Tag: News

Majority Of Post-Op Patients Managed Pain Without Opioids, Study Finds

The study’s lead author believes that keeping people from taking opioids for the first time could help mitigate the opioid epidemic.

Patients who have undergone surgery may not always need opioid painkillers to manage post-operative pain, according to a new study.

The research, which is pending publication in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, found that a majority of patients were able to manage their pain using a regimen of over-the-counter pills.

For the study, researchers selected patients who were undergoing one of six surgical procedures. These patients were given the option to use acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil) to control their pain. They were instructed to take an alternating dose of these over-the-counter medications every three hours.

The patients were also given a “rescue” opioid prescription to use in case they experienced breakthrough pain and needed more relief. However, 52% of patients did not use the opioids, and 98% used 10 opioid pills or fewer. People who used the opioids needed, on average, four pills.

“Patients reported minimal or no opioid use after implementation of an opioid-sparing pathway, and still reported high satisfaction and pain control,” study authors wrote. “These results demonstrate the effectiveness and acceptability of major reduction and even elimination of opioids after discharge from minor surgical procedures.”

Lead study author Michael Englesbe, a professor of surgery at the University of Michigan, told Medical Xpress that keeping people from taking opioids for the first time could help mitigate the opioid epidemic.

“We think a fundamental root cause of the opioid epidemic is opioid-naïve patients getting exposed to opioids and then really struggling to stop taking them postoperatively, and then moving on to chronic opioid use, abuse, addiction, and overdose,” he said.

The study proves that many patients can manage pain effectively without opioids. Englesbe will now expand the research to study an additional 12 types of surgical procedures. Demonstrating that patients can manage pain without opioids could change how prescriptions are handled, he said.

“Our overall goal is to have half the operations done in the state of Michigan without patients needing opioids and still getting excellent pain care,” he said. “There are alternatives to opioids for surgical pain that work well and we should be using them more.”

However, he said that this involves talking openly to patients, and realizing that in some cases opioids are needed to effectively manage pain.

“Just not giving opioids is not the answer—we have to give the best pain care,” he said. “From the beginning, everyone was on the same page with talking to patients about their pain and letting them know that operations hurt.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 June 2019
USPS, FedEx Remain Easiest Way To Ship Fentanyl Into US

“The sheer logistical nature of trying to pick out which packages contain opioids makes it much more challenging,” said a Customs and Border Protection official.

A recent federal court case involving 43 members of a methamphetamine distribution network with ties to the Sinaloa Cartel again highlighted the relative ease with which the United States Postal Service (USPS) and private carriers like FedEx can be used to deliver powerful synthetic opioids into the United States.

The case involved a San Diego-based network that shipped methamphetamine and the “club drug” gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) to locations throughout the U.S. using the postal service and FedEx.

Coverage in Quartz detailed how increases in express shipping, combined with a lack of sufficient staffing at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency and carriers like the UPS allow such transactions to take place.

Former FBI agent Dennis Franks said that the current method of stopping drugs from entering the country through the mail is like “putting your finger in a dike, but there’s just not enough fingers to put in all the holes.”

The 43 defendants in the federal case used the USPS and fraudulent FedEx accounts to mail drugs to sub-distributors. The FedEx accounts were “billed to and paid for” by large corporations in the belief that the companies would not notice smaller shipment costs.

A joint task force involving the Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Attorney’s Offices, sheriff’s and police departments, the United States Postal Inspection Service and Federal Bureau of Prisons collaborated to file indictments against 43 members of the network on May 21.

Despite efforts like these, the practice of importing drugs through the USPS and private carriers remains a serious problem for state and federal law enforcement.

According to congressional testimony from the union that represents CBP officers, the agency needs more than double the number of inspectors currently on duty at mail sorting facilities to keep up with the volume of packages to “ensure successful interdiction.”

In the past five years, express shipments have increased by nearly 50%, while international mail shipments have risen more than 200%. But at shipping and receiving hubs like the one maintained by FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee, there were only 15 CBP officers working on the overnight shift to process 86 million shipments in 2018.

“The sheer logistical nature of trying to pick out which packages contain opioids makes it much more challenging,” said Robert E. Perez, an acting executive assistant commissioner for CBP. “It’s unlike anything we’ve encountered.”

Policy changes incurred by the change in government administrations, as well as the necessity of a warrant to search any package sent via the USPS, also contribute to the overwhelming issues that confront law enforcement with mail shipments.

And as Franks noted, the cartels and related networks have their own means of assuring that their deliveries go unchallenged.

“Don’t think that these cartels don’t have their own ‘intelligence services,’” he told Quartz. “Friends, family members working on the inside. So they’re going to know how many agents or officers are assigned to which FedEx facility, when they’re working, and when they’re not.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 June 2019
Jessica Alba Attends Therapy With 10-Year-Old Daughter

Alba opened up about the importance of healthy communication with her daughter during a recent conference.

Actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba recently opened up about attending therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor, to encourage healthy communication and to become a “better mother.”

Alba was at Her Campus Media’s eighth annual Her Conference at Wanderlust Hollywood last Saturday (June 1), where she discussed women in the workplace, running The Honest Company which she co-founded in 2011, and growing up in Hollywood as a young actress with Mexican roots.

The mother-of-three talked about going to therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor Marie Warren, to “learn to be a better mother to her and communicate better with her.”

This is a far different approach to how she was raised, she admits.

“I didn’t grow up in an environment where you talked about this stuff, and it was just like shut it down and keep it moving,” said Alba, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “So I find a lot of inspiration just in talking to my kids.”

“Some people think, like in my family, you talk to a priest and that’s it. I don’t really feel comfortable talking to him about my feelings,” she said.

Alba is often candid about her life, parenting style and approach to running her business.

Last month, she revealed the impact that coming of age in Hollywood had on her. “I was meant to feel ashamed if I tempted men. Then I stopped eating a lot when I became an actress. I made myself look more like a boy so I wouldn’t get as much attention. I went through a big tomboy phase,” she said during a panel at the Goop Health summit in Los Angeles on May 18.

Actresses Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Wilde and Busy Philipps also sat on the panel.

Being a young woman in Hollywood, Alba became guarded and became insecure about her womanhood.

“In Hollywood, you’re really preyed upon,” Alba said. “They see a young girl, and they just want to touch you inappropriately or talk to you inappropriately or think that they’re allowed to be aggressive with you in a way.”

She continued, “So, then I like created this pretty intense ‘don’t f— with me’ [attitude]. I had to create a harder shell about being a woman.”

Motherhood allowed her to stop being ashamed of her body, she said. “[After Honor was born] I was like, oh this is what these boobies are meant to do! Feed a kid! And that was the dopest s— I’d ever done. So, I came into my body as a woman finally and I stopped being ashamed of myself.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 June 2019
Researchers Posing As Opioid Users Struggle To Get Treatment Appointments

Researchers posing as Medicaid patients in need of buprenorphine were often denied appointments by providers.

Researchers called hundreds of addiction treatment providers across the U.S. while posing as individuals in need of help—in a study of the barriers that people with addiction disorders face when seeking treatment. What they found was a minefield of discouragement, especially when they were posing as people on Medicaid.

According to ABC News, two researchers reading from scripts called 546 prescribers of the opioid addiction treatment drug, buprenorphine, to attempt to schedule an initial screening appointment.

After three tries, 77 of the prescribers were unreachable, often due to outdated contact information on government websites. When they were able to make contact at all, 46% of prescribers denied the researchers appointments when they said they were on Medicaid, compared to 38% when they said they could pay with cash.

This is a serious problem in light of the fact that finding the motivation to go through such a frustrating process is even more difficult when you’re coping with an addiction disorder, says study co-author Dr. Michael Barnett.

“Think about the last time you had to make four or five phone calls in a row and how annoying that was,” he explained. “Addiction makes doing tasks like that even harder.”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 38% of “nonelderly” people with opioid use disorders are covered by Medicaid. Analysis by the foundation found that those on Medicaid were twice as likely to receive treatment for addiction than those with either private insurance or no insurance.

However, the results of this latest study suggest that prescribers are still reluctant to take patients on Medicaid, likely because it doesn’t pay as much as private insurance.

This is particularly true for doctors, who only agreed to schedule appointments 40% of the time. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants, on the other hand, agreed to appointments 70% of the time.

Other barriers included the cost of buprenorphine treatment, which averaged $250 to start but could go as high as $500, plus lab fees. Additionally, some states require Medicaid patients to try other avenues of treatment before they’re allowed to go on buprenorphine in spite of multiple studies finding it more effective than many other forms of opioid addiction treatment.

“Abundant evidence shows that methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone all reduce opioid use and opioid use disorder-related symptoms, and they reduce the risk of infectious disease transmission as well as criminal behavior associated with drug use,” reads the National Institute on Drug Abuse website. NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow said of the study that the barriers discovered “should be eliminated.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 June 2019
Connecting With The Police Helped Her Get Sober

Sending a single text message helped one woman living with addiction get the help she needed to start her sober journey.

When Shannon McCarty realized that she wanted to start living life—and not just try to escape it by using meth and heroin—she knew that she could turn to a police officer who had slipped her a card and said to call when she was ready for help.

So, McCarty mustered the courage to send the following text to Officer Inci Yarkut, a member of the Community Outreach and Enforcement Team with the Everett, Washington Police Department, according to NPR.

“Hello Inci, I tried to send you a message a few weeks ago I’m not sure if you got it … I was hoping to set up a time to meet with you for your help on the stuff we had talked about. I don’t want to go to jail or have a record as I am just the lost, depressed, hurt woman who has made a few poor choices, basically trying to end my life because I can’t take pain and hurt anymore … I have lost a lot over the last three years including my will, it seems. I don’t want to be this judged person anymore. I just need some help and I am not usually one to ask for help, but I want to be me again. I am sorry and thank you for listening, and I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you for your time. Shannon.”

That message set things in motion, and today McCarty has been sober for 10 months. Along the way Yarkut has helped her navigate sobriety, connecting McCarty with community resources like a local bus pass.

Yarkut said that success stories like McCarty’s show that community policing can have a big impact on helping people stay sober. Since the Community Outreach and Enforcement Team was founded in 2016, it has helped the department connect with people struggling with substance abuse, rather than just arresting them.

“The idea behind our team was to really focus on that outreach piece because just continually putting people in jail, putting people in jail, putting people in jail and having them come out and repeat that cycle of their drug use, that’s not doing anything for them,” Yarkut said.

The interaction between Yarkut and McCarty shows how a different approach to policing addiction can work. Yarkut first met McCarty when someone called the police because McCarty was shooting up in a car. But instead of arresting her, Yarkut opened a door.

“I explained who I was and what my role in the police department was,” Yarkut said. ”[I] said, ‘Hey, if there’s something that we can do for you—because I think there are things that we can do for you, that we can help you—give me a call.”

Today, McCarty is a far cry from the skinny and pale woman who Yarkut met that first night.

“She looks healthy,” Yarkut said. “She has a big old smile on her face. You can just see in her face what a changed person she is, and it’s pretty awesome.”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
California Mental Health Workers To Take Part In Indefinite Strike

The employees would like patients’ wait times to be cut, as well as increased access for those looking for therapy.

A union representing mental health workers announced Monday (June 3) that they will be taking part in an indefinite strike beginning Tuesday (June 11) due to unaddressed concerns about patient care.

The union represents about 4,000 Kaiser Permanente workers from more than 100 California facilities, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The Bee adds that the National Union of Healthcare Workers is working on a new labor contract and says the employees walking out would like wait times for patients to be cut, as well as increased access for those seeking therapy.

“We have been working between sessions on some short-term, relief-type efforts,” Kenneth Rogers, a Kaiser psychologist, told the Bee. “but really the problem with us not accepting their last offer was there is no accountability for the patient care and work issues that we had addressed.”

On May 23, Janet A. Liang, the president of Kaiser’s Northern California Region, and Deborah Royalty, chief administrative officer of the Permanente Medical Group, reportedly made an offer to “provide immediate relief to staffing shortages and constraints in appointments.”

Their offer included a number of actions for the coming 30 days, including expanding recruiter numbers, having a temporary agency focus on crisis intake, scheduling on-call staff for emergency departments, providing more staff for scheduling, and more.

“We believe these changes will make meaningful, immediate improvement in your daily office schedule,” Royalty and Liang stated in their letter, according to the Bee. “However, these actions are just the beginning, and so together we need to innovate and collaborate to design an integrated model of evidence based care that truly makes Kaiser Permanente the best place to receive care and best place to work in mental health.”

Despite their efforts, Rogers tells the Bee that management hasn’t included these offers in the contract. He says one of the workers’ main requests is that their schedule booking requirement decreases from 90% of the time to 80% so that they have more time to respond to emails, take notes, check in with parents of minors, and more.

“We can’t wait any longer to fix this problem,” Kaiser therapist Alicia Cruz said in a statement. “I work with young people who are suicidal and self-harming, and our group sessions are so crowded that children and their parents have to sit on the floor. We just don’t have the resources at our clinic to provide the services these people need.”

According to the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the union also plans to attend a rally for mental health in Sacramento on Wednesday, June 12.

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
Handbag Maker Celebrates 3 Years Of Helping Employees Stay Sober

All of the proceeds from the bags that the nonprofit company sells are used to pay employees’ salary and benefits.

For three years, every employee at Unshattered, a non-profit bag maker in Poughkeepsie, New York, has stayed clean and sober.

Although that may not be remarkable at some workplaces, it’s amazing considering that all of the women who work at Unshattered are in the early stages of recovery.

“You picture devastation and addiction. That was their lives,” Kelly Lyndgaard, who founded the organization, told Chronogram in January. “They’ve chosen to get well, chosen to do the hard work to get back on their feet.”

Unshattered provides women in recovery with job training and a career path that leads to a full-time job, with benefits. Using up-cycled materials like old army uniforms or car upholstery, the women make handbags and other totes. The idea is simple, but life-changing. This week, the organization is celebrating three years of 100% sobriety for all employees, according to the Daily Freeman.

Dea Tobias has been with the organization since November 2017. She connected with Unshattered after completing rehab at Hoving Home, a treatment center that partners with the organization. Since then, she’s been sober and finds purpose in making beautiful bags and connecting with other women who have overcome addiction.

“It’s about women like myself, my beautiful handbags and learning to live,” she said.

Having a steady job allowed her to stay clean after her stay in rehab ended. “I didn’t know what my next step was but I knew that going back to doing the things that I used to do wouldn’t work,” she said.

Instead of returning to the streets, Tobias was able to secure a full-time job at Unshattered. “It’s truly amazing here,” she said. “I’m around the ladies that know my struggle. They know what I’ve been through and they relate.”

When a woman has completed a recovery program, she can apply for a 10-week internship at Unshattered, learning skills like design and sewing. When the internship is up, the woman can decide if she is ready for full-time employment, Lyndgaard said.

“It’s not about me deciding whether or not I want to hire you. It’s: are you willing to do the work that it takes to create employment for yourself and drive enough value in revenue to the team?” she said.

All of the proceeds from the bags that Unshattered sells are used to pay employees’ salary and benefits. Administrative costs are covered through fundraising, Lyndgaard said.

The president of Hoving Home, Beth Greco, said that Unshattered has provided a continuum of care for women in early recovery.

“[Recovering women] can finish our program, but there has to be a next step,” she said. “What Unshattered has done is given us a very viable next step for some of the women.”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
"New York Times" Fact-Checks Elizabeth Warren’s Stance on Legalization

Warren is now pro-legalization but the record shows that this was not always the case.

A new article by the New York Times fact-checks Senator Elizabeth Warren’s comments regarding marijuana legalization.

In April 2019, the senator, who is currently a 2020 Democratic candidate for president, told a CNN town meeting that she “thought it made a lot more sense for Massachusetts to go ahead and legalize marijuana” instead of decriminalizing it, which the state passed in 2008.

However, the Times found that Warren’s declaration was somewhat exaggerated, and pointed to comments made in 2011 and 2012 that appeared to show reluctance towards embracing full legalization.

At the town hall meeting in April, Warren was responding to a student’s question about her stance towards legalization by noting that she “supported Massachusetts changing its laws on marijuana,” and believed that legalization was a more effective measure than decriminalization.

The Times considered her comment an “exaggerated” version of her actual stance at various times in the past.

During the Senate Democratic primary debate in October 2011, Warren actually opposed legalization. “Medical marijuana is one thing, but [legalization] generally, no,” she said. A year later, she declined to offer an opinion on the issue during an interview with the Associated Press, but later voiced her support for medical marijuana during an interview for Boston radio.

In 2015, Warren was asked by Boston Globe reporter Joshua Miller about her previous opposition to legalization efforts. She told Miller that she was “open to it” after hearing about legalization measures in other states, and reiterated her willingness to consider legalization a year later when asked about her position on Question 4, a legalization initiative on the November 2016 ballot.

The Times piece found that Warren’s statements on various subjects were largely true, including the decline of the minimum wage and her wealth tax plan, though it took issue with her description of Democratic support for said plan as “huge.”

Warren’s current support for legalization puts her on equal footing with the majority of her fellow Democratic candidates, including Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttgieg, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.

Former Vice President Joe Biden supports decriminalization efforts, criminal record expungement for marijuana charges and federal research into cannabis, but has stopped short of backing legalization, a position he shares with two other Democratic candidates, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and Senator Sherrod Brown.

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
Dank Recovery Memes And The Healing Power Of Humor

The memes inject humor into even the darkest subject matter—overdosing, rehab, heroin withdrawals, domestic abuse and more.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to find communities of people who share even the most obscure common interest. This is especially true for people who hesitate to openly share that part of their life with just anyone. Like people who are living with, or are recovering from, addiction.

Dank Recovery Memes is just one example of a social media channel that has gained popularity through its humorous take on the experience of living with addiction. Created in 2015 by Timothy Kavanagh, its Facebook page (where it all began) now has more than 726,000 followers. It has a presence on Instagram as well.

As a heroin user in recovery himself, Kavanagh, 35, found a community of people online who craved the same humor when it came to their shared experience. “Through social media I found other people that were sober, had good recovery, but had the same kind of sense of humor,” Kavanagh told BuzzFeed News.

Kavanagh built his seven years of recovery around total abstinence. He won’t drink, smoke or use methadone because it will trigger a relapse. But he emphasizes that his recovery may not look like the next person’s. It is unique to him.

The content posted on Dank Recovery Memes injects humor into even the darkest subject matter—overdosing, rehab, heroin withdrawals, domestic abuse and more.

“I had to reconcile the fact that I can have a really fucked-up sense of humor but not be a fucked-up human being,” Kavanagh told the Daily Dot last month. “I’m very awkward in a fun way. I’ll go out to eat and the waiter will say, ‘Can I get you a beer?’ And I’ll say, ‘I can’t. I’m allergic. I break out in track marks.’ The waiter will just look at me like oh my god…”

While plenty of his social media followers have reached out to Kavanagh to thank him for providing this space to relate to others, others don’t find his brand of humor particularly helpful, including experts interviewed by BuzzFeed News and the Daily Dot. But while they were reluctant to praise his efforts due to the graphic and “offensive” nature of his posts, they did acknowledge the importance of finding connection in recovery.

While the content on Dank Recovery Memes may be offensive to some, its greater purpose is to bring together a marginalized community through humor. And for “normies” who come across these memes, it’s a humanizing glimpse inside the world of people living with addiction.

“There are other people like me who are sober right now who don’t know you can be sober but still laugh,” said Kavanagh. “Being OK with your sense of humor and laughing at your past is a form of self-forgiveness. It helps remove the shame, stigma, and isolation that comes with addiction.”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019
Ivan Moody Counts Rob Halford, Jon Davis Among His Sober Supporters

“No matter where he was in the world, he picked up, left me messages, he sent me cards,” Moody said of the Judas Priest singer.

Ivan Moody, the lead singer of the metal band Five Finger Death Punch, has had a hard road to achieving sobriety, but he currently counts metal legend Rob Halford as one of his sober supporters, as well as Jonathan Davis from Korn.

As Moody explained on The Jasta Show, “Rob is actually one of my—and I hate to put it this way—sober coaches. He’s been sober now for almost forty years. And when I went through recovery, and even my bandmates and I weren’t talking, Halford was on the phone with me. I got two 10-minute phone calls a day, and Halford was one of them every single day. No matter where he was in the world, he picked up, left me messages, he sent me cards.”

Moody added that “Jonathan Davis was the same way—he was very supportive of me.”

Halford is considered one of the best in the genre. Moody said, “This was coming from a kid who grew up on Judas Priest and I’m turning around and this guy is a father to me in certain ways, and very much a piece of who I am now.”

Moody went on to tell Jasta he was “never very orthodox with [my] sobriety. Neither was J.D. or Rob, which, again, that’s what I really appreciate. I don’t go to a lot of meetings. I respect it, and I understand why other people used [them] and benefitted from [it], but for me personally, it’s just not what I need. So that was something I always looked to with guys like J.D. and Rob… that wasn’t my path and I didn’t need it.”

Moody has reportedly been to rehab five times, and came close to death from an alcohol-related seizure. After that experience, Moody recalled, “I knew I was done during my detox. It took me seven and a half days just to detox. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t go to the bathroom by myself, I couldn’t smoke a cigarette. I had a staff member actually sleep in the room with me for the first 28 hours just to make sure I didn’t go under. I blew a .36 when I went in, which anyone who knows anything knows means that was basically death. And I didn’t want to come out of it. I woke up the next day and I [was] pissed that I was still alive.”

Moody ultimately realized he didn’t want his legacy to be dying from substance abuse.

“I listen to a Linkin Park song now and I can hear [Chester Bennington] crying for help. Why did it take us so long to hear that? I want people to hear my lyrics or my melodies and say ‘that dude’s in pain.’ Or ‘that guy’s victorious over something—he overcame that substance.’”

View the original article at thefix.com

5 June 2019