One day longer than the next....

Well, mother went back to the eye doctor
and he rechecked her eye pressure in both
eyes, he also retested her for glaucoma and
the results there were GREAT! Mother does
not have glaucoma so this is VERY GOOD
NEWS! Now her M.D. has to start scheduling
the other test like MRI and Cat Scan of her
head to see what is going on with the very bad
headaches she been having.

We don't know what to expect here because
of the 22 bleeds she had in her brain when she
had the double strokes that were caused by the
medicine given to her when she was in the ER
with her heart attack last year.

With all of this happening it just fast forwarded
the dementia she has, and it has not only been
very hard on her but on us also.
One day seems longer than the day before
each time. And all you can do is ask when will it
end, not just for us but for her also? It is so hard
to see her in the condition that she's in knowing for
a fact she doesn't want to be or like it and does
not understand what is truly going on, but knows
that something is and that things just aren't right
as she put it with her.

Of course that can go for any one person that is in
the same condition, not with the same medical
problems but with any that are life threatening.
Doesn't matter if it's cancer, diabetes, leukemia
what ever it might be. It's so hard on the person
that has it and the family of the person.

You sit there and ask what you can do to help
and or make it better but in reality there is nothing
you can do except to just keep praying.

Now Glaucoma...with everything else

Since my mother had the light heart attack a few wks.
ago as the doctor called it, we've had to have her
checked for pressure on the eyes or in the eyes.
Not sure how that goes but any rate the doctor
wanted her ck'd for the eyes first before he does
any other testing such as the MRI or CAT SCAN
then he will go ahead and do the others on her
head to see if she is by chance bleeding again in
the brain like she did before.

So the nursing home made an appt. with the eye
doctor and wk. before last she went and the doctor
said there was no pressure on her eyes but he did find
she had glaucoma and it was located in the back of the
eyes if I understand correctly.
So now she has to go back this wk. again and he is
going to test her one more time for pressure on the/in
the eyes and then I will find out more about the glaucoma.
The nurse did tell me mother would be loosing her sight
but I didn't find out if it would be quick or slow. If that does
happen, it's gonna be KATY BAR THE DOOR cause mother
will not take to that well at all and then that just adds more on me!

As I said I know nothing about glaucoma, but I have looked up
a bit of info and added it below and I will be adding more after
I talk to the doctor on this next visit with mother.

Ya know just when you think you might have a very small
handle on things concerning a family member with severe
health problems, then something else sneaks in to let you
know you don't!
I am hoping against all odds it looks like that this is or will
be fixable but what from I'm hearing it's not.

More later when we go back to the next appt. and I'm still hoping
for better news.

Some info on Glaucoma

Definition
By Mayo Clinic staff

 Movement of fluid in the eye
               Open-angle glaucoma
                                 Angle-closure glaucoma

Glaucoma is not just one eye disease, but a group of eye
conditions resulting in optic nerve damage, which causes
loss of vision. Abnormally high pressure inside your eye
(intraocular pressure) usually, but not always, causes this
damage.


Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness.
Sometimes called the silent thief of sight, glaucoma can
damage your vision so gradually you may not notice any
loss of vision until the disease is at an advanced stage.
The most common type of glaucoma, primary open-angle
glaucoma, has no noticeable signs or symptoms except
gradual vision loss.

Early diagnosis and treatment can minimize or prevent
optic nerve damage and limit glaucoma-related vision loss.
It's important to get your eyes examined regularly, and make
sure your eye doctor measures your intraocular

Movement of fluid in the eye

Aqueous humor continuously circulates from behind the iris

into the anterior chamber at the front of the eye. It exits where
the iris and the cornea meet. The fluid filters through a spongy
tissue containing microscopic channels (trabecular meshwork)
before passing into a larger channel called Schlemm's canal,
where it eventually merges with the bloodstream. ]

Angle-closure glaucoma

In angle-closure glaucoma, the angle formed by the
cornea and the iris closes. In this illustration, the iris
is plastered against the trabecular meshwork, which
prevents the aqueous humor from reaching the drainage
channels (see black arrow). This can lead to a rapid
 increase in intraocular pressure, a serious medical
 condition.

 Open-angle glaucoma

In this illustration the trabecular
meshwork is partially blocked,
impairing the flow of aqueous
fluid out of the eye (see black
arrow). This blockage of the
trabecular meshwork leads to
a gradual increase in intraocular
pressure. Within months or years,
an elevated pressure can result in
vision loss

 Anatomy of the eye

Your eye is a complex and
compact structure measuring
about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters)
in diameter. It receives
millions of pieces of information
about the outside world,
which are quickly processed by
your brain.
http://www.maycoclinic.com/



www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com
Is It Early-Stage Glaucoma? New Tests May
Provide the Answer

Loss of vision in people with glaucoma is due
to a progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells --
the cells that transmit visual information from
the retina to the brain through the optic nerve.
Doctors use a visual field test, also known as
perimetry, to detect the resulting functional vision
loss. The problem: Researchers now know that at
 least 50% of retinal ganglion cells are lost before
vision problems are identified on standard visual
field tests.
Some of the efforts to more accurately identify
early-stage glaucoma have focused on methods
that can better determine whether functional visual
loss has occurred.

Functional changes. By testing your visual field,
your doctor can learn whether your peripheral
vision is being lost from glaucoma. During a
computerized visual field test, you place your
chin on a stand in front of a computerized screen.
Whenever you see a flash of light appear, you
press a button. At the end of this test, your
doctor receives a printout of your field of vision.

•The most commonly used and best-studied test
displays white lights on a white background, but
some researchers have demonstrated that short-
wavelength automated perimetry (SWAP), which
uses blue lights on a yellow background, may
detect defects from glaucoma earlier.

•Another method of checking peripheral vision is
electroencephalography (EEG) using multifocal
visual evoked potentials (mfVEP). During VEP testing,
special sensors (electrodes) are placed on your scalp
to record your brain's response to visual stimuli, such
as flashing lights that flicker from black on white to white
on black on a video screen. In a person with normal vision,
repeated stimulation of the visual field evokes changes on
the EEG. But if there are no EEG changes, the brain is not
receiving signals from the eyes, suggesting loss of vision.
Multifocal VEP records separate responses from
multiple visual field locations.
•Another test, frequency doubling technology (FDT)
perimetry, has a unique approach to evaluating peripheral
vision in glaucoma. This test is based on an optical illusion
that can occur when viewing patterns of black and white
parallel bars. For some people, when the pattern is flashed
on the screen at a high speed, the number of bars appears
to double. Some research suggests that this illusion arises
from specific retinal ganglion cells, which have a high
tendency to get damaged in glaucoma.

K2 OR NOT TO K2

I do not know anything about this new or
so called new product (for lack of a better
word) that's out there in public or in our
society today. I have heard as probably the
rest of you about this on the news here and there.
I am concerned about it as I'm sure many of
you are because of how easy it is to get by our
 young kids!
I am starting to hear some horror stories about kids
being rushed to the hospital because of smoking this
K2 and the heart attacks, brain hemorrhages and
what ever else.
I have inserted below a small report from Newsweek's
home page, just some info on this K2, and I will be in
the future adding more things about it from the research
that I can find and check.

Newsweek Homepage


Close Search Fake-Pot Panic


Local media is abuzz about 'K2'. A scary drug, or just another drug scare?


Jack Shafer, the media columnist at Slate, is famous for pointing out "bogus trend stories," especially those involving drug use. Of them, he once said, "Whenever I fall into a funk over the press corps' abysmal coverage of illicit drugs, I console myself with the knowledge that, as awful as the coverage is, it's always been that way." He's even blasted drug coverage in sister publications The Washington Postand NEWSWEEK.


What would he make of all the recent stories about K2, or "fake marijuana," which is essentially a legal, smokable form of psychoactive potpourri? Breathless news reports about the substance have been popping up all over in the last few days. If you live in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, or Wisconsin, you've probably seen one. Maybe you even caught a Missouri detective's panicked prediction that K2 is "going to end up killing somebody." As far as we know, though, it hasn't. Why is it suddenly getting all this attention?


There's a legitimate news hook for some of these stories: Kansas became the first state to ban K2 last week, and there are similar bills pending in Nebraska and North Dakota. But why the states are banning the stuff now is unclear. K2 isn't new. It's been around since the mid-'90s, when John Huffman, a Clemson University chemist, synthesized a substance he called JWH-018. The chemical was structurally similar to THC, the active ingredient in pot, and apparently quite a bit more potent. (There's a good explanation of the science here.) Like its illicit cousin, JWH-018 made users mellow and euphoric. Pot enthusiasts picked up on Huffman's work, mixed or bought batches of JWH-018 themselves, and started spraying it onto varying mixes of dried herbs, flowers, and tobacco leaves. The result was K2—a.k.a. "Spice," "Genie," or "Zohai"—which quickly caught on in head shops and on the Internet as a way to get high without breaking the law. Although the federal Drug Enforcement Agency has listed K2 as a "drug or chemical of concern," it isn't officially "scheduled," and that makes it legal (unless you're buying it in Kansas).


Is JWH-018 dangerous? No one really knows. There's not a lot of research on what it does to mice and almost nothing on what it does to humans. Its effects shouldn't be that different from marijuana's, but then, we could argue all day about how dangerous marijuana is. Even researchers who have found that pot use has long-term detrimental effects, like the link to psychosis that was announced earlier this week, tend to qualify their statements by noting that the link is "by no means simple" and arguing that we need a lot more research.


Maybe there's been an explosion in K2 use, then, and that's what people are flipping out about? This story from Arizona quotes a smoke-shop owner saying that "the trend has just exploded in the last 60 days," but one guy in Phoenix does not a compelling data source make. In St. Louis, Anthony Scalzo, a pediatrician and toxicologist at Saint Louis University Hospital, says he's seen nearly 30 teenagers come through local ERs suffering from bad trips on K2 just in the last six weeks, but this is an aberration. Scalzo says he's spoken with his counterparts at poison-control centers in Atlanta, New Jersey, and New York City. Their recent case loads, respectively: 12, 2, and 0. And no one's tracking K2-related medical cases nationwide. There is a database, the National Poison Data System, that could. But Scalzo says, "It doesn't even have a code for K2."


More likely, the greater danger involved in buying K2 stems from the fact that it's an unregulated mixture of God knows what. "You don't know what you're getting," says Scalzo. "It's buyer-beware."


That leaves Scalzo very worried about the kids coming through the ERs in his area, because they aren't acting like you might expect a K2 user to act. "They're jacked up. They're agitated and anxious, sometimes delirious," Scalzo says. "And they're completely surprised by what has happened to them, because they were just expecting to get mellow." Scalzo also notes that cannabinoids (a fancy word for potlike chemicals) "have protective effects on the cardiovascular system, which again goes against the grain of what we are seeing with cardiovascular stress with K2." In other words, these kids' hearts are racing and their blood pressure is way up—which is exactly the opposite of what it should be on K2. All this, Scalzo says, "leads me to conclude that we may have a contaminant in the product."


Nobody wants to start a "bad batch" scare. So Scalzo is trying to find out through scientific means—rather than speculation—if there is indeed something toxic in some bags of K2 being sold in the Midwest. He recently sent an alert to Missouri ERs advising them that local K2 "may be tainted with an unidentified substance that is causing untoward adrenergic-like [i.e., stimulating] effects." It also says, "We do NOT suspect that the untoward adrenergic-like effects are due to [JWH-018]." Then it asks the ERs to collect urine samples from suspected K2 users. One problem: so far, most patients don't want to cooperate, which means that evidence will be slow to materialize. That won't stop newspapers or local TV stations, we suspect, from running sensationalist stories about the dangers of K2 in the meantime.

? kombucha ?

I don't know anything about this drink
other than there seems to be alot more
of a rush to take it from the shelves and
to ban it now.


There seems to be a problem with it
having a little bit of alcohol in it and it's
not being labeled as having any in it.


But when something is fermented doesn't
that mean it's got at least a percentage of
some alcohol in it...that's why it is fermented!


I really just wanted to get some kind of information
out to ones that by chance haven't heard anything
about it yet to be careful with this product and do
more research on it and ask other people about it,
because if you can not drink for what ever the reason
and or on medication, then you need to be very care
with what is taken.


There is some other info on this product just below
from a news station in Washington, please read it
may give some insight.
Thank you.

A BAN on KOMBUCHA (tea)

Kombucha Ban


Staff Reporter
07/28/2010 ShareThis

Kombucha is a type of tea that's been around for centuries, but has recently become quite popular. It's usually found in health food stores. People who drink it say it has many benefits. But now it's been pulled from stores in Seattle and across the country because of its fluctuating alcohol content. KUOW's Meghan Walker has the story.

TRANSCRIPT

Chris Joyner is in his fermentation room in Seattle's Central District. It's a tiny room in the back of his kitchen, which is filled with empty kombucha bottles.

Joyner: "Its 78 in here. Do you smell vinegar?"

Walker: "Yup."

Joyner: "Yeah it's a strong smell of vinegar. So we've got two shelves and a number of 10 gallons containers here. And, a few fruit flies, which we keep out by covering the containers with cloths and rubber bands."
Joyner is the founder of local kombucha brand called Communitea; that's tea with a T–E–A.


Joyner: "So it starts with making tea and we've got a big steam kettle here it's a 40 gallon steam kettle. And we make a tea concentrate. So we heat say 30 gallons of water in this. We use green tea because it has more antioxidants and polyphenols."


Kombucha is a fermented tea made from yeast and bacteria. Joyner has been making it for 17 years. Regular drinkers claim it aids digestion, sleep and weight loss. But Joyner, along with all other kombucha bottlers in the country, have halted sales on their bubbly teas. That's because the alcohol content is fluctuating unpredictably. It's going above 0.5 percent on some batches, which is the legal limit for non–alcoholic beverages.


Joyner: "Since we didn't understand why it had changed so quickly, we felt that it was better for us to stop selling because, we need to be able to trust labels. Pregnant women, people recovering from alcohol problems need to be able to look at a label and if it says less than 0.5 percent, they need to know that it actually is. And although ours sometimes is, it obviously isn't, all the time. So we stopped selling."


The tea began vanishing from grocery stores last month after the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, suggested testing on commercial kombucha brands. As a result, nearly every bottler has suspended sales until further notice. Joyner's trying to find a way to manage the alcohol levels on his own tea.


Joyner: "It's kind of a dance. The sugar levels go down as the yeast eats the sugar, so the alcohol levels rise. And then the bacteria eat the alcohol, and that makes the alcohol go down and the acids rise. So there are several things happening. I'm testing every day now, I've gotten testing equipment so that I can test all those things everyday and find out how this works. Perhaps there's some simple way by changing the temperature or changing the amount of sugar or changing the time, and have it be predictable and stable."
Nailing down the alcohol percentage in each batch will be a time–consuming process. Cecile Andrews of Seattle is a regular kombucha drinker. She's disappointed that she can't buy the tea in stores or from Joyner.


Andrews: "I mean I have never felt any effects of alcohol from it, I have never! And it's so crazy. I mean it's great that Chris is being as responsible as he can, why not just put a label on it: may contain some alcohol."
And the amount of alcohol, Andrews says, doesn't merit federal regulation.


Andrews: "Their time can be spent better elsewhere than focusing on this little thing that not that many people drink, and that those of us who do, do it for health reasons, we're not doing it to get drunk. And it's like, you know, why not get our priorities straight?"


There are pasteurized versions of kombucha in stores; that process eliminates the alcohol. But Joyner is among those who believe the raw kombucha has a healthier kick.


Joyner: "Kombucha helps your body detoxify. It would be a way to remove heavy metals that come in from things like fillings. That was how we started. We were at a homeopaths office and he suggested having amalgam fillings removed because that has mercury which is a toxin. And kombucha then is a way to help that process after you've stopped adding it to your system by taking the fillings out, then the kombucha will help your liver be more effective at detoxifying your body."


Joyner used to sell his kombucha in bulk to the Fremont PCC store. The store invested in a kombucha keg last month, which now stands dry. Leon Bloom is PCC's deli manager.


Bloom: "It's hard to say you know, it seems like maybe this is one of those situations where the letter of the law and the reality don't completely match up. I don't know that a probiotic beverage with a trace amount of alcohol should necessary be regulated the same as an alcoholic beverage."
But, that's what might happen. In order to sell the raw kombucha with fluctuating alcohol levels, bottlers will have to get an alcohol license. Chris Joyner is now considering doing just that.


Joyner: "I'm sure we'll be able to sell it, it's just a question of whether people who've always looked at kombucha as being in a different category, how they would feel about it if all of a sudden it was being sold as an alcoholic beverage, but we'll just have to see."
But some kombucha lovers can't wait. Joyner also sells yeast and bacteria masses, called kombucha mothers. You use them to make the tea at home.


Walker: "Is it fairly easy to get your own culture and make it yourself?"


Joyner: "Well, like a lot of things, it's not hard to do, but it's hard to do well."


Leon Bloom from PCC thinks some customers won't wait for the tea to return. He wouldn't be surprised to see a rise in bathtub kombucha in Seattle.


For KUOW News, I'm Meghan Walker.
© Copyright 2010, KUOW