- Home
- Professionals
- Boosting Stroke Recovery
Boosting Stroke Recovery
NIH NEWS IN HEALTH
NIH News in Health · Source article
A stroke can change your life in an instant. Symptoms come on suddenly. Facial drooping, arm weakness, or slurred speech can all signal that a stroke is happening. A stroke can take away the ability to walk, talk, or do other daily activities. But survivors can often relearn skills affected by the stroke and overcome losses in ability.
Strokes happen when the brain doesn’t get enough blood flow. This can be caused by blood vessels getting blocked or rupturing. Not enough blood flow means the brain doesn’t get the oxygen it needs. And that can damage the brain.
Depending on how much damage there is, a stroke can lead to life-long disabilities or even death. What problems it causes depends on where damage occurs in the brain. Survivors may have trouble using their arms or legs, talking, or thinking clearly. In more severe strokes, one side of the body may become weak or paralyzed.
Stroke rehabilitation, or “rehab,” is designed to help stroke survivors return to their daily activities. It can help them recover and improve their quality of life. NIH-funded scientists are studying how to make rehab more effective for people recovering from a stroke.
Benefits of Rehab
Rehab can help survivors build back skills they have lost after a stroke. It uses exercises and other therapies to help restore physical function. It also provides strategies to handle remaining problems. For example, a stroke survivor may no longer be able to grasp things with one hand. Rehab can help them learn to use their other hand.
Rehab usually starts at the hospital within 48 hours of a stroke. It relies on a team of specialists who tailor rehab to specific needs. The rehab team may include nurses, physical therapists, and Health professionals trained to evaluate and treat people with speech and language disorders. speech-language pathologists.
Skills are lost when brain cell connections become damaged. To regain those skills, brain cells need to form new connections. That process is called remapping. Studies suggest that stroke survivors get better results when they spend more time doing rehab.
“Rehab can boost re-mapping when tasks are repeated and specific,” says Dr. Scott Janis, a neuroscientist at NIH who oversees clinical research on strokes.
Researchers are trying to find out how intense rehab needs to be to get the best results. They are also looking for ways to make rehab more engaging and easier to access. Ongoing studies are focused on restoring language and limb function.
Restoring Muscle Use
After a stroke, survivors can have trouble moving certain muscles. Muscles can become weak, uncontrollable, or paralyzed. Rehab programs can help address these issues. But some survivors have difficulty finding a provider in their area or getting to a clinic.
Dr. Steven Cramer, a stroke neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, wants to make rehab easier to access. He’s designed an in-home intensive rehab program for people who need to restore their arm function. All that’s needed is a computer and an internet connection.
“We give participants 1,000 arm movements per session, six days a week, for six weeks,” Cramer explains. “This is massively more than what the typical American patient gets in usual care.”
By ramping up intensity and access, Cramer’s team hopes to boost stroke survivors’ recovery and make rehab more engaging.
“We’re not doing typical stroke rehabilitation,” Cramer explains. “Participants are playing video poker, Mahjong, and shooting ducks. They can also play Stroke Jeopardy to learn more about stroke.”
But the “secret sauce is socialization,” he adds. Every other day, a licensed therapist meets with the program participants online. They give new exercises, review previous ones, and answer questions.
Cramer’s team compared their in-home rehab program to a traditional program conducted in the clinic. Both increased arm functioning and movement a similar amount. Now, they’re testing the impact of adding the in-home program to usual care.
Restoring Language
Strokes can also damage the part of the brain that controls language. At least one out of every four stroke survivors have a condition called “aphasia.” It affects speaking, reading, writing, and/or understanding language.
Not all stroke survivors recover from aphasia, even with speech-language therapy. They often have chronic (long-lasting) problems with language.
Dr. Julius Fridriksson, a neuroscientist at the University of South Carolina, is testing a new approach for patients with chronic aphasia treatment. His group is trying intensive speech-language therapy with brain stimulation.
“We think that applying electrical currents to the brain areas that control language could stimulate the remaining brain cells,” says Fridriksson. Activating those cells could help build back brain connections for language.
To stimulate the cells, the team uses a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The team places patches that conduct electricity on the outside of the participants’ scalp. It’s used during speech-language therapy.
“Aphasia is a serious condition because people are unable to communicate,” Fridriksson explains. “People with chronic aphasia need better therapy so they don’t experience it the rest of their lives.”
His team has been testing what parts of language therapy brain stimulation can enhance. They’ve found that it can help with remembering names of objects. Survivors with aphasia often have difficulty recalling names of objects they knew before their stroke. Now the team is testing if brain stimulation with language therapy is more effective than therapy alone.
See the Wise Choices box for tips on how rehab can help stroke survivors.
Further reading and research references
- Halting Heart Attack and Stroke: Get Medical Help Fast
- What Is a Stroke?
- Stroke: Signs, Causes, and Treatment
- Stroke Recovery
- Know Stroke Recovery Through Rehabilitation
- Post-Stroke Rehabilitation
- Aphasia
- About Stroke (CDC)
- Moving Forward After a Stroke (VA)
- Telerehabilitation following stroke
- Efficacy of home-based telerehabilitation vs in-clinic therapy for adults after stroke
- Improved naming in patients with Broca's aphasia with tDCS.
- Transcranial direct current stimulation vs sham stimulation to treat aphasia after stroke: A randomized clinical trial
Illustrative archival photograph: National Cancer Institute / Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License. The people or equipment shown are not identified as participants in the research or interviews described here.
Professionals
View more
NIH News in Health · Source article Health Capsule Uncontrolled hypertension, or high blood pressure, is the leading cause of death in the U.S. It develops when the force of the blood pushing against the walls of arteries becomes too high. This puts more pressure on the heart and arteries, which puts you at risk for heart disease. Hypertension is more common in low-income populations. Studies have found that people are better at lowering their blood pressure when they have more medical support. But low-income patients are often treated in places with less health care resources. An NIH-funded research team looked at whether providing additional medical support to low-income patients with hypertension could help them lower their blood pressure. The team enrolled 1,200 participants. About half received standard care. The other half received standard care along with additional provider support. They met with healthcare providers more often and received care from multiple types of providers. The patients who received extra care were better able to lower their blood pressure. The additional support helped them more closely follow their personal wellness plans. “This trial showed that a team-based approach to supporting and treating patients with uncontrolled blood pressure in low-income rural and urban areas can effectively lower high blood pressure,” says Dr. Katherine Mills of Tulane University, who led the study. Source: NIH News in Health. Originally published July 2026. Republished by Graymedy on 11 October 2026. This is a sourced NIH article, not a Graymedy interview or original study. Read the original article and its research references. NIH News in Health permits republication of its articles and illustrations with acknowledgement. Research findings retain their original study context. Further reading and research references Halting Heart Attack and Stroke: Get Medical Help Fast Healthy Body, Happy Heart: Improve Your Heart Health High Blood Pressure High Blood Pressure (Older Adults) Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) Multifaceted strategies for hypertension control in low-income patients Illustrative archival photograph: National Cancer Institute / Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License. The people or equipment shown are not identified as participants in the research or interviews described here.
Boosting Stroke Recovery
Detecting Language Difficulties
Health Coaching May Improve Surgery Recovery
NIH News in Health · Source article Q&A Excerpts from our conversation with Dr. Jonathan Himmelfarb, a kidney-health researcher at Mount Sinai in New York City. Read the story Curbing Chronic Kidney Disease in NIH News in Health. NIHNiH: How can diabetes, obesity, or heart disease lead to kidney damage in some people? Himmelfarb: The kidneys get exposed 24/7 to whatever is in the blood, and some of that can be damaging to the kidneys. In diabetes, people have high blood sugar. There are changes in the amount of fats in the blood, and other Related to metabolism, the chemical changes in the body that create the energy and substances you need to grow, move, and stay healthy. metabolic changes as well. All this creates added work for the kidneys, and over time that can cause damage. It takes around 10 to 15 years for this to happen, but you can eventually get irreparable damage to the kidneys, which can ultimately lead to kidney failure. That’s also true for obesity. Even if your blood sugar is normal, in obesity there are other metabolic changes in the body that can impact the kidneys. High blood pressure is another common condition that directly affects the kidneys. Because the kidneys have so much blood flow through them, a high proportion of their structure is blood vessels. And those blood vessels can be damaged by constant pressure and stress. NIHNiH: Why is developing more personalized therapies for chronic kidney disease important? Himmelfarb: Chronic kidney disease is really a syndrome more than it is a specific disease. It’s a syndrome that’s defined by how well the kidneys are functioning. If there’s a loss of the ability of the kidneys to filter the blood or to prevent leakage of proteins from the blood, that’s chronic kidney disease. But there are many, many different causes that can lead to that syndrome. Even for people with a specific risk factor, like diabetes or obesity, their kidneys can be affected differently. Different cell types in the kidney can be injured in different ways. And the response to injury can vary by the cell type, what’s causing the injury, and your genetic background as well. We’re in an exciting era where, for the first time, we have some very effective drugs for chronic kidney disease. But say you have diabetes and chronic kidney disease, you may improve with drug A. Or your disease may stay stable. But some people will continue to have loss of kidney function on drug A, and might have done better with drug B. Right now, we have no way to know that up front. What the Kidney Precision Medicine Project is designed to do is eventually help doctors pick the right drug or drug combination at the beginning of treatment, rather than through trial and error. NIHNiH: Your team is also building ‘kidney-on-a-chip’ models with human cells. What are the potential advantages over this approach compared to using animals to test new drugs? Himmelfarb: We’ve cured a lot of diseases in animals, but that hasn’t translated to the same benefits when you use those treatments in people. Most drugs still fail when they go into clinical trials. They either turn out to be too toxic, or they’re just not effective. If we can improve that by working with human models from the beginning, and we can shorten the period of time it takes to bring new drugs to patients, that would be a win not just for treating kidney diseases, but other diseases as well. And with organ-on-a-chip models, we can take into account the genetic variation you have in people. Genes can also contribute to what would be the best treatment for an individual, or even for their risk of getting a certain disease in the first place. Source: NIH News in Health. Originally published January 2026. Republished by Graymedy on 11 October 2026. This is a sourced NIH article, not a Graymedy interview or original study. Read the original article and its research references. NIH News in Health permits republication of its articles and illustrations with acknowledgement. Research findings retain their original study context. Further reading and research references Curbing Chronic Kidney Disease: Keep Your Body’s Filters Healthy Preventing Diabetes: Small Steps Can Make a Big Difference Managing Diabetes: New Technologies Can Make It Easier Blood Pressure Matters: Keep Hypertension in Check Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Diabetes High Blood Pressure Coronary Heart Disease Kidney Precision Medicine Project Illustrative archival photograph: National Cancer Institute / Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License. The people or equipment shown are not identified as participants in the research or interviews described here.
Dr. Meryl Waldman on Diet and Chronic Kidney Disease
Dr. K.C. Brennan on Understanding and Treating Migraine
