While public health officials in the United States are busy tackling the crisis of narcotic addiction, Adderall has slowly and steadily entered the lives of thousands of school-going children and college students in the country. Popularly known as “study drugs,” Adderall is primarily a central nervous system stimulant that is used for treating attention-deficit hyperactivity..
Chronic pain is a serious problem that interferes with all aspects of one’s life. Studies have shown that pain is associated with the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves. A study conducted by the scientists at the Georgia State University pointed at the immune system as central to chronic pain. Published in the Journal..
Abuse of prescription drugs, especially painkillers, has become a major health epidemic in the United States, with millions of overdose deaths occurring every year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that over 183,000 people died due to the overdose of prescription painkillers from 1999 to 2015. In fact, a huge percentage of people in..
On June 1, 2017, a 19-month-old boy in Akron, Ohio was suspected to have overdosed on an opioid while fiddling with a bag containing residue. His family called 911 to summon emergency workers to their home after they found the toddler not breathing. Paramedics were able to revive the baby with Narcan, an anti-opioid drug,..
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) defines opioid use disorder (OUD) as a problematic pattern of opioid use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress. It is characterized by a range of symptoms including a nagging desire for opioids and experiencing opioid withdrawal symptoms in the absence of the drug. Another attribute common..
While alcohol and illicit drug abuse has dominated the college campuses since decades, the consequences arising out of chronic abuse of prescription drugs, particularly stimulants, sedatives and pain relievers, have affected millions of American teens and adolescents. Although there have been several advances in the field of new and upgraded treatments for chronic pain, attention..
Prescription diet pills became a fad in the 1990s as it was the era when people were overly conscious about how they looked. Being slim mattered more than anything else, with both men and women being equally obsessed with the desire to stay thin. During this time, a diet pill known as Fen-Phen, a combination..
It is common to prescribe painkillers to patients afflicted with chronic wounds. This is despite the fact that limited knowledge is available regarding the effects of opioids on wound healing. A group of scientists in their study titled “Relationship between opioid treatment and rate of healing in chronic wounds” have examined the relationship between exposure..
A new study by the researchers of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that the majority of homes with children in the United States do not follow safe storage norms when it comes to storing prescription pain medications. Using the Health Belief Model, the researchers determined the association between beliefs and safe..
In the wake of the opioid addiction plaguing the United States, the greatest need of the time is to identify the reasons behind this outbreak. A telephonic survey by the Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-third of the respondents who had taken prescription opioids for two months or more in the past two years..