Leslie Glass's Blog, page 401

Skipping meals makes you crazy

Want to know what happens to your brain when you start skipping meals to lose weight? Brain fog, irritability, and finally downright rage. Why does this happen? You’re not losing weight, you’re starving your brain

Guess what? Your brain needs glucose to function well. When you skip meals your blood sugar drops and the first thing that happens is your ability to think straight is hampered. You’re literally starving the most important part of your body. Your thinker. When there is not enough glucose for the brain, the rest of you your body does not function at 100 percent either.

Do you have friends (or relatives) who get super grumpy sometimes? Low blood sugar causes people to feel irritable, confused and fatigued.  The body begins to increase production of cortisol, leaving us stressed and hangry.

Skipping meals can also cause your metabolism to slow down, which can cause weight gain or make it harder to lose weight. Skipping meals puts your body into survival mode. It causes you to crave food and eat more when you get the chance.

When we skip meals, we tend to crave unhealthy, fatty, sugary  foods. When that happens, we succumb. Forget eating healthy. When you are that hungry, you’l go for anything.

7 Tips to avoid skipping meals 

Eat smaller, frequent meals throughout the day rather than skipping meals.
Always have a snack around like yogurt or a granola bar to hold you over until your next meal.
Eat snacks high in protein and fiber.  They will keep you full longer.
Plan your meals in advance or prepare them the night before.
Make a schedule for the week to avoid over booking yourself or falling behind.
Set an alarm to ring at lunchtime if you are going to be running around all day.
Make a lunch date. You cannot skip a meal if you have already made plans with friends or family.

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Sick, it might be this virus

There is the flu, and then there is another virus that may seem like the flu. Know the difference

From CNN  A runny nose, cough, sore throat, breathing problems, fever, headache, diarrhea: If you came down with these symptoms in the middle of winter, you’d probably assume it’s the flu and take to your bed immediately. Think again.

Another family of viruses, known as adenoviruses, often mimic the common seasonal sickness. Though they are similar, there are differences between the two.
Adenoviruses, unlike the flu, are not seasonal and can cause illness throughout the year. And while an adenovirus vaccine exists, it’s available only to military recruits.










































 What are the symptoms?
“Most of the time, adenoviruses produce influenza-like illness with cough and runny nose and feeling crummy, but you get better,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. “But they can also cause conjunctivitis and, particularly in children, diarrhea.”

The (very few) upsides to childhood illnesses


Pinkeye (conjunctivitis) is another symptom that can result from an adenovirus infection, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other signs of illness include inflammation of the stomach and intestines (gastroenteritis), bladder infections and bronchitis. When your airways become filled with mucus, they may start to spasm, which causes coughing and shortness of breath; this is bronchitis.
Some people will develop pneumonia, an infection of the lungs, as a consequence of an adenovirus infection, Schaffner said. “Of all the cases of pneumonia that occur in adults, about 5% are actually probably caused by adenovirus.”

What is pneumonia?


In a worst-case scenario, adenovirus could cause neurologic symptoms, including encephalitis — an inflammation of the brain — and meningitis — an inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain.
This is very rare, says the CDC, and only infants, people with existing respiratory or cardiac disease or patients with weakened immune systems, such as those who have recently undergone chemotherapy, would be likely to develop such serious illness. In extremely unusual cases, an adenovirus infection could result in death.
That said, most adenovirus infections are mild, with symptoms usually lasting about 10 days, according to the CDC. And for most patients, home remedies and over-the-counter medicines to relieve the symptoms will be the only treatment necessary.

How do these viruses spread?

Adenoviruses are spread by coughing and sneezing, direct contact with an infected person or touching objects and surfaces, such as a door handles and light switches, where adenoviruses can live and remain infectious for long periods.
Discovered in the 1950s, adenoviruses are named after the tissue where they were first found: the adenoids, located just behind the nose. There are more than 60 specific types of adenoviruses that can cause human infections; others cause sickness exclusively in animals. Differences in types result in differences in symptoms. Some types are more likely to give you pinkeye, say, while other types might lead to gastroenteritis.
Adenovirus infections “usually occur sporadically — here a case, there a case — so outbreaks are pretty rare,” Schaffner said. That said, Oregon has seen two deadly outbreaks in recent history. One outbreak claimed the lives of seven patients in 2007, and the second outbreak led to five deaths between October 2013 and July 2014.

From 2003 through 2016, the two most commonly reported adenovirus types in the US were types 2 and 3, though four additional types — 1, 4, 7 and 14 — also caused illness, according to a 2017 report from the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease of the CDC. These six types accounted for 85.5% of 1,497 laboratory-confirmed specimens reported during the time period.
This small number of cases is believed to be an underrepresentation of the actual number of cases due to the fact that most people who become sick either do not go to a doctor, or their doctors do not test for this virus.

‘Many more weeks’ to come in fierce, deadly flu season, CDC says


And adenoviruses are still difficult to diagnose since they’re not included in a panel of tests used to identify specific viruses, according to Schaffner. He said this is changing, and for that reason, he believes the number of cases will rise.

How do I avoid getting sick?

“Avoid people who are coughing and sneezing,” Schaffner said. “Also avoid people who have pinkeye.”
Adenoviruses are resistant to many common disinfectant products. You need a cleaner with “virucidal” activity, such as bleach, according to Alex Valsamakis, director of Clinical Virology and Molecular Microbiology and a professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Adenoviruses can “stay stable at room temperature for weeks” on unclean surfaces, said Valsamakis, who described this family of viruses as “environmentally hardy.”
“Wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face,” she said. “That’s kind of the easiest way to prevent inadvertently transporting something from your fingers into your nose or mouth, which is where these are going to grow.”


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Still, Schaffner doesn’t think people need to be worried about adenoviruses. “They cause principally a whole bunch of minor troublesome infections spread by children, often from children to adults,” he said.
“But they’re not nearly as serious as influenza.”

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How The Past Comes Back To Haunt Us

Does what happened in the past stay in the past? Absolutely not. One of the most significant triggers for childhood relationship trauma are adult relationships.

If our partner, for example, gets angry or neglectful, similar experiences from childhood that we are not consciously aware of may become restimulated. We may become hurt or despondent beyond what the current situation merits because unresolved hurt from the past is getting mixed up with hurt in the present and making it feel more unbearable or intense than it might otherwise feel.

The Brain Wants Someone To Blame

But because the thinking brain always wants an explanation, we all too often look for the one nearest at hand:

“My husband or wife is really awful.”
“If only my kid were better behaved I wouldn’t be so upset.”
“If my partner would only change…”

We blame what we can see. The person right in front of us gets a mix of past and present reactions. We may remain totally out of touch how deeply our own past may be altering the intensity of our emotional reactions.

We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

Yesterday’s pain, anger, and confusion is projected onto today’s relationships without knowing why.  Over time this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We actually recreate the fear and pain that we experienced as children in our adult interactions. To complicate matters further, we may see the solution to our problems as continually changing the situation we’re in. Instead, we need to examine what, inside of us, might be contributing to recreating painful relationship dynamics.

Revisiting The Past’s If Onlys

“If only I had a better house, spouse, or boss I wouldn’t feel so helpless, angry and alone. I better change them so I can feel less lonely and stressed.”

More often than not, the real change that needs to happen is within us. We need to change our own history by revisiting it.  We can do this by:

Hearing someone talking about a scene we identify with (Support groups)
Watching a psychodrama that feels all too familiar
Doing a role-play ourselves that allows us to revisit a moment from our past so that we can change how we experience it.

Three Benefits Of Confronting The Past

First, when we do some intentional healing process such as this, we are able to see the same situation with new, informed, and adult eyes. We understand that we were not the cause of the problem after all.

We also see that our shame and guilt over having been a bad and blamed child was perhaps misplaced. It was simply an immature child’s attempt at making sense of a scary situation by taking on too much blame.

Finally, we may see that our parents were fallible people after all, not bad but perhaps stressed, immature and without resources themselves. They were in over their heads.

This essay was originally published by Dr. Dayton on her website, www.tiandayton.com.

Sometimes getting over childhood hurts takes professional help. Visit Recovery Guidance to find counselors and addiction treatment resources near you.

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TRX and Recovery from Addiction

TRX was created by a Navy Seal commander Randy Hetrick while on deployment.  TRX stands for Total body Resistance eXercise.  It is a workout for beginners as well as athletes.

In TRX training there are seven basic movements which are push, pull, plank, rotate, hinge, lunge and squat.  And don’t worry.   You will not get a call from your local circus for recruitment.  You will get a “call” from your body thanking you.  When you are doing the exercises on the TRX you are engaging your core, you are improving your balance and you are moving almost every part of your body.

You can use the TRX suspension straps at home, at the gym or even when you travel.  Take them with you, so you won’t have any excuses of not working out, because with the TRX suspension you can train just about anywhere.  Also, it is a workout that fits the outdoors, as you can even strap them to a tree or your car.  You use your own body weight as a resistance while holding the TRX straps with your hands, or being suspended from the ground with your feet.

Kevin Pingle at Yvette’s Health and Fitness is demonstrating chest press exercise on the TRX suspension.

Benefits of TRX Training:

Helps burn fat
Builds strength
Improves cardiovascular health

“The challenge is maintaining conditioning when you have no access to training facility.” – Randy Hetrick

With TRX training you will be able to monitor your progress.  Perhaps your plank will not be perfect in the first few times.  Possibly, you will feel awkward or clumsy.  Remember that it is totally okay.  You are not doing it to win a contest.  Your competition is with your past self today.  You are there to change and restore yourself.  Within a few weeks you will see the positive improvements.

If you are looking for a workout routine that will not bore you, a workout that will take you outside your comfort zone, then TRX training is the one for you.  This training is challenging enough but not impossible.  It is also an outlet for stress.  In recovery it is important to find activities to replace the negative ones that are associated with the addiction.  With regular TRX training the feel good chemicals endorphins will kick in.  You will start smiling more with time as you get better with your form and strength.  With the physical strength, the emotional courage to continue in the path to recovery will ensue.

Engaging in a productive activity such as TRX training will take away the thoughts that could lead to relapse.  Fill in this window of past negative activities with something that will help your present and future.  TRX training could be that activity.  In addition, it is a good excuse to tell your drinking friends if they are asking you to join that you are busy with TRX training.  Bottom line is when you stop drinking or using drugs you end up with a lot of time in your hands.  Do something that will make you happy for real.

If you need help to maintain recovery, or deal with addiction, check out Recovery Guidance for a free and safe resource to find professionals near you.

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Chronic Pain Sufferers Need Treatment Solutions

Fifteen years ago, to an outraged crowd of concerned citizens about opioid deaths, our local Congressman and an FDA representative had an explanation for not cracking down on opioid distribution. This was in the pill mill state of Florida, but the issue was more that shutting down pill mills. The FDA representative told a large and hurting crowd that restrictions couldn’t be put on the synthetic heroin, Oxycodone, and other powerful opioids that were killing people, because “the nurses tell us people are in pain.” 

Oxycodone Was Not Designed For Chronic Pain

Oxycodone was approved in 2004 for sick and dying patients, and then when approved was widely distributed by physicians for all kinds of pain, and surgeries. It was never supposed to be a first choice medication for either short term pain or chronic pain. In fact, instead of mitigating chronic pain, powerful opioids can create their own dangerous cycle of drug craving and drug sick pain. Back in 2010,  the impact of opiates was already devastating in this small Florida city. Over three hundred young people had perished of overdoses within the last two years. No one but their mothers were speaking for for them, and the word of “nurses” turned out to be more powerful that the voices of mourning families. But chronic pain is not to be dismissed.

The Issue Of Chronic Pain Is A Real One

Thousands of people have chronic and debilitating pain. Because of the attitude that pain can only be treated with powerful drugs, other solutions for dealing with pain, especially pain in those recovering from addictions have not been explored enough.

Dr. John Stenzel A Pain Expert Explains

“The incidences of opioid overdoses have not abated. We continue to see headlines reporting that over 60,000 people are dying each year. There are also between 80-110 million adults suffering from chronic pain in the United States. As more and more those with legitimate chronic pain conditions lose or receive a limited supply of their opioid medications, they overutilize emergency room visits (sometimes weekly) and run up medical costs.

These complex chronic pain patients make up 20% of the patient population, and consume 80% of medical services with little to no improvement in quality of life. Currently, individuals seeking treatment for addiction are billed through mental health services, and those seeking treatment for chronic pain are billed through the medical system. However, the high-utilizing complex chronic pain patients require a specialized, coordinated care model that combines mental health and medical treatment to address the coexisting biological, psychological, and social disorders that fuel chronic pain suffering and addictive behaviors.

What Is The Solution For Chronic Pain Sufferers

Unfortunately, insurers – to our knowledge – have not recognized nor do they have a system in place to bill for concurrent bio-psycho-social-spiritual treatment, even though research shows that it is the most effective way to lower costs and increase positive patient outcomes.

Dr. Stenzel Wants Treatment Providers To Offer More Options

We know that chronic pain is costing this country just under a trillion dollars every year. What are your thoughts about how to address this? I would love to inspire a dialog between stakeholders. Are these issues being discussed amongst treatment executives? What solutions would are being recommended for this very expensive population? Whose attention should this be brought to? Chief Executive Officers? Chief Financial Officers? Chief Medical Officers? Chief Clinical Officers? Segment Strategists? Network Contracting Executives? 2018 offers a new year and new opportunity to address this treatment necessity.”

 

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What Is The Gift Of Earthing

From Annie Hightower: I have found a new tool to add to my treasure chest of self-care tactics.  Among therapy, running, hiking, calling a friend, etc. I have recently entered into the joy of earthing.

Earthing, Basically…Is Walking On The Earth Barefoot

Walking on grass, sand, mud and the like, void of any foot covering.  These days we don’t connect with the electrons, vitamins and ions of the earth as much since we have pavement, flooring and shoes separating us from the natural ground beneath us.  Earthing is way of a reconnecting to all of that.

But for me it’s more, it’s pulling away for a few moments, it’s meditative, it’s mindful.  It’s also about pushing through anything fearful, rigid, stuck or stagnant within me.   Every day (when I remember) for a few minutes, I kick off my shoes or sandals and walk carefully (explanation below) through the grass.

Then look for some good, clean mud to stand still in for a few minutes, sinking into the warm, sticky earth.  For a few minutes, I breathe in deeply a few times, inhaling peace…exhaling stress, nonsense and all unnecessary BS.

I then rinse my feet off and hurry them back into the protection of my shoes.

 After, I feel different, lighter, somehow more present and alive.   It could be that the action of it is causing me to believe it works, or perhaps it truly works.  Does it matter when something makes you feel better and aware of life in the moment? Not to me.

Lost Innocence Played Forward

When I was little, one summer I was running in the yard and accidentally stepped on a bee.  I was painfully stung on the bottom of my foot.  Not long after, I stepped out of a car barefoot and onto a lit cigarette someone had pitched form a car.  The sting was unbearable. Lesson learned.  I did not go without shoes, at least flip flops, ever again.  For decades.  Not even indoors. I later projected the fear limitation onto my son, never allowing him outdoors with bare feet.  Once, when he was about 3 years old he came running outside toward me, I stopped him and asked “Are you out here in bare feet?”  He looked down and said “I’m out here with people feet.”  Even though that was the cutest thing ever, I warned him about running through the grass without protection from the terrors that lurk.  Dramatically I warned him of painful lesson I learned myself.

Earthing at first felt very new and even a little unsafe for me. But I like it, I’m doing it and I am starting look forward to it every day.

Earthing feels similar to those unexpected moments when you find yourself running through the rain and stop, hold your hands up to the sky and allow yourself to feel heaven rain down.  Healing.  Freeing. Alive.  A moment of distraction from the stresses of what is going on around us. 

For a few minutes out of my day Earthing brings me back to earth.  It’s as simple as that. If you can’t find mud to play in, however, or don’t have grass in your life, even bare feet on a safe pavement can connect you with the earth.

Annie Highwater is a recovery blogger and the author of Unhooked.

If you need help with addiction or mental health, visit Recovery Guidance to explore professional resources in your area.

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Does swearing make you happier and healthier

Do you swear? Do others around you swear? Does it drive you crazy when you hear certain words? Us too. But swearing (some kinds of gentle, non disparaging or personally hurtful swearing) can feel good and honest.

From the Huffington Post While swearing may have once been considered an unsavory habit, research has found there are some benefits to using more colorful language. Not only does cursing come with some mental and physical health perks, it also could positively affect how you converse with others. In other words, it’s pretty darn good for your overall well-being.

By Lindsay Holmes











MELPOMENEM VIA GETTY IMAGES

Need some evidence? Below are a few science-backed reasons why it isn’t so bad to incorporate a few swear words into your lexicon:

Swearing is an effective way of communicating.

Research has shown that cursing might increase the effectiveness and persuasiveness of an argument. Not only that, swearing can communicate how you feel about a certain subject without explicitly explaining it or resorting to a physical altercation, the BBC reported:

By swearing, we not only communicate the meaning of a sentence, but also our emotional response to the meaning — our emotional reaction to something. It also allows us to express anger, disgust or pain, or indicate to someone that they need to back off, without having to resort to physical violence.

It might mean you’re more honest.

A recent study found that people who swear often lie less and have higher levels of integrity. Researchers examined participants’ profanity use and had them do a lie scale, which is a series of evaluations that ask redundant questions to determine a person’s truthfulness. The study found a positive relationship between those who cursed and their honesty levels.

It improves your pain tolerance.

If letting out a few expletives helps when you stub your toe, there might be a reason for that. A study published in 2011 found that swearing can increase your ability to withstand pain. Researchers hypothesized that cursing can activate your body’s release of natural, pain-relieving chemicals that have a similar soothing effect to drugs like morphine, Time reported.

Swearing is a sign of intelligence.

Just call yourself a smarty pants. Studies have suggested that a fluency in taboo words is associated with possessing a larger vocabulary in general. Researchers who have studied swearing also say that the habit may be linked with a higher IQ.

It may make you perform better during exercise.

Pumping out profanities may help you pump some iron. Research conducted in 2017 suggested that swearing could affect the outcome of your workout. Study participants were examined during bicycle and hand-grip exercises and were told to either repeat neutral words or curse words during the activities. In both tests, swearing helped improve performance, The New York Times reported.

It may give you a sense of calm.

Experts say that overall, if you want to let the cuss words fly, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“The health benefits of swearing include increased circulation, elevated endorphins, and an overall sense of calm, control and well-being,” Neel Burton, a psychiatrist based in Oxford, England, and author of Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions, wrote in Psychology Today.

Those are all some damn good excuses.

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There Are No Stages For Coping With Grief

There is a lot of information regarding grief that is inaccurate, especially the five stages of grief developed by Kubler-Ross. While this was an interesting study in 1969, later research has found that there are no stages to grief. So if there are no stages, how do we experience grief and how do we cope?

What Is Grief?

Grief, also called sorrow, is the process of loss; mourning and bereavement relate to the process of coping with loss. These losses may include:

The death of a loved one or a beloved pet
A dissolution of a marriage
Loss of a friendship
The loss of childhood innocence through abuse
The ending of a role such as retirement
Becoming an empty-nester
Becoming disabled or homeless
Suffering from a medical condition or a psychiatric illness
Any other of the many losses we face throughout our lifetime

Life is about love and loss. How we cope is as important as the loss itself. Grief can demonstrate itself in many ways:

Sadness
Tearfulness
Obsessing about the loss
Poor appetite or trouble sleeping
Sobbing
Anxiety
Anger
Guilt
Shame
Feelings of relief
Hopelessness and helplessness
Gratitude
Acceptance
All other feelings along the spectrum.

There is no right or wrong way to cope as long as it is a healthy process, i.e., not resorting to isolation, drinking or drugging or other self-harm behaviors, suicide attempts, or other dysfunctional coping styles.

The Coping Skill That’s Needed

In the beginning, we may just focus on survival. All we can do is put one foot in front of the other to get through the day. Time often feels at a standstill as we weave through the grief process. We may wonder if the pain will ever end.

And sadly, those of us in Western Society tend to struggle to give mouring its due.  We try to deny the pain and the loss instead of embracing what we had as well as what we lost. If we allow ourselves, we can work through the loss and come out on the other side and begin to thrive again. This doesn’t mean we won’t feel the sorrow.  We can allow it to manifest itself in positive ways.

For example, we learn to be more compassionate as we understand what others are also going through. First, grief teaches us to embrace the loss. Then we learn to allow healing because we know sorrow is as much a part of life as is joy. We may move through the grief on our own, with others, with a grief counselor or grief support group, but we can and do go on.

One Day At A Time

So we begin to get back into life by taking one-day-at-a time. We utilize all of our coping skills, for besides doing the healthy grieving, we also get back into our routines, doing enjoyable activities. We only use distraction skills as needed, such as:

Not focusing on the loss at work
Allowing ourselves a set time to grieve at home
Meeting and talking with others not only about your loss, but about life

We do our fun activities and while we may initially struggle with feeling joy, we continue to do these things as our pleasure will return. It’s important to tell ourselves that we will get through the loss and that we will enjoy life again. So take the time to experience life as an physical/emotional/intellectual/relational/spiritual event. Go for a walk, meditate, or play tennis. Participate in religious and spiritual activities, or hang out with others. Treat yourself to a special meal, reminisce, or read a mystery novel. Take a class or watch a movie – for there is more to life than just the emotional aspect of grief.

Take Grief As It Comes

Most of all, there is no set pattern to grief. It may come as a calmness or as a tsunami; it may come with sobbing or with a sense of peace. Grief may make you feel you are going crazy or it may be a stillness within. However it comes, let it be, for sorrow is a process. It’s not a one-time event. And if we are able to meet all our losses by grieving at the time, then this helps us from struggling with ongoing losses.  For if we do not address them each and every time, then they can build up and cause more issues such as:

Depression
Stress-related disorders
A complicated grief reaction

Grief is a natural process – depression is not.

If you need help coping with grief, visit Recovery Guidance to see who the recovery professionals are in your area.

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15% NSAID users exceed daily limit

Chances are you or someone you know has used nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) within the last month. NSAIDs, such as Advil (ibuprofen), Aleve (naproxen) and Celebrex, are among the most commonly used medicines in the U.S. These drugs can have serious side effects, including GI bleeding and sometimes heart attacks, and are often taken without medical oversight because many are available over-the-counter.

Now, for the first time, researchers have found that 15 percent of adult ibuprofen users exceed the maximum recommended dose of ibuprofen or other NSAIDs in a one-week period. Exceeding the daily limit often followed taking too much of a single NSAID at one time, taking two different NSAIDs at the same time, or failing to wait long enough before taking another dose.

“It is important to understand how many users exceed the maximum, how they do it and what characteristics are associated with over-use. This knowledge can help guide consumer interventions to promote safer use,” explained lead author David Kaufman, ScD, Director of Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center and professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. The study was a collaborative effort of Slone, Pinney Associates (Pittsburgh, PA), and Appleseed Consumer Insight (Arlington, MA), co-directed by Kaufman and Saul Shiffman, PhD, Senior Scientific Advisor to Pinney Associates.

Approximately 1,300 individuals who reported taking an ibuprofen medication in the preceding month completed a daily diary of their NSAID use for one week, and took ibuprofen during that time. The researchers then were able to compute their ingested daily dosage and compare it with the recommended daily maximum dose.

Those who exceed the recommended dosage tend to have a combination of medical factors such as chronic pain and poor physical state, attitudes conducive to ignoring the label recommendations, and poor knowledge of those recommendations. The authors suggest that attitudes and knowledge, along with specific dosing behavior and compliance with label directions, are potentially modifiable, which could lead to safer use of NSAIDs.

These findings appear online in the journal Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.

Funding for this study was provided by Johnson and Johnson Consumer Inc.

Content originally published in Science Daily

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Roadside Testing for Marijuana Use Difficult

As the movement to legalize marijuana in the United States gains momentum, researchers worry about keeping the public safe, particularly on the roads. Recent studies in which marijuana users took controlled doses of cannabis in the lab have identified new biomarkers that can be used to estimate a person’s recent cannabinoid intake. But, using those markers to judge cognitive and behavioral impairment is complex, say toxicologists in a commentary published on January 25 in a special issue of the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine on biomarkers of substance abuse.

“There is no one blood or oral fluid concentration that can differentiate impaired and not impaired,” says Marilyn Huestis, who spent over 20 years leading cannabinoid-related research projects at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “It’s not like we need to say, ‘Oh, let’s do some more research and give you an answer.’ We already know. We’ve done the research.”

Alcohol can impair a user more than cannabis, and indeed, the risk of an accident while driving increases in proportion with blood alcohol concentrations. But pot is different: many variables can affect how impaired someone is at any given concentration of ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive agent in cannabinoids. Whether it is inhaled or consumed, or whether the user titrates their own dose, can affect the level of impairment. And pairing cannabis with alcohol makes the high higher, and the alcohol buzz last longer.

Another problem is that THC quickly leaves the bloodstream. Previous research by Huestis has shown that while an occasional user is impaired for 6 to 8 hours, blood THC concentrations can be effectively zero after 2.5 hours. And on average in the United States, it takes from 1.4-4 hours after a crash or traffic stop to administer a blood test. “If someone is driving impaired, by the time you get their blood sample, you’ve lost 90% or more of the drug. So, we have to change what we do at the roadside,” says Huestis.

Long-term daily cannabis users, like those who use marijuana for medical reasons, also present a challenge for developing roadside protocols. THC accumulates in the tissues of the body and then slowly releases over time, meaning that chronic users can test positive for cannabis even after 30 days of abstinence. Psychomotor impairment can be observed three weeks after the last dose. “You want people to be taking medicinal cannabinoids and now you know that their driving is going to be impacted,” says Huestis. “So how do you handle that problem?”

Huestis, like most researchers, doesn’t support a legal driving limit for cannabis like the one in place for blood alcohol concentrations. Instead, she advocates for well-trained police officers who can identify the behavioral signs of impairment and less invasive biological marker tests, which could be immediately performed at the roadside to confirm the presence of a cannabinoid. To that end, recent research has identified new blood and urine markers, and tests using breath and saliva markers are being developed.

The implications go beyond driving. These new markers and tests could also be used to assist in treating drug dependence, in determining appropriate therapeutic levels of medical marijuana, and for monitoring women who want to stop using cannabinoids during pregnancy.

Huestis, who also owns a toxicology consulting company with her co-author, Michael Smith, isn’t opposed to legalization. But she does want to make sure that marijuana’s status as a legal drug and a medicine doesn’t make us complacent. “Cannabis probably is less dangerous to use than alcohol,” she says. “There’s less morbidity and mortality associated with it, but there’s still a lot of problems. And we as a public are not recognizing this.”

The Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institutes of Health funded this research.

Content originally published by Science Daily

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