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Expanding life
By Denisa Udroiu
Accidents can be disabling, but the research and findings allow more and more people to regain more control of their lives. A quite simple exercise has been more and more used to help people who lost a member or the use of it, to get rid of the excruciating pain or to regain the use of it.
Already more than 10 years ago American researchers reported an experiment with victims of stokes left with one side of the body paralysed. Cerebral vascular attack is the third case of death in the industrialised world, leaving 90% of survivors with some deficit, and 30% of victims disabled. Researchers found that hiding the unfit member behind a mirror, in such way that the person sees only the valid member duplicated in the mirror, and exercising this valid member while watching in the mirror is accelerating recovery. The reason would be that the brain is tricked into believing it has to coordinate 2 valid members- 2 arms, for example- and therefore transmits the impulses necessary to the correct movements, speeding up recovery. Also, participants to the experiment reported preferring this method over others.
The same exercise has been adopted by the American military doctors since 2006, for the amputees Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers. Soldiers who agreed to exercise the healthy member for 5 days / week, 15 minutes / day, for one or two months, saw a dramatic decrease in the pain of the absent member. This pain, the phantom limb pain, as it is known, is lasting years after the amputation, can affect 95% of the amputees and it resists pretty well painkillers. Although not efficient in 100% of cases, the exercise with the mirror, compared with other traditional methods, is bringing a quicker and sharp reduction in pain and retrains the member so well that some people reported using the prosthesis for driving, for example.
On the high-tech side, there are under development virtual games aimed at producing the same effect- trick the brain into thinking it is moving the absent limb- but the mirror has the advantage of the price- about 20 euros compared to several thousands for the virtual games.
More on this topic:
- an article from CNN Health covering the story of soldiers having used the mirror technique
- a video from UPI showing how the exercises are done
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