Dr Alison Bentley is a general practitioner who has consulted in sleep medicine and sleep disorders, in both adults and children of all ages, for almost 30 years. She also researches and publishes on a number of sleep-related topics both in formal research journals and lay publications including as editor of Sleep Matters, an educational newsletter on sleep disorders for doctors.
The US Food and Drug Administration took a good look at the safety and effectiveness of CBD products on Friday, as it weighs how to best regulate the hemp-derived compound going forward.
During a public hearing that stretched for hours, the agency heard testimony from people on all sides of the issue.
Explosion of interest
In opening the hearing, FDA Acting Commissioner Dr Ned Sharpless said, “critical questions remain about the safety” of the products, CNN reported.
“While we have seen an explosion of interest in products containing CBD, there is still much that we don’t know,” Sharpless added.
To say the market for CBD products has exploded in the past year would be an understatement.
Everything from oils to gummies to pills, creams and ointments are now for sale at supermarkets and specialty chains. You can even get massages infused with CBD, or cosmetics laced with the drug.
All of these products contain cannabidiol but not THC, the ingredient in pot that provides a “high”.
CBD products have swamped the market not because of any new medical evidence, but because of a change in federal law.
What do scientists really know?
Late last year, Congress passed a farm bill that lifted a decades-old ban on growing hemp. As long as the plant contains less than 0.3% THC, hemp can be grown legally anywhere in the United States by licensed farmers.
The bill specifically said the US Drug Enforcement Administration cannot regulate hemp products like CBD. So, it’s now up to the FDA to manage the CBD craze.
But what do scientists really know about the health benefits and risks of CBD?
Precious little, experts say, and consumers should take care that they aren’t wasting their money.
“You have a flood of CBD products that are coming from hemp that are going out onto the market, and you’ve got all sorts of claims being made about those from people who are trying to sell them,” said Timothy Welty, chair of the department of clinical sciences at Drake University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, in Des Moines, Iowa.
The flood of CBD products has become so overwhelming that the FDA recently stepped into the fray.
Rare forms of epilepsy
The agency has whipped out a flurry of warning letters to companies marketing CBD products, telling them to stop making unfounded health claims for the substance.
Companies have falsely claimed that CBD can stop cancer cells, slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, ease nerve pain and fibromyalgia, and curb withdrawal symptoms for people undergoing substance abuse treatment, the FDA letters state.
To date, there’s only one use for CBD that has significant scientific evidence behind it – curbing the symptoms of rare forms of epilepsy.
The FDA last year approved the drug Epidiolex to treat two forms of childhood epilepsy. The medical evidence has shown that the highly purified CBD in Epidiolex can ease seizures.
For the rest of CBD’s potential uses, there is simply too little evidence to make a firm conclusion.
The next potential medical use for CBD could be for the symptoms of anxiety disorder, said Welty and Yasmin Hurd, chair of translational neuroscience and director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai, in New York City.
May decrease anxiety
Clinical trials suggest that CBD could help treat anxiety, but Welty feels there needs to be more study. Hurd is slightly more convinced, but agrees more study is needed.
“There is published evidence that CBD does decrease anxiety,” Hurd said. “That’s another indication where I can say I can believe the data; however, we still don’t know the dosing regimen that would be effective for anxiety. Those are studies that are ongoing.”
Other uses – as an anti-inflammatory, an aid for substance withdrawal, a sleep aid, a pain reliever – haven’t been conclusively proven.
In some cases, the evidence runs counter to what people might suspect.
There’s not much reason to believe CBD would be an effective means of pain relief, said Dr Ajay Wasan, vice chair for pain medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“If you think of it as a medicine, it would be a weak analgesic,” Wasan said. “It’s really the THC component of medical marijuana which is the compound that gives you pain relief,” he explained.
Purity of content
“I’ve been surprised how much CBD has taken off and exploded with very little data,” Wasan said. “Most of the other herbal supplements, there are at least some studies on it before it becomes really popular. But for this, I haven’t seen anything.”
The bottom line, researchers said, is that people who want to try CBD for one reason or another should talk with their doctor first.
Besides that, consumers might consider buying CBD products from a state-run programme. Some states like Iowa have established such programmes to make CBD available medicinally, Welty said.
“Those products are more reliable, because they have a system to monitor the purity of content,” Welty said. “You’re a little more sure that you’re getting what you’re paying for.”
Welty is much less sure of the “artisanal products” containing CBD that are available in stores and dispensaries, and for good reason – studies have shown that most of these products fail tests for content and purity.
“The CBD products that come through that route, there’s essentially no control, and you as a consumer have no way to know what you’re getting,” Welty said.
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The feeling of “oneness” may make you more satisfied with your life, new research finds.
Oneness is the belief that everything in the world is connected and interdependent.
Two surveys of nearly 75 000 people in Germany found a strong link between life satisfaction and higher scores on concepts associated with oneness – such as social connectedness, feeling close to nature and empathy.
Variety of religious traditions
This was true whether people were part of a religion or not, according to the study recently published online in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
Participants were from a variety of religious traditions, including Protestant denominations, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. More than a quarter said they were atheists.
“The feeling of being at one with a divine principle, life, the world, other people or even activities has been discussed in various religious traditions but also in a wide variety of scientific research from different disciplines,” said study author Laura Marie Edinger-Schons. She is a professor of corporate social responsibility at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
“The results of this study reveal a significant positive effect of oneness beliefs on life satisfaction, even controlling for religious beliefs,” Edinger-Schons said in a journal news release.
Atheists have lowest oneness beliefs
People’s oneness beliefs appear to remain stable over time, the study found. Instead of changing with events, they seem to represent a general attitude toward life, Edinger-Schons said.
Research has tied higher levels of life satisfaction to benefits such as better grades among students and better health in older adults.
Oneness scores varied by religion but were much better predictors of life satisfaction than religious beliefs, according to the findings.
“I did not find it surprising that atheists have the lowest levels of oneness beliefs in the sample, but what surprised me was that oneness beliefs were actually very different across various religious affiliations, with Muslims having the highest levels,” Edinger-Schons said.
“Also, when oneness beliefs were taken into account, many of the positive effects of religious affiliation on life satisfaction disappeared,” she added.
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Steering clear of people who are coughing and sneezing is one way to prevent catching the flu. Avoiding e-cigarettes may be another, new research suggests.
In a small study including smokers, e-cigarette users and non-smokers, researchers saw that both traditional cigarette smokers and “vapers” were more susceptible to flu.
Women have greater risk
But cigarettes and e-cigarettes appeared to boost flu risk through different pathways.
“E-cigarettes can alter your response to viral infections and may make you more susceptible to influenza,” said the study’s lead author, Meghan Rebuli. She’s a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma and Lung Biology.
Rebuli added that the researchers found that men and women responded differently to e-cigarettes, and women may have an even greater risk of infection with flu if they vape.
E-cigarettes are small electronic devices that heat a liquid to make an aerosol to be inhaled or “vaped”. The liquid may contain nicotine, flavouring and other chemicals, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because e-cigarettes contain fewer chemicals than tobacco cigarettes, they’re generally considered somewhat safer. E-cigarettes can be beneficial if they help people stop smoking tobacco cigarettes, the CDC says. But people who haven’t smoked shouldn’t start using e-cigarettes, they advise.
Disrupting immune response
More research needs to be done on any potential health effects from e-cigarettes, the CDC noted.
And that’s where this study comes in.
“We know that cigarette smoking increases your risk of infection with influenza, and we were curious whether e-cigarettes would also disrupt the normal immune response,” Rebuli said.
The study included nearly 50 people – 14 e-cigarette users, 13 tobacco cigarette smokers and 20 non-smokers. On average, participants were slightly overweight and in their mid to late 20s. But the e-cigarette vapers were slightly younger, with an average age of 23.
Rebuli noted that many of the e-cigarette users were former tobacco smokers, but they had to have been off of tobacco cigarettes for at least a year to be in the study. E-cigarette users had to have vaped for at least 30 days, though most had been doing so for a few years, according to Rebuli.
The researchers also required that e-cigarette users in the study had to puff on an e-cigarette at least 18 times daily. Many did more than that, with some puffing several hundred times a day, Rebuli said.
E-cigarettes do affect immune system
All of the volunteers were exposed to a “live attenuated influenza virus”. Rebuli said this particular virus only replicates in the nose.
When the investigators looked at how the immune system responded to the virus, they saw differences in e-cigarette and regular cigarette smokers compared to the non-smokers. But the changes differed depending on the method of smoking.
Rebuli said it’s not clear exactly how e-cigarettes led to the changes in the immune response, just that they did. And while the researchers didn’t look at whether or not a flu infection might be more severe in people who use e-cigarettes, “it’s a possibility,” she said.
Dr Richard Stumacher is chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York. He said this study is an important step in better understanding the effects of e-cigarette research.
“What’s important to glean from this preliminary information is that there is evidence that e-cigarettes do affect the immune system in a way that’s directly related to a person’s ability to fight an infection,” Stumacher said.
Findings from the study are scheduled to be presented at the American Thoracic Society meeting in Dallas. Findings presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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The inability to get out of bed. A crippled sense of self-worth. Constant dread and continuous isolation. Most people would be able to recognise the classic signs of depression at its worst.
But these stereotypical markers hardly paint the full picture of what the mental illness actually looks like. After all, the World Health Organization claims a whopping 50 percent of the 300 million people currently living with depression go untreated — even in the highest-income countries. This could be for many reasons, including the fact that depression can be hard to recognise.
“People often stigmatise depression and are in denial that they are depressed,” says Dr Susanne Cooperman, a psychologist at NYU Langone. “They are often used to muscling through stressful situations and depressing periods in their lives, and… they are kind of surprised when people tell them they are [depressed].”
So, here, Cooperman shares some unexpected depression symptoms in women. Sure, at some point, all of us have experienced one (or all) of these signs, and that’s totally normal and okay. If. however, these symptoms are true for you all day, most days, it’s best to talk to your doc to determine if you’re depressed.
You regularly lose your temper
Can’t stop snapping at your partner, your co-workers… and even your dog? According to a 2013 study in JAMA Psychiatry, “overt irritability/anger” was a symptom for more than half of people experiencing more severe and longer-term depression. Uncharacteristic agitation is a sign of depression in both adults and children, Cooperman says.
READ MORE: Feel Like Your Antidepressants Stopped Working? Here’s What Could Be Happening
You’ve started waking up super early
Depression can cause some women to sleep. All. The. Time. But Cooperman explains that others start sleeping less, often waking up in the wee hours of the morning. If, all of the sudden, you are consistently rising at about 4 or 5am. with the inability to go back to bed, you may be experiencing a sign of depression.
Your hobbies just aren’t fun anymore
This isn’t to say that losing interest in a two-week knitting fad means you’re depressed. “But an example could be that you used to love cooking, and it just doesn’t give you pleasure anymore,” Cooperman says. “It’s very hard, when you’re in that place, to get out of that depression, because usually by engaging in pleasurable activities you feel better, but now there’s no motivation, no interest, and even if you get yourself to do do it, the enjoyment doesn’t kick in. It’s kind of a catch-22.”
READ MORE: 5 Women Share What Finally Helped Them Get A Handle On Their Depression
You’re glued to social media
Have you been more addicted to Facebook and Instagram than usual? According to Cooperman, this uptick in social media scrolling could be one tactic that people with undiagnosed depression use to ignore the root cause of what’s ailing them. “It’s a distractor that also gives you a little bit of a high,” she says. “There’s a little adrenaline spurt every time you get a message [or like], which is kind of like self-medicating by increasing the adrenaline that is in your system. This can lead to adrenal fatigue and burnout because you can only do that so long.”
Your lower back hurts like crazy
Depression spikes the chances that you’ll deal with low-back pain, according to a 2015 research review. And the worse your depression, the worse your pain. Experts currently believe that depression causes nerves to become extra sensitive. Meanwhile, if low-back pain interferes with your quality of life or limits what you can do, it can easily worse your depression, according to researchers.
READ MORE: Yes, “Smiling Depression” Is A Thing — Here’s How To Know If You Have It
Your weight is all over the place
It’s common for depression to be paired with an increase or loss in appetite, says Cooperman. “Some people might be losing weight, which in the beginning they might enjoy,” he says. “But over time, the loss of appetite will leave you with less energy.” Other people will react by snacking throughout the day, especially on foods that are high in sugar and fat. “You snack on potato chips and then you feel bad about yourself; it increases low self-esteem because you put on weight and it’s an endless cycle,” he explains
You are suddenly the most indecisive person ever
Obviously, you can be indecisive without being depressed, but sudden or increasing indecisiveness is actually a major depression symptom in women, according to research published in Cognitive Therapy and Research. A sense of hopelessness, or even expecting the worst possible outcome from every choice, may play a role, according to researchers. What’s more, when people who are depressed do land on a decision, it’s often a bad one (think: alcohol, skipping work, risky sex).
This article was originally published on www.womenshealthsa.co.za
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Former soccer star Makhosi Luthuli is pain-free and enjoying life again after a cancerous tumour was removed from her face.
She was still groggy when her cousin handed her the cellphone. She thumbed it to selfie mode and looked at the screen. There it was: the face of Makhosi “Troublemaker” Luthuli – and one she hadn’t seen for nearly seven years due to the cancerous tumour that had covered most of the right side, severely distorting her features.
I will beat this
Last year the former Banyana Banyana midfielder told DRUM of her committment to fight her condition (I will beat this, 8 March 2018) and now she’s a changed woman, thrilled to have her life back after an operation to remove the growth. “It was like taking an ugly mask off my face,” she tells us, smiling. Makhosi (45) has every reason to be happy.
“I am free from pain and it feels like I’ve been given a second chance. I knew God would never give me a burden that is beyond me. I believe He wanted to test my faith and I’m glad I came out victorious.” The former midfielder told us last year she was determined not to allow the cancer to get the better of her.
“I’m not scared of dying but I’m not dying any time soon,” she said. “Cancer hasn’t taken my talent and skill away from me. I am still Makhosi the Troublemaker.”
Seven years of hell
But lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, had taken a horrific toll on her. She was in constant pain, had difficulty breathing because the tumour had disfigured her nose and she couldn’t chew food properly as part of her jaw and teeth had been destroyed.
Her left ear and eye were also covered and her kidneys had been damaged because of chemotherapy and radiation. But now doctors say she’s officially free from cancer and she’s looking forward to making up for lost time after “seven years of hell”.
“My speech has improved and I can now eat whatever I want to. I am no longer on special diets. I can breathe without any problems and I can see clearly through both my eyes.”
She missed eating fruit most, she says, because of the damage to her jaw. After the operation she could initially only eat soup but her diet is back to normal now for the first time in years.
The six-hour operation to give Makhosi her face back and rid her of the cancer cost R1 million. The surgery was performed by doctors from Operation Healing Hands, a charity initiative organised by a group of doctors and private sector medical professionals to give back to communities on Mandela Day.
The struggle to find help
Makhosi’s operation took place last year on Madiba’s birthday, 18 July, and the surgery, prosthetics, hospital and aftercare costs were donated by Life Wilgers Hospital in Pretoria.
Before Operation Healing Hands agreed to Makhosi’s operation the footballer was desperate for help. “As the cancer grew on my face I knocked on every door, including government departments, but I received no medical or financial assistance.
“It was a daily torture but I never allowed the illness to control my life, so I kept on fighting,” she says. She has nothing but praise for the medical team.
“I will never forget the love and compassion shown by those doctors, the nurses and all the personnel in that hospital. They explained the entire procedure to me and I was comfortable with it,” she recalls.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid.
“Before the operation I said a prayer because I didn’t know if I was going to make it through. I was put under the anaesthetic and woke up six hours later.”
And when she opened her eyes, she was greeted by her cousin, Ncamisile Luthuli, who had been a pillar of support throughout her long battle. “She gave me her cellphone and for the first time I saw my face without the lump,” Makhosi says.
Repairing what’s been damaged
She spent a week in hospital and now goes back for monthly check-ups, but she’s no longer on any medication. Now the only thing left is plastic surgery to repair the damage the tumour did to her face, an operation that’s been scheduled for later this year.
Makhosi, now freed from the pain that kept her indoors most of the time, is back on the soccer pitch with her club Future Stars, where she is the coach.
She’s feeling mentally and physically energised and stronger than before. “I know I’m one in a million people because I have survived cancer. I also know I survived because I fought with everything I have to get treatment.
“Many victims of cancer die without getting this kind of help. And some die without even getting a proper diagnosis or treatment.”
The Makhosi Lithuli Foundation
She recently started an organisation, the Makhosi Luthuli Foundation, to spread awareness about cancer, particularly in rural areas. “I’ve started visiting local schools,” she says. “I was once a soccer star but now I’m a cancer survivor. I know there are many people who are suffering silently and they are scared to come out.
My foundation seeks to support such people. For me, cancer was a journey and I told myself that it too shall pass. I didn’t allow it to stand in my way and I motivated myself every day.” Meanwhile, her players are thrilled to have their coach back.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have Makhosi. She sacrificed her time, her family, even her money just to see the club grow. We’ve also learnt life lessons from her and we are truly grateful for that,” player Sipho Mabika (23) tells us. Another player, Nyawose Sibongakonke (21) adds, “We feel very happy that she’s back with us.
It’s been tough for all of us in the club. We know how much she wanted to be with us, but she couldn’t because of her illness. Whenever we came to practise, we joined our hands and prayed for her.” People in her hometown of Magabeni, near Durban, can’t believe Makhosi is back. “For years there were rumours I’d died,” she says.
“For years everywhere I went people would stare at me. Now they can’t believe I’m back, that I’m the same person. Everyone is happy and excited for my healing.”
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We are often unaware of the sugar content of foods as it is added to many processed foods such as sauces, breakfast cereals, health and energy bars, yoghurt, milky drinks, instant coffee, flavoured coffee sachets and rusks.
But where did it start – how did we become so hooked on sugar?
Revealing the rich and controversial past of sugar, alcohol, tobacco and opium, Hollywood actor Brian Cox embarks on a thought-provoking journey to uncover how the commercial exploitation of these products hooked the rest of the world on an appetite for a good time.
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Some people are more prone to fainting than others, and the reason might lie in their DNA.
Danish researchers who analysed millions of gene variants in the DNA of 400 000 people have zeroed in on a gene that increases a person’s risk for fainting.
Genetic risk variant
It’s believed that 20% to 30% of people faint at least once in their lifetime, often due to heat, dehydration or anxiety. But now, it appears that your genetic makeup is also a factor.
“A part of chromosome 2 increases the risk of fainting. This means that there is a genetic risk variant that predisposes to fainting,” said researcher Morten Salling Olesen. “In addition, we are the first to show that fainting is genetically determined by linking an increased risk of fainting with an exact position in the genome.”
Olesen is an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Copenhagen and the Laboratory for Molecular Cardiology, Rigshospitalet.
His team analysed genomes of about 400 000 people in the UK Biobank, including more than 9 100 who sought treatment after fainting.
Humans have 23 chromosome pairs, or 46 chromosomes in each cell.
A person can have one, two or no fainting-related gene variants on chromosome 2. Someone with the fainting risk variant on both versions of chromosome 2 has a 30% higher risk of fainting than someone with no variants.
Women more prone to fainting
A similar analysis of genetic data from nearly 55 000 people in Denmark confirmed the UK findings. Researchers also found that women under age 35 faint twice as often as men of the same age. The reasons are unclear.
“If you are a woman and you carry the risk variant on both chromosomes on chromosome pair number 2, you have an approximately three times increased risk of fainting compared with men not carrying the risk variant,” Olesen said in a university news release. “Your gender and a single genetic variant in your genome reveal a substantial part of your risk of fainting.”
Fainting results from a shortage of blood and oxygen to the brain, and there are various types. The gene identified in the study is called ZNF804A, but the type of fainting (syncope) it’s associated with is unknown, researchers said.
“This gene probably affects some of the reflexes that determine whether you faint or not. The question is whether the hereditary component is the same for all types of syncope,” Oleson said. “We believe that the gene we have identified predisposes to vasovagal syncope, which is the most common type of syncope. But we still do not know. First we need to study the gene in detail.”
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Researchers have long wondered why blind people seem to have a sharpened sense of hearing. Now a Seattle team has pinpointed specific brain adaptations that occur in people without sight.
“There’s this idea that blind people are good at auditory tasks, because they have to make their way in the world without visual information. We wanted to explore how this happens in the brain,” said Ione Fine, a psychology professor at the University of Washington (UW).
More information about sound
Fine is the senior author of a pair of studies in which researchers used functional MRI to detect two specific hearing-related changes in blind people’s brains.
Rather than identifying which parts of the brain are most active while listening, the researchers examined the sensitivity of the brain to slight differences in auditory frequency.
One study was published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience and the other in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to Kelly Chang, the lead author of the Journal of Neuroscience study, the researchers “weren’t measuring how rapidly neurons fire, but rather how accurately populations of neurons represent information about sound.” Chang is a graduate student in the UW psychology department.
The investigators found that compared to a sighted person, a blind person’s auditory cortex was better able to detect small differences in sound frequency.
Using sound to track moving objects
Fine said, “This is the first study to show that blindness results in plasticity in the auditory cortex. This is important because this is an area of the brain that receives very similar auditory information in blind and sighted individuals. But in blind individuals, more information needs to be extracted from sound – and this region seems to develop enhanced capacities as a result.”
The other study examined how the brains of people who are born blind or go blind early in life use sound to track moving objects.
The researchers came to focus on an area of the brain called the hMT+, which in sighted people is responsible for tracking moving objects they see. In sightless people, it tracks the sounds of moving objects, such as cars or footsteps, the study authors said.
“These results suggest that early blindness results in visual areas being recruited to solve auditory tasks in a relatively sophisticated way,” Fine said in a university news release.
According to Chang, the research showed “that the brains of blind individuals are better able to represent frequencies”.
In addition, the findings provide “an idea of what changes in the brain explain why blind people are better at picking out and identifying sounds in the environment”.
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Creativity doesn’t fade as you get older, but it may change, a new study shows.
An examination of 31 winners of the Nobel Prize in economics found an early peak of winners in their mid-20s and a later peak of winners in their mid-50s.
Different kinds of creativity
“We believe what we found in this study isn’t limited to economics, but could apply to creativity more generally,” said lead author Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics and public administration at Ohio State University.
In fact, previous research by his same team found similar age-related patterns in other sciences and the arts.
“Many people believe that creativity is exclusively associated with youth, but it really depends on what kind of creativity you’re talking about,” Weinberg said in a university news release.
It found that younger Nobel Prize winners tend to be “conceptual” innovators who challenge conventional wisdom and come up with new ideas suddenly.
Older winners tend to be “experimental” innovators. They amass knowledge through their careers and find ground-breaking ways to analyse, interpret and distil it into new ways of understanding, the authors explained.
Difference in peak ages
“Whether you hit your creative peak early or late in your career depends on whether you have a conceptual or experimental approach,” Weinberg said.
Most other studies in this area have focused on differences in peak ages of creativity in different scientific fields. Generally, they have found that creativity in most peaks in the mid-30s to early 40s.
“These studies attribute differences in creative peaks to the nature of the scientific fields themselves, not to the scientists doing the work,” Weinberg said.
“Our research suggests than when you’re most creative is less a product of the scientific field that you’re in and is more about how you approach the work you do,” he added.
The new study was published in a special issue of the journal De Economist.
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