Tag: News

Selena Gomez Gets Candid On Instagram: "Depression Was My Life"

“I think before I turned 26 there was like this weird time in my life [where] I think I was kind of on auto pilot for about five years.”

In a recent Instagram post, pop starlet Selena Gomez announced she would be taking a break from social media. She also held a live stream to speak to her fans about what she’s been going through.

“Update: taking a social media break. Again. As much as I am grateful for the voice that social media gives each of us, I am equally grateful to be able to step back and live my life present to the moment I have been given,” she wrote in the post. “Kindness and encouragement only for a bit! Just remember- negative comments can hurt anybody’s feelings. Obvi.”

Gomez also hosted an Instagram live stream where she spoke with fans for the last time before her hiatus. Fans asked her questions in the chat about a wide variety of topics, including her mental health.

“Depression was my life for five years straight,” she revealed to her fans. “I think before I turned 26 there was like this weird time in my life [where] I think I was kind of on auto pilot for about five years. Kinda just going through the motions and figuring out who I am and just doing the best I could and then slowly but surely doing that.”

Having her every action put under the spotlight for public scrutiny led to an “annoying” pattern where she constantly dealt with a “fear of what people are going to say.”

To a fan who asked how to forget someone, Gomez offered a little advice.

“Well, you can’t really just like forget. You kinda have to figure out why you’re still holding onto them. Like why do you want to forget them? And that’s where you start,” she said, before adding “Sometimes forgetting can be a bad thing.”

This level of candidness from Gomez to her fans is not unprecedented. She has always been vocal about her struggles with mental health and her battle with lupus, an autoimmune disease. In February, the singer went to rehab for a mental health tune-up.

“She felt like she needed to get away and focus on herself with no distractions. She came back feeling very empowered. She wants to go again later this year. She feels and looks great. She’s still working on new music and is excited about it,” someone close to Gomez told People.

Gomez is also taking a social media break this time not because things are bad, but because they are good.

“I enjoy my life,” she said on Good Morning America. “I don’t really think about anything that causes me stress anymore, which is really nice.”

View the original article at thefix.com

1 October 2018
Virus That Infected Our Ancestors May Play a Role in Addiction

Researchers studied whether the retrovirus played a part in promoting addiction in some individuals.

A virus that infected a human-related species more than 250,000 years may be the key as to why some individuals are more likely to develop dependencies towards drugs or alcohol.

A recent study found that traces of an ancient retrovirus – a virus that inserts its genetic code into its host’s DNA – known as HK2 was up to three times more likely to be found in the genetic makeup of individuals who had contracted either HIV or hepatitis C through intravenous drug use than individuals who had become infected through other means, such as sexual intercourse.

Traces of the HK2 virus are believed to exist in approximately 5 to 10% of the global population.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Athens in Greece and Oxford University in London, England, was published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences and was comprised of two parts: the Greek research group analyzed the genes of more than 200 individuals with HIV, while the English group looked at the DNA of approximately 180 individuals infected with the hepatitis C virus.

The Greek researchers found that the members of their study group that contracted HIV from intravenous (IV) drug use were 2.5 times more likely to have traces of the HK2 retrovirus in their genetic makeup than those who became infected through intercourse or other means.

The English researchers found similar results in their study group, with those who contracted hepatitis C through IV drug use and were long-time drug users 3.6 times more likely to have traces of the retrovirus in their genes than those who were infected in another manner.

As Live Science noted, when HK2 is found in an individual’s DNA, it is found in a gene called RASGRF2, which is involved in the release of dopamine – the neurotransmitter linked to the brain’s pleasure circuitry, and the chemical released by the brain in large amounts during drug use which scientists believe causes the repetition of such experiences.

The second part of the study yielded less concrete results: scientists inserted traces of HK2 into the RASGRF2 gene in human cells that did not already contain it. While they discovered that the virus changed the means in which DNA created proteins, it remained unclear as to its direct connection to addictive behaviors.

According to co-senior study author Aris Katzourakis, professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford, the study is “the first time that researchers have shown that an ancient viral insertion that’s variably present in the population has a measurable, in this case detrimental, effect on our biology,” though as CNN noted, the RASGRF2 gene was associated with binge-drinking in a 2012 study.

The next step is to determine how HK2 influences dependent behaviors, with the end goal being a “drug to target” where the retrovirus has infiltrated the gene.”

Doing that may allow science to “help people recovering from this kind of behavior,” said Katsourakis.

View the original article at thefix.com

29 September 2018
Doctor Stands By Writing More Than 300k Opioid Prescriptions

“I was never charged or ever investigated because I didn’t commit any crimes. I prescribed narcotics to people in pain.”

When Dr. Katherine Hoover was working at a pain clinic in West Virginia between 2002 and 2010, she wrote more than 335,130 prescriptions for painkillers, which breaks down to 130 prescriptions each day, seven days per week.

Despite the outrageous numbers, Hoover recently told NBC News that she stands by her actions and she didn’t do anything wrong.

“I was never charged or ever investigated because I didn’t commit any crimes,” Hoover said in a telephone interview. “I prescribed narcotics to people in pain. I did everything I could to help people have a better life, which I told the FBI. Every prescription I wrote was justified for the person who had gotten it.”

Despite the fact that she practiced in the state with the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths, Hoover sees no connection between her actions and the crisis.

“That’s not because of doctors,” Hoover said. “It’s actually gotten worse since they forced doctors out of business who do their best to treat pain patients. … The first and real problem in our country is the high rate of suicide and the distress people are in. That’s the epidemic that we need to start looking at.”

Hoover began working at Mountain Medical Care Center, a private clinic in Williamson, West Virginia that was reportedly known for easily giving out prescriptions.

Each morning, cash patients would line up outside the clinic, where first-time patients paid $450 to see a doctor, and returning patients paid $150 to the receptionist to write a refill for their prescriptions. In 2009 alone the clinic took in more than $4.6 million in cash, according to court documents.

“They called it ‘Pilliamson,’ instead of Williamson,” Mingo County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Sparks told The Charleston Gazette in 2011. “It was an open secret, you might say.”

In 2010, federal authorities shut down the clinic. The office manager and another doctor who worked at the clinic were charged with crimes including selling narcotics prescriptions, but Hoover was never charged. She received a civil penalty of about $90,000 and reportedly fled to the Bahamas.

Over the past eight years, according to NBC, Hoover has been reportedly elusive with her whereabouts, although she is still engaging in lawsuits, including with a dry dock company that she says wrecked her yacht.

Speaking with NBC, Hoover said that her doing time in jail would not solve anything.

“We need to stop putting people in jail,” she said. “Our jails are full of innocent people. This needs to be addressed as a public health problem. Everybody in our society is addicted to something.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Pennsylvania Supreme Court To Decide If Prenatal Drug Use Is Child Abuse

A lengthy legal battle has been waged by the state against a mother whose newborn was hospitalized for 19 days to treat drug withdrawal.

The highest court in the Keystone State this week heard arguments on the divisive matter of whether prenatal drug use counts as child abuse.

Attorneys for child protective services framed it as a matter of “human rights,” while defense lawyers for an unnamed mother warned that criminalizing such behavior could be a “slippery slope,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court case revolves around a woman who tested positive for a medley of drugs—including pot, opioids, and benzodiazepines—just after giving birth in a central Pennsylvania hospital. Afterward, her newborn was hospitalized for 19 days to treat drug withdrawal.

Children and Youth Services took custody of the baby and accused the mother of abuse, setting off a lengthy legal battle still winding through state courts.

Early on, a Clinton County court decided that the mother’s drug use didn’t constitute child abuse as a fetus is not a child. But during the appeals process, a Superior Court bounced the case back to the lower court, though two judges raised concerns about the implications of labeling drug use during pregnancy as a form of abuse.

“Should she travel to countries where the Zika virus is present? Should she obtain cancer treatment even though it could put her child at risk?” wrote Judge Eugene Strassburger, according to the Philadelphia newspaper.

Earlier this year, attorneys for the mother—who is identified in court filings only by her initials—asked the state’s high court to take up the case, and this week the justices heard oral arguments from both sides.

“Failing to heed a doctor’s advice to take folic acid, if the child is born with a neural tube defect, then the mother could be a child abuser under the county’s reading of the statute,” said attorney David Cohen, arguing that labeling prenatal drug use as child abuse could open the door to a variety of similar arguments against unhealthy behavior.

But Justice Christine Donohue called that “slippery slope” argument “too much,” and said she wasn’t sure that she’d “buy” it. Meanwhile, county CYS attorney Amanda Browning told the court that the case was about “human rights, equal protection and child welfare,” pointing to the painful withdrawal process after birth.

It’s not clear when the high court will issue its decision.

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Prince’s Half-Sister Talks About His Death, Fentanyl

Sharon Nelson says the music icon was just trying to control his pain when he took the fatal dose of fentanyl.

First came prescription drugs and heroin. Now, the synthetic opioid, fentanyl, is ripping through the country, killing scores of people who take heroin, cocaine or prescription pills that have been laced with fentanyl.

That’s exactly what happened to Prince, according to his half-sister, Sharon Nelson.

Speaking with ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff for a 20/20 segment that will air Friday night, Nelson said that her brother was just trying to control his pain.

“He wouldn’t have taken a pill like that at all,” Nelson, Prince’s oldest sister, said in a preview released by ABC. “When you’re in pain, you’re going to take a pill, hoping it relieves it. You’re not thinking like that; you’re not thinking like a normal person who isn’t in pain.”

Woodruff said that Prince’s death made fentanyl a household name and raised awareness about the drug.

“This is kind of a wakeup call for people around the country about the power and danger of these pills, from a man who—no chance given his intelligence and position in life—would never have taken a pill with so much fentanyl,” Woodruff said.

Fentanyl can be used in a medical setting to control severe pain. However, toxicology reports showed that the levels of the drug in Prince’s blood when he died in April of 2016 were extremely high and were a “smoking gun,” as to his cause of death.

“The amount in his blood is exceedingly high, even for somebody who is a chronic pain patient on fentanyl patches,” Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told the Associated Press earlier this year.

However, there are reports that the singer thought that he was taking Vicodin, not fentanyl pills. Nelson said the fact that her brother, an experienced opioid user, died from an overdose shows how dangerous fentanyl is.

She said she hopes fans will realize that fentanyl is extremely dangerous and that it can be lurking anywhere—even when people think they know what drugs they are taking.

“After all that’s happened to Prince, I know, I can say for sure that his fans will never take that pill,” she said.

The episode of 20/20 that Nelson appears on is focused on fentanyl, including investigating the source of illicit fentanyl from China and speaking with families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl overdose.

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Gisele Bundchen Details Panic Attacks, Suicidal Ideation In New Memoir

“I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up…I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad.”

In an upcoming memoir, Gisele Bündchen reveals that her life as a supermodel was far from perfect, despite how it appeared on the outside.

Behind the scenes, the Brazil native, who retired from the runway in 2015 after 20 years in the business, struggled with panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, People reports.

In a new interview, the 38-year-old mother-of-three said she is ready to share the pain she struggled with as she went from small town life to global stardom as a young woman.

Bündchen was 14 when she got her first taste of modeling in Brazil. The rest was history.

“Things can be looking perfect on the outside, but you have no idea what’s really going on,” she told People. “I felt like maybe it was time to share some of my vulnerabilities, and it made me realize, everything I’ve lived through, I would never change, because I think I am who I am because of those experiences.”

As a young model, Bündchen suffered her first panic attack in 2003 during a bumpy plane ride. She struggled to accept the pain she was feeling while at the height of her success.

“I had a wonderful position in my career, and I was very close to my family, and I always considered myself a positive person, so I was really beating myself up… I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel bad,” she told People.

The model said she felt “powerless.” In her memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, she described feeling like an “animal trapped inside” a cage. “I couldn’t see a way out, and I couldn’t stand another day of feeling this way,” she said, according to Page Six.

Unable to make sense of her emotions at the time, her anxiety only worsened.

“The idea swept over me then: Maybe it will be easier if I just jump. It will be all over. I can get out of this. When I think back on that moment, and that 23-year-old girl, I want to cry. I want to tell her that everything will be all right, and that she hasn’t even begun to live her life. But in that moment, the only answer seemed to be to jump.”

The former Victoria’s Secret model was prescribed Xanax by a treatment professional, but wasn’t enthusiastic about receiving medication for her problems.

“The thought of being dependent on something felt, in my mind, even worse, because I was like, ‘What if I lose that [pill]? Then what? Am I going to die?’ The only thing I knew was, I needed help,” she said, according to People.

Since then, she made some changes to her lifestyle—like cutting sugar and relieving stress with yoga and meditation—that she said were the building blocks to her recovery.

“I had been smoking cigarettes, drinking a bottle of wine and three mocha Frappuccinos every day, and I gave up everything in one day. I thought, if this stuff is in any way the cause of this pain in my life, it’s gotta go.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Martin Sheen On Sobriety, Supporting Charlie Sheen

“I think all of us are striving to lead honest lives. That’s a requirement of every human being.”

Actor Martin Sheen addressed the many challenges experienced by his son, Charlie Sheen, at a charity event in Los Angeles on September 24.

The 78-year-old actor, who currently appears in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, folded his son’s experiences with alcohol, drugs and his very public meltdown into statements about selflessness, family unity and the importance of finding a means of giving back to the world at large at an benefit for the nonprofit The People Concern by LA Chefs for Human Rights.

Sheen, who was being awarded with LA Chefs’ Human Rights Hero Award for his work with the homeless in Los Angeles, said that he was proud of his son’s efforts to follow a healthier path and admit to his past discretions. “I think all of us are striving to lead honest lives,” said Sheen. “That’s a requirement of every human being.”

Sheen, who also battled alcoholism, said that charity and helping others can also be beneficial to one’s own problems. “The best way to heal is to help healing someone else, and it takes one to know one, so you can appreciate what someone’s going through if you’ve gone there yourself,” he noted.

In an interview with AARP Magazine, Sheen said that upon getting sober through his Catholic faith, he turned to Alcoholics Anonymous to gain perspective on how to help Charlie with his dependency issues, which ultimately entailed him turning over his son to authorities for probation violation in 1998 as a last-ditch attempt to get him into rehabilitation.

Martin Sheen admitted that bringing his son to help felt, at times, almost insurmountable. “What he was going through, we were powerless to do much, except to pray for him and lift him up,” he told Radio Times in 2015. Being in the glare of the celebrity spotlight also posed its own set of unique roadblocks. “The ego, the cover, the availability of stuff – it’s bread for destruction, the celebrity’s life,” he explained.

To counter the siren call of the dangerous side of fame, Sheen said that giving over one’s most precious commodities – time and ability – can become an oasis.

“When you come to understanding that the only thing you can ever possess is the thing that you cherish, and you give away with love, including your precious time and talent,” he explained. “That’s why volunteering is so important, because that’s the only thing we can take with us when the job is over. The only things you can take with you are the things which you cherish and gave away with love.”

Sheen expressed pride and gratitude in Charlie’s latest attempt to live a clean and sober life. “The bigger your celebrity, the more difficult it is to lead an honest life, because your past is always present,” said the elder Sheen. “I think today makes it that much harder for people because there’s no privacy. I think that the idea of anonymity is very important to the [recovery] program, and it has an energy all its own.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Big Pharma Tries To Slip Benefit Into Senate Opioid Package

“Big Pharma is trying to hijack the bill and turn it into a giant pharmaceutical company bailout,” said Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota).

Pharmaceutical companies are attempting to inject $4 billion in savings for themselves into opioid legislation being considered in Congress.

A package of bills meant to address the opioid epidemic have passed both the House and Senate, and the two bodies are now working together to craft a version that both can agree on.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, has tried to get a clause added to the bill that would reduce the discount that pharmaceutical companies need to offer Medicare beneficiaries whose spending on drugs falls into the coverage gap, according to The New York Times.

“We have a good bipartisan opioids bill and we need to get it signed into law. But now Big Pharma is trying to hijack the bill and turn it into a giant pharmaceutical company bailout,” Senator Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) said in a Twitter post.

Right now, pharmaceutical companies are required to discount brand-name drugs 50% for people in the coverage gap. Next year, the discount is set to increase to 70%. The increased discount was initially designed to reduce federal spending on Medicare’s drug benefit by $7.7 billion through 2027.

However, after the law was passed increasing the discount, the Congressional Budget Office raised its estimate of the savings to $11.8 billion. Because of this, PhRMA would like the discount reduced to cover only the $7.7 billion savings, calling the updated level a “technical error.”

The AARP said that PhRMA’s proposal “will increase prescription drug costs for older Americans while providing a windfall of billions of dollars to the drug industry.”

The prescription drug discount has nothing to do with the opioid crisis—but because there is broad bipartisan support for passing the opioid legislation quickly, PhRMA is trying to slip its desired changes into the bill while it has momentum, the Times noted.

“We are focused on ensuring Medicare Part D is secure for the future by correcting a technical error” by the Congressional Budget Office, said Stephen J. Ubl, the president and chief executive of PhRMA.

However, most people outside PhRMA disagree.

“In the context of the current debate, I would not roll back the drug discounts,” said Mark E. Miller, the former executive director of a federal commission that advises Congress on Medicare. “We need broader changes in the structure of Medicare’s drug benefit. If the discounts are rolled back, patients and taxpayers should get something in return, to bring more competition to the market and drive down drug prices.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 September 2018
Overdose Deaths Increase in New Jersey Even As Prescriptions Decline

State attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal says that despite the fatal OD increase “there are reasons for hope.”

Opioid overdose deaths in New Jersey increased by 24% last year, even as the number of prescriptions written for opioids fell for the first time in recent years.

According to a press release from the state attorney general’s office, just over half of opioid overdose deaths in the state were caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids meant to mimic its strength.

“We still lose too many of our residents to drug overdoses, and the death toll continues to rise,” said Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal. “But, if we look at the numbers, there are reasons for hope.”

Despite the fact that an average of eight New Jersey residents die from an opioid overdose each day, Grewal said that policies to limit prescriptions of opioids are working. The state’s opioid prescription rate peaked in 2015, when 5.64 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed.

By 2017, that number was down to 4.87 million, making last year the first “in recent memory when the number of opioid prescriptions fell below 5 million,” said the press release.

In March 2017, the state enacted a five-day limit on first-time opioid prescriptions. Since then, prescriptions of opioids have decreased 26%.

Between January 2014 and March 2017 they were reduced just 18%, so this suggests a significant improvement in cutting back on opioid prescriptions. Overall, opioid prescriptions have been reduced by 39% between January 2014 and July of this year.

“The decreasing rate of prescription opioids dispensed in New Jersey shows that a smart approach to the opioid epidemic can help turn the tide. If we persist in our efforts to prevent addiction and overdoses, we can save lives,” said Sharon Joyce, director of the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator for Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (NJ CARES).

In order to try and decrease the opioid overdose rate, the state will begin offering more information online, including data on naloxone administration rates and overdose rates for specific counties.

“The Attorney General is not only making his Department’s opioids data publicly available,” the press release said. “Through NJ CARES, the Department is relying on data to target its education efforts and identify its enforcement priorities.”

The administration is also focusing on outreach efforts, including an ad campaign to highlight a safe disposal program for unused prescriptions.

And the musical Anytown will be performing at middle and high schools across the state to raise awareness about the dangers of opioids.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 September 2018
Scientists Used Gambling Monkeys To Try To Figure Out Addiction

The experiment’s goal was to understand which regions of the brain wield influence over decision-making.

The behavior of a pair of monkeys with a taste for juice—and gambling—may suggest that risky decisions, from high stakes betting to criminal behavior, is less of a personality trait and more an issue of brain circuitry.

Scientists conducted an experiment in which the monkeys were taught to play a computer game that rewarded them with juice, the amount of which varied depending on the risk level of their decision.

When the scientists found that a region of the brain involved with eye movements became activated when the monkeys took greater risks, they temporarily deactivated the region—and found that the test subjects made far less rash decisions.

The research suggests that risk preference is not fixed but adaptable, and by understanding the brain function involved in those decisions, help could be provided for individuals who have “decision-making disorders” like substance or gambling dependency.

The research, conducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and published in the September 2018 edition of Current Biology, sought to determine whether risk-taking was a personality trait—in short, “that some people are risk takers and others are not,” said study co-author and Johns Hopkins associate professor Veit Stuphorn.

The scientists devised a computer game in which the test subjects—two rhesus macaques—were offered two choices: one, which provided a guaranteed but small amount of juice, and the other, which might bring a more substantial amount of juice, or none at all. To indicate their choice, the monkey would move their eyes in each round.

What the scientists found was that the monkeys consistently chose the bigger but less safe option, even in the face of getting consistent but smaller amounts of juice instead of none at all.

They also discovered that the supplementary eye field (SEF)—a region in the frontal lobe of primates’ cerebral cortex that is involved in eye movement, and possibly in the eye’s role in decision-making—became very active when the monkeys earned a larger reward.

But as NPR noted, the activity didn’t prove that it correlated with the monkeys’ behavior, so the scientists temporarily deactivated that area of the brain through cooling. Once inactive, the monkeys made safer bets by choosing the smaller but consistent option for juice.

The study findings do not conclusively determine that the SEF is responsible for high-risk decision-making; rather, it suggests that making risky decisions is not a set and permanent aspect of an individual’s personality.

The brain might alter those choices based on a number of factors, including the level of reward. It’s also possible that other regions of the brain may be complicit in making high-risk choices.

Understanding which regions of the brain wield influence over decision-making could have far-ranging implications in the treatment of conditions that involve rash choices.

“One would be to help people who have decision-making disorders, whether that’s problem gambling or addiction, or other things like that,” said Michael Platt, the James S. Riepe University Professor of neuroscience, marketing and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “We might be able to develop more effective therapies.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 September 2018