What is the Best Advice for Stroke Survivors?
With Dr. Nick Housley 10th Jul, 21Transcript
What is the Best Advice for Stroke Survivors?
Brain injuries and especially strokes can impair many motor functions of the patient, and he may not be able to perform even a simple task such as picking up a coffee. Nonetheless, you can regain your lost motor function by performing repetitive tasks practice with patience and persistence.
What message would you like stroke and brain injury survivors to hear?
If you or your loved one is a survivor of stroke or any other brain injury, you want to consult various doctors and google. However, a lot of information can be overwhelming for stroke patients and their care partners but what one can take away is a few messages which are following.
1. The nervous system is very flexible
There is always the opportunity for improvement that the nervous system is far more flexible with plastic than we ever thought it was years ago. Thus, you can make it relearn all the activities.
2. Requirement for improvement
The factors that best contribute to the possibility of improvement required challenging the patients to do things in a way that they thought they could not or were not doing before. In this way, you can start performing all those tasks that you want.
3. Repetition and persistence are the keys
Repetition within the context of that challenge and persistence of activity are the only ways we can retrain our brain and make this functional plasticity come alive and be valuable to patients. That is why you need to do repetitive task practice for a certain amount of time every day.
4. There is no shortcut in stroke rehabilitation
The last and most important thing that you have to remember is that you are dealing with a very difficult situation in case of brain injury. You may sometimes over commercialize with a promotional piece on electronic, print, or digital media. It would have one very clear message that there is a pill or a pharmacological agent of some sort, and if you take this, you are going to be all better. You have no responsibility whatsoever.
Unfortunately, that is not the case in stroke rehabilitation, and you have a lot of major responsibilities. So, you cannot allow yourselves to be deceived into believing that the nature of the response to therapy under a situation where you have had a catastrophic injury such as a stroke is an easy fix because it is not. It requires hard work, diligence, and the recognition that with the appropriate training shaping and use of interfaces, such as robotics, you can improve much beyond where you are at a specific time.
Conclusion
In summary, stroke or any other brain injury can be overwhelming because it impairs your basic motor functions. But you need to perform repetitive tasks practice every day for a certain amount of time with patience and persistence in order to relearn all your motor activities.