Are you an alcoholic?

You only have to worry that you are becoming an alcoholic if you find yourself drinking hard liquor on your own at nine in the morning, right? Apparently not. David Bayever, a Wits pharmacist and Acting Chair of the Central Drug Authority says that if you drink at as little as two litres of alcohol a weekend you are at risk of becoming an alcoholic.

But surely drinking two litres of beer and two litres of vodka are completely different things?

"Obviously, there are many variables including age and alcohol tolerance," says Bayever "but you have to start somewhere".

So how much is too much?

According to Bayever, two litres is a rough estimate. So while there is no guarantee that drinking two litres of beer a weekend will make you an alcoholic (there can’t be any argument about the vodka), it will certainly put you at risk of becoming one.

While it is common knowledge that gender, to a certain degree, affects your alcohol tolerance — larger males generally being able to drink more — it is not widely known that your age can affect the likelihood of you becoming an addict.

It is estimated that it can take between five and 15 years for an adult to become an addict. Teenagers on the other hand can become addicts in the short period of five to 15 weeks, says Bayever.

Paul Adriaanse of Alcohol and Drug Concerns suggests that you can’t really give a blanket figure of two litres because there are many criteria and you need to look at what the alcohol consumption is doing "physically and psychologically and what effect it is having on the environment".

He says that while drinking two litres a weekend may very well mean that you have a problem, everyone has different tolerance levels and these levels increase with increased consumption.

High-risk binge drinking

"You need to start worrying if you are staying home from work or if there is a change in your temperament, if you have reduced inhibitions or impaired judgment and if you are suffering from 'alcoholic blackouts'," he says.

The Medical Research Council regards 'binge drinking' as 'high-risk' drinking behaviour. However, it also suggests that 'low-risk' drinking can in fact be healthy for certain groups. It defines 'low-risk' drinking as four units per day for males and two units per day for females, for not more than five days of a week.

If one unit is a 340ml can of beer, then four units is 1360ml. The difference therefore, in the case of men, between what is regarded as healthy and what is regarded as damaging is just under two cans of beer.

Alcohol is the primary drug of abuse in South Africa, with approximately 7.5 percent of the population engaging in weekend 'binge drinking' and Red Cross Children’s hospital has estimated that the total cost to the economy annually — including the cost of inability to work and child abuse — is around R20–billion.

To put this into perspective, at least 400,000 RDP houses could be built each year with the money that alcohol abuse costs the country. If you are drinking two litres of beer each weekend (assuming that that is all that you are drinking) you are probably spending about R3120 on beer each year. Could your money be better spent? - Health iAfrica

The Cancer Drug

Medical -- Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95% of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5% is downright interesting. For example, "America's Next Top Model" is much more fun to watch when you've lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose; without them, my eyes are a dust magnet.

But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: how they cooked for my family and picked up my kids and took me to doctors and pretended not to notice how bad I looked and, most important, that I could not -- cannot -- survive without them.

No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. I am not kidding. People I never expected dropped by to deliver joints and buds and private stash. The DEA could have set a security cam over my front door and made some serious dents in the cannabis trade. The poets and musicians were not a surprise, but lawyers? CEOs? Republicans? Across the ideological spectrum, a lot of my buddies are stoners. Who knew?

OK, I admit it, in college I smoked dope with the rest of them. I mean, everybody was doing it -- an excuse I do not allow my children -- and at parties I didn't want to be uncool. Plus, I felt my only other option was alcohol, and the sweet drinks I liked were too fattening. But that was a long time ago, and since then I have learned to drink bourbon straight, get high on life and appreciate the advantages of not doing anything you wouldn't want your kids to do.

I thought all my friends felt the same. Boy, was I wrong. When I surfaced from my chemo haze enough to care about anyone else, I was curious. Why do so many 40- and 50-somethings still get high? I asked my suppliers. Pain was the No. 1 answer. Not just the psychic angst of being mothers and fathers to teenagers, but real physical pain. We're all beginning to fall apart, and for those who imbibe, a couple of tokes really take the edge off the sciatica, rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel syndrome and migraines.

The second biggest reason was anxiety. Perhaps we can blame politics for middle-age pot use: the war, the environment, the loss of our civil liberties, little things like that.

Obviously some of us use drugs to ease the lives of quiet desperation we never thought we would have back when we were getting stoned the first time. Our drug use now is really the same as in college. Then I got high to relax, to gain confidence, to forget I was an overweight, mediocre college student terrified of the future. Now we get stoned to relax, forget our disappointing careers and mask our terror of not just our own future but the future for our kids as well. Is it so different from my dad coming home from work and having a couple of martinis? Or my mother and those little prescribed pills she took when she felt "nervous"? At least -- we can rationalize -- cannabis is all natural.

I spoke to my oncologist about the pros and cons of cannabis use for cancer patients. He said he was part of a study 25 years ago on the effects of pot on nausea, joint pain and fatigue caused by chemotherapy. It worked then, he said; it really helped some people. But now they have great new drugs, such as Emend, dexamethasone and Ativan, that keep the nausea and other pain at bay. He said the people who use pot now do it because they like it. Or maybe they use it because they would rather support a farm in Humboldt County than a huge pharmaceutical conglomerate.

After chemo No. 1, I was violently ill. Anti-nausea drugs notwithstanding, I was hugging the porcelain throne. My body did not want to be poisoned; I guess it liked cancer better. I was willing to try anything, so I lit up. It helped. A lot. I collapsed on the couch, I zoned out watching "Project Runway," I was able to take deep breaths without puking.

My 15-year-old daughter was shocked. The look on her face was proof that her elementary school D.A.R.E. program had really done its job. A friend -- not a supplier or a user -- explained to her it was just to make me feel better and that if it worked, wouldn't that be great? My daughter reluctantly agreed, but I knew she didn't mean it. I had come full circle in my life -- the next time I had a toke, I stood in my bathroom with the fan on, blowing smoke out the window, but instead of my parents, I was scared my kids would find out I was smoking dope again.

The biggest pain of cancer is the gnawing, scratching, bleeding dread that they didn't find it all, that you didn't go to the doctor soon enough, that it is growing out of control at this very moment. My doctor recommended meditation. Yeah, right, I thought, more time sitting quietly trying not to think about dying. I had carpool for that. Meanwhile, I lost all taste for alcohol. Even half a glass of wimpy white wine could make me toss my cookies, so I turned to my friend Mary Jane occasionally, only when nothing else would do.

In the middle of one post-chemo night, my husband was out of town and I was sick and I got up and tried to get the little pipe lit and take one hit so I could maybe sleep. My son heard me struggling and he came into my bedroom. He lit the match for me and showed me where to put my finger on the "carburetor," the hole on the side of the pipe, to make it draw. I was too grateful to ask him how he knew all this. He stayed with me until I felt better. It was mother-son bonding in a new way.

Just another reason to say: Thank you, cancer.

By Diana Wagman Source: Los Angeles Times

Diana Wagman, a professor at Cal State Long Beach, is the author of the novels "Skin Deep," "Spontaneous" and "Bump."

Note: Cancer opens one's eyes to the many facets of cannabis.

'Cannabis' brain tumour drug hope

An ingredient in marijuana may be useful for treating brain cancers, say Spanish researchers from Madrid.

Chemicals called cannabinoids could starve tumours to death by halting the growth of blood vessels that feed it, the Complutense University team hope.

By studying mice, the team has shown for the first time how these chemicals block vessel growth.

Their study, published in Cancer Research, also shows the treatment appears to work in humans.

This research provides an important new lead compound for anti-cancer drugs Dr Richard Sullivan, Cancer Research UK

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common brain cancer and is notoriously difficult to treat.

It can evade destruction by radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery.

Dr Manuel Guzmán and colleagues set out to determine whether they could prevent the cancer from growing by destroying its blood supply.

Previous research has shown cannabinoids block the growth of blood vessels in mice, but little is known about how these chemicals do this and whether they might do the same in human tumours.

Starving tumours

The researchers first gave mice cancer resembling the human form of brain cancer they wanted to study.

They then treated the mice with cannabinoid and examined the genes of the mice.

The activity of genes associated with blood vessel growth in tumours through the production of a substance called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was reduced.

Cannabinoids appeared to stifle VEGF production by increasing the activity of a substance that controls cell death, called ceramide.

Lead researcher Dr Guzmán said: "As far as we know, this is the first report showing that ceramide depresses VEGF pathway by interfering with VEGF production."

Their next challenge was to see if cannabinoids had the same effect in humans.

They took samples from two patients with glioblastoma multiforme who had not responded to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment.

Treatment for humans

Samples were taken before and after the patients were treated with cannabinoid solution infused directly into the tumour.

In both patients, VEGF levels in the tumour were reduced following treatment with cannabinoids.

Although they only looked at two patients, the researchers hope their findings could lead to new treatments.

"The present findings provide a novel pharmacological target for cannabinoid-based therapies," said Dr Guzmán.

Dr Richard Sullivan, Head of Clinical Programmes at Cancer Research UK, said: "This research provides an important new lead compound for anti-cancer drugs targeting cancer's blood supply.

"Although this work is at an early stage of development, other research has already demonstrated that VEGF is an important drug target for a range of cancers.

"The key now will be to show further activity in pre-clinical cancer models, find out in which combinations cannabinoids show greatest activity and formulate a product that can be tested in man.

"It is important to note that cannabinoids would need to generate very strong data in the future as there are already a number of VEGF inhibitors in clinical development," he said. - BBC

• Medical NEWS Today
• New Scientist

• SETHGROUP

In "Cannabis extract makes brain tumors shrink, halts growth of blood vessels," Medical News Today gives other details about the tests done on human patients.

[The researchers] selected two patients who had glioblastoma multiforme and had not responded to chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery. The scientists took samples from them before and after treating them with a cannabinoids solution -- this was administered directly into the tumor.

Amazingly, both patients experienced reduced VEGF levels in the tumor as a result of treatment with cannabinoids.

The researchers said that the results were encouraging. In order to be sure about their findings they need to carry out a larger study, they said.

Here you can see the effect of the treatment on the two patients with brain cancers. VEGFR-2 activation is shown in green and its expression in red. Cell nuclei are stained in blue. Relative values of activated-VEGFR-2 pixels are displayed in parentheses and total-VEGFR-2 pixels in square brackets are given for the two patients per cell nucleus. (Credit: Cancer Research).

For more information, you also can read this news release from the American Association for Cancer Research, "Cannabis ingredient inhibits VEGF pathway required for brain tumor blood vessels."

The research work has been published by the Cancer Research journal under the title "Cannabinoids Inhibit the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Pathway in Gliomas." Here are two links to the abstract and to the full paper (PDF format, 7 pages, 732 KB). The above illustration comes from this paper.

Sources: Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist, August 15, 2004; Medical News Today, August 15, 2004; American Association for Cancer Research news release, via EurekAlert!, August 15, 2004; Cancer Research, Vol. 64, Num. 16, Pages 5617-5623, August 15, 2004

Migraine May Be Related To Underproduction Of Cannabinoids

Perugia, Italy: Patients with a history of migraine headaches may be suffering from a clinical deficiency of the endocannabinoid system, according to clinical trial data published in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Investigators at Italy’s University of Perugia, Department of Public Health, reported that patients with chronic migraines possessed "significantly lower" levels of the endogenous cannabinoids anandamide and 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG) in their platelets compared to age-matched controls.

"These data support the potential involvement of a dysfunctioning of the endocannabinoid and serotonergic systems in the pathology of chronic migraine and medication-overuse headaches," researchers’ concluded.

A previous paper published in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters similarly suggested that migraine, fibromyalgia, and other treatment-resistant conditions may be associated with dysfunctions in the endocannabinoid system. This system is believed to play a primary role in regulating humans' mood, appetite, skeletal development, motor coordination, digestion, and reproduction.

Full text of the study, "Endocannabinoids in platelets of chronic migraine patients and medication-overuse headache patients: relation with serotonin levels," appears in the November issue of the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

Benefits of Cannabis in Migraine, and other Treatment-Resistant Conditions - Russo EB

South Africa: Death Toll on Country's Roads

Figures provided by Arrive Alive on Wednesday indicated that those fatalities included 460 pedestrians, 379 passengers and 303 drivers. The provincial breakdown shows that Gauteng province tops with 231 fatalities; 170 in KwaZulu-Natal; 145 in the Eastern Cape; 145 in Mpumalanga; 134 in the Western Cape; 125 in Limpopo; 97 in North West and 23 in the Northern Cape.

According to Arrive Alive spokesperson Ntau Letebele, most accidents were alcohol related. "Some motorists drink first thing in the morning, or drink apart from meals and we have warned road users about this hazardous pattern of drinking," he said...


"It has been estimated that the per capita consumption of alcohol in South Africa is between 10.3 and 12.4 litres, with the higher level reflecting the amount including homebrewed alcohol," Mr Letebele said. He said the Department of Transport's Arrive Alive was more concerned with safety of road users, especially pedestrians and motorists. Traffic authorities will be out in full force to deal with any eventuality, especially drinking and driving which carries a fine of R120,000 or six year jail sentence.

BUA NEWS

Driving

Here’s an interesting video aired on British television that’s been gaining popularity online.

It’s not the most scientifically sound piece of research on the planet, but it does illustrate the point that maybe driving while stoned isn’t as dangerous as everyone makes it out to be. The consensus is that a healthy dose of paranoia after smoking generates increased concentration in the driver.

On the flip side, driving while drunk makes you more liable to take risks.

Arrive Alive