One more of those "if only the Country, and others, had paid attention throughout the decades previous!", what we would know and how that would have helped so many, not only veterans, and possibly changed the course of the present recent history!
June 16, 2011 - New research on post traumatic stress disorder will be released next week at a conference hosted by the Veteran's Health Research Institute in San Francisco. ABC7 got a preview of the studies, which suggest that PTSD can dramatically affect a person's health as they age.
The conference is called "Preparing For the Future of Veterans Health" and the early research indicates that PTSD affects the body as well as the brain.
Researchers are learning that the psychological wounds of war, known as post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD have a devastating biological impact.
"Theme of this conference is that we're thinking about the aging veteran," said Dr. Thomas Neylan.
Neylan, the head of PTSD research at the San Francisco Veteran's Administration, showed one area of the brain, that's affected by PTSD. It's called the hippocampus. It looks like a little jelly roll and is responsible for memory.
"There are different regions of the hippocampus and the interesting thing is that some of these regions are very sensitive to stress," said Neylan.
High resolution brain scans show that people with PTSD have a smaller hippocampus, by 11 percent on average.
"This is the area that we found is smaller in people with PTSD," said Neylan. {continued}
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