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from the what-happens-if-it-strikes-twice dept.
Ferris Jabr writes in Outside Magazine that every year, more than 500 Americans are struck by lightning. Roughly 90 percent of them will survive but those that survive will be instantly, fundamentally altered in ways that still leave scientists scratching their heads.
For example Michael Utley was a successful stockbroker who often went skiing and windsurfing before he was struck by lightning. Today, at 62, he lives on disability insurance. “I don’t work. I can’t work. My memory’s fried, and I don’t have energy like I used to. I aged 30 years in a second. I walk and talk and play golf—but I still fall down. I’m in pain most of the time. I can’t walk 100 yards without stopping. I look like a drunk.”
Lightning also dramatically altered Utley's personality. “It made me a mean, ornery son of a bitch. I’m short-tempered. Nothing is fun anymore. I am just not the same person my wife married." Utley created a website devoted to educating people about preventing lightning injury and started regularly speaking at schools and doing guest spots on televised weather reports.
Mary Ann Cooper, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is one of the few medical doctors who have attempted to investigate how lightning alters the brain’s circuitry. According to Cooper the evidence suggests that lightning injuries are, for the most part, injuries to the brain, the nervous system, and the muscles.
Lightning can ravage or kill cells, but it can also leave a trail of much subtler damage and Cooper and other researchers speculate that chronic issues are the result of lightning scrambling each individual survivor’s unique internal circuitry. "Those who attempt to return to work often find they are unable to carry out their former functions and after a few weeks, when coworkers get weary of 'covering' for them, they either are put on disability (if they are lucky) or fired," writes Cooper. "Survivors often find themselves isolated because friends, family and physicians do not recognize their disability or feel they are 'faking'. (PDF)"
(Score: 1) by dpp on Monday September 29 2014, @06:58PM
That article mentions a few cases where lightning apparently healed/benefit people with various ailments.
Re: a personal interest - nerve damage
I have a spinal injury, medically induced (doctors damaged/severed nerves in my spine during a discectomy ), recovery from which was described as possibly taking many years.
The nerves recover slowly (those not completely severed), hence the - possibly many years. Early on I'd play with placing a tens unit below the near damage area and use it to "fire" muscles which my brain could get the signal to.
Condition only improved for a couple of years, no changes/improvement in the last 15yrs.
I've read up on different approaches beyond - "wait & see what you wind up with".
One method was using tissue, I believe young cells/tissue (say from deceased infants) where it was place "over" the damaged area, where this affective bridges the area & the brain begins send new/additional signals below that area.
Now... the lightning story.
I read of a few cases where people with long-term nerve damage were struck by lightning (some otherwise electrocuted), who after the strike wound up having sensation in the area previously "dead". After therapy and such, functionality was returned to parts of the body long since unused.
Theories -
The brain holds a "map" of how/where signals are sent. The electrocution overloads the brain and "wipes' the map (resets it).
Then when the brain starts going back & using the default (cached/original?) map, and bumps into signals not getting through, it winds up trying different routes, some being ones which weren't "tried" previously, and the signal get routed around the defective paths.
Anyhow....long story, but I personally was very intrigued by the idea. I have a tremendous amount of use in the area below where the nerve damage occurred (leg), such that it wouldn't take but another perhaps 30-40% of the originally affected signal to re-route/re-activate to have near full functionality.
I'll not going off chasing storms with a lightning rod any time soon....however, perhaps once day science will understand the safe+possibly therapeutic levels and be able to use electricity in a medical procedure.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:17PM
Possibly. The body also needs a way to figure out where things need to be. Can't just "regenerate" the wrong stuff in/towards the wrong places.
See also: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2152812/Paralysed-patients-revolutionary-treatment-rats-severed-spinal-cords-taught-sprint-just-TWO-WEEKS.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday October 10 2014, @07:47PM
There seems to be some progress: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26360-a-heroic-family-fight-against-paralysis.html [newscientist.com]