Study on Movement Time of Individual after Stroke

Stroke is a sudden death of brain cells because of oxygen deficiency due to rupture of an artery supplying the brain or blockage of blood flow. Paralysis of one side of the body to hinder movement together with weakness and loss of speech are some of the results of a stroke.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability in the world. Deficiency in motor function after stroke affects mobility, limits activities of daily living, participation in professional activities and society.

All these factors lower quality of life hence the need for rehabilitation training to reduce motor impairments.

Reducing Movement time of individual after stroke with CI Therapy

The duration takes to gain movement after stroke rehabilitation depends on the severity of the stroke and other relating complications. Some survivors recover quickly, but some spend months or years getting rehabilitation.

The belief for many years is that rehabilitation requires the use of traditional physical therapy methods but constraint –induced (CI) movement therapy is allowing faster recovery in a time short as two weeks. Unlike other methods that target a period of six months to a year.

Data after study on CI movement therapy shows that it is two –week regimen that produces substantial improvement. It allows patients to regain much of lost ability to move a leg or an arm even in patients who got stroke years ago.

CI therapy is a cavalry charge that restores function by the expansion of the motor area in the brain to allow regaining of a substantial portion in the area to perform its original purpose. The name of the process is a cortical reorganization.

During CI therapy, the patients will spend two weeks a day patient at a hospital clinic to undergo intensive physical therapy training. The patient performs intensive physical therapy that involves training the affected arms every day for six hours forcing a renewal in stimulation to the areas of the brain that was not in use.

It is different from conventional therapy that a patient gets for 30-60 minutes a day for two or three times a week. It takes weeks or a few months but rarely reaches 24 hours of treatment. CI therapy has an extended nature called “massed practice” to make it more therapeutic.

Results of CI therapy are striking because they enable a patient to gain the ability to use the affected arm for activities such as dressing, signing names, brushing the teeth and other tasks of daily living. However, CI is still under experiment mainly in the US until clinical trials prove to be effective in a large group of patients.

Physical Activities to Reduce Movement Time of Individual after Stroke

These approaches to stroke rehabilitation help to reduce the time it takes to regain movement will depend on the severity of a patient’s condition.

Mobility training: Teaches a patient to use mobility aids like a cane, walker, ankle brace or wheelchair. An ankle brace stabilizes and strengthens the ankle to help it support the body weight when learning to walk again.

Motor skill: These are exercises to improve coordination and muscle strength. It might also require therapy to strengthen swallowing ability.

The range of motion therapy: Exercises and treatments that ease spasticity (muscle tension) and help in regaining range of motion.

Constraint-induced therapy: It is also called forced-use therapy because it involves restraining of the healthy limb when a patient is practicing to move the limb affected by stroke to improve its function.

Mental Practice to Boost the Movement Time Of Individual after Stroke

It is essentials for a patient to start addressing the psychological stuff because stroke also affects brain functionality to improve its ability to initiate movement. A simple mental practicing (visualizing) rehab exercises helps to activate neuro-plasticity in a similar way to physical activities. Noninvasive brain stimulation techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation also have some success in improving motor skills.

Combining mental practice with physical practice helps patients to gain better results by reducing movement time after a stroke.