Aims: A translation into English of the case history sectionof Carl Wernicke’s original manuscript of 1881, with a discussionon its relevance for clinicians today. Methods: A copy of CarlWernicke’s original German text was obtained by one of the authors(CCHC) and translated into English from the old German by aprofessional translator. Results: The translation was subsequentlyagreed by native German speaking referees, and minor changesmade. Conclusions: The authors studied the translation in detailand concluded that Wernicke’s description had stood the testof time. The diagnosis of Wernicke’s Encephalopathy remainsa clinical one.
Aims: Blood pressure (BP) changes in alcohol-dependent individualsduring a 12-week alcohol relapse prevention study were examinedin light of drinking status and biomarkers of alcohol consumption[carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (%CDT) and gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT)]. Methods: Of 160 randomized alcoholicindividuals, 120 who had hypertension and in whom daily drinkingdata was available, at 6 and 12 weeks of treatment were included.The impact of alcohol consumption on change in systolic BP (SBP)and diastolic BP (DBP) was examined. Further analysis determinedthe relationship between BP and alcohol-use biomarkers. Results:A significant effect of complete abstinence on both SBP (–10mmHg; P = 0.003) and DBP (–7 mmHg; P = 0.001)when compared to any drinking (SBP and DBP = –1 mmHg)was observed. At week 12, participants with a positive %CDT(2.6) had 7 mmHg greater SBP (P = 0.01) and DBP (P < 0.001)than those with negative %CDT. Participants with positive GGT(50 IU) had 10 mmHg greater SBP (P = 0.12) and 9 mmHggreater DBP (P = 0.03) than those with negative GGT.The percent change in SBP was correlated with percent changein %CDT (P = 0.003) but not GGT (P = ns).The percent change in DBP was correlated with both percent changein %CDT (P < 0.0001) and GGT (P = 0.03).Conclusions: Abstinence from alcohol significantly decreasedthe BP and a positive relationship between BP and both alcohol-usebiomarkers was illustrated. Since %CDT is more specific thanGGT for heavy alcohol consumption, clinicians may monitor therole of alcohol in hypertension using %CDT as a supplementalaid, providing an objective assessment of drinking to influenceBP treatment decisions.
The drug apparently mimics the effects on the body of the only known animal Planet.
Experts say the findings might indicate genes in humans that could be targeted to increase lifespan and possibly to identify additional genes important in ageing.
Dr. Linda Buck of the research center says it remains unclear why, depriving the body of all but the minimum amount of calories needed to survive seems to enhance longevity but the Seattle team believe they may have found an easier way to achieve the same effect.
Nematode worms are ideal subjects for studies into lifespan, they are similar in many ways to humans as they have a central nervous system and sexual reproduction; they also only live for only a matter of weeks.
Dr. Buck says they are unable to explain it but it is possible the drug disturbed the balance of two brain chemicals which help the nematode decide whether there is enough food around to justify laying eggs and this, might produce a “perceived, but not real” state of starvation.
The researchers say such life-extending benefits however come at a cost with weight gain and increased appetite some of the side effects which is why the drugs are not popular antidepressants. http://101clicks.com (pharmacy online Rss news)
A team from the Trinity College Dublin and the Sanger Institute, Cambridge (UK), led by Dr Arpad Palfi and Dr Jane Farrar of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin used mutant mice that model the human eye disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The researchers compared these mice with wild-type mice, testing their hypothesis that changes in microRNA expression may be evident in retinal degeneration.
Retinitis pigmentosa is the most common form of inherited retinal degeneration affecting more than one million individuals worldwide. Progressive photoreceptor cell death eventually leads to blindness. Mutations in more than 40 genes have been linked to the disease and no therapy is currently available.
The team found very similar patterns of microRNA expression in retinas of two wild-type mouse strains, but, microarray profiling revealed that in these wildtype mice the patterns of microRNA expression differed between the brain and retina. Furthermore, there were clear differences in the microRNA expression patterns between wild type and mutant mice. The researchers found alterations greater than two-fold in the expression of 9 microRNAs in mutant mouse retinas compared with those of the wild-type mice. These microRNAs potentially regulate genes implicated in retinal diseases and genes encoding components involved in cell death and intracellular trafficking. Reed Feed Anti Diabetic Anti biotics Pharma Healthy Bones Mens Health Womens Health pharma news pharmacy xl
OA offers a spiritual solution to compulsive overeating
“I did not enter my first meeting with hope,” recalls one member of Overeaters Anonymous. “I entered with despair. But I left with hope, because it was the first time in my life that I realized or heard that I was not morally imperfect, that I was not weak-willed, that I was not some defect. I had a disease—the disease of compulsive overeating.”
These words capture some core principles of Overeaters Anonymous (OA). One is that its members have an abnormal relationship with food. Another is that no plan for healing this relationship can succeed when it’s based on personal willpower alone.
As an alternative, OA suggests reliance on a “power greater than ourselves,” also referred to as God or a Higher Power. This frankly spiritual approach sets OA apart from other responses to overeating.
Atheists and agnostics may well express skepticism: What can a relationship to God or a Higher Power possibly have to do with overeating? What can possibly work other than dieting, exercise, and self-control?
OA offers three answers to these questions:
First, you are free to define God or Higher Power in any way that you choose. These words refer to any source of help outside ourselves—for example, fellow members of OA. No belief in a supernatural being is required. As a result, OA’s doors are open to atheists, agnostics, and members of any religion.
Second, any solution to overeating must address mental obsession with eating. “Overeaters Anonymous,” the group’s core text, includes stories of people who lost dozens of pounds through dieting, exercising, and purging—only to regain the weight later. Even when these people shed pounds, their thoughts focused on food.
One OA member describes this mental state: “My whole life was about getting the food, buying the food, preparing the food, sneaking the food, and hiding the food from morning until night.”
Another person said, “I used food for everything. It was my excitement. It was my entertainment. It was my antidepressant. It was my social life.”
Driven by such compulsion, OA members recall doing things that no sane person would do: Eating stale, spoiled, or rotten food. Stealing from other people’s plates. Picking up food off the ground.
Third, abandon all attempts to remove the obsession by yourself. After all, your attempts to do this in the past have consistently failed. Instead, turn to your Higher Power for help.
“Overeaters Anonymous” the book puts it this way: “This mental obsession was something we couldn’t be rid of by our unaided human will. Another power, stronger than ourselves, had to be found to relieve us of it, if we were to stop eating compulsively and stay stopped.”
This solution might sound vague or impractical. But OA offers practical suggestions for getting daily guidance from a self-transcending source. For example:
Rather than eating in response to a craving, attend an OA meeting or call someone in the program.
Meet regularly with a sponsor—someone with longer experience in OA who serves as a mentor.
Instead of acting on impulse, pause to pray or meditate.
You can learn more about OA by going online to www.oa.org. The Web site explains how to find OA meetings and related resources near you. The above quotes from OA members are samples from “Hearing Is Believing: OA Members Speak,” a recording available from OA on CD or cassette.
The following books may also be of interest:
“Overeaters Anonymous, second edition” (Overeaters Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2001).
“The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous” (Overeaters Anonymous World Services, Inc., 2002).
“Compulsive Overeater: The Basic Text for Compulsive Overeaters” by Bill B. (Hazelden, 1981).
“Twelve Steps for Overeaters: An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous” by Elisabeth L. (Hazelden, 1993).
Alive & Free is a health column that offers information to help prevent and address addiction and substance abuse problems. It is provided by Hazelden web site at www.hazelden.org.
Overcoming Overeating by Jane R. Hirschmann, Carol H. Munter
Although people recognize that they have a problem with alcohol, a survey finds that many don’t seek treatment because they’re not ready to stop using, according to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
The SAMHSA report, “Reasons for Not Receiving Substance Abuse Treatment,” also found that many people fail to seek out treatment because they think they can’t afford it.
Of the 761,000 individuals who recognized that they needed treatment for alcohol addiction, 49 percent were not ready to stop drinking and 40 percent thought the cost of treatment was prohibitive.
“It is tragic that a major reason people continue to abuse alcohol is that they do not believe they can afford appropriate treatment,” said SAMHSA Administrator Charles G. Curie. “President Bush has proposed a three year ‘Access to Recovery’ program to provide $200 million more each year for substance-abuse treatment. This program would provide someone in need of substance-abuse treatment with a voucher to pay for the services. We really need this program if we are to provide treatment to the large numbers who say they cannot afford it.”
The report was developed from SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
There are two benefits from recovery: we have short-term gains and long-term gains.
The short-term gains are the things we can do today that help us feel better immediately.
We can wake up in the morning, read for a few minutes in our meditation book, and feel lifted. We can work a Step and often notice an immediate difference in the way we feel and function. We can go to a meeting and feel refreshed, talk to a friend and feel comforted, or practice a new recovery behavior, such as dealing with our feelings or doing something good for ourselves, and feel relieved.
There are other benefits from recovery, though, that we don’t see immediately on a daily or even a monthly basis. These are the long-term gains, the larger progress we make in our life.
Over the years, we can see tremendous rewards. We can watch ourselves grow strong in faith, until we have a daily personal relationship with a Higher Power that is as real to us as a relationship with a best friend.
We can watch ourselves grow beautiful as we shed shame, guilt, resentments, self-hatred, and other negative buildups from our past.
We can watch the quality of our relationships improve with family, friends, and spouses. We find ourselves growing steadily and gradually in our capacity to be intimate and close, to give and receive.
We can watch ourselves grow in our careers, in our ability to be creative, powerful, productive people, using our gifts and talents in a way that feels good and benefits others.
We discover the joy and beauty in ourselves, others, and life.
The long-term progress is steady, but sometimes slow, happening in increments and often with much forward and backward movement. Enough days at a time of practicing recovery behaviors and piling up short term gains leads to long-term rewards.
Today, I will be grateful for the immediate and long-term rewards of recovery. If I am new to recovery, I will have faith that I can achieve the long-term benefits. If I’ve been recovering for a while, I will pause to reflect, and be grateful for my overall progress.
From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie.
The Language of Letting Go (Hazelden Meditation Series) by Melody Beattie
Teenage girls in the United Kingdom consume more alcohol than their male peers, the Western Mail reported.
According to a survey conducted by the Schools Health Education Unit, 44 percent of girls aged 14 and 15 had at least one alcoholic drink a week, compared with 42 percent of boys. While boys generally drank more beer, girls consumed more wine, spirits, and alcopops. Teen girls were also more likely to smoke.
The researchers attributed the increase in drinking to teen girls trying to emulate the behavior of older peers and to outdo their male counterparts.
“They are going out and losing control as a result of alcohol and we are seeing them then putting themselves at risk through casual sex and all the infections that go with it,” said Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a professor at the University of Wales College of Medicine. “We know chlamydia is on the increase. My impression from talking to students is there is a culture that to have a good time you have to go out and get smashed. There’s this huge peer pressure that you are only having a good time if you are drunk. Some of these girls look so grown up. They are so provocatively dressed, it’s quite difficult for somebody running a bar or pub to know if they are under-age.”
The survey was based on responses from 15,500 children from 196 primary and secondary schools across the UK.
Aim: To compare the effects in alcohol-dependent patients ofthree pharmacotherapies, disulfiram (DIS), naltrexone (NTX),and acamprosate (ACA), when used with a brief manual-based cognitive-behaviouralintervention. Method: We conducted a randomized, open label,multicentre naturalistic study in two phases; first, a 12-weekcontinuously supervised medication, followed by targeted medication(TM) up to 52 weeks in addition to a 67-week follow-up period;altogether 119 weeks (2.5 years), in 243 voluntary treatment-seekingalcohol-dependent adult outpatients. Subjects were randomized1:1:1 to receive supervised NTX, ACA or DIS, 50, 1998, or 200mg, respectively, per day, plus a brief manual-based cognitive-behaviouralintervention. The patients were met in the second and sixthweeks, and then after 3, 6, and 12 months. The primary outcomemeasures were the time (days) to first heavy drinking day (HDD),and time during the first 3 months to the first drinking dayafter medication started. Secondary variables were abstinentdays/week (0 drinks/day), average weekly alcohol intake, AlcoholUse Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT), Severity of AlcoholDependence Data (SADD), and quality of life (QL) measures. Results:All three study groups showed marked reduction in drinking,from baseline to the end of the study. During the continuousmedication phase, treatment with DIS was more effective in reducingHDDs and average weekly alcohol consumption, and increasingtime to the first drink, as well as the number of abstinentdays. During the TM period, there were no significant differencesbetween the groups in time to first HDD and days to first drinking,but the abstinence days were significantly more frequent inthe DIS group than ACA and NTX. There were no differences betweenthe NTX and ACA groups in either phase of the study of drinkingoutcomes. However, SADD scores improved more in the NTX groupthan the ACA group. Conclusions: Patients allocated to ACA,NTX and DIS combined with brief manual-based cognitive behaviouralintervention significantly reduce their alcohol consumptionand report improved QL. Supervised DIS appeared superior, especiallyduring the continuous medication period, to NTX and ACA.
The article title was printed with a typographical error. Thishas been corrected now.
Aim: Women have a higher susceptibility to alcohol-induced liverdisease (ALD) than men. Gender-related differences in food preferencewere described in previous studies for several populations,but not in alcohol abusers. As certain micronutrients are reportedto take influence on the development of ALD in animal experiments,the hypothesis of the present retrospective cross-sectionalstudy was that gender-dependent (micro-) nutrient intake inpatients with ALD may cause the higher susceptibility of womento this disease. Methods: In 210 patients (male: 158, female:52) with different stages of ALD (ALD1: mild stage of liverdamage; ALD2: moderately severe changes of the liver with signsof hepatic inflammation; ALD3: severely impaired liver function)and in 336 controls (male: 208, female: 128), nutrient intakewas determined by a computer-guided diet history, and relatedto the severity of ALD in dependence on the sex of the patients.Results: No significant differences between males and femaleswith ALD were calculated for the intake (per kg body weight/day)of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and the intake (per kg bodyweight/day) of most micronutrients. In females with ALD, higherintake was found for vitamin C (ALD3), calcium (ALD2), iron(ALD1 and ALD2), and zinc (ALD1), but the consumption of noneof these micronutrients seems to contribute to a higher susceptibilityto ALD in females. Conclusion: Though the present study confirmsthe higher susceptibility to ALD in women, the data of calculateddaily macro- and micronutrient intake do not suggest any explicitinfluence of gender-specific nutrition in the development ofALD.