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KENOSHA NEWS | TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019 | D1

Question: I just started getting ketamine IV infusions two weeks ago, after I heard about the Spravato nasal spray. After a few days, I’m a person again!

I haven’t really laughed or enjoyed anything at all for more than 20 years. That’s my entire adult life. I just got a life given back to me, and all I feel now is hope and gratitude. Nothing has been even close to how ketamine has transformed me.

I’ve been on more than a dozen antidepressants over that time, prescribed by half a dozen psychi-atrists. Some things helped, but nothing like this. This isn’t a placebo. No way.

I’ve suffered long enough and have grappled with suicide for years. That’s all gone now. This medication saved my life. It should be accessible to everyone who needs it. All I can think now is this: It’s sure exciting to be alive!

Answer: Over the past several years, psychiatrists have been reporting that ketamine infusions can act quickly to alleviate treatment-resistant depression (American Journal of Psychiatry, March 29, 2019; Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, Nov. 27, 2018).

Such pilot studies probably touched off the research leading to the esketamine (Spravato) nasal spray that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved for hard-to-treat depression. We are delighted that you have achieved such a good response.

Treatment for cluster headachesQuestion: I have suffered from repeated cycles

of cluster headaches. They’ve come every three to five years since the early 1990s. Each cycle lasts four to six weeks, with multiple headaches daily.

The neurologist I saw came up with a solution: prednisone and verapamil as preventive medi-cine and Zomig as an emergency measure. After I started on this regimen, I experienced a headache from eating an excessive amount of chocolate. (I knew alcohol could trigger a cluster headache, but the chocolate was a surprise.)

I took one Zomig tablet without relief. I took a second one 45 minutes later and the headache was gone in seven minutes. This has worked for me, so I have never needed to use the oxygen treatment.

Answer: Cluster headaches are incredibly pain-ful, and they can be difficult to treat. High-flow oxy-gen is a first-line therapy (Headache, July 2016). So are sumatriptan shots or zolmitriptan nasal spray (Zomig). Verapamil is a blood pressure pill that is sometimes used off-label as a preventative approach for cluster headaches.

If you would like to learn more about oxygen or alternatives such as melatonin for cluster headache, you may wish to read our Guide to Headaches and Migraines. To order a copy, please send $3 in check or money order with a long (No. 10), stamped (70 cents), self-addressed envelope to: Graedons’ People’s Phar-macy, No. M-98, P.O. Box 52027, Durham, NC 27717-2027. It can also be downloaded for $2 from our website: www.peoplespharmacy.com.

Unlike migraines, cluster headaches aren’t usually linked to triggers. However, you may not be the only one who reacts badly to alcohol or chocolate.

Open nasal passages for nighttime breathingQuestion: Sometimes people write to you about

nasal congestion at night. This happened fre-quently to me until I started using SnoreCare nasal vents. These really open my nasal passages, and I no longer feel congested. I hope you will pass this hint along.

Answer: It comes as no surprise that nasal conges-tion could interfere with nighttime breathing (Euro-pean Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, September 2011). Doctors generally prescribe steroid nasal sprays such as Flonase or a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine for such problems. However, nasal vents or nasal strips such as Breathe Right can improve nasal breathing (Pulmonary Medicine, Dec. 13, 2016).

Ketamine reversed

years of depression

BY HILLARY DAVIS

LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., — The patients gathered around tables at Los Alamitos Medical Center speak clearly and strongly. It’s no coinci-dence. The power of their individual voices is threatened by their shared diagnoses.

They are living with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive, degenerative neurological condition that affects movement — not just obvious motor skills but the abilities to speak and to swallow. To keep and improve their voices — and by extension, their agency and identity — they participate in specialized speech therapy called Loud Crowd.

“May, me, my,” they chant in unison as a warm-up, the M sounds buzzing. “Moe, moo.”

“I like that voice,” speech-lan-guage pathologist and Loud Crowd creator Samantha Elandary tells one of the men. “It sounds good.”

With her trained ear, Elandary can hear the tell-tale softening and slowing caused when neurons die and stop producing the neurotrans-mitter dopamine, which sends mes-sages to throat muscles that direct their normal function.

She has patients put effort into their words without shouting. This is what she calls speaking with intent, using pathways in the brain that are less reliant on dopamine.

“We need to be in control of our voices,” she encourages the bunch.

They hold a monotone “ahh” for about five seconds, gliding their voices to higher and lower registers to drill the use of inflection. They

count and read aloud, connecting words and sounds the way they might stitch together if written in cursive.

Los Alamitos Medical Center was one of 92 clinics and hospitals nationwide to win grants last year in order to offer Loud Crowd and its sister program, Speak Out, to patients like Sam Sebabi.

Like the others in the therapy group, Sebabi, 71, is older and ac-complished. He speaks with the lilt of his native Uganda.

He was diagnosed with Parkin-son’s nine years ago, and though his doctors tell him he has a slow-pro-gressing form, his voice began to falter. He described his speech as “babbling.”

“By nature I have a loud voice, and when I stammer, people have a hard time understanding me,” he says.

He fancies himself funny and competitive. With the Loud Crowd therapy, Sebabi, who now lives in Signal Hill, Calif., regained his confidence.

“Before, I was avoiding people,” he said.

Los Alamitos neurologist George Wang explains that as neurons, or nerve cells in the brain, die off,

patients lose coordination. This can lead to tremors, shuffled gait and slurred, stuttering or whispery speech. Wang says directed speech therapy maximizes the remaining potential ability, but cannot reverse degeneration.

The conscious effort Elandary stresses as a foundation of speech maintenance can also save lives. Speech, eating and breathing rely on the same muscles, all of which are impacted by Parkinson’s. She says the majority of deaths in Parkinson’s patients are caused by aspiration pneumonia, a lung infec-tion that develops after breathing in food, saliva or stomach acid instead of swallowing.

Speech therapist Lynn Gallandt, who works at the medical center, says the mechanics of speech are automatic in healthy people.

“We don’t have to think about our breathing, where our tongue is,” she says.

As Parkinson’s forces movements to get smaller, speech patterns change. Though the disease is pro-gressive and has no cure, patients can gain back some control through their vocal exercises.

“I see hope,” Gallandt says. “I see them starting to realize, ‘I have a voice again.’ ”

Elandary started Loud Crowd 20 years ago in her Texas living room as a monthly speech and social group that follows the foundational program started by Speak Out.

The programs have been repli-cated worldwide.

To learn more, visit parkinson-voiceproject.org.

Parkinson’s disease patients find their voices

again with help from speech therapists

LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTO

Samantha Elandary, right, the founder and CEO of the Parkinson Voice Project, and Lynn Gallandt, a speech therapist with the Los Alamitos Medical Center, lead a therapy session of Parkinson’s disease patients at the Los Alamitos Medical Center on March 13.

SPEECH, EATING

and breathing rely on

the same muscles, all of

which are impacted by

Parkinson’s.

BY FIZA PIRANI

THE ATLANTA

JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

No matter how good your diet or exercise regimen is, some folks just can’t seem to get the toned abs of their dreams.

According to new research published this month in the journal Plastic and Reconstruc-tive Surgery, a technique called abdominal etch-ing can help create the often-desired “six-pack abs” for males and three vertical lines for fe-males.

The procedure, accord-ing to lead researcher

Tarik M. Husain of the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, involves “power-assisted” targeted liposuction as “a novel method of sculpting an ideal abdomen.”

The technique, he said in a statement to Wolters Kluwer Health, is both safe and effective.

Researchers tested the procedure in a study of 26 men and 24 women (average age of 36 years), all of whom were in good shape, ate well and exer-cised regularly, but had “certain resistant areas of fat” that kept them from

achieving the ab definition they wanted.

According to the find-ings, none of the 50 pa-tients experienced major complications following the abdominal etching procedure, though minor complications did occur in 22 percent of patients. These minor issues in-volved some over-etching that improved overtime, and some patients (10 percent) developed sero-mas, or fluid collections, which were quickly managed.

Overall, 98 percent of patients said they were satisfied with the results,

despite a 27-month postop-erative follow-up involv-ing wearing foam dress-ings for weeks on end.

And they’ve main-tained their results through abdominal etch-ing for up to six years, according to the study.

“The patients exemplify that the procedure can be performed with optimal aesthetic results, and min-imal postoperative com-plications,” Husain said, noting that abdominal etching requires extensive postoperative manage-ment, plus nutrition and training to maintain long-term results.

Abdominal etching: Patients get ‘six-pack abs’

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