Juli the OT Student

TED talk by Lisa Genova I chose to do my neuro note on Alzheimer’s because I wanted to learn more about it this neurological disease. Alzheimer’s occurs when amyloid betta accumulates in the brains synapses forming amyloid plaque. Once the plaque reaches a tipping point is when someone starts to experience the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.   Before I listened to the TED talk I thought that if a person had the Alzheimer’s gene they inevitably got the disease.   This is not 100% true. Having the gene is one small component of getting Alzheimer’s and even then, you are still not guaranteed to get this neurological disease. Lisa mentioned a few ways that a person can decreases their chance of getting Alzheimer’s, these include; getting adequate sleep, aerobic exercise, and decent cardiovascular health (diabetes, smoking, obesity, hypertension). However, Lisa’s main solution to preventing Alzheimer’s has to do with neuroplasticity. In class I learned that neuroplasticity is the...

The message of the Do-Live-Well framework is “what you do everyday matters”, and it is essential to one’s health and wellbeing. There are four sections in this framework: 1. dimensions of experience, 2. activity patterns, 3. health and wellbeing outcomes, and 4.   forces influencing activity engagement. This frame work is a guide a person uses to reflect on the time used in occupations. This helps identify disrupted dimensions of experience that interrupts a person’s well-being. An OT might use this framework to assess the time a client dedicates to occupation and compare it to their quality of life. This theory does clearly state what is function and what is not functional. However, I strongly believe functional would be classified as a client dedicating time to do meaningful activities and them being satisfied with their quality of life. Overall, this framework aims to empower people of all ages to reflect on their patterns of activity engagement, in order to promote health. ...

While preparing for Foundations, I learned that Healthy People 2020 focuses on addressing the social determinates of health. The purpose is to create social and physical environments that promotes health for all people. Examples of social determinates include conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, work, play, and age that affect health and overall quality of life. Many people are quick to judge a book by its cover. For example, if we see an overweight person in Walmart, a person may think “wow, how did they let themselves get like that.” What people don’t take into consideration is the environment that person was born into. They might not pf had education about health or the funds to purchase healthy foods. Everyone deserves to have the resources to live a healthy, happy life. AOTA’s Societal Statement on Health and Literacy state that it’s our job as occupational therapist to educate people on health-related services that will give them op...