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Patience is also a form of action. ~Auguste Rodin
Studies of alcohol use and cognition among the elderly are rare. A study of drinking among the elderly in Brazil has found that heavy alcohol use is associated with more memory and cognitive problems than mild-to-moderate alcohol use, especially among women.

“There is a scarcity of information about alcohol use and the elderly,” said Marcos Antonio Lopes, an author of the study. “It needs to be resolved in order to construct a real diagnosis and promote proper health care for this population.”

According to Jerson Laks, a researcher with the Brazilian National Committee for Research, “alcohol use is frequently an exclusion criterion for any study of cognition and dementia in the elderly, as well as in studies aimed at depression.”

“This study shows that older people keep drinking along the life span,” said Laks. “Taking into consideration that drinking may lead to falls and to cognitive impairment when heavy use is the case, this study creates important awareness about this issue.”

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A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~Thomas Carruthers

A doctor in Canada has had his medical license suspended because he was treating patients while under the influence of drugs. Thomas Crawford lost his license for the third time in 13 years because of his addiction to Dilaudid and cocaine. He was suspended before Christmas but the decision by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia was only made public this week.

Crawford came to Nova Scotia in 1996 from New Brunswick, where the College of Physicians and Surgeons New Brunswick suspended his license after a substance abuse complaint. He resigned his practice after receiving treatment for drug addiction.

When Crawford arrived in Nova Scotia, he received a medical license on the condition that he not prescribe any narcotics. In 1997, someone complained that Crawford was impaired while on duty, according to the report. The College then began an investigation of Crawford.

“The college learned that contrary to information previously provided by Dr. Crawford, he had retained his prescribing privileges and had accessed narcotics for his self-use through such privileges,” the report says.

Crawford went into treatment and surrendered his prescribing privileges. The random testing ended in 2003. His license was suspended again in April 2008. He was hospitalized in August and was prescribed narcotics for pain. In November he was back in a treatment program and was once again prescribed narcotics. He stopped using drugs in December of 2008.

Crawford may get his license back if he stays clean of all narcotics. If his license is reinstated, he will never be able to prescribe narcotics again.

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Kevin Kline
Director of Admissions
The Treatment Center
877-392-3342

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. ~William Feather

Scientists have discovered a hormone produced by the body during periods of stress that is linked to alcohol dependence in animals. Chemically blocking the hormone, called the corticotrophin releasing factor, or CRF, also shut off the signs and symptoms of addiction. This discovery, at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, could result in the development of a drug treatment for substance abuse.

“Our study explored what we call in the field ‘the dark side’ of alcohol addiction,” said Marisa Roberto, an assistant professor at The Scripps Research Institute. Roberto led the Scripps research study.

“That’s the compulsion to drink, not because it is pleasurable, which has been the focus of much previous research, but because it relieves the anxiety generated by abstinence and the stressful effects of withdrawal,” Roberto said.

The study confirmed the previously implicated role of CRF in alcohol addiction, but also demonstrated in rats that the hormone can be blocked on a long-term basis to alleviate the symptoms of alcohol dependence in humans.

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If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston

Alcohol was a factor in almost two-thirds of cases of self-harming in Northern Ireland. About 1,000 people went to the hospital each year with more looking for help at the weekends, according to a report from the Department of Health.

Jo Murphy, the spokeswoman for Pips Project, a support group, said many struggling people turn to alcohol. “You use a crutch when you break your leg and sometimes people use alcohol as a way of coping with life,” Murphy said.

The Northern Ireland Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm is part of a joint venture with the Republic of Ireland. In 2007, 1,043 people looked for help. In 2008, the total had risen to 1,048. The highest rates of self-harm were among 35-44 year-old women and 25-34 year-old men.

Alcohol was involved in 64 percent of episodes of self-harm over the two year period, with that proportion increasing in 2008. Murphy added that drinking is more socially acceptable than drug use in Ireland, but its effect is equally serious.

“Sometimes people see the addiction rather than the underlying things that bring them to that point,” Murphy said.

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The cruelest lies are often told in silence. ~Adlai Stevenson

A federal judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement from a woman who exposed hundred of patients in her care to hepatitis C. Judge Robert E. Blackburn said that Kristen D. Parker’s plea agreement did not take into account the feelings of her victims, many of whom gave troubling written statements. It is unusual for a judge to reject a defendant’s plea agreement.

Parker admitted to stealing pain medication syringes and replacing them with saline-filled needles she had used to inject herself with heroin. Seventeen patients at the Rose Medical Center in Denver have tested positive to hepatitis C. The genetic sequencing of the strain matches Parker’s blood, according to a report from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Hepatitis C affects liver function and can be a long-term health problem for those affected.

Judge Blackburn warned Parker at the hearing that if she continued with her guilty plea, her sentence could be tougher.

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Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. ~Will Rogers

More than half a million British skiers and snowboarders will be on the slopes impaired by alcohol this winter. This is according a new survey by a British insurance company. The survey found that 74 percent of respondents (1.072 people) claimed that drinking heavily the night before does not affect their skiing.

The insurance company, MORE TH>N, said it expected nearly 2.5 million British skiers at resorts across Europe this season, with 23 percent of those people expecting to drink 18 units of alcohol on at least one night out, leaving more than twice the legal limit of alcohol for drivers in their systems the next morning.

With the average intermediate level skier travelling at speeds up to 20 miles per hour, the threat of serious accidents is a real one.

“Drunk driving is severely frowned upon and drunk skiing should be too. It is just as dangerous,” said a MORE TH>N statement.

The company concluded that many British skiers will finish drinking and be asleep by 1 a.m., and be on the ski slopes at 9 a.m. That would mean that the average-weight skier will have seven units of alcohol in their body when they start skiing for the day.

Such skiers would be prone to impaired balance, reduced visual acuity, impaired perception and a loss of critical judgment.

How do we know that the sky is not green and we are all color blind? ~Author Unknown

The British government has banned drinking contests in bars and forced pub owners to offer customers tap water to drink. Doctors and health lobbyists said that the government had not imposed minimum price controls on alcohol.

Carys Davis, spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern, a British charity, said that the new measures are “better than nothing” in the fight to control the growth of binge drinking.

Alcohol consumption has become a political issue in Britain over the past few years. Government data shows that the country’s alcohol-related deaths have doubled since 1991. In 2009, Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson suggested price controls could lead to nearly 100,000 fewer hospital admissions and 45.000 fewer crimes each year.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said that he had not ruled out minimum pricing, but he didn’t want to penalize “responsible drinkers on low incomes.” The new rules need to be voted on by members of Parliament. The rules would ban speed-drinking contests and all-you-can-drink offers in pubs. Pubs would be required to offer drinks in smaller amounts and free water.

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Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. ~Author Unknown

The new guidelines for the Mental Health Parity Act (MPHA) went into effect on January 1 of this year. Federal law now requires insurance companies who cover mental health or addiction treatment must do so equally with the coverage they provide for medical treatment. State and federal governments now spend more than 15 billion dollars each year on substance abuse services. Insurance companies spend at least 5 billion each year. Researchers estimate that approximately twenty million people in the United States need addiction treatment but are not receiving treatment.

The MPHA implicitly recognizes that addiction is a mental health issue and is just as destructive to the physical health of a person as a disease. In fact, physical illness is often the result of untreated addiction. Diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis C, liver cirrhosis or lung cancer are often the result of untreated drug and alcohol addiction.

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Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. ~Doug Larson

A surgery technician in Colorado who infected three dozen people with hepatitis C and may have exposed thousands more does not expect to be forgiven.

Kristen Diane Parker, 27, told prosecutors that she shipped through a hospital’s drug screening process and began stealing drugs to fuel her addiction to heroin. Parker will be sentenced to 20 years in prison. She pleaded guilty to tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by deceit or subterfuge. She admitted stealing syringes filled with Fentanyl from operating carts at Denver’s Rose Medical Center and Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs.

Parker told prosecutors she injected herself with Fentanyl, then replaced it with saline. She said she meant to put the saline in clean needles but got careless. Prosecutors say her actions exposed almost 6,000 patients to hepatitis C and thirty-six patients were infected.

“I can’t ask for forgiveness,” Parker said in a videotaped interview. “I don’t expect anybody to forgive me for what I’ve done. You know, I’m human. I was a drug addict.”

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne disease that can cause serious liver problems, including cirrhosis or liver cancer. Symptoms can include nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, pain and jaundice.

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Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart. ~Countess of Blessington

Despite limited evidence of long-term success in using opioid pain medications for chronic back pain, the prescribing of these medications has increased in recent years for back and other chronic pain. The implications are controversial as published studies provide little evidence indicating which patients will benefit from long-term opiod treatment.

New research, published in The Journal of Pain, identifies predictors of long-term opioid use among patients with chronic back pain caused by lumbar spine conditions. Out of 2,110 study participants, 42 percent reported using opioids for pain and a third said they use opioids on a daily basis.

The researchers found that nonsurgical treatmeng and smoking predicted continued long-term opioid use. Smoking can be a marker for substance abuse disorders, though the researchers were not able to consider substance abuse as a predictor of long-term opioid use.

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