quickly and efficiently. It is important because they were not able to do these things before, including folding a towel, picking up a coffee mug, etc.
Would It Be Okay If You Have Very Little Improvement?
It is completely okay if you have very little movement because every stroke is different. It is different in terms of interacting with you and the way your brain is wired and structured. For instance, suppose rehab is like an equation y=mx+b, where on the one side, we have your outcome. However, what we can have on the other side is not just mx+b but a bunch of parameters and variables that dictate your long-term results.
What Neurological And Mechanical Components Affect Stroke Recovery?
There are a lot of neurological and mechanical variables that matter in stroke recovery. For instance, the severity of the stroke, age, focused and intense rehab, muscle engagement in the stroke rehab, consistency, timing, etc. Therefore, when we control these variables, they give us a lot of predictive ability about progress.
For How Much Time Should One Do Rehab?
Further, when we start a rehab, we have to be rational about it. We do not want to go to five or six hours of therapy a day because we may be able to do that for one day. But what is going to happen is that it is not going to be fun. You may not have the capacity to do that, and you might get tired. Resultantly, you will not do anything for the next seven days, and that is not right.
In fact, consistency is the key. Therefore, the best thing to do here is that you may start from maybe 45 minutes or one hour a day. In some instances, even less if you are not able to do it for long and then build up slowly.
It is because there are not only plastic changes occurring in our brain, but there are also mechanics of your limb. The pain, swelling, or inflammation can be a big detractor for your movement, so getting the quality of your tissues better, the swelling down, moving your tissues can be very important. As a result, you might see a reduction in your tone.
Conclusion
You can fasten your progress by controlling neurological and mechanical factors, such as focused and directed rehab for a significant amount of time. As they say, motion is a lotion for your joints and muscles. So when you are able to move, you probably get a return of fluids, and you might get quicker results.