ICU Syndrome | Best Brain Game Is Work | Tainted Supplements

How To Minimize Risk Of ICU-Related Dementia

Richard Langford still has trouble focusing and remembering things 10 years after he spent time in a hospital ICU. Morgan Hornsby for NPR   When A Stay In The ICU Leads To Dementia Imagine you’ve developed a sudden illness and have deteriorated to the point that you have to go into the intensive care unit. Once there, you have hallucinations and spells of delirium. If you’re fortunate enough to survive, your troubles might not be over. After discharge you could be left with a kind of dementia related to your hospitalization. There’s a growing recognition that a stay in the ICU can lead to persistent problems in thinking. Doctors call it post-ICU syndrome, NPR's Richard Harris reports.   It's a cluster of cognitive symptoms that can include anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as delirium, and it affects 30 to 50 percent of all patients who are rushed to the ICU.  Nearly a decade after Richard Langford, a retired minister, was sent to the ICU for complications related to knee-replacement surgery, he's struggling to work his way out of a thicket of deficits that are physical, emotional and cognitive.  But there are ways to minimize the risks, as a second story from Richard Harris explains. Doctors have even developed a checklist to make an ICU safer. “Getting you out of bed early ... cuts delirium in half," says Dr. E. Wesley Ely at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Having family around talking to doctors and nurses also makes a big difference in motivating patients to be alert and get moving.   Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images   Best Brain Game To Stave Off Alzheimer’s Could Be Your Job As a specialist in Alzheimer's prevention, Jessica Langbaum knows that exercising her mental muscles can help keep her thinking sharp. But she doesn't do anything special to boost her brain. "My job is my daily cognitive training," says Langbaum, the associate director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Initiative at the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix. Puzzles and games are less helpful because, unlike a demanding job, they tend to focus on a single narrow task. "If you like crossword puzzles, do them," she tells NPR’s Jon Hamilton. "But try something new. And trying something new that brings you enjoyment is key. Don't do it if you don't like it."   Courtesty of FDA Flickr That Herbal Supplement May Work So Well Because It Actually Contains Viagra Over the years, the Food and Drug Administration has identified hundreds of supplements tainted with pharmaceuticals – from antidepressants to weight-loss drugs to erectile dysfunction remedies. Even after FDA tests showed the supplements contained unapproved or recalled medications, many of the products continued to be marketed and sold, reports Shots contributor Ronnie Cohen. The paper in JAMA Network Open calls into question the FDA's ability to effectively police the $35-billion-a-year supplements industry. "The FDA didn't even bother to recall more than half of the potentially hazardous supplements," says Dr. Pieter Cohen, a Harvard Medical School professor and an internist with Cambridge Health Alliance in Boston, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the journal.   We hope you enjoy these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism on Shots and follow us for daily stories at @NPRHealth.  Your Shots editor, Scott Hensley   You received this message because you're subscribed to our Health emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002