The North American Brain Injury Society will hold it's 6th Annual Conference on Brain Injury October 2-4, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The conference is the largest annual gathering of North American professionals working in the field of brain injury. Attendees are comprised of basic scientists, rehabilitation physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, social workers, nurses, case managers, legal professionals, advocates and all others working in the field of brain injury.

The 2008 conference will focus on four concurrent education tracks covering the following topic areas:

• Medical-Clinical Best Practices
• Research/Science
• Life Long Living & Working
• Legal Issues in Brain Injury

In all, over 60 of the leading experts from North America will present the latest advances in the science, rehabilitation and treatment of traumatic brain injury. You can access additional information on the conference at the NABIS website here.

For many people with acquired traumatic brain injury, an adequate life care plan is essential. In personal injury cases, where the value of a life care plan is part of the damages, an essential ingredient is the life expectancy of the individual. In New Jersey and many other states, the Courts utilize a gender, race and ethnic neutral life expectancy, utilizing one life expectancy table regardless of gender or race.

Most recently “New government researches found large and growing disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.”

As reported in Sunday’s New York Times, researchers from the Department of Health and Human Services looked at life expectancy, among many other factors, using census data on education, income, poverty and housing to name but a few of the factors looked at.

This finding was similar to a study conducted by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School who reported that in the 1980s and 1990s “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly-educated groups.” This was also similar to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention report in February documenting those with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care than those with lower education and less income.

Since life expectancy represents only the average (50th percentile) life expectancy of Americans, half the population will live longer than the average life expectancy tables. This will have a profound effect in cases where attorneys representing those with acquired traumatic brain injury fail to adequately alert a jury of this potential result.

On Wednesday, March 12, 2008 I had the pleasure of presenting a seminar at the International Rehabilitation Conference (NeuroHabana 2008) in Havana, Cuba.

My presentation was on the topic of “Third Party Observers During Neuropsychological Testing”. Professionals in the Traumatic Brain Injury field from the United States, Cuba, Serbia, Israel and several South American countries were in attendance.

This was a great event and I was proud to have been able to participate with so many other professionals in the TBI field and on such an important topic.

  This NYT article by the well known health and fitness writer, Tara Parker-Pope, dissects the standard push-up.  Here are some highlights from the article.  Read the article in full here:

1. The push-up is a good barometer of overall fitness engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs.
2.  The obesity epidemic has made push-ups more difficult to perform for the average American—pushing up all that extra weight is not easy.
3. The aerobics revolution has shifted emphasis away from maintaining upper body strength, which is not a good thing.
4. Lots of people can’t do push-ups, including for the reasons listed above.  Kids are failing push-up tests at an alarming frequency rate.
5. Being able to do push-ups is particularly important as we age as push-ups can provide the strength and muscle memory to reach out and break a fall, and it’s well known that falls can be debilitating for seniors.
6. People lose strength as they age but regular exercise enlarges muscle fibers and can mitigate the decline.
7.  A 40 year old man should be able to do 27 push-ups.  At age 60, the number is 17.

While the article focuses on the time honored push-up, it is really another wake up call regarding the importance of exercise in life and particularly as we age.  Let’s face, how many 60 year old men can hit the deck and crack out 17 push-ups?  Staying in shape confers huge health and lifestyle benefits as we age.  Push-ups are a good barometer of your overall fitness and should be part of any training program.