It's Not Dementia, It's Your Heart Medication: Cholesterol Drugs and Memory

 

One day in 1999 Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., and could not remember where he was. His wife stepped outside, and he greeted her as a stranger. When Graveline’s memory returned some six hours later in the hospital, he racked his brain to figure out what might have caused this terrifying bout of amnesia. Only one thing came to mind: he had recently started taking the statin drug Lipitor. Cholesterol-lowering statins such as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are the most widely prescribed medications in the world, and they are credited with saving the lives of many heart disease patients. But recently a small number of users have voiced concerns that the drugs elicit unexpected cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, fuzzy thinking and learning difficulties. Hundreds of people have registered complaints with MedWatch, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction database, but few studies have been done and the results are inconclusive. Nevertheless, many experts are starting to believe that a small percentage of the population is at risk, and they are calling for increased public awareness of the possible cognitive side effects of statins—symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as dementia in the aging patients who take them. Fat and the Brain It is not crazy to connect cholesterol-modifying drugs with cognition; after all, one quarter of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that, among other things, provides structure to the body’s cell membranes. High levels of cholesterol in the blood create a risk for heart disease, because the molecules that transport cholesterol can damage arteries and cause blockages. In the brain, however, cholesterol plays a crucial role in the formation of neuronal connections—the vital links that underlie memory and learning. Quick thinking and rapid reaction times depend on cholesterol, too, because the waxy molecules are the building blocks of the sheaths that insulate neurons and speed up electrical transmissions. “We can’t understand how a drug that affects such an important pathway would not have adverse reactions,” says Ralph Edwards, former director of the World Health Organization’s drug-monitoring center in Uppsala, Sweden. Two small trials published in 2000 and 2004 by Matthew Muldoon, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh, seem to suggest a link between statins and cognitive problems. The first, which enrolled 209 high-cholesterol subjects, reported that participants taking placebo pills improved more on repeated tests of attention and reaction time taken over the course of six months—presumably getting better because of practice, as people typically do. Subjects who were on statins, however, did not show the normal improvement—suggesting their learning was impaired. The second trial reported similar findings. And a study published in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics noted that among 60 statin users who had reported memory problems to MedWatch, more than half said their symptoms improved when they stopped taking the drugs. But other studies have found no significant link between statins and memory problems. Larry Sparks, director of the Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Research at the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz., goes so far as to say that “you’ve got a better chance of buying a winning lottery ticket, walking outside and getting hit by lightning and dying” than you do of suffering a cognitive side effect from statins. Vulnerable Genes? Many experts agree that for most people the risk is quite low, but they are beginning to believe the effects are real. “A subset of the population is vulnerable,” argues Joe Graedon, co-founder of the consumer advocacy Web site the People’s Pharmacy, which has collected hundreds of reports of cognitive-related statin side effects in the past decade. Some researchers believe these people have a genetic profile that puts them at risk.

Statin side effects: How common are memory loss, diabetes, and muscle aches?

 

When the US Food and Drug Administration told the makers of cholesterol-lowering statins to add new side effect warnings to their labels last week, many of the 40 million statin users may have been unaware of the extent of the risks associated with these drugs that have been touted by some cardiologists to be safer than aspirin. No question, statins -- which include Lipitor (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), and Crestor (rosuvastatin) -- are relatively safe drugs, and they’ve saved thousands of lives over the past 20 years, particularly in men with established heart disease. But like any drug they can cause problems in some, including muscle aches, an increased risk of diabetes, and, gaining recent attention, memory loss. University of California-San Diego researcher Beatrice Golomb published a paper two years ago describing 171 statin users who reported that they had developed memory problems and dementia-like symptoms that the statin users attributed to their use of the medications. The vast majority experienced an improvement in their symptoms after stopping the drugs and many saw their symptoms return after going back on statins. Robert Grindell, a state employee from Makinen, Minn., told me his short-term memory began to deteriorate after he started taking Zocor in his early 50s. (He contacted Golomb after hearing about her research.) “My co-workers told me I was coming in to ask them the same question three times in one day,” he said. “I had a CT scan to determine if I had a stroke, but it came back fine; the next day, I couldn’t even remember where I had the test performed.” After learning that Zocor caused memory problems, Grindell decided to go off it and said within a few days he noticed an improvement in his memory, not having to glance down several times at a printed phone number as he dialed it to remember the digits. Unfortunately, the exact incidence of these memory problems isn’t known. Manufacturer-sponsored clinical trials show that they occur in fewer than 1 percent of users, but statin researcher Dr. Paul Thompson, chief of cardiololgy at Hartford Hospital, said the real incidence is probably much higher. He has a study expected to be published sometime this year that measured cognitive effects in statin users compared with those on placebos that he said will provide a better estimate; the findings can’t be disclosed until the study is published. The diabetes risks of statins are more well-established. One review study published last year calculated an extra two cases of type 2 diabetes in every 1,000 patients who took a high-dose statin (80 milligrams per day) compared with those who took a lower dose (20 to 40 milligrams). And one clinical trial found that statin users had about a 25 percent increased risk of developing diabetes over a two-year period compared with those who took placebos. Experts, though, agree that in people at high risk for heart disease, the increased diabetes risk is outweighed by the statin’s protection against heart attacks and deaths from any cause. The danger of muscle destruction from statins -- which can damage the liver and kidneys -- is also clear but slight. According to Thompson, about 1 in every 1,000 statin users will develop severely elevated levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, which indicates muscle death, and only 1 in 10 million die from developing an extremely severe case of the condition called rhabdomyolysis. Muscle aches are far more common: occuring in about 1 in 10 users, according to Thompson. “It seems to be more common in people who do a lot of exercise.” In fact, a study he conducted found that marathon runners taking statins developed a greater increase in creatine kinase right after their race compared with runners who weren’t on statins. “We also see more muscle aches in older people and women since they have less muscle mass,” he said. Lowering the statin dose or switching to a different statin doesn’t always help, Thompson said. “In our studies, those who develop statin myalgia tend to get it again and again; they’re body may get sensitized to statins.” There may also be a genetic component, with statin muscle aches occuring more often in those whose parents also had them. And there may be a link between memory loss and muscle aches. “In our database, the majority of patients who had cognitive problems also had muscle problems,” Golomb said. She recommends that those who are having memory loss or muscle aches speak to their doctor about going off statins -- especially if they’re not in a high-risk group for heart attacks. Those who get the most benefits are men under 65 who’ve already had a heart attack, she said. Women, elderly people, and those without heart disease get much smaller benefits from statins, and it’s unclear whether the drugs extend their lives. “Many patients have told me that their doctor said going off statins would kill them,” Golomb said, “but that’s not an accurate representation of the evidence.”

Evidence builds that meditation strengthens the brain

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit. See Also: Health & Medicine Nervous System Psychology Research Brain Tumor Mind & Brain Neuroscience Intelligence Brain Injury Living Well Reference Thalamus Alpha wave Cerebral contusion Functional neuroimaging Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes. The article appears in the online edition of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of neural tissue. Among other functions, it plays a key role in memory, attention, thought and consciousness. Gyrification or cortical folding is the process by which the surface of the brain undergoes changes to create narrow furrows and folds called sulci and gyri. Their formation may promote and enhance neural processing. Presumably then, the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth. "Rather than just comparing meditators and non-meditators, we wanted to see if there is a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration," said Luders. "That is, correlating the number of years of meditation with the degree of folding." Of the 49 recruited subjects, the researchers took MRI scans of 23 meditators and compared them to 16 control subjects matched for age, handedness and sex. (Ten participants dropped out.) The scans for the controls were obtained from an existing MRI database, while the meditators were recruited from various meditation venues. The meditators had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types -- Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more. The researchers applied a well-established and automated whole-brain approach to measure cortical gyrification at thousands of points across the surface of the brain. They found pronounced group differences (heightened levels of gyrification in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex, including the left precentral gyrus, the left and right anterior dorsal insula, the right fusiform gyrus and the right cuneus. Perhaps most interesting, though, was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of insular gyrification. "The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration," said Luders. "Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula." While Luders cautions that genetic and other environmental factors could have contributed to the effects the researchers observed, still, "The positive correlation between gyrification and the number of practice years supports the idea that meditation enhances regional gyrification."

Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet

 puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes.

The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe connected to a vessel filled with water, is particularly fashionable among young people, with the number of specialist bars rising 210 per cent since 2007.

But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.

Trend: Zaky Ali ,40, owner of Marhaba Cafe in Birmingham, with a hookah pipe for smoking shisha, which is becoming more popular among the young. But experts warn it can do more damage than cigarettes because users take more puffs of smoke

This is because a cigarette smoker typically takes between eight and 12 puffs, inhaling 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke.

But during hour-long shisha sessions smokers may take up to 200 drags, ranging from 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each. 

 

 

More...

• Britain's drink death capital: How more people die from alcohol in Sunderland than anywhere else

 

‘Shisha smoking is a growing concern because people aren’t aware of the risks like they are with cigarette smoking,’ says Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London.

‘The greater the exposure in terms of duration and amount smoked, the greater the risk to your health’

That’s because although shisha tobacco tastes nicer than cigarettes, it contains all the same toxicants known to cause lung cancer and heart disease.

Risk: Smokers typically take in 12 puffs on a cigarette compared to up to 200 for hookah pipes

Among the risks are heart disease, respiratory problems, lung and mouth cancer and problems during pregnancy.

‘Smoke from tobacco contains a number of carcinogens which damage the DNA in cells,’ explains Professor West. ‘Just one damaged cell can divide and multiply uncontrollably and quite quickly develop into a large tumour. This is what causes lung cancer,’ explains Professor West

Enthusiasts claim that as the smoke passes through water most of the harmful chemicals are absorbed, however there is no evidence to support this.

‘If people think it’s safer than cigarettes, when it’s not, they need to be informed otherwise,’ said Professor West.

There are other risks. As the mouthpiece is passed around from person to person, this raises the risk of transmitting diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.

The waterpipe has been used to smoke tobacco for centuries, primarily in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

A rise in travel to countries such as Egypt and Turkey has seen the pipe transported to the UK.

The waterpipe is heavily sold as a souvenir, and is popular with tourists who like to take it back home as a gift or decorative object.

The waterpipe can also be purchased in various shops in London for as little as £20, with shisha tobacco costing £5-£10.

The tobacco is burned with charcoal in a bowl that sits above the vessel.

The smoke it produces passes through the water in the container and goes down the pipe so the user can sit by the vessel and an inhale it with their mouth. 

Middle Eastern inspired: A shisha user in Iraq, the pipe's traditional home

The smoke is cooled by the water and makes it feel less ‘harsh’ - and experts warn that as a result people inhale it more deeply into their lungs, which increases the risks even further.

Shisha tobacco is flavoured with fruit molasses such as apple and strawberry, so the residual redolent smoke is sweet.

Because it doesn’t taste like a cigarette, people often think of it as being safer or better. Many young people who don’t usually smoke are attracted to this seemingly harmless activity.

It’s also a cheaper option than buying a round at the pub. One shisha usually costs between £7-£20, and is often shared by two or three people throughout an evening.

In the borough of Westminster, London, the number of shisha cafes have gone up approximately by 68 per cent since 2007.

The smoking ban hasn’t stopped this trend from growing. Restaurant and café owners offering shisha have been able to flout the ban by creating garden terraces or patio seating outdoors.

But as the weather gets warmer, and shisha becomes more and more fashionable, experts are calling for better health warnings.

Professor West suggests: ‘Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet.’

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry

 

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry, a consultant psychiatrist says.Many people who use drugs recreationally also take prescription medicines such as tranquillisers, sleeping pills and painkillers to deal with the effects of a weekend high and get back to work on Monday, new research reveals. An international survey carried out by the Guardian and Mixmag magazine found that about a third of the 7,700 people from the UK who revealed their illegal drug use also took prescription sleeping pills – 22.4% had taken benzodiazepines such as temazepam in the last year and 7.2% had taken the newer "z-drugs" – zopiclone and zolpidem. Those taking part in the survey were predominantly well-educated working people who felt they were in control of their lives. But Dr Richard Bowskill, consultant psychiatrist and medical director of the Priory rehabilitation centre in Brighton, said he saw the fallout years later from this pattern of illegal and prescription drug-taking among "highly functioning" clients. "People think they are being their own pharmacist. They have a major binge of cocaine over the weekend and three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday night. They think they understand what it is doing to their body and they think they are in control, but their brain chemistry is getting messed up," he said. "They know the effects of the drug. It's often being used following cocaine to self-medicate for the downswing and it causes chaos. It's a really common scenario. Then they can't get to sleep on Monday and they take some more sleeping tablets." While recreational drug users think prescription medicines are safe, because GPs hand them out and the tablets are what they purport to be, benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers are highly addictive if taken regularly for any length of time. Anna, who had a high-pressured job requiring her to make frequent long-haul flights, was not a recreational drug taker but started taking zopiclone to help her sleep on the plane or when she arrived in a different time zone and needed to be fresh for work in the morning. "Your body gets accustomed to the drugs. I didn't really understand their addictive nature," she said. "They weren't having an effect so I was having to up the dosage." She ended up taking five tablets at a time, but they just made her more anxious, irritable and sleepless. "I lost a lot of friends." She talked of the societal "pressure to perform" and her regret that there was so little help. GPs did not want to know, she said. With the help of the Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants and Painkillers (CITA), a support group, she had been switched to a different drug and was slowly cutting down. Against expectations, most people in the Guardian/Mixmag survey did not get their prescription drugs from the internet, but from their own GP or a friend who had been prescribed them. GPs were in a bind, said Dr Peter Swinyard, national chairman of the Family Doctor Association. When people arrived in the surgery complaining of pain or insomnia "we are predisposed to believe what people tell us", he said. "We always work from the premise that they are being honest with us." Nonetheless, a survey the association did last summer showed that 52% of GPs were worried about prescription drug abuse in their area. Eight out of 10 of the 197 GPs who responded to the survey said they were aware of prescribing to people who they thought were addicted. Half were aware of occasions when prescriptions had been sold on. "People tell us they lose their prescription or it got eaten by the dog. A lot of general practices have systems like a book at reception recording those who say they have lost their prescription," Swinyard said. But there are people who GPs would not characterise as liars or cheats. "There is the traditional little old lady who is taking her sleeping pill prescription and selling it down the pub. I'm sure there is a cohort of elderly people supplementing their pension by selling their prescription drugs," he said. Although the Guardian/Mixmag survey responders mostly said they used sleeping tablets for sleep and painkillers for pain, they had often tried them to get high – 57.8% in the case of the anti-hyperactivity drug Ritalin, nearly 40% in the case of the benzos and 28% who had taken opioid painkillers. In the US, prescription opioids have caused a huge problem since oxycodone – better known by its brand name OxyContin – was licensed for use outside cancer treatment in the mid-1990s. In 2008, 15,000 Americans died from overdosing on prescription opiates, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), which is more than on heroin and cocaine combined. The opioid epidemic appears not to have hit the UK. "There has been a rise in oxycodone deaths, but it is pretty small," said James Bell, addiction consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. "I have been trying to look for evidence here and it is not a big problem." Demand was fuelled in the US by direct advertising to the public. In the UK this is not allowed and most people are registered with a single NHS GP so cannot shop around. The Guardian/Mixmag study, which was conducted by Global Drug Survey, shows that a quarter of responders had taken prescription opioid painkillers and 9% had taken other painkillers. More than three-quarters said they took them for pain relief, 24% said they took them to get to sleep and 18% said they took them for mood-changing purposes.

How an hour spent smoking trendy shisha is as harmful as ONE HUNDRED cigarettes

 

Hubbly-bubbly, hookah or shisha - whatever name it goes by, puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes. The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe connected to a vessel filled with water, is particularly fashionable among young people, with the number of specialist bars rising 210 per cent since 2007. But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.

Heart disease drug 'combats racism'

Volunteers given the beta-blocker, used to treat chest pains and lower heart rates, scored lower on a standard psychological test of "implicit" racist attitudes. They appeared to be less racially prejudiced at a subconscious level than another group treated with a "dummy" placebo pill. Scientists believe the discovery can be explained by the fact that racism is fundamentally founded on fear. Propranolol acts both on nerve circuits that govern automatic functions such as heart rate, and the part of the brain involved in fear and emotional responses. The drug is also used to treat anxiety and panic. Experimental psychologist Dr Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.

Regular drinking habit comes with age

 

PEOPLE over 45 are three times more likely to drink almost every day as those who are younger, according to new figures. Some 13 per cent of adults over 45 drink almost every day compared with 4 per cent of those under 45, Office for National Statistics’ data shows. And as people get older they tend to drink more – with over a fifth of men aged 65 and over drinking almost every day compared with just 3 per cent of men aged 16 to 24. Among women, 12 per cent of over-65s consume alcohol almost every day compared with just 1 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds. However, the survey, of more than 13,000 adults in 2010, found younger people were more likely to binge drink.

Several decades ago, a number of clinics used LSD to treat alcoholism with some success.

But until now, no research has pulled together the results of these trials to document exactly how effective LSD was.

Now a new analysis of randomised controlled trials of the drug provides evidence for a clear and consistent beneficial effect of LSD for treating alcohol dependency.

'Tabs' of LSD: On average, 59 per cent of LSD patients showed improvements after taking a single tab of the powerful hallucinogenic drug

Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, during research fellowships at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, spotted a gap in the understanding of lysergic acid diethylamide's (LSD's) potential for alcoholism treatment.

 

More...

• Best incentive yet for improving your diet: How fruit and veg could make you cuter

 

No researcher had ever performed a quantitative analysis of previous clinical trials using the drug.

Krebs and Johansen set out to independently extract data from previous randomised, controlled clinical trials, pooling their results.

They identified six eligible trials, all carried out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These included 536 participants, the vast majority of whom were male in-patients enrolled in alcohol-focused treatment programs.

Individuals with a history of schizophrenia or psychosis were excluded from the original trials.

The control conditions included low-dose LSD, stimulants, or non-drug control conditions.

Hope: LSD made volunteers feel more resolute about giving up drink

While the experiments varied in the dosage used and the type of placebo physicians administered to patients, LSD had a beneficial effect on alcohol misuse in every trial.

On average, 59 per cent of LSD patients and 38 per cent of control patients were improved at follow-up using standardised assessment of problem alcohol use.

There was also a similar beneficial effect on maintained abstinence from alcohol. The positive effects of a single LSD dose - reported both in these and in other, non-randomised trials - lasts at least six months and appears to fade by 12 months.

Regarding the lasting effects of the LSD experience in alcoholics, investigators of one trial noted: ‘It was rather common for patients to claim significant insights into their problems, to feel that they had been given a new lease on life, and to make a strong resolution to discontinue their drinking.’

And investigators of another trial noted: ‘It was not unusual for patients following their LSD experience to become much more self-accepting, to show greater openness and accessibility, and to adopt a more positive, optimistic view of their capacities to face future problems.’

‘Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked,’ says Johansen.

 

LSD could treat alcoholism

 

The new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that LSD had a positive effect on alcohol misuse in each of the trials, with 59 per cent of patients who took the drug having improved at follow-up, compared with 38 per cent who took a placebo.  A single dose of LSD produces benefits which last between six and 12 months, and repeated doses along with modern treatments could ensure longer term results, the researchers said. The drug, which causes hallucinations that make users experience the world in a distorted way, is not physically addictive but some experte believe users can become dependant on its effects, for example from a need to distance themselves from reality. Pål-Ørjan Johansen, a Norwegian researcher and fellow of Harvard Medical School, who led the research, said: "Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked." Dr David Nutt, former advisor on drugs to the government, said: "I think this study is very interesting and it is a shame the last of these studies were done in the 1960s. "I think these drugs might help people switch out of a mindset which is locked into addiction or depression and be a way of helping the brain switch back to where it should be, in a similar way that Alcoholics Anonymous programmes do."

Ice cream as 'addictive as drugs' says new study

 

Researchers concluded that cravings for the dessert were similar to those experienced by drug addicts. They found that the brain was left wanting more while eating ice cream in the same way as a person who regularly uses cocaine. Their study, published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, appears to add weight to previous studies that people can be left feeling "addicted" to some foods. Dr Kyle Burger, from the Oregon Research Institute, in Eugene, about 110 miles south of Portland, said overeating "high-fat" or "high-sugar" foods appeared to change how the brain responded and in turn downgraded the mental "reward". "This down-regulation pattern is seen with frequent drug use, where the more an individual uses the drug, the less reward they receive from using it," said Dr Burger, the study's co-author.

Online porn increases sex addiction risk says expert

THE prevalence of internet pornography is turning more Australians into sex addicts, an SA rehabilitation expert says. "The amount of porn that is readily available to anyone, especially on the internet, will lead to a serious public health problem," said Robert Mittiga, who runs the GATS Counselling centre on Hackney Rd, one of only two clinics in Australia that treats sex addiction. Mr Mittiga said he treated up to 40 sex addicts a year but expected the number to grow as more people learned about the condition. "Research has shown that about 10 per cent of any population are addicted to sex," he said. Mr Mittiga conservatively estimated up to one million Australians could have the problem. He said the internet - and young people's access to it - exacerbated the problem. He likened its wide array of pornography to marijuana, which he said was a gateway to harder and harder drugs. "Many sex addicts were exposed to pornography at a very young age, before their minds could properly process it. It could've been their father's magazines under the bed, but these days it is readily available on the internet," he said. "Sex addicts on the internet often experience a rapid progression of their addiction as they trawl deeper and deeper into hard-core porn to get their fix." He acknowledged there was a debate over whether it could really be classified as an addiction but said he treated it as an addiction because it met all the criteria. "Sex addicts have the same mood alterations as people addicted to substances like drugs or alcohol," he said. "Most importantly, they continue their behaviour despite the serious life-changing consequences, such as lost relationships, STDs and legal problems." Mr Mittiga said he was treating younger people, including women, and had one client who had begun stealing to pay the $90,000 he spent on prostitutes. He said the movie Shame, about an addict who pursues sex even though he gets no real pleasure out of it, was an excellent representation of the problem.

Cannabis memory effects examined

 

Scientists believe they are closer to understanding how taking cannabis disrupts short-term memory. The Canadian team from Ottawa University narrowed the effect down to a particular type of brain cell called an astrocyte. Writing in the journal Cell, they said it might be possible to block it in medicines based on cannabis. A UK researcher said it could reveal more about natural brain chemicals. Cannabis floods the brain with a host of chemicals which mimic one of its own subtle signalling systems, leading to pronounced changes in mood and memory. Scientists are trying to harness the power of these chemicals, called cannabinoids, in pharmaceuticals aimed at conditions such as multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. The doses of cannabinoid are carefully controlled to avoid the "high" feeling. The work by the Ottawa University researchers may shed light on how one of the best known cannabinoids, THC, acts on the brain. Memory matters Their work suggests that, when it comes to affecting memory, THC is acting not, as might be expected, on the brain's neurons, but on a brain cell called an astrocyte. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote We may find a way to deal with working memory problems in Alzheimer's.” Dr Xia Zhang They bred mice whose astrocytes could not be affected by THC, and found that their spatial memory was unaffected by the dose. This discovery could help drug companies reduce the risk of unwanted side effects when using THC in their products, they suggested. However, possibly more importantly, it could shed light on the brain's own chemical pathways, the "endocannabinoid" system. Dr Xia Zhang, one of the researchers, said: "Just about any physiological function you can think of in the body, it's likely at some point endocannabinoids are involved." Understanding how this system works could lead to ways to make it work better, he suggested. "We may find a way to deal with working memory problems in Alzheimer's," he said. Prof Heather Ashton, from the University of Newcastle, said that memory problems were an established feature of cannabis use, and understanding the mechanism behind them was "interesting". She said: "When someone is taking cannabis, in some cases you find that they cannot even remember starting a sentence by the time they reach the end." But she agreed that the practical benefits of such research might ultimately lie in a better understanding of the body's own endocannabinoid system, rather than the effects of cannabis itself.

Ronnie Wood: Show keeps me sober

 

Ronnie Wood has revealed doing his radio and television show has helped him stay sober. The Rolling Stones guitarist, who has previously opened up about his alcoholism, presents a show on Absolute Radio, which has been turned into a television series for Sky Arts. And he said having a focus has helped him stay off the booze. He said: "While I've been keeping sober, it's been a way to express myself in a new focused way. It has helped me stay sober because of all the archives I'm having to plough down with my producer. I've had to concentrate but I also get the freedom, it's what I do, I deal with music, I get energy from it." The musician entered rehab after an intervention by artist Damien Hirst, and Ronnie told the Radio Times he knew he had to get clean as he was becoming immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol. He said: "The drink wasn't working, the dope wasn't working. I wasn't getting high. I was getting p'ed off and I was getting annoyed at myself. I thought, 'I'm not this person'."

One in seven Cambridge students 'has sold drugs to help pay their way through university'

 

One in seven Cambridge students is  dealing drugs to help pay their way through university, according to a survey. It found many claim that they have been forced to sell illegal substances to friends to make ends meet as they study. And it revealed nearly two-thirds admitted taking drugs, with cannabis the most  popular substance.

Boozy films 'turn children into drinkers'

 

Experts say that teenagers who have seen the most films featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start consuming alcohol as those who watched the least. Parents should closely monitor the films their children watch, advise the researchers, while Hollywood should look at phasing out drinking scenes, just as it has for smoking. The team, from a number of US universities, aliken American films to the flu virus, quickly spreading risky drinking behaviour around the globe. For two years they conducted regular phone interviews with 6,500 children, aged 10 to 14 at the start of the study. They asked them about the films they watched, whether they consumed alcohol, whether they drank without their parents knowing, and whether they took part in 'binge' drinking.  They found watching lots of films with drinking scenes was one of the most powerful factors, when it came to predicting both whether a child would start drinking, and progress to binge drinking. Only being an older child at the start of the study, and having lots of friends who drank, were more important when it came to predicting who took up drinking. Writing in the British Medical Journal Open, they suggested that Hollywood should place "similar emphasis" on vetting films for drinking scenes, as they already did for smoking scenes.

Fresh hope in pancreatic cancer war

 

Pancreatic cancer cells can be destroyed by combining two drugs, researchers have found - giving hope that more effective treatments can be developed to combat the disease. The research by Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute showed in mice that combining a chemotherapy drug called gemcitabine with an experimental drug called MRK003 sets off a chain of events that ultimately kills cancer cells - multiplying the effect of each drug on its own. MRK003 blocks an important cell signalling pathway called Notch in both pancreatic cancer cells and the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels supplying tumours with essential nutrients. Experts found the addition of MRK003 to gemcitabine - a drug used commonly in patients with pancreatic cancer - increased the ability of gemcitabine to destroy tumours. The research was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicin, and study author Professor David Tuveson said: "We've discovered why these two drugs together set off a domino effect of molecular activity to switch off cell survival processes and destroy pancreatic cancer cells." Around 8,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year and the disease is the fifth most common cause of cancer death in the UK. Survival rates are very low in relation to other cancers and the length of time between diagnosis and death is typically short, usually less than six months. The most recent data for England show that around 16% of patients survive their disease beyond 12 months after diagnosis - prompting the need for new treatments. The discovery is now a clinical trial being led by Duncan Jodrell, professor of cancer therapeutics at the University of Cambridge. He said: "We're delighted that the results of this important research are now being evaluated in a clinical trial, to test whether this might be a new treatment approach for patients with pancreatic cancer, although it will be some time before we're able to say how successful this will be in patients."

Alastair Campbell on drink: 'I paid a heavy price'

 

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spokesman, examines the British middle class's troubled relationship with alcohol and his own long and complicated history with drink. To read the headlines about Britain's drink problem, you might think it is largely an issue of teenage binge-drinking in town centres up and down the country. You would be very wrong. Young people drinking too much is a problem. But it is not the biggest drink problem Britain faces. The real problem comes in the form of our hidden alcoholics. Back in my hard-drinking days I was one of them - professional, successful on the surface, with a good job, a steady relationship, a mortgage, nice holidays, lots of friends. But I was heading for a very big fall. The Office for National Statistics tells us that the professional classes are now the most frequent drinkers in the country and that 41% of professional men drink more than the recommended daily limit of three to four units at least once a week. Women are also drinking much more than they used to, with alcoholic liver disease now split evenly between the sexes. My own drinking reached its peak while I worked in Fleet Street in the 1980s - a time when the pub was an extension of the office. Anne Robinson, one of my colleagues on the Daily Mirror back then, was one of the many casualties of the hard-drinking culture. Reflecting back on the days before she too gave it up, Anne said: "It was just a sea of alcohol. If you were editing the paper, people just came in to your office to empty your drinks cabinet." Annie has been dry for years. I paid a heavy price for the same sort of lifestyle when my drinking, coupled with depression, triggered a mental breakdown that landed me in hospital. It forced me to confront my drinking, and by 1986 I'd stopped and started a slow road to recovery. Since then, even in newspapers, Britain's boozy workplace culture has largely disappeared. 24-hour mistake? Yet, paradoxically, more people are being treated for alcohol problems. Recent figures show that nearly 9,000 people die each year in the UK from alcohol-related diseases. Perhaps more alarmingly, liver disease in general is the only major cause of death in Britain that is on the rise, year after year - claiming 100 lives every week - whereas mortality for all the smoking diseases is falling dramatically. Find out more Panorama: Britain's Hidden Alcoholics BBC One, Monday 20 February at 20:30 GMT Then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer That Britain has a problem with drink is highlighted not just by the figures, but by the fact that the government is busy devising a new strategy to address alcohol-related ill-health. David Cameron has signalled his appetite for reform, including the possibility of minimum pricing as already being taken forward in Scotland, and tougher rules on promotion and marketing. So how did we get here? Well, as with so much of our recent history, the answer lies in Europe. With closer ties came cheaper travel and a newly developed taste for all things European, wine included. Then came the booze cruises to France and the birth of a seemingly unquenchable British thirst. Since 1970, our consumption of wine has gone up five-fold, according to the Beer and Pub Association. We now consume 1.6 billion bottles a year (not counting the ones we drink when we go abroad). It has gone from a middle-class luxury to an everyday part of middle-class life. Anne Robinson remembers a "sea of alcohol" in the newsroom Though ultimately individuals have to take responsibility for their own relationships with alcohol, governments have to set the framework, which is why the planned new strategy is so important. I defend virtually everything done by the government I worked for under Tony Blair. I confess however, as he and Tessa Jowell will confirm, that I was never a big fan of the laws to introduce 24-hour licensing, surely one of the factors in the troubled relationship between Brits and booze. I had left Downing Street by the time the law came in, but it had been mooted for some time before and I never really bought the argument that Britain would suddenly become a continental-style drinking nation. Cheap booze I think we have always had this tendency, where there is drink, to drink it to excess. Did it make things worse? Was it a mistake? On the one hand it is quite nice to have a sense of London and other cities being more European in their approach to drink. But I think it is entirely possible to see a link between increased availability of alcohol and our increased consumption. Britain is, after all, the nation of the gin epidemic - back in the 18th Century. While in 1914, the government had to bring in the Defence of the Realm Act because our own drinking was deemed a threat to our ability to defend ourselves in war. Health campaigners cite those as the first major British drinking crises. They believe we are now facing the third. The big shift in recent times has been the rise of drinking at home, which is why the binge-drinking stereotype is neither accurate nor helpful. The issue is largely about price. Pubs charge a lot for a pint. Supermarkets don't. It is a sad paradox that the decline in pubs has come alongside what seems to be a rise in drinking and alcohol-related problems. In 1970, 90% of all pints were poured in a pub. Today, it is only 50% - the other half are bought much more cheaply in supermarkets and off-licences. The government has to do its bit. But in making a film about Britain's relationship with drink, and in meeting some of the hidden alcoholics, I met people who had each come to their own arrangement with alcohol. For most, the answer is complete abstinence, or complete loss of control. I too said no for 13 years, but then I started having the odd drink again. This time, I feel as though I am more in control. To be frank, it would be hard not to be. Alcohol facts 10m people in England drink more than recommended Daily units men: 3-4 Daily units women: 2-3 New advice is to abstain from alcohol for two days a week Source: Drinkaware But, having met others as they underwent rehabilitation treatment, I do wonder if I am doing the right thing. Partly I am testing myself, having one or two so I can then enjoy the satisfaction of being able to say "No". I also like being able to be "normal" like other social drinkers, just have the odd one and then call it a night. I cannot say I have not drunk since first falling gently off the wagon in 1999. But I can say I have never been drunk, never had a hangover, never touched spirits and never felt the loss of control that had me hospitalised prior to my 13-year unbroken dry spell. The psychiatrist who I see for my depression thinks that even occasional drinking on my part is a bad idea, and interestingly, in making a documentary on the subject, I did once again stop drinking altogether, not least perhaps as a result of the tour of Queen Mary's Hospital anatomy department, where I was shown a few damaged livers. I do feel that my own relationship with alcohol is more secure. And while government has a role to play in setting rules and regulations on responsible drinking, on a certain level I think that our connection to alcohol is a deal that each of us has to make with ourselves. I hope this film helps some of Britain's drinkers to do that.

210,000 people face alcohol death risk, warn doctors

 

Failure to reform alcohol laws could lead to 210,000 preventable deaths in England and Wales in the next 20 years, doctors have warned. They are putting pressure on the government ahead of its "alcohol strategy" for both countries, expected in the coming months. Writing in The Lancet, doctors said the UK was at a "potential tipping point". Prime Minister David Cameron has already vowed to tackle the "scandal" of drunkenness and alcohol abuse. The projected mortality figures comes from Prof Ian Gilmore, a former President of the Royal College of Physicians, Dr Nick Sheron, from the National Institute for Health Research and members of the British Society of Gastroenterology. Their figure of 210,000 is a slight reduction from their previous estimate of 250,000 and represents their "worst-case scenario" of no change to alcohol policy. "It remains entirely within the power of the UK government to prevent the worst-case scenario of preventable deaths," they wrote. The figures for England and Wales suggest 70,000 of the deaths could be from liver disease and the rest from accidents, violence and chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, breast cancer and cancer of the gastrointestinal tract. 'Tipping point' They were critical of the "responsibility deal" in England, which are voluntary agreements with the drinks industry on issues such as promotions and labelling. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote What we have to accept is that doing nothing is no longer a responsible option” Eric Appleby Alcohol Concern This was compared to the Scottish government's approach such as a minimum price per unit of alcohol. The group said: "We are at a potential tipping point in the UK in taking on the shameful, preventable loss of life caused by alcohol. "The potential prize of reversing this tragic toll of alcohol-related deaths is there for the taking." The Department of Health will publish its alcohol strategy for England later this year. Selling alcohol below cost price is to be banned in England and Wales from 6 April. However, ministers are expected to go further in the forthcoming strategy, recommending a higher minimum price for drink. The chief executive of Alcohol Concern, Eric Appleby, said: "What we have to accept is that doing nothing is no longer a responsible option for alcohol policy, and that trying to 'nudge' drinking culture through information and persuasion has proved to be little better than doing nothing. "We can see from the example of other countries that drinking patterns really can change, the challenge is there for the government to start the process now through the Alcohol Strategy." Henry Ashworth, chief executive of the Portman Group, which also represents UK drinks producers, said: "It is really important that we put this report in context. "The vast majority of people drink responsibly. Painting doomsday scenarios won't help reduce alcohol misuse and calling for Soviet Union style population controls cannot do anything but alienate the vast majority of people who already drink within Government guidelines. "We agree with the Prime Minister that strong partnerships are essential to tackle the minority who use alcohol recklessly and drinks producers are committed to supporting this approach." The public health minister, Anne Milton, said: "As the Prime Minister said earlier this week, we are determined to tackle the scandal of alcohol abuse. People that misuse alcohol endanger their own lives and those of others. "It costs the NHS £2.7 billion per year and in our forthcoming alcohol strategy we will set out our plans on how to deal with the wide range of problems and harms it causes."

Misery among heroin addicts in Afghanistan

 

U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-moon said Thursday that Afghanistan will never be stable unless it tackles its drug problem. He spoke at an international conference in Vienna. Ninety percent of the world's opium originates in Afghanistan's poppy fields -- and much of that is turned into heroin. CBS News contributor Willem Marx took a look at the problem. Beneath a notorious bridge in downtown Kabul, a human tragedy festers. For more than a year now, hundreds of heroin addicts have lived there -- an ancient opium den in a modern urban sewer. Thousands more drop in each day to buy, smoke and inject their daily fix. "How do you react when you see that level of misery?" Marx asked Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who heads the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime for Afghanistan. "Appalling, appalling," he said. "And even more appalling, it is happening just below and in front of us." Lemahieu said with ever more users injecting their drugs, there's a troubling new statistic. Around 1 in 14 of Afghanistan's drug users is now believed to be HIV positive. And with addicts sharing needles, that number is soaring. This is how an HIV epidemic brews. We watched as men reused bloody syringes again and again -- so many, that we had to walk carefully among the addicts for fear of treading on an errant needle. "Each day my life was getting worse and worse," said Abdulrahim Rejee, a former heroin user who crawled out of this despair a year ago. Today he lives with nine other recovering addicts in a shared home. Abdulrahim credits a pilot program involving methadone, a heroin substitute that requires no needles. It is widely viewed as the best defense against the spread of HIV here. "I feel my life has changed 100 percent," he said. "I have rejoined my family, and I feel very healthy." But methadone is available for just a fraction of Afghanistan's addicts -- Abdulrahim and 70 others. "We need to expand the delivery of that service to a lot more addicts than what we are able to do today," said Lemahieu. The only other option here is to go cold turkey at a detox clinic. Under the bridge one morning, Marx saw an addict collapse from an overdose. Abdulrahim jumped in to resuscitate the struggling man. "When I go to that bridge," Abdulrahim told Marx, "I want to help those people, that they can live like me." The man barely survived barely, But with limited care available, he lived only to shoot up another day. This misery persists, while a deadly virus continues to spread.