Le Toucher et la Paralysie : le rôle du toucher dans la construction de Soi et la relation à l’Autre

To touch, to be touched… The subject invites to reflexion when one is valid. What is the case for a person with cerebral palsy? How does she touch? What does she feel when she is being touched, massaged? The article refers, in a more global way, to the question of Touch, linked with our sensibility and our sensory experiences in our first relationships and our self-construction. It gives voice to persons suffering from cerebral palsy in the way of testimonies on their feelings of touch. What does it represent for them? How do they speak of their experiences? Their words questions our practices and our relationship to the other person in therapeutic touch and well-being touch, as well as their implications and complementarities.     

L’activité sportive chez un jeune en surpoids : une prescription ?

As far as taking care of obese people is concerned, advising young overweight children to do more exercise seems to be relevent. And yet some problems emerge. People associate sport with mockery and it often rhymes with physical and moral suffering. That's why it's necessary to pay attention to children's feelings about it. When they try to avoid sport, they think they protect themselves from the other, who has ultimately become the prosecution, blaming them for their difference. That can create a lot of frustration. As psychologists and teachers in the adapted physical activity area, we work as a group, especially during our therapy session. Then, the physical activities that we propose are talked about in therapy. They can look at it from the outside as they are expressing their difficulties, from previous or present experiences. Sport must be associated with game, pleasure, self-satisfaction and most of all with the communication with the other. They’re accompanied according to their need and we aim at integrating them progressively in a sports association. Besides, a psychological support often proves itself required and beneficial. Moreover, guilty parents feel like they are being judged. Their inability to encourage their child to do any sport echoes their own fear. So we must take their feelings into account so they don’t feel even less capable and more guilty. Offering to verbalise their problems and respecting everyone's feelings make them consider they have a choice, and it enables them to realize that sport can be a source of personal achievement.     

Endocrinology of bone mineralization: An update

Throughout the world, millions of people suffer from fragilizing osteopathies such as osteomalacia and osteoporosis. Osteomalacia is a rare disorder, corresponding to mineralization abnormalities in adult bone, as opposed to rickets in children. Renal phosphate loss and hypophosphatasia are the main causes of vitamin-resistant osteomalacia. Diagnosis is based on clinical history, phosphocalcic metabolism assessment and, if necessary, molecular characterization, and must be rapid in order to initiate the most appropriate treatment and consider new treatments such as burosumab if necessary. Osteoporosis is characterized by reduced bone mass and strength, which increases the risk of fragility fracture. Fracture-related burden is expected to increase over the coming decades linked to the aging of population and a treatment gap. In order to reduce this treatment gap, it is important to develop two strategies: improvement of screening and of treatment. Systematic screening using the FRAX® fracture risk assessment tool could be useful to increase anti-osteoporosis medical treatment and reduce fracture rates. The question of treatment sequencing in osteoporosis is another challenge, notably after denosumab cessation, complicated by a decrease in bone mineral density and increased risk of fracture. New treatments are also available, including romosozumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody, which promotes bone formation and inhibits bone resorption by inhibiting sclerostin. Romosozumab is approved in several countries, including France, for treating severe osteoporosis in postmenopausal women at high risk of fracture and free of cardiovascular comorbidity. Endocrinologists need to be aware of these fragilizing osteopathies in order to improve both diagnosis and treatment.