Tag: News

Dry January's Popularity Leads More Bars To Mix Non-Alcoholic Drinks

Bars are crafting specialty drinks with flashy names to draw in alcohol-free customers during the month of January.

The Dry January public health campaign started several years ago by a group called Alcohol Change UK, a London-based advocacy group. Now the campaign has spread to the U.S., and many New York bars are finding themselves mixing mocktails (cocktails without alcohol) for their customers.

This is great news for those trying to abstain or reduce their alcohol consumption, making it easier to do a night on the town with friends and still participate in the festivities—without the drinking.

New York bars such as Existing Conditions are crafting specialty drinks with flashy names to draw in alcohol-free customers, such as the “Serendipity,” a drink with a tomato and passion fruit blend.

At $16, the drink is expensive but delicious—just refrain from calling it a mocktail. According to Channel Three News, owners Dave Arnold and Don Lee say, “It contains the word ‘mock.’ Why would I want to mock the guest who’s coming in?” Arnold and Lee want to take their customers seriously, they say—alcohol drinkers or not.

They continue, “We put more time and effort into going from a raw ingredient to a final product, because that’s what it takes to put that much flavor into something without alcohol.”

Not all bars are happy about Dry January.

“We hate it!” says Johnny Swet, a bar owner in New York. “You don’t see your regulars. Where are they?” he says. “A guy comes in for four or five bourbons, four or five nights a week, and then you don’t see him. Is he out of town? His friends say, ‘He’s not drinking this month.’ Oh lord.”

Swet says that January has gotten so slow that he is encouraging his bartenders to go on vacation. Tips are down by as much as 25%. The average person at a bar might drink two or three cocktails in one sitting, but just one or two mocktails, says Rick Camac at the Institute of Culinary Education in The Wall Street Journal.

Mocktails also often involve complicated recipes with pricey ingredients, and fresh-squeezed juice in an alcohol-free drink can cost more than the alcohol itself. $16 is the average cost for a virgin drink, and customers aren’t always willing to pay that much.

Though Dry January may not be good for business, the month-long public health campaign is about health and wellness. Mintel Senior Beverage Analyst Caleb Bryant told Channel Three News, “For some that means reducing alcohol consumption, or abstaining from alcohol entirely.”

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Pete Davidson Returns to SNL With Support From A Sober Star

Comedian John Mulaney joined Davidson during Weekend Update where they joked about mental health, hanging out and watching The Mule.

After a tumultuous 2018 filled with personal and professional challenges due in part to mental health conditions, comedian Pete Davidson returned to Saturday Night Live last weekend, guided by former SNL writer John Mulaney, who is in recovery.

The two appeared together in an interview portion of Weekend Update, where Davidson makes an appearance from time to time to discuss his personal life and sometimes his mental health for laughs.

“As you know, I’ve had a really crazy month and I want to talk about something that really matters to me,” Davidson told Colin Jost.

“Mental health?” Jost asked.

But no—the sketch was about the new Clint Eastwood film The Mule.

Seeing Davidson and Mulaney side by side, Jost remarked that he didn’t know the two hung out together.

“We do, but a lot of time it looks like I’m Pete’s lawyer,” Mulaney said. “For real, I’ve been spending time with Pete to try to show him that you can have a life in comedy that is not insane. A sober, domestic life.”

“And after observing John’s life I publicly threatened suicide,” Davidson retorted. “I know I shouldn’t make that joke, but it’s funny.”

In December, Davidson was cut almost entirely from an episode of SNL because he had missed dress rehearsals, TMZ reported. Davidson reportedly was in his pajamas in his dressing room for most of the show.

Before that taping, Davidson posted a message on Instagram before deleting his account, saying, “I really don’t want to be on this earth anymore. I’m doing my best to stay here for you but i actually don’t know how much longer I can last,” according to Vanity Fair.

That was concerning because Davidson has discussed his suicidal ideations in the past. His former fiancée Adriana Grande was so worried that she stopped by the set, but security refused to let her see Davidson, who had reportedly asked that Grande be kept away.

“I’m downstairs and I’m not going anywhere,” she tweeted to Davidson, before deleting the message.

However, in Saturday’s SNL return, Mulaney didn’t let the suicide comment slide without being acknowledged.

“Pete, look at me, look me in the eye,” he said. “You are loved by many and we are glad you’re okay.”

Mulaney doesn’t often talk about his sobriety, although he has mentioned it occasionally.

“I don’t drink,” he said in his show New in Town, according to Vanity Fair. “I used to drink, then I drank too much and I had to stop. That surprises a lot of audiences because I don’t look like someone who used to do anything.”

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Can Cannabis Alter The Teenage Brain?

A recent study examined how marijuana use impacts the gray matter in the teenage brain.

A recent study consisting of brain scans of 46 teens in Europe found that smoking just one or two joints seemed to produce changes in the gray matter of their brains.

The teens appeared to have a greater amount of this tissue, which is a major component of the central nervous system and is responsible for information processing. However, this does not necessarily mean that more gray matter is better.

According to a 2006 article in the Postgraduate Medical Journal, the brain naturally shrinks as people age. This process is called “pruning” and is part of the normal development process at all ages.

This new study, titled “Grey Matter Volume Differences Associated with Extremely Low Levels of Cannabis Use in Adolescence,” notes that gray matter volume (GMV) in the temporal regions of the brain is “associated with contemporaneous performance on the Perceptual Reasoning Index and with future generalized anxiety symptoms in the cannabis users.”

While there has been little research on the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to substances like alcohol, it is generally considered true that permanent changes and damage to the young, developing brain are more significant due to the compounding issues that development disruption causes over time. However, it’s difficult to determine whether the increased gray matter observed in the studied teens is a bad thing, a good thing or a little of both.

“At the age at which we studied these kids (age 14), cortical regions are going through a process of thinning,” said Hugh Garavan, lead author of the study and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, to NBC News. “So, one possibility is that the cannabis use has disrupted this pruning process, resulting in larger volumes (i.e., a disruption of typical maturation) in the cannabis users. Another possibility is that the cannabis use has led to a growth in neurons and in the connections between them.”

Gray matter can also be altered by a number of common activities other than drug use. Studies have found that meditation can result in changes to this part of the brain. Others have found that habitual interaction with action video games reduces gray matter in the hippocampus while playing 3D platformer video games increases it. Even becoming pregnant has shown to create significant changes in gray matter structure that last for two years after birth.

In this latest study, the 46 teens self-reported smoking very small amounts of cannabis in their lifetimes, equivalent to one or two joints, and reported that they had not consumed any other illicit substances.

Not only did the study find greater GMV levels around the amygdala, hippocampus and other areas of the brain, follow-ups found higher levels of “sensation seeking” and anxiety symptoms among the cannabis-using teens compared to controls. However, the authors of the study specifically stated that these behavioral differences were unrelated to the amount of gray matter.

“Of the behavioral variables tested, only sensation seeking and agoraphobia differed between the cannabis users and controls and these factors were not related to GMV differences,” the study reads.

The authors also noted that behavioral differences should be “interpreted with caution” due to the low sample size, but they are notable as “panic and anxiety symptoms are frequently reported side effects by naïve and occasional cannabis users.”

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
How Big Pharma's Payments To Doctors Affected Overdose Deaths

A new study examined the link between large payments and gifts to doctors from pharma companies and overdose deaths.

In counties and states where opioid manufacturers offered large payments or gifts to doctors to promote their product, a new study has suggested that both opioid prescriptions and opioid-related overdose deaths were higher than in other areas.

Coverage of the study in The New York Times showed that the study culled information from a variety of sources, including the Open Payments database, which tracks payments by pharmaceutical companies to doctors, and data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Information from these sources suggested that spending on physicians was most highly concentrated in the Northeastern United States, where certain cities and counties claim some of the highest overdose death rates in the country.

The study, conducted by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center and New York University School of Medicine, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, filtered data from the aforementioned national databases through three criteria: total dollar value of marketing efforts by companies spent on doctors, number of payments and number of physicians that received any marketing.

According to the researchers, the pharmaceutical industry spent approximately $40 million promoting their opioid products to nearly 68,000 doctors between 2013 and 2015. The marketing efforts included paid meals, trips and consulting fees.

By referencing overdose data and opioid prescription numbers from the CDC, they determined that for every three additional payments made to doctors per 100,000 people in a county, overdose deaths involving prescription opioids would rise 18% over a year’s time.

Marketing to doctors dropped significantly in the period immediately following the years included in the study by 33%, which The New York Times attributed to public pressure on companies after the opioid epidemic began reaching critical levels.

Cities and counties in the Northeastern US that received some of the largest payments also had some of the highest overdose rates, including Salem and Fredericksburg in Virginia, Cabell County in West Virginia and Lackawanna County in Pennsylvania.

As The New York Times noted, the study authors also suggested that the number of interactions such as free meals appeared to be more strongly linked to overdose deaths than the amount spent on such interactions.

“Each meal seems to be associated with more and more prescriptions,” said study lead author Dr. Scott Hadland of Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction. Hadland and his co-authors also wrote that the study did have limitations: They were unable to differentiate between overdose deaths involving prescribed opioids and those caused by painkillers obtained through illegal means.

“We acknowledge that our work describes only one part of the very complex opioid overdose crisis in this country,” said Hadland. “Even still, prescription opioids remain involved in one-third of all opioid overdose deaths, and are commonly the first medications that people encounter before transitioning to heroin or fentanyl. It is critical that we take measures now to prevent marketing from unnecessarily exposing new people to opioids they may not need.”

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Critics Respond To Malcolm Gladwell's Controversial Cannabis Article

In a recent New Yorker feature Gladwell makes the case that marijuana is not as “safe as we think.”

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s recent feature in The New Yorker about the possible connections between marijuana use and paranoid/psychotic behavior has drawn fierce critical responses from both cannabis consumers and fellow writers alike.

A new editorial in The Atlantic crystallizes the core issues that opponents have voiced about the story: In citing former Los Angeles Times reporter Alex Berenson’s book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, both Gladwell and Berenson appear to be making broad assumptions about the potential for marijuana use to incite paranoia, schizophrenia and violent behavior based on research and anecdotes that do not reach the conclusions that the authors state.

As James Hamblin, who wrote the Atlantic piece, noted, Gladwell and Berenson’s assertions are the “public-intellectual equivalent of just sayin’.”

In the New Yorker story, Gladwell sought to make the case that marijuana is not as safe a drug as proponents claim it to be. His primary source for this assertion is Berenson’s book, which cites statistics from the state of Washington, which at first blush, seem to indicate that murder and aggravated-assault rates rose by 40% between 2013 and 2017 — the period immediately before and after the state legalized recreational marijuana.

Berenson also cited a 2017 report on the health effects of cannabis by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), which found “substantial evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and the development of schizophrenia or other psychoses.”

But as Hamblin and others note, Gladwell appears to focus less on the wealth of inconclusive or conflicting results found in both sources, as well as the many other factors that contribute to mental illness and violent behavior.

Gladwell writes, “We don’t know that an increase in cannabis use was responsible for that surge in violence” in Washington State. Nor do Gladwell or Berenson appear to mention that the NAM research also found statistical evidence of a link between “cannabis use and better cognitive performance among individuals with psychotic disorders,” as well as “moderate evidence of no statistical association between cannabis use and worsening of negative symptoms of schizophrenia.”

As Hamblin and science writer Dave Levitan both noted, there are two issues at hand with Gladwell and Berenson’s assertions. One is a cherry-picking of data to prove a point: In regard to the statistics about Washington, Levitan noted that while the state did experience an increase in murders between 2013 and 2017, the rate actually fell between 2015 and 2016. Additionally, the murder rate from 2012 to 2017 actually only increased by 3%. So, as Levitan wrote, “Which murder rate do you use?”

Both authors also noted that Gladwell and Berenson continually confuse correlation with causation. As Hamblin writes, “Berenson argues that if marijuana can cause psychotic breaks from reality, and psychotic people are more inclined to violence, marijuana is a cause of violence.” Levitan breaks it down even further: “Crime tends to spike in the summer; so does ice cream consumption. Did all that ice cream cause the crime?”

Ultimately, what emerges from Gladwell and Berenson’s narratives is the undeniable fact that more research into cannabis is necessary. But linking its use to mental illness and violence will actually make such efforts more difficult. Hamblin cited Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who said, “Many people who are making the decisions about funding going to the [National Institute of Health] and other organizations will now say that we should have a moratorium on a drug that increases murder. Why would we want to do that and put people’s lives at risk?”

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Can Treating Insomnia Ease Depression Symptoms For Menopausal Women?

Researchers explored possible treatment options for depression and insomnia in menopausal women.

Depression symptoms in women going through menopause may decrease when insomnia is treated, new research has found.

According to Reuters, researchers enlisted 117 women going through menopause who also had insomnia. Most women, according to Reuters, experience menopause anywhere between age 45 and 55. Menopause occurs when the hormones estrogen and progesterone stop being produced by the ovaries. One of the main symptoms for women is insomnia.

The women were split into three groups randomly. One group received cognitive behavioral therapy, the second group received a type of CBT called sleep restriction therapy, and the third was given information about habits to make sleeping and falling asleep easier (also referred to as sleep hygiene education).

Of the women in the study, 4.3% had been diagnosed with moderately severe depression. Researchers found that both types of therapy helped to alleviate depression symptoms, while the sleep hygiene education did not have the same results.

“We can add targeted cognitive behavioral treatment of insomnia to the current arsenal of treatments available to alleviate menopausal associated insomnia and with this treatment we have the added benefit of reductions in depressive symptoms which frequently co-occur with sleep disturbance associated with menopause,” senior study author Christopher Drake of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, told Reuters via email. “We hope to one day show that targeting insomnia symptoms early when depression is mild or yet to develop can prevent depression from ever developing in the first place.”

When it comes to insomnia, CBT helps people learn techniques that address the mental aspects of insomnia, like overcoming negative emotions, anxiety and a racing mind.

Previous research has found that CBT can help those with insomnia to create better bedtime routines and improve their sleep patterns.

When it comes to sleep restriction therapy, it can be done solo or in addition to CBT. The goal of this type of therapy is to limit how many times a person wakes during the night and to decrease the total amount of time they spend in bed but not the total amount of time they spend asleep.

In this particular study, women receiving CBT went through six face-to-face therapy sessions with a medical professional in the behavioral sleep medicine field. Those undergoing sleep restriction therapy had two face-to-face sessions and three phone sessions. The remaining group undergoing sleep hygiene education received six emails per week, each with tips for better sleep routines and information on sleep and its connection to health and lifestyle.

Researchers do note that this study has some limitations, such as the fact that women with major depression were not included in the study. The study also did not take into account hot flashes, which are a common symptom of menopause that could interfere with sleep.

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Judge Rules Firing Of Nurse Caught Stealing Opioids "Unfair" Because Of Addiction

The nurse had falsified patient requests for drugs, used them, and then further falsified records that the medications were delivered to the patient.

A nurse who was caught injecting herself with opioids she had reported as being delivered to patients has had her name cleared of wrongdoing because a judge has ruled her addiction a disease.

Not only has the long-term care facility where she works been forced to take her back on the job, but the Regional Municipality of Waterloo has also been ordered to financially compensate the nurse for “injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The presiding judge, arbitrator Larry Steinberg, argued that the nurse suffered from the disease of severe opioid use disorder, leaving her with “a complete inability or a diminished capacity” to resist stealing and using opioid medications meant for patients at her place of work.

The nurse in question, named in records only as DS, was found to have falsified patient requests for drugs, used them, and then further falsified records that the medications were delivered to the patient. A fellow nurse also caught DS using patients’ drugs in the restroom.

Faced with accusations from management, DS at first denied using the drugs but later admitted to becoming addicted after using drugs as part of her treatment for a kidney condition.

The incidents that DS stands accused of happened in 2016, and DS said she has not used any such drugs since going to rehab later that year.

Legal representatives for the long-term care facility argued that reinstating DS’ employee status would burden the facility with “undue hardship.” They claimed that if DS were to steal a fentanyl patch from one of the many patients there who suffer from dementia, the patients would not be aware enough to realize it and report her.

Additionally, other nurses cannot be depended on to go above and beyond their duties to monitor DS to ensure she does not commit further thefts. Furthermore, they argued, DS was not fired for being addicted but for falsifying records and stealing.

However, Steinberg ruled that the theft and falsification of records were symptoms of a disease DS suffered from.

The nature of addiction became central to the case. An addiction expert who was brought in to weigh in on the case, a professor of psychiatry named Lawrie Reznek, testified that addiction is more like a “bad habit” than a disease. He did admit that his opinion “was a minority view in the psychiatric profession and that it was contrary, for example, to the DSM-5.”

Steinberg argued that calling addiction a “bad habit” actually “stigmatizes these conditions and makes it harder for people to get help.” Science backs the judge’s opinion, as studies have found addiction to affect those with genetic predispositions to it and actually change the brain and body in measurable ways.

However, the Canadian justice system has not historically treated addiction as such, convicting several nurses accused of similar crimes.

View the original article at thefix.com

23 January 2019
Doctor Uses Instagram To Start Mental Health Conversation

Dr. Jessica Clemons has launched an Instagram page aimed at helping those in need of mental health care.

These days a lot of people are reaching out through social media to talk about mental health, whether they’re world famous celebrities or everyday people who want to share their difficulties and ask for help.

Now Forbes reports that a psychiatrist named Dr. Jessica Clemons is using social media to not only help open up the conversation on mental health but to also guide people on where and how to get help.

Dr. Clemons’ Instagram page has over 40,000 followers, and she also appeared on a VH1 special, In Session: Live with Dr. Jess, where she did a therapy session live. (Another therapist who has done live therapy sessions, in this case with celebrities, is Dr. Siri Sat Nam Singh, who did a widely seen talk with Katy Perry in 2017.)

Dr. Clemons told Forbes, “I’m really happy my work in mental health gives me the opportunity to take care of people when they need it the most. I think having compassion and the ability to empathize with people is my gift. And I use it to remind people, who may be feeling like they’re suffering mentally, that they are not the summation of the negative things that have happened to them. I remind people that they are not their pain and that they have access to love.”

In launching @askDrJess, Dr. Clemons said attending therapy herself inspired her to have a social media presence. “I had this idea to try to normalize conversations about mental health . . . I remember the day when Instagram debuted the feature where you could post a poll. People had already started asking me things about anxiety . . . I’d done a lot of group work where I’d lead discussions that were also teaching people. So I thought I’d give it a try on Instagram. I posted the poll and 90 percent of people said they wanted to learn more about anxiety.”

While therapy is a private experience, Dr. Clemons didn’t feel reservations about being public on social media. “Using social media, I found ways to connect and talk about things that are real. So I just kept doing it and it felt natural.” Dr. Clemons’ husband also encouraged her to do a live stream every weekend, then “before I knew, eight or nine months had passed and people are still tuning in.”

Where Dr. Clemons does one-on-one therapy with her clients during the week, her weekend live streams “feel like a group experience. It’s not group therapy, by any means, but there is this shared sense of empathy . . . And when they share, there’s this feeling that the group gets to share some of the burden. . . . I’m there as the expert but people also use each other as support.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 January 2019
FDA Discusses Using Drug Therapy To Help Teens Quit Vaping

The FDA recently held a public hearing to discuss the vaping epidemic among teens.

Many consider vaping to be a big problem, and many still don’t realize its potential harm. Now the FDA is so concerned about the popularity of vaping, they’re even considering drug therapy to help wean young people off vaping.

Matthew L. Myers, who is the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told CNN, “The FDA has concluded that the level of addiction it is seeing among youthful e-cigarette users is so disturbing and so unprecedented that it needs to at least ask whether we need a solution that goes beyond what we ever did with cigarettes.”

Even with the partial government shutdown in effect, the FDA held a public hearing on Friday, January 18, to address the problem. One of the biggest problems with the vaping epidemic among young people is that more research needs to be done. There’s a different kind of chemistry that goes into vaping, and previous research on teens and cigarette addiction clearly doesn’t apply the same way.

As Dr. Susanne Tanski, who is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine, explained, “Clinicians urgently require new solutions to safely and effectively help stop [adolescents] using these and all tobacco products for good. There is unfortunately virtually no data on how to treat an adolescent with e-cigarette dependence.”

But then the conversation switched to a different tactic, which is trying to keep young people from starting vaping at all. Tanski conceded that “preventing youth use in the first place should be FDA’s primary goal. We must all recognize that if an adolescent has developed a nicotine addiction as a result of vaping, we’ve already failed.”

Several teens who got hooked on vaping also spoke at the public hearing. One teen first started Juuling in eighth grade, and he stated, “I see so many of my friends who had the same problem I did … and have no idea how to stop it.”

One possible solution that was proposed at this meeting was having the FDA conduct a “pre-market review” of e-cigarettes, which would include a ban on flavors, one of the most appealing factors of e-cigarettes to young people.

And while medication is being considered to help wean adolescents off vaping, non-drug therapy was strongly urged at this public hearing as well.

Nonprofit tobacco control group Truth Initiative has a program that helps young people quit through text messaging. An executive for Truth Initiative said in a statement, “E-cigarette users don’t identify as smokers. They have different barriers to quitting, and, especially in the case of teens and young adults, many want an anonymous way to go about quitting without involving their parents or friends, which texting provides.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 January 2019
Inside The Push For Over-The-Counter Naloxone

The FDA has recently taken an unprecedented step to kickstart the development of over-the-counter naloxone products.

Last week the FDA took an unprecedented step to make the anti-overdose drug naloxone directly available to opioid users.

Currently, naloxone requires a prescription. But in an effort to make approval for non-prescription versions of the drug easier for pharmaceutical companies to get, the FDA developed sample labels that would meet federal Drug-Facts Label requirements for over-the-counter products. It marks the first time the drug agency has ever proactively created labelling to expedite the process.

“Naloxone is a critical drug to help reduce opioid overdose deaths. Prevention and treatment of opioid overdose is an urgent priority,” the agency wrote in an unsigned statement. “Increased availability of naloxone for emergency treatment of overdoses is an important step.”

The agency created two model labels, one for a nasal spray version of the drug and one for an auto-injector version. Both versions include a short information box about the drug and its uses, followed by an illustrated guide on how to administer the life-saving treatment and a warning about the drug’s expected effects.

“These efforts should jumpstart the development of OTC naloxone products to promote wider access to this medicine,” the FDA wrote. The agency tested the labeling through a research contractor to verify that potential users could understand the images and warnings.

“This work builds on our ongoing efforts to get this life-saving drug into the hands of those who need it most,” the statement continued. “In addition to the approval of injectable naloxone for use in a health care setting and both prescription auto-injector and intranasal forms of naloxone, which facilitate use by laypersons, we also released draft guidance to advance development of generic naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray.”

The move comes amid a long-term rise in overdose deaths, as close to 48,000 people died from opioids in 2017 – double what the figure was seven years earlier, according to the federal agency. Overdoses can cause drug users to lose consciousness and stop breathing, but naloxone reverses those effects if given quickly enough.

Though the injectable version is pricier, a two-pack of the brand-name nasal spray version sells for about $125, according to CNBC. The generic is around $40 per dose. In theory, offering up a label that could make over-the-counter access easier might help lower those figures further by eliminating the need for would-be buyers to spend money on seeing a doctor for a prescription.

“While the person administering naloxone should also seek immediate medical attention for the patient,” the agency said, “the bottom line is that wider availability of naloxone and quick action to administer it can save lives.”

View the original article at thefix.com

22 January 2019