Couch Potatoes and Heart Disease

January 28th, 2011   1 Comment

A new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology set out to find if prolonged sitting was linked to cardiovascular diseases.  Actually the doctors called the study “Screen-Based Entertainment Time, All-Cause Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events” where “screen based entertainment” is more commonly known as TV and or computer – leave it to doctors to come up with a title like that.

After following 4,512 Scottish people from 2003 to 2007 and recording their screen viewing time and their health, Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, MSc, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, United Kingdom said:

“People who spend excessive amounts of time in front of a screen — primarily watching TV — are more likely to die of any cause and suffer heart-related problems.  Our analysis suggests that two or more hours of screen time each day may place someone at greater risk for a cardiac event.”

The study found that those people who spent two or more hours per day in front of a screen for leisure activities were double the risk of heart attack or other cardiac event compared with those who spent less sedentary time in front of a screen.  Those in the study who had four or more hours of screen time were fifty percent more likely to die of any cause.  One surprising fact in the study was that it did not matter if they were physically active for several other hours in the week in other words exercise in addition to being a couch potato did not improve the heart health of those in this study.

According to Doctor Emmanuel Stamatakis approximately 25% of the association between screen time and cardiovascular disease events was explained collectively by C-reactive protein.  Extended periods of sitting may cause high levels of low-grade inflammation which can lead to heart disease.  A marker of low-grade inflammation called C reactive protein or CRP was about three times higher in the study participants who spent the most time sitting in front of a screen.

While the study covered recreational screen time since that was the easiest for people to have a choice in, Dr. Stamatakis mentioned that people with jobs that require extended sitting and screen time should take breaks and short walks throughout the day.

Spice Still Available? The Legal Challenges Keeping It (Temporarily) Alive

January 28th, 2011   3 Comments

Remember the synthetic marijuana-like product Spice?  Other than Four Loko, Spice was probably the drug story of the year, attracting the attention of media outlets, parents, and kids alike.  In time it attracted the attention of the federal government as well, and the DEA in November said that it would take emergency measures to schedule the drug, or in other words to classify it as they do other drugs, and get it removed from the market.  According to the DEA’s release, the final rule on the psychoactive compounds JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497, and cannabicyclohexanol would be published on December 24th.

The controversial products that people call "fake pot" are still on the market.

The popular brand "K2"

This was very disappointing to Spice smokers.  You might be surprised to learn that as of now the disappointment is unwarranted – though the DEA made its announcement on November 24th, the products remain on the market.

Huh?  As it turns out, the DEA was not clear in its original release as to the timeframe of the temporary ban.  Apparently, 30 days is the minimum amount of time required to announce a change in the rules.  But it doesn’t mean that’s the amount of time it will take – the DEA can take all the time it needs and has issued another release to clarify that.  So, Spice has been pulled from a lot of shelves (or reformulated), and we are told a home drug test is in the works for it, but it’s still, technically, temporarily, legal.

DEA Spokeswoman Barbara Carreno, interviewed by the Hartford Advocate, explained the process, explaining “We still have to write new regulations and publish them and that’s taken longer than expected.”  Furthermore:

While the law stipulates that the DEA must announced its proposed ban thirty days prior to enacting it, there’s nothing that prohibits them from taking longer, Carreno says. Until the rules are actually published in the Federal Register, the nation’s official rule book, the ban will not go into effect.

She said she wouldn’t offer an estimate as to when final rules may be published, saying the agency had “learned our lesson” with regard to predictions or estimated time frames. She said vendors of K2 and Spice should continue checking the register to stay on the right side of the law.

Business owners will have to be vigilant, although it seems likely that when Spice and K2 are actually off the market, the media attention to the issue will resume, at least briefly.

Another reason why the DEA is having trouble getting Spice products off the market is a lawsuit that has been filed in Minnesota by a few business owners.  They argue that banning Spice will hurt their bottom lines, and it surely will, as one business owner said Spice accounted for a million dollars in sales last year (see The Salt Lake Tribune for more info).  The lawsuit was dismissed just days ago by Judge Patrick Schiltz but the business owners are filing a repeal.

Apparently the DEA expects to issue a final ruling on the ban next month.  A seemingly separate group, the Retail Compliance Association, has also made a legal challenge to the ban, based on its impact on small businesses and certain federal acts better explained by David Kroll here.  According to the press release by the Retail Compliance Association

One economic analyst stated that the industry may represent more than 1 billion in economic impact, if true, this will preclude the ban from ever taking effect as the emergency order is governed by Executive Order 12991 which states that emergency bans cannot be implemented in the cases where a 100 million dollar or greater economic impact will be imposed.

It would be interesting to learn more about those numbers and see how the case is argued.  The DEA says it has removed language in its Notice of Intent that cited the acts in question.

The (threatened) Spice ban raises a lot of interesting issues.  It does seem to warrant a ban – it’s basically unregulated, unknown chemicals sprayed on plant material, and it has been causing bad reactions among some people.  Marijuana legalization advocates seem to like Spice because it makes marijuana look good in comparison.  How the DEA will handle synthetic cannabinoids in general (as there are way more than the 5 the DEA specified in their Notice of Intent) will be intriguing as well.

So the Spice saga goes on…we’ll let you know when the DEA publishes its rules in February, if in fact they publish the rules at all.

Picture from “The Pitch”

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Music & Love: Just Like Drugs

January 10th, 2011   3 Comments

As it turns out, you really don’t need drugs to get high – in fact both music and a feeling of love can create reactions in the brain similar to the highs of cocaine. Two separate studies over the past few months have produced interesting insights into our emotional brain.

The older study, from October, involved showing pictures of someone that the subjects described themselves as being passionately in love with (see the study at the Guardian) to the subject while the subject was administered a dose of pain.  The effect of seeing the pictures dulled the pain, and not only that, it did so in a manner similar to morphine and cocaine.  The pictures hit the nucleus accumbens, which the article describes as “key reward addiction centre” and a “region [that] tells the brain that you really need to keep doing this.”  The same study suggests that distractions also work at reducing pain, but they do so differently and in other regions of the brain, regions not associated with opioid drugs.

The most recent study suggests that music has drug-like effects on the brain as well.  This study, conducted by scientists at McGill University, measured increases of the chemical dopamine in the brain while music was played.  It reminds me of reports from the summer of last year (see Wired) about a new phenomenon known as “i-dosing,” in which kids were listening to droning music through headphones to get “high.”  As it turns out, they very well may have been getting high – scientists found that when subjects were listening to music that they said “gave them goosebumps” their dopamine levels rose by 6-9%, with one subject’s dopamine levels rising 21%.  By comparison, cocaine takes dopamine levels up by 22% or more.  A favorite piece was Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”

It would be great to see some of these results duplicated in further studies – the study about love was fairly small. Understanding more about how the human brain works and processes stimuli is a great goal – imagine the doors such research could open into better substance abuse treatment techniques, into happier people in general, and so on. Some may wonder if this will lead to some kind of music urine drug test or so on – but I doubt it. Try to think of one bad side-effect that music produces…

The techno version of the song was also popular.

Perhaps listening to “Love is the Drug” by Roxy Music is the one thing that can really tie all these findings together.

Got any other news stories for us to look at? Drop a comment or send us an email!

(Image above is a 3D sound spectrum analysis of a violin string).

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Drug Detecting Dogs: Not So Effective After All?

January 7th, 2011   Add Comment

Drug sniffing dogs are a popular icon in the War On Drugs, seen walking around airports or riding around in a K-9 squad car.  They reinforce our notion that dogs are man’s best friend.  Whether or not they reliably succeed in the task of detecting drugs is another question.

The Chicago Tribune came out with an analysis yesterday of three years’ worth of data on drug sniffing dogs’ effectiveness.  The news was not great – the dogs were more often wrong than right when they alerted officers to search a car for drugs and/or paraphernalia.  Over 3 years, only 44% of alerts led to a successful finding of drugs/paraphernalia; if the driver in question was Hispanic, the success rate dropped to 27%.  (You will be relieved to know our tests are much more accurate, 98% accurate in fact – see our marijuana drug test for more information).

You may wonder then if this proves to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which is in place to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures.  What might surprise you even more is that there is almost no regulation of the process by which the dogs are certified and trained.  Supporters of the drug-sniffing dogs view this as one of the main problems and an important reason for the less than impressive stats.  Other issues include the fact that the dogs may be sniffing residue rather than drugs when they go into false alert mode.

While it’s good that the dogs can sniff out drugs, it’s clear that more training must be done to make sure that they do effectively and without bias.  A complete search of a car done without merit is a waste of time and resources and a source of humiliation for the person subject to it.  Hopefully this story will draw attention to the issue and lead to improvements where needed in dog detection programs.

German Shepherds are often chosen to be drug sniffing dogs in the US.

German Shepherds are often used in K-9 Units

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Most Interesting Drug Stories Of The Year

January 4th, 2011   Add Comment

2010 has passed and you are probably, like me, struggling to write or type “11″ at the end of the year.  We saw a lot of interesting things happen in 2010 when it comes to drug-related news.  In some cases use took off and in some cases it dropped; drugs were banned, celebrities went in and out of rehab, drawing attention to certain kinds of drug abuse, and marijuana legalization was voted on across the US.  What in your opinion were the most interesting drug-related stories of the year?

Here are a few of ours:

January – Drug Testing the Center of Debate in Kansas

Many states are suffering due to the recession, and looking for places to cut their budgets.  One particularly controversial idea was to drug test welfare recipients to determine their eligibility for benefits.  Missouri, Kansas, and more recently, Florida, are still making headlines on this issue in one way or another.  So far no such bill has passed but the issue looks like it will be taken up again by newly elected Florida Governor Rick Scott.

The Olympics tend to always be a time when drug use and drug testing are discussed.

The Olympics

February - The Olympics

Time flies, ski jumpers do too.  It seems like just yesterday I was trudging home in the cold to watch the Olympics in Vancouver.  This story is included because the Olympics always brings up issues of doping and drug testing – Winter Olympians in particular seem to get in trouble with marijuana (Ross Ross Rebaglti, Bode Miller).

March – U.S. the Illegal Drug Capital of the World

“Hooray.”  The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) declared the United States the largest market for illegal drugs in the world.

Cigarette Companies Still Not Playing By The Rules

Although the actual event discussed in this story happened in 2008, it was a study in 2010 that made it a “story.”  This study suggested that a series of conventionally feminine Camel ads influenced as many as 174,000 underage girls to start smoking.  The makers of Camel cigarettes pushed back and said they followed restrictions on cigarette marketing from 1998.  As to whether that’s true, you be the judge.

May – Lindsay Lohan, Generally

It’s hard to find just one link for this story.  Celebrity drug gossip is not one of my favorite topics, but Lindsay Lohan has provided very public evidence all year of how scary and messy dealing with drug/alcohol problems can be.

June/July – Washington Fights OxyContin Prescription Fraud

You know how people (at least in movies) add a few extra zeros to a check?  This is what some people have done with their painkiller prescriptions.  To combat this the state of Washington came out with new, harder to tamper with prescription paper.  It’s a major hurdle, and a solution we’ll definitely check in on later to see how well it worked.

Alcohol and drug abuse rose among teen girls according to a study from this year.

Alcohol

Alcohol & Drug Abuse Rises Among Teen Girls

A new study indicated that “self-medication” among teen girls has increased at a greater pace than it has among teen boys.  Released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the MetLife Foundation, it showed that about 70 percent of girls agreed that “using drugs helps kids deal with problems at home.”

August – Adderall – Upper, Downer, Leveler?

August kicked off for us with a bizarrely misleading statement of Michael Lohan’s, in which while denying his daughter had a methamphetamine problem pointed to Adderall as a “methamphetamine base.” While somewhat true, chemistry doesn’t really “work” that way.  In other words, while two chemicals can be extremely similar, that 1% difference between the two can create extremely disparate effects.  Gas is a “base” for napalm, but obviously we don’t all drive around in fireballs.

However, Adderall when used without a prescription DOES have undesirable effects.  It seems to “level out” the symptoms associated with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), such as hyperactivity, while fostering said symptoms in those without ADD.  It’s an interesting issue and was brought up in the case of Ms. Lohan by a doctor who suggested that in fact, when ADD is misdiagnosed, the use of Adderall can cause many problems and cocaine-like highs.  It is, after all, more or less like speed, and you can home drug test for it for good reason.  And with that, we end our recap coverage of Ms. Lohan and her drug issues.

Four Loko got the axe this year as it was said to cause hospitalizations and raised concerns among parents and school administrators.

Four Loko

October – Loco for Four Loko

This fall Four Loko attracted a lot of attention, enough to get it swiftly taken off the market by the FDA.  We covered both the initial furor and the controversial ban.

November – Bye, Bye Spice – For Now

We covered Spice and whether it could be drug tested for, and then provided coverage on what Spice is, really.  The FDA and DEA put an emergency ban on the sale of Spice/k2 at the end of the year, however, so that it could be studied to see if its use was/is safe.

December – More Teens Smoke Pot Than Cigarettes

Rounding out the year, the NIDA put out a study that showed that there are more 12th graders that smoke pot than there are 12th graders that smoke cigarettes.  There are many possible explanations for this result – the general popularity of cigarettes is decreasing, plus at their age neither pot nor cigarettes can be purchased legally, so it depends on what you can buy from friends.  In such a situation it’s not hard to imagine that more 12th graders smoke pot than cigarettes.

Whew!  That about wraps it up for us.  What was your favorite or least favorite drug related story of the year?  Let us know too what you would like to see in the coming year.  And finally, have a Happy New Year!

-Robyn

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