Our corporate headquarters in Oklahoma City has been making it a tradition to participate in the INTEGRIS Jim Thorpe Courage Run each year. This year's race was held on Saturday, May 5, 2012 at Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, OK. The 5K, 10K, 1 mile fun run, and wheelchair events give the community an opportunity to raise money to provide patients at Jim Thorpe Rehabilitation benefits that traditional reimbursement does not cover.

Adaptive Adventures is a non-profit organization that creates life-changing opportunities for people with physical disabilities. Through programs like kayaking, wake boarding, skiing, and cycling Adaptive Adventures opens doors for people to get out experience sports despite their disabilities. 

In conjunction with Make a Hero production, Adaptive Adventures has a short film documentary called The Movement that they are inspiring the country with. This film tells the story of five people who faced incredible obstacles, found the inspiration to overcome them and became real everyday heroes. Through skiing, each has ultimately discovered or rediscovered the freedom of movement. The goal of the short film is to increase awareness, participation, and opportunity in adaptive sports across the country. 

The film is narrated by Robert Redford and Warren Miller and features adaptive sport athletes like Matt Feeney and Chris Waddell. View the trailer below.

We are very excited to provide three $1,000 scholarships to students with spina bifida, spinal cord injuries, or transverse myelitis. The college scholarship is available to high school seniors or those currently in college that are planning to attend at least 12 credit hours at a two-year or four-year college in the U.S. in the Fall. The deadline is June 1, 2012. 

The founder of 180 Medical, Todd Brown, has had his share of the difficulties that disabilities present. When he was paralyzed from the chest down, one of Brown's biggest challenges was the near-constant UTIs. His victory resides in not only being able to eliminate most infections and live a healthier life, but in creating a company that provides people like him with the same options. This scholarship takes that goal even further. With this scholarship, those optimistic students that prove they are dedicated to furthering their education and enthusiastic about making a positive impact on the world can be given a reward that will help them to achieve their dreams.

Visit www.180medical.com/scholarships for application instructions and up-to-date scholarship information.
       

Last August the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation chose our Founder & CEO, Todd Brown, as their next success story highlighting lives of those with paralysis who have risen above the struggles. The series includes videos on other inspirational people like Jesse Billauer from Life Rolls On, Scott Chesney, and Bob Yant from Cure Medical - just to name a few. View the video below which tells about how Todd was injured and how he and his family adjusted to his new life in a wheelchair.


View the blog post about the video shoot from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation blog here.
     

180 Medical is one of America's fastest growing nationally accredited providers of sterile-use catheters, urologic, and disposable medical supplies. 180 Medical is used as a referral source for some of the top rehabilitation facilities, pediatric hospitals and urologists in the world because of their extensive knowledge and customer care. The company has offices across the country and their products are covered by thousands of health plans, insurance networks, and state Medicaid programs. 

Why does a person who has suffered a spinal cord injury often become much more susceptible to heart disease?

A new study undertaken at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation seeks to answer this question.  The answer may lie in a previously less emphasized area--autonomic nervous system pathways disrupted by spinal cord injury (SCI). 

Autonomic pathways serve involuntary functions of the internal body, involving organs of respiration, digestion, elimination, circulation.  Lungs, heart, stomach, gall bladder, liver, pancreas, spleen, intestines, blood and lymph vessels, reproductive organs, glands.  All structures and functions unseen by the eyes are maintained by autonomic nerve pathways which travel from the brain through the spine to the internal body.

The research was targeted specifically to heart disease, which affects people with spinal cord injury disproportionately, and at a younger age than the general population.

The study involved assessments of a control group of 14 able-bodied persons and another group of 20 persons who have sustained SCI.  The group of 20 was further subdivided into those who had sustained autonomic pathway disruption with those who had not.

Conclusive findings showed that while both SCI groups had high cholesterol, the group with autonomic nerve pathway disruption had considerably less glucose tolerance and greater overall fat and abdominal fat, putting them in a prediabetic state, a known factor in increasing heart disease risk.

Also noteworthy, the SCI control group with autonomic pathway disruption showed less normal indicators of internal functioning overall, even with a healthy lifestyle including exercise.  It remains inconclusive at this stage whether patients' pattern of internal dysfunction is due solely to such disruption, or to patient characteristics after such an injury.

While there is clearly a requirement for more independent research, the study points to a directive--more thorough screening of patients with spinal cord injury.  In addition to measuring of sensory and motor damage, patients should be tested for autonomic nerve functioning after an injury.