Red Deer Advocate from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada • 17

RED DEER ADVOCATE, Wednesday, March 8, 1 989 1C Family 2C Food4C Advocate Features Features editor: Darren Francey Marathon: ing involves more than the nose, Warren said. When blindfolded, Most people cannot discriminate a lemon from a lime. International Fragrances regularly brings in dozens of smell samplers, usually women, to rate and react to fragrances, with emphasis on how the fragrances can alter mood. In the process, Warren has found that 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the subjects display a particularly acute sense of smell. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those with no sense of smell.

Mary Brooks, 35, of Philadelphia, took an uncommon route to this fairly common problem. Beginning in 1972 she began to experience what amounted to smell hallucinations; she thought she smelled an unpleasant odor when there was no odor present. Years of anguish and unsuccessful treatment finally led to brain sugery in which her olfactory nerve was removed, ending her hallucinations but leaving her incapable of smelling. It can be very dangerous, she said. Ive already burnt things in the oven and I didnt know it and there are smoke alarms everywhere.

But on the other hand it doesnt bother me not to smell because I still sense that Im breathing and smelling the same as you are. Brooks doctor was Richard Doty, director of the University of Pennsylvania Smell and Taste Centre. Patients include the aged and professionals like wine tasters, firefighters, police officers, gas company workers, inspectors and cooks whose lives and livelihoods can depend on the sense of smell. There have always been problems that people had and theyve had no place to turn in the past, Doty said. Its a frontier of science which really hasnt even been touched on.

Thats no accident, Kauer said. Our world doesnt require it. We really dont go out and forage for food by sniffing along the ground. That evolution took place millions of years ago. Doty, Daniel Deems and Stanley Stellar published a report in August in the journal Neurology linking the loss of smell and Parkinsons disease.

A year earlier, a similar study linked the loss of smell to Alzheimers disease. A new area of research will try to determine if the nasal passage serves as a pathway for viruses or chemicals that contribute to those maladies, Doty said. By JOHN DIAMOND of The Associated Press OSTON Scientists know a lot about smell. They know it weakens as we get older, it varies depending on a persons sex and ethnic background, and it involves more than just the nose. What they generally dont know is why.

Within the scientific community, smell has always taken a back seat to the other senses, probably because we dont live in an olfactory world. We live in a visual world; a world of sounds, said Dr. John Kauer, a New England Medical Centre researcher trying to determine brain function using the nose. Last year he used video cameras and special dyes to trace the path of an odor impulse through the brain of a salamander. The work produced a "movie, or series of color-enhanced pictures, showing that the brain is a parallel processor, handling many signals simultaneously.

The research may have implications for the study and treatment of brain tumors by helping differentiate between tumors and normal tissue. Scores of researchers are poking their noses into such olfactory oddities as a link between premature decline in smell and Alzheimers disease; a protein that ferries odor molecules through the nose; the fact that half of all people between ages 65 and 80 suffer major loss in the sense of smell; and the trait peculiar to some nasal nerve cells to regenerate. Theyre the only neurons in the human body that undergo this spontaneous renewal and spontaneous decay, Kauer said. Some of the research in the field of smell is aimed not at medical advancement but at commercial profit. In Union Beach, N.J., Dr.

Craig Warren heads a research and development team for International Fragrances and Flavors a company that produces scents for soaps, perfumes and other products made by hundreds of companies around the world. Smell, Warren said, "is the one sense for which the mechanism for perception is unknown. Scientists know how odor molecules are gathered by smell neurons but they dont know how a few similar types of receptor cells can distinguish between thousands of different odors. Research suggests that the process of smell A miracle? Recovery defies medical reason By JIM KLOBUCHAR Special to The Advocate ith a limp barely detectable, Don Hamilton walked into a photo studio in Wayza-ta, last weekend with the woman he will marry in June. The photographer, Tom Kennetm-ueller, scurried through the traditional role of the soft-skinned dictator directing engagement pictures.

Wider smiles. Come on, get chummy. Gadgets clicked and slid. There were no sounds of astonishment. Those were left for doctors and nurses in Park Rapids, and at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, and for Glen Neddemeyer and Greg and Steve White, who carried Don Hamilton out of the woods, unconscious and dying after a hunting accident in November 1987.

In St. Josephs Hospital in Grand Rapids they tested his vital signs. No pulse showed. They tested for blood pressure and got nothing. He had lost practically all of his blood.

For nearly 25 minutes his heart stopped. He was clinically dead. Don Hamilton, an outdoorsman and the manager of a forklift dealership in Minneapolis, was gone at 32. The instruments announced that. But the doctors and nurses kept pounding on his heart, because instruments arent infallible.

They restored a faint heartbeat. They administered massive transfusions and placed him on a helicopter for North Memorial. They did it with only the most fragile hope that he could survive another two or three hours. Beyond that, it was almost impossible. These people could not have imagined that on a late winter day 15 months later, Don Hamilton would be posing for his engagement photos with Donna Johnson of Minnetonka, and a few hours later heading for a snowmobile trek in Yellowstone Park.

Would it have been any more plausible to the medical teams at North Memorial, where he lay in a coma for five weeks? The family heard the words brain death the first night. The doctors talked about it candidly with his relatives. It looked inevitable. He showed no response to stimuli. They considered amputating his leg.

His lungs deflated and his kidneys stopped working. They put him on dialysis and reinflated the lungs. The loss of blood when his rifle fell from his deer hunting perch in a tree, and sent a bullet into this left thigh, had shocked his brain and his lungs. They gave more transfusions. A neurologist, Dr.

Bruce Norback, had never seen a person recede that deep into apparent lifelessness and come back. But Hamilton awoke shortly before Christmas. He was brought back fundamentally because of the care and emergency treatment he received in both of the hospitals. But the doctors readily conceded something else: He came back for reasons that could not be explained completely in the physicians language. A prayer circle organized by his family? The resilience of a body toughened by a lifetime of outdoor exertion, rock climbing and running? Dr.

George Nemanich is part of that broad medical fraternity to whom words like mystery and miracles are not part of the workaday environment. But he admits being mystified by Don Hamiltons revival. Nobody who saw Hamilton in North Memorial that first night could foresee a normal life ahead. And to these you might add one more mind touched with the same wonder. "Knowing what I know now, he said, and remembering what it was in the erliest days of my recovery, I think Im surprised Donna was there when I woke up.

She could have been frightened by the possibility of brain damage. It looked for sure that if I survived I was going to be a vegetable. She could have been frightened by a lot of things. But she stayed. She is beautiful and generous and we love each other.

"I wont be able to rock climb or play soccer, and I don't know if I'll run again. I think I'll hunt deer again. I can tell people who are ready to give up on life something about how miraculous it can be. Until you've been close to death, you have no reality of how much life is worth. Jim Klobuchar is a writer for the Minneapolis -St.

Paul Star Tribune. The race for every person By GERALD SECOR COUZENS Special to The Advocate arathon. This one word conjures up images of extremes in distance, training and human effort. Still, thousands of people prepare for and compete in marathon running races each year. The Greek courier Pheidippides ran 41.8 km (26 miles) from the fields of Marathon to Athens to report the defeat of the Persians and later died from his strenuous efforts.

But with systematic training, proper diet and adequate hydration, people of all ages can run a marathon and suffer no ill effects. Long-distance running offers something for everyone, from simple exercise and enjoyment to stress relief and weight control. Ive always been a competitive runner, so the marathon never was a matter of being able to just take it to the finish line, said Bill Rodgers, a four-time winner of the New York City Marathon. The lure of the marathon for me is in seeing how successfully I can run. Its certainly a bizarre event, and by no means do you have to run a marathon in order to become fit.

But the marathon does offer a unique challenge to everyone who tries it, Rodgers said. Last November, Rodgers, 40, once one of the worlds top marathoners with a best of two hours, 10 minutes and 10 seconds, went to the starting line in New York for his 53rd marathon. Like Rodgers, Joan Benoit, winner of the inaugural marathon for women in the 1984 Olympic Games, isnt put off by the marathon distance. Its a grueling race, but a distance that I really like to run if Im competitive and not injured, she said recently. Competitive for Benoit doesnt mean going head to head with any of the other runners in a marathon.

The 145 to 160 km she covers each week training on the roads around Freeport, are only preparation for competing in the formidable marathon. Marathoning can be a solitary venture, but there has been no loneliness in the life of longdistance runner Johnny Kelley of East Dennis, who has competed in 113 marathons around the world. Kelley still competes in 10-km races, now saving his one yearly marathon for Boston, a race hes competed in 57 times, winning it twice. Im trying my hardest to stay alive, said the 81-year-old running legend, who gets up each morning at 5 to run for 45 minutes and goes for a two-hour run once a week. Last year, in a maximum exercise stress test conducted by Kenneth Cooper, MD, in Dallas, Kelley smashed the previous test record for 80-year-olds by running all out for 19 minutes.

Never injured in all the years hes been running, Kelley offers new marathon runners one bit of advice. Keep away from the doctor who says, Stop running, $20 please, and find yourself a good sports medicine doctor who will work with you. Unfortunately, not everyone is genetically blessed with the perfect running body of a Rodgers. Rodgers is 1.75 metres (five-foot-mne), weighs 58 kg (128 pounds) and never had any of the medical problems that often plague others who are taller, heavier and less trained for the distance. The marathon is obviously not for everyone," said Benoit, who doesnt think anyone gains anything from completing a marathon in five or six hours.

The marathon shouldnt be attempted until someone has put in training of at least 20 miles a week and has competed in 10-Ks and a half-marathon, she said. No, the marathon is definitely not for everyone, agreed Edward W. Colt, MD, a Manhattan physician and former medical director of the New York City Marathon, its an extreme stress for even the best-conditioned athletes. But for those with any underlying medical problems, the marathon can cause devastating trauma. Still, he believes the marathon is a special event in sport.

"I think we all need at least one or two adventures in our lives at some time, and the marathon is certainly a great adventure to try. Gerald Secor Couzens is a New York health writer. Compulsive gambling is no joke and borrowed money from strangers. He even pleaded with his daughter to share her $10 allowance with him. Recently Vincent and a friend concocted a scheme to blackmail a vendor for $5,000 by threatening to put glue in the coin slots of as many machines as they could find.

Thats how much the two figured they lost in the machines in recent months. We were afraid we'd get our legs broken or something, said Vincent, explaining why the two did not go through with the plan. "Im in enough trouble already. Two weeks ago Vincent was thinking of killing himself. Im not in control any more, it's killing me, he said.

Im going to lose everything if this doesnt stop. With their marriage in tatters and falling behind in the rent money, Vincent and his wife recently went to a mental health counsellor for help. Vincent is not alone. Bruce Barber, a psychiatric social worker at the Saint John Mental Health Clinic, said since January six clients have sought help because theyre hooked on video poker machines. Barber said two of the six gamblers are women, most are middle class and only one or two had ever bet on horses or played serious card games.

All are in desperate financial straits. Barsonys foundation estimates half a million Canadian adults suffer frcm compulsive gambling addiction that can destroy marriages, drain bank accounts and even lead to suicide. "I know some of the nicest people youd ever meet who are sitting in penitentiaries because they robbed or killed someone to play them, he said. SAINT JOHN, N.B. The little signs on the electronic gambling machines read For Amusement Only.

But the message pains Tibor Barsony, executive director of the Canadian Foundation on Compulsive Gambling, who sees the games leading to broken marriages, suicides and the clang of jail cell doors. The problem is that many people introduced to the machines have become compulsive gamblers, an addiction Barsony describes as an incurable disease. Vincent, a Saint John man, is an example. He's hooked on the gambling machines in that citys taverns and convenience stores. At first it was only $10 here, $20 there not enough to make his wife suspect anything.

She thought he was buying cigarettes or going to the tavern after work with friends. But then Vincent (not his real name) began using up entire pay cheques. He pawned clothes.