SCI Awareness Month

September is official "Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month."  If you're looking for statistics or other information related to SCIs, you can follow this link to learn more.

I don't have any particularly profound insights to add in commemoration of the month, except to quote the reported axiom of Benjamin Franklin: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

While an ounce of prevention cannot guarantee against injury (if it could, a lot of us would have a lot of ounces), and while a pound of SCI cure is not necessarily available (if it were, a lot of us would also be availing ourselves of a lot of pounds), doing your best to prevent a spinal cord injury is smart when you can do it.   

Thanks to Bryan Camacho, Army Sergeant

Veteran Bryan Camacho (Army Sergeant) was paralyzed twice, once in Iraq and once in the U.S.  His story, featured in the news as he is receiving a new home from the non-profit Home for Troops, is a reminder: please be thankful for our veterans and the lasting sacrifices they make.

Emotions and Physical Recovery

Hmm . . . emotions may directly affect recovery after spinal cord injury.  (I'm not sure how I "feel" about that!) 
In all seriousness, this conclusion seems sensible enough, given the general importance of mental and emotional health for anybody's physical health.  It remains to be seen what the next step would be following this type of a study. 

NervGen Pharma Trials and Scar Tissue

For readers who are watching NervGen Pharma, here's an update on upcoming trials for people with spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis.  If you're new to NervGen, they're working on a peptide (NVG-291) that will allow nerve regeneration in spite of scar tissue.  You can read more about NervGen and NVG-291 here. 
I've talked about scar tissue and various treatments of it several times before: using an EpiPen for SCIs, eating blue M&Ms (yes, M&Ms), injecting nanoparticles, and inserting an internal scaffolding.  All of these different methods tackle the situation of scar tissue which blocks regeneration.  The blue M&M seems like it would be most popular, and I'm keeping an eye on it . . . but it's not that simple!  Caveat lector.