Matthew Phelan sees the world as his stage.
He loves singing, dancing and acting, has an interest in
photography, and one day wants to tour the world as a busker.
The 26-year-old has ambition by the bucket load and endless
determination. He needs it — Phelan has Down Syndrome, and Friday
was World Down Syndrome Day, marking a condition which affects one
New Zealand baby in every 1000. It causes delays in learning and
development because of an extra chromosome in each cell.
Phelan lives independently in a one-bedroomed Christchurch flat,
the walls covered in posters of his favourite …
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According to Oman News: Sultanate, represented by the Health Ministry, will join the World Health Organization (WHO) and other World countries to celebrate the World TB Day which falls on Mar 24th every year which this year is held under the theme "Committed to TB Eradication".Dr. Ali bin Ahmed Ba’omar, head of the Acquired Deficiency Syndrome Combating Department highlighted the disease as one of the major problem faced by the Health Ministry in the past.
Due to the continuous efforts of the programme which extended over 26 years, the registered number of infectious cases …
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Highlights from USA TODAY’s new health blog, “A Better Life,” by medical reporter Rita Rubin:
Men, take prenatal vitamins
Prenatal vitamins for daddy wannabes? A new study suggests that might not be so far-fetched.
California researchers questioned healthy men about their daily intake of folate, zinc and antioxidants such as vitamin C and analyzed their sperm to see how many did not have the normal complement of 23 chromosomes, a situation called aneuploidy. Aneuploidy may account for more than a third of miscarriages and causes a variety of disorders, including Down syndrome.
Turns out that men who consumed the most folate had the fewest sperm with aneuploidy. Researchers found no link between zinc and antioxidants and aneuploidy. Coincidentally, folate supplements already are prescribed to women trying to conceive to reduce the risk of spina bifida and other neural tube defects in their offspring.
The attraction of ripe fruit …
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Betty Stone of Des Plaines since 1954 Services for Betty Stone (nee Ross), 87, will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, March 20, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 855 Lee Street, Des Plaines, where she will lie in state from 12 noon until the time of the services. Entombment will be in Memory Gardens Cemetery, Arlington Heights.
Visitation will be from 3 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, at G.L. Hills Funeral Home, 745 Graceland Ave., Des Plaines. Born Aug. 12, 1920, in Buffalo, N.Y., she ,passed away Sunday, March 16, 2008, in Park Ridge. Betty was a member of the Kiwianis Club, the Des Plaines …
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The mother of a Christchurch teenager with Down syndrome is angry
police have yet to interview the man who allegedly sexually
assaulted her son in a care facility.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, laid a
complaint with police at the start of January that her son had been
sexually assaulted by a fellow resident in a Richmond Fellowship
supervised facility.
She also laid a complaint with lawyer Robert Perry, the
Canterbury’s district inspector, under the Intellectual Disability
(Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act, about the same time.
Detective Sergeant Todd Hamilton, of …
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Philadelphia’s most radiant movie star is Lior Liebling, subject of the poignant and profound documentary Praying With Lior .
On its surface, Ilana Trachtman’s film is a deceptively simple portrait of how a young man’s faith illuminates his family and community. On reflection, it is also a complex account of difference and acceptance, of the emotionally fraught journey from grief into joy.
To hear Lior tell it, he has "Up Syndrome."
"April Fool’s!" laughs the 13-year-old Mount Airy boy on the brink of becoming bar mitzvah, beaming the 500-watt smile that warms everyone in his orbit. In Hebrew, his name means "My light."
Lior has Down syndrome, a difference that has not deterred this son of two rabbis - Mordechai Liebling and the late Devorah Bartnoff - from his studies, religious or secular.
Lior’s joie de vivre is contagious. …
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It’s good news for Terry Pratchett, Britain’s highest-profile Alzheimer’s sufferer. Alzheimer’s syndrome is a disease of old age that could lie in wait for any of us and sometimes ambushes those who think of themselves as merely middle aged. Terry Pratchett is 59. The good news is that research is showing that cannabis slows down memory loss. The recent report from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has involved mice, but is now moving towards human trials.
This won’t come as a surprise to America’s Drug Watch Oregon, whose Marijuana Research Review has been publishing for decades the many investigations and tests going forward on marijuana. With 400 chemicals present in the plant it’s hardly surprising it has diverse, sometimes contradictory, effects. Many of the Review’s findings have come with substantial warnings that the ever-stronger forms of the drug common in the 1990s, carry a whole variety of risks: adverse effect on the immune system; interference with the capacity to control body heat; short-term memory loss; and an impaired ability to learn.
Reports also found that smoking marijuana enhanced abnormalities in some multiple sclerosis patients. So this latest news is by no means a call to return to the weed by those for whom 50 years ago it was simply part of a free-wheeling lifestyle. There is an irony, though, in the thought that those same independent spirits now in their sixties may be needing it for an altogether more serious condition.
The fact is the Oregon Health Division has just expanded the state’s medical programme by adding Alzheimer’s disease to those conditions that qualify for state-sanctioned marijuana use. Their 1998 initiative already allows it in cases of cancer, glaucoma, HIV/ Aids, severe nausea, seizures, and persistent muscle spasms.
But Oregon is not expecting a rush. A representative from among Oregon’s 60,000 Alzheimer’s patients calls for “an extensive scientific study… to examine both positive and negative effects”. “That clearly has not happened yet, and we really cannot endorse it at this point,” he said. The good news for Terry Pratchett is that work is going forward steadily to find a treatment.
For me, the fear of losing my memory is even more haunting than the prospect of death. The older I get the more I realise I am defined by all that I have done and known, and when memories begin to thin out, something intrinsic to my sense of identity goes too. We can’t recall everything that’s happened: the brain would choke on its own superabundance.
And there is no doubt some peace of mind to be gained in repressing traumatic and damaging occasions. I have always been suspicious of those talking cures that insist on retrieving long- dormant pain and suffering. But old age is made up of memories and living with them is saner than living without them.
I sat with friends recently thumbing through old photograph albums in which we all figured. Each of us remembered different faces and circumstances. Each had forgotten different things. That is part of being old. And incidentally the final use for all those accumulating heaps of old snaps. Forgetfulness shades only gradually into memory-loss. The daily trivia begins to recur more often: where did we leave the keys, what did I come upstairs to fetch, have I told this anecdote to you before? Long before… or half an hour ago?
So worry creeps up on us, wondering how soon to ask the doctor, go for tests. The British are more reticent than the Germans who apparently turn up early and are put on appropriate drugs sooner. Old people fear making a fuss, and are so often treated with casual disregard by society that they simply shut up and put up. This won’t do any longer.
The government spends on Alzheimer’s research a mere 3 per cent of what it spends on cancer. Given the demographic trends that predict a steady rise in the proportions of us over 50, Alzheimer’s deserves a higher priority. Pratchett has been afflicted for two and a half years : he has just finished his latest novel and begun the next. He believes that in future a combination of lifestyle and drugs may hold back the development of his Alzheimer’s into the seriously disabling dementia we all fear.
Alzheimer’s is a private ailment and a private dread. How many of us have aged parents drifting silently into a world of unknowing. But with people like Pratchett speaking out and scientific researches making the headlines the Government must be left in no doubt that this is an issue with a growing constituency. They must not let it slip their memory!
joan.bakewell@virgin.net
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Because it is divided into weight classes, amateur wrestling has athletes of all sizes. Sometimes, females wrestle males. But again this season, wrestlers across the USA have shown the inclusiveness of the sport goes beyond that.
In South Dakota, fans at the state high school tournament gave a standing ovation to a fourth-place finisher who lost a leg in a truck accident last summer. In California, a high school senior with Down syndrome finished his career to cheers without ever winning a match. In Ohio, a wrestler who lost the lower parts of both legs and arms to a childhood blood disorder went 40-4 and made the state tournament. In Maryland, a blind wrestler competed at high school states.
Next week in St. Louis, Arizona State freshman Anthony Robles will wrestle in the 125-pound class of the NCAA DivisionI championships. Born with one leg, he has a 19-7 …
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