The Jittery Monks have worked with students for years and we strive to
help students succeed in higher education.
To help students fund their educations, we're offering a scholarship of
$1,500. The full details of this scholarship are available here:
https://jitterymonks.com/scholarship/
The scholarship that we're offering for the 2018-2019 contest runs from 01
April, 2018 to 01 March, 2019. We hope to get many applications from
qualified students, so we'd be grateful if your institution would take a
minute to post our scholarship on your website to help students find this
opportunity.
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Specialist Treatment helps Stoke Cancer Victim back to the Family Meal Table
Throat cancer victim and Stoke dad of two Dom Marshall faced a lifetime of being fed through a tube in his stomach and unable to take part in family meals following his chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment.
Fortunately, a specialist treatment that can be used with NICE approved guidelines, has returned the father of two to the meal table. The treatment is currently unavailable on the NHS.
Dom was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in his right tonsil. Ten weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment left Dom unable to swallow and being fed liquid food through a tube, called a ‘PEG’, into his stomach.
Despite treatment by a speech and language therapist to help encourage swallowing, he was still unable to drink or eat again.
Following some research on the internet, Dom’s wife Keeley discovered a treatment called VitalStim Therapy involving neuromuscular electrical stimulation, which is being championed by consultant Speech and Language Therapist Sumathi Sinnappan in the UK.
It works by using a machine that sends small electrical pulses through pads on the skin to stimulate the throat muscles. When combined with swallowing exercises, the patient can regain their swallow.
Says Dom, “Before meeting Sumathi my future was grim. I faced being unable to eat or drink ever again and you begin to realise how important this is to the quality of your life. Once when I was on holiday in Cornwall I had to leave a family meal in a restaurant, because all I could do was watch. I went outside onto a bench and burst into tears.
“When I met Sumathi for my first treatment I had no expectation of success, but by the end of that session, having eaten nothing for four months, I ate a yoghurt and drank half a litre of water.
“Each session consisted of the electrical pads being fitted to different areas of my throat and electrical pulses being generated while I swallowed different food and drinks. These ranged from crushed ice, to yoghurt and as the treatment progressed, to more solid food such as a banana.
“After that first treatment, I set a goal with Sumathi of being able to eat a bag of chips by the time we finished all the sessions. On my way to that final treatment I popped into Macdonalds to buy a bag of chips and afterwards ate them in Sumathi’s office. For me this was a major achievement, just being able to do something normal.
Sumathi’s constant reassurance and patience when I was so nervous to start with, helped by the breathing exercises she suggested, gave me the confidence to get through the treatment.
“My life has been transformed and I truly appreciate being able to do the things that others take for granted. If anything, we go out socialising more now than we ever did before my cancer.”
Please click the following link to watch Dom’s story to regaining his swallow following throat cancer – https://vimeo.com/264739733
Dom’s treatment involved 10 sessions over a period of just two weeks. The total cost of the treatment is about 10 percent of the cost of Dom being fed through his stomach via a PEG for just one year.
According to the BMJ Best Practice website, two sets of research estimate that dysphagia, or problems with swallowing, affects up to 1.6 million people a year costing the NHS an estimated £30bn.
As Sumathi Sinnapan explains “Eating and drinking is a part of our everyday life; it is essential for socialising in our society. Never mind the total cost of feeding people through a PEG or other measures, each person I see is an individual who is unable to take part in a basic human function. It is about the quality of their lives.”
VitalStim therapy is a specialised form of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) designed to treat swallowing disorders through muscle re-education. The therapy is administered by a small, carefully calibrated current delivered to the motor nerves of the patient's throat through specially designed electrodes, which cause the muscles responsible for swallowing to contract. At the same time, a dysphagia specialist guides the patient through active swallowing therapy to re-educate their normal swallow function.
The treatment sessions typically start with a minimum 30 minute therapy session and increase in duration to up to 60 minutes over time. Therapy sessions are repeated between three and five times a week until swallowing patterns have been restored to a nearly normal level. Some sufferers see a dramatic improvement the next day, others in as little as three days, with most reporting significant progress in 6 to 20 sessions.
The therapy has helped thousands of patients with dysphagia, including patients resigned to living on feeding tubes. If you or a relative suffer from dysphagia you can find out more information about the treatment at www.vitalstim.co.uk.
About VitalStim Therapy
VitalStim Therapy® is a safe and effective treatment for patients suffering with difficulty swallowing or dysphagia. It was developed in the USA in response to the 15 million people living with dysphagia. FDA (Federal Drug Association) has approved this therapy in December 2001 and it was approved by NICE in 2014.
The therapy is a specialized form of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) designed to treat swallowing disorders through muscle re-education. It is administered by a small, carefully calibrated current delivered to the motor nerves of the patient's throat through specially designed electrodes causing the muscles responsible for swallowing to contract. At the same time, a dysphagia specialist guides the patient through active swallowing therapy to re-educate normal swallow function.
Most treatment sessions are up to 60 minutes long. VitalStim therapy has helped thousands of patients with dysphagia, including many who were resigned to live on feeding tubes. Therapy sessions are repeated between three and five times a week until swallowing patterns have been restored to a nearly normal level. Sufferers frequently see dramatic improvements in 6 to 20 daily sessions, and sometimes in as little as 3 days.
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4 Common Retirement Mistakes
And How To Avoid Them
Constructing a smart retirement income plan isn’t easy. Throughout the working years there are many factors to consider, such as salary, expenses – monthly and unforeseen – debt and college for the kids, just to name a few.
All of those can affect a person’s ability to, first, devise a consistent plan for their retirement goals, and secondly, accumulate the necessary capital to provide ample retirement income. hieve them. Meanwhile, costly mistakes can be made that will have implications down the road.
“A retirement strategy has many moving parts, and each can have a significant impact on the others,” says Jadon Newman, CEO of Noble Capital (www.noblecapital.com), a financial advisory firm. “Many people often make the same mistakes.
“There are ways to avoid them, and much of it is about knowledge. There’s more you need to know about retirement today than you did 20 or 30 years ago. It starts with knowing what lifestyle you want to achieve in retirement and the options that will both protect you and enhance what should be the best years of your life.”
Newman gives four common mistakes in retirement planning and how to avoid them:
• Investing like you’re still young. Earlier in their working careers, people often have a higher risk tolerance. But approaching retirement, Newman says, your investment strategy should shift toward preserving capital. “Phase out those investments that are subject to wider fluctuations,” Newman says. “The gradual move away from riskier investments should begin as you enter your mid- to late 40s.”
• Leaving your nest egg vulnerable to big market drops. Putting your entire nest egg in one basket could be disastrous. “Having an excessive amount of market risk in your portfolio, you could find yourself suffering a loss that you won’t have time to recover from before you retire,” Newman says. “With stocks having surged for an extended period, beware the bear market. It would be wise to purge some risk from your portfolio in favor of more predictable methods of capital growth and income, such as annuities, life insurance policies, or alternative investments like private lending and real estate.”
• Not satisfying basic income needs. It has become less realistic for a 401(k) coupled with Social Security to provide the regular income needed for retirement. It’s important to estimate what yearly expenses will be in retirement and diversify accordingly. “Use your investments, insurance policies or retirement accounts to provide multiple income streams,” Newman says. “This allows you to draw from them only what you need to meet your pre-determined budget. Be sure you calculate your Social Security payment and any required minimum distributions so you don’t incur additional tax liability.”
• Having the wrong kind of annuity. A crucial component of a comfortable retirement is reliable income, and a common way to achieve that is by using annuities. Unfortunately, some retirees find themselves with an annuity that doesn’t fit their needs. A fixed annuity pays out a guaranteed rate of return, providing less risk compared to variable annuities, but the tradeoff is you get a more modest return. “Sometimes a fixed index annuity (FIA) is the best bet,” Newman says. “These allow you to protect your principal by shifting the risk to the insurance company selling you the annuity. There are caps on your potential returns, but FIAs are more reliable because they mitigate risk.”
“With retirement planning, the end goal should be not only to ensure you’ll have enough income to satisfy your retirement budget, but also to provide you with enough to truly enjoy your retirement,” Newman says. “Because life goals and the economic climate are subject to change, you need to consult with your financial adviser annually to optimize your strategy.”
About Jadon Newman
Jadon Newman is the founder and CEO of Noble Capital (www.noblecapital.com). With more than 16 years of experience in the financial services industry, he specializes in retirement planning, real estate investment and asset management. Newman has earned a CCIM designation and CSA credential in addition to an insurance license in the state of Texas.
To determine the places in the U.S. with the most mixed demographics, WalletHub compared the profiles of more than 500 of the largest cities across five major diversity categories: socioeconomic, cultural, economic, household and religious.
Most Diverse Cities
Least Diverse Cities
1
Jersey City, NJ
492
Huntington, WV
2
Houston, TX
493
Morgantown, WV
3
New York, NY
494
Lewiston, ID
4
Silver Spring, MD
495
Kalispell, MT
5
Dallas, TX
496
Barre, VT
6
Gaithersburg, MD
497
Keene, NH
7
Los Angeles, CA
498
Rochester, NH
8
Germantown, MD
499
Orem, UT
9
Long Beach, CA
500
Provo, UT
10
Arlington, TX
501
Bangor, ME
Key Stats
To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/most-diverse-cities/12690/
