Christian Junior High Honors Ceremony

Saturday May 12th was the grand re opening of McDonalds in Santee. The Paul Schmid Organization, City of Santee, and the Santee Chamber of Commerce were on hand for the Grand Opening Celebration.

From 9:30 to 11:00 am, the East County Cruisers sponsored a classic car show. Among the cars there was the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazard. The car is owned by Lee and Kathy Smith.

The ribbon cutting ceremony was at 10:00 am. Present were Owner, Paul Schmid, Store Manager, Keith Grubba, General Manager, Lou Parascand, Assemblyman Brian Jones, Santee Vice Mayor Rob McNelis, Santee Councilman Jack Dale, Santee Chamber President, John Morley, Santee Chamber Executive Director, John Olsen, and Ronald McDonald. The Santana Marching Band and Cheerleaders were there for the raising of the colors and music entertainment.

Other activities included a live performance by Gary Seiler, clown face painting, mechanical bull riding, and the Ronald McDonald Show. KSON was there with a radio remote and prizes. Big Macs were a $1.00 from 11:00 am -5:00 pm.

Also there was Miss Santee, Victoria Heyne, and Miss Santee Teen Casey Maynard, and the Santee Princesses.

The Eastern San Diego County Jr. Fair Livestock Move-In started on Sunday May 13th at the Lakeside Rodeo Grounds. Youth from the 4-H and the Future Farmers of America are proud participants in this event.

Steven Petratos, leader of the Monash University team, said he was confident that clinical trials less than a decade away would show the therapy also worked in humans.

Working with colleagues in the United States and Canada, the Melbourne team identified a protein, collapsin response mediator protein 2, or CRMP-2, that in MS patients is modified. They suspect CRMP-2 triggers nerve cell damage when it interacts with another specific protein in the brain, spinal cord or optic nerves.

They managed to block both the modification of CRMP-2 and the interaction. Using gene therapy to breed so-called block-out mice, they found nerve damage could be stopped.

“What we did was to take that gene, make it resistant to damage, and reinsert it using a viral delivery mechanism into the nervous system,” he said. “What we found with those mice is that when we tried to induce the disease we didn’t see any nerve cell or nerve fibre damage.”

The research, published in the latest issue of the journal Brain, was welcomed by Multiple Sclerosis Research Australia chief executive Jeremy Wright.

“It’s one of the most exciting breakthroughs we’ve had,” Wright said. “It verifies what science says about the disease – that it’s about the immune system going a bit skew-whiff and not having the genetic controls all in place.” Wright said the research helped explain how drugs now in use are working.

Women are three time more likely than men to get MS, a disease thought to be caused by the immune system malfunctioning and launching attacks on the myelin cells around nerve endings. The drugs now in use attempt to weaken the whole immune system, and so weaken its attacks. The breakthrough flagged by Petratos offers a different approach.

“This is the first treatment where we’re starting to get specific attacks on specific molecules,” Wright said. “We’re blocking the attacks as opposed to trying to dampen the immune system, which means you’re not wasting the treatment on the rest of the immune system.”

Petratos is buoyed by similar research work he has done on Alzheimer’s, another neurological degenerative disease, and one where regulatory authorities have approved the gene therapy approach. Hospital patients in the US have been recruited for clinical trials on gene therapies to treat Alzheimer’s.

Having approvals in the bag means clinical trials on MS patients could be less than 10 years away.

“It’s the progressive form of MS that responds very poorly to conventional methods of treatment,” Petratos said.

“If you have limited damage to nerve fibres (and get the course of injections he expects will form the therapy) you won’t end up getting progression. It’s the progression that makes you go from ambulant to being in a wheelchair.”

Q. What percentage of older men have erectile dysfunction?

A.

The following are some leading causes of erectile dysfunction: diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), prostate surgery, hormone imbalance, alcohol and drug abuse.

And, of course, there are your emotions. It should be no surprise that, if you’re having a relationship problem with your sex partner, you can suffer from ED. Here are some other psychological influences: anxiety over a previous failure, everyday stress, depression, and feeling unattractive to your partner. If you’re suffering from ED, you should see your doctor for a discussion and physical exam.

Monitoring erections that occur during sleep can help the diagnosis. Healthy men have involuntary erections during sleep. If nocturnal erections do not occur, then ED is likely to have a physical rather than psychological cause. Tests of nocturnal erections are not completely reliable, however.

The incidence of ED increases with age. Between 15 and 25 percent of 65-year-old men experience this problem. In older men, ED usually has a physical cause, such as a drug side effect, disease or injury. Anything that damages the nerves or impairs blood flow in the penis can cause ED.

Q.

What is a taste disorder?

A.

The most common complaint is “phantom taste perception,” which is tasting something that isn’t there.

If you think you have a taste disorder, see your doctor. Diagnosis of a taste disorder is important because once the cause is found, your doctor may be able to treat your taste disorder. Many types of taste disorders are reversible, but, if not, counseling and self-help techniques may help you cope.

If you cannot regain your sense of taste, there are things you can do to ensure your safety. Take extra care to avoid food that may have spoiled. If you live with other people, ask them to smell and taste food to see if it is fresh. People who live alone should discard food if there is a chance it is spoiled.

of one or more of the five taste categories: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory.ageusia. People with taste disorders experience a specific ageusia, or the reduced ability to taste. Others can’t detect taste at all, which is called hypogeusia. Some people have dysgeusia There are several types of taste disorders. You can have a persistent bad taste in the mouth. This is called a

Q.

What causes Parkinson disease?

A.

The defining symptoms of PD include tremor, slowness of movement, rigidity, and impaired balance and coordination. As these symptoms become more pronounced, patients may have difficulty walking, talking, or completing simple tasks. They also may experience depression, difficulty sleeping and other problems.

In the early 1960s, scientists determined that the loss of brain cells was causing PD. The cells that were depleted produced dopamine, a chemical that helps control muscle activity. Today, PD is treated with drugs and surgery.

Medications for PD fall into three categories.The first includes drugs that increase the level of dopamine in the brain. The second category affects neurotransmitters in the body to ease some of the symptoms of the disease. The third category includes medications that help control the non-motor symptoms of the disease such as depression.

There are two commonly used surgical treatments for PD: pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation. Because these procedures are invasive, they are usually reserved for severely afflicted Parkinson’s patients who do not get adequate relief from medications.

disease in the United States, after Alzheimer’s.neurodegenerative Parkinson disease (PD) is a complex disorder of the central nervous system. It is the second most common

Greetings precious people, as we continue this series on prayer, we will take another look at what the Word of God the Bible tells us it is that we should pray for. Most of our time thus far has been spent looking at what the New Testament has to say on the subject of prayer. Over the next few weeks we will look at the Old Testament and some of the numerous examples given in it on prayer.
Within the first nine chapters of the Book of First Chronicles which gives account of the genealogies of the various tribes of Israel we find a precious gem on prayer. In 1 Chronicles 4:9-10, “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.”
The first thing I want you to see is the significance of the name Jabez, it means “sorrowful”. Apparently the mother of Jabez bore him in sorrow. We do not know what the circumstances were for her during or prior to his birth but it was something significant enough for her to give her son such a name. Think of having to go through life having a name that means sorrowful!
The next item of importance is the characteristic that is attributed to him, “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.” I find it fascinating how the Lord is able to take a person such as Jabez whose mother gave him this difficult name to go through life with and then make something wonderful out of his life. What made him more honorable than his brothers we do not know exactly but I suspect a good part of it had to do with the fact that he was a man of prayer.
There are four specific things that Jabez made request of in his prayer to God. First, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed”. Many mistakenly think that it is wrong to ask God of anything for themselves. This prayer and many others recorded in the Bible disprove that notion. What is wrong is that we ask things for ourselves with the wrong motives, as James says, “that you may spend it on yourself”. Notice also that Jabez does not give any specifics on how the Lord would bless him, he merely asked the Lord’s blessing on his life. I like this, he trusted the Lord to know the best way in which God could bless him.
Second, “and enlarge my territory”. Many look at this as having only to do with land size. Now this may have been part of it but the application can be given to a much larger spectrum. It can include an enlargement of the territory of ministering to others, to blessing others, to witnessing to a greater number of people. I know for I have applied this prayer to my own life and God has expanded my ministry all over the world.
Third, “that Your hand would be with me”. Oh how important of request is this! I for one want and need the Hand of God on my life continually. The Hand of God is representative of strength and power. I am week in many ways and the areas that I think that I am strong are often where I get myself into trouble as I rely on my own strength and power. My strength is nothing compared to that of God’s.
Fourth and final, “and that You would keep me from evil that it may not grieve me!” What an important request to make, to be kept from evil and what great insight he had of the results of not being kept from evil, that it brings grief. The evil that is being referred to is both from without, those powers and forces around us that want to bring evil upon us whether they are the Devil and his cohorts or those who just simply want to do us harm. But there is another source of evil that we need to be kept from and it is much closer to home, it is our own heart. The Word of God the Bible tells us in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Obviously very few know the true condition of the heart because we all think that we have a good heart. But God reveals the true condition of our heart and it is the heart that Jesus comes into and changes as a person surrenders their life to Him.
Drew Macintyre is associate pastor of Calvary Chapel of Alpine and can be reached at 619-445-2589, or ccalpine@juno.com