Controversy is brewing over K2, a "drug" similar to pot. Prior to its ban last week in Kansas and another county in Missouri, the drug was completely legal in all 50 states. Now there is debate over the dangers involved with its use.

K2—sometimes called “genie” or “Zohai”—is a substance chemically similar to pot. Its key ingredient, JWH-018, is a synthetic cannabinoid that mimics marijuana’s euphoria-causing agent THC.

Clemson University chemist John W. Huffman developed the chemical in 1995 for purely experimental purposes, but its legitimacy and availability made it a popular alternative to marijuana.

The chemical is sprayed on herbs and sold as an incense called “spice”, but is more often smoked to get high—JWH can be up to five times more potent than marijuana.

Little is known about the actual effects of the drug, but some users have reported hallucinations, vomiting and high blood pressure. Others say it’s one of the best highs they’ve ever experienced. The drug is unregulated, which may explain why some users have experienced adverse effects. You can never be sure of what you’ll get.

Legislators and concerned parents continue to squabble about its legitimacy, but for now it’s still legal in most states. Huffman told The Observer he’s just surprised it didn’t catch on sooner.

"I've come to the conclusion,” he says, “that if an enterprising person wants to find a new way to get high, they're going to do it."

The bottom line is that more investigation is needed to determine the effects of the drug’s use. Read the original article on K2 in Newsweek, or see Huffman’s interview in The Observer.

When it comes to finding the perfect person, forget asking the standard ‘What’s your dream date?’ questions. Now it may be practical to ask which terminal illness he or she has. Prescription4Love.com, a new dating site has been doing just that.

Ricky Durham created the site in 2004 in honor of his brother, Keith. The site is geared to match people with special health needs to others with similar conditions. Whether this search is for friendship or something more is entirely up to the user.

Ricky’s brother Keith had Crohn’s Disease, a form of irritable bowel disorder. It could make meeting people for the first time awkward. That’s when Ricky came up with the idea for Prescription 4 Love.

“Deciding when to tell someone you have a colostomy bag is incredibly difficult,” Durham explains. “I thought if Keith had a chance to meet someone with a similar condition, there would be no need to have to disclose anything.”

Prescription 4 Love is set up like most other online dating sites. Users can create their own profiles, browse through the forums, and chat with each other in an open environment without a hidden medical history. Durham’s recently added instant messaging, blogging and virtual gifts to the mix.

Durham’s site began with a focus on just 11 chronic illnesses, but has expanded to include more than 30. Prescription4Love welcomes anyone from amputees to recovering alcoholics, people with diabetes or heart disease, people who have or have had cancer to little people. Durham has even added STDs to the list. In fact, HIV and herpes are among his most popular groups.

“One lady in particular called me who had cancer said that whenever she told the person she was dating she had cancer they stopped dating her within a matter of days,” he says. Now she can find acceptance in a community where everyone can relate in one way or another.

As of now more than 8,000 people have used the site, and although Keith passed away before the site was fully developed, he is still very much the driving force behind Ricky’s work.

“Keith is the inspiration behind everything that I do for Prescription4Love,” he says. “I have had phone calls and emails from different people thanking me for stating such a web site…the response has been great.”

There may be a link between the brain's dopamine levels and social status. In a small test, people with more dopamine receptors were more likely to have a higher social status and more social support.

Fourteen men and women were asked to describe their social roles and support levels. Each was injected with a small amount of radiotracer, used to show how different tissues function in PET scans. Researchers, meanwhile, monitored dopamine activity in the brain.

"Low levels of dopamine receptors were associated with low social status and that high levels of dopamine receptors were associated with higher social status,” study leader Dr. Diana Martinez of the New York Psychiatric Institute said in a press release. “The same type of association was seen with the volunteer's reports of social support they experience from their friends, family or significant other."

Although human testing is still in its early stages, a similar correlation between dopamine receptors and social status has been identified in primates. This link may have something to do with the perks of being higher up on the social ladder.

“In monkeys, dominant and subordinate social rank are determined by physical and social triumph and defeat,” authors explain. Dopamine is partly responsible for motivation and reward. It is also thought to be a precursor to the release of adrenaline.

“In humans, social hierarchy is a more subtle phenomenon that can be approximated by measuring social status and social support,” they write.

While high social status was correlated with a higher number of dopamine receptors, healthy participants with social phobias had fewer receptors. This information could explain why some people are more anxious or socially detached than others. It could also pave the way toward a greater understanding of conditions such as social anxiety disorder.

While this study is merely suggestive, results support the idea that social status and encouragement from peers and loved ones may be related to dopamine receptors. Further research could provide insight to the complexity of dopamine’s role in social structure.

Read more on the study in February’s issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Humility is an admirable quality, but it may also be something to be proud of. According to a study by the University of Texas at Austin, people who are unrealistically self-assured have lower frontal lobe activity than their more modest counterparts.

The two-part study asked university students to rate themselves against peers on positive and negative qualities that were meant to indicate desirability. Traits such as maturity, modesty, discipline, wit, and being well-spoken were considered positive, while traits such as rigidity, aggressiveness, messiness, and being materialistic, narrow-minded or boastful were undesirable.

For the first test, 20 students evaluated themselves on these characteristics during two timed sessions that required participants to make decisions quickly. Fifty-six students participating in the second test were asked to take the same test, but they were given an unlimited amount of time for evaluation.

“The extent to which participants viewed themselves as ‘above average’ was negatively correlated with orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and, to a lesser extent, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation,” authors of the study wrote. “The majority of people judge their personality to be more desirable than their peers' personalities.”

The OFC and dACC are both involved in evaluation and planning. According to the authors, these regions of the brain are involved in deep thought and may be partly responsible for keeping the ego in check. They may also, in part, be responsible for recalling self-serving examples of specific traits. Judging broader traits, they say, would require less effort.

"In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is,” said lead author Jennifer Beer in a press release. Beer is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “The more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."

The study is the first to examine the brain’s role in self-bias in social judgment. Authors say it implies a relationship between poor insight and frontal lobe dysfunction. This information could be used to further study other relationships the frontal lobe might have with poor insight.

“For example, mood disorders and substance abuse may compromise function and/or volume in frontal lobe regions,” authors write. “Understanding these functional and structural changes in relation to self-judgment bias may be helpful for designing therapeutic interventions for various disorders.”

The study appears online in NeuroImage.

Technology is all the rage in Denmark, where some patients are using computers with medical devices, cameras and other electronics to visit the doctor.

Paperless prescriptions, online access to medical records and video chats with your doc are just a few features of the Danish healthcare system. Although not everyone has jumped on the digital bandwagon yet, about half of the country’s hospitals and nearly all primary care doctors have opted for electronic records.

An approach to medical treatment like this could drastically change the way doctors help their patients manage their health. Patients with heart conditions, for example, could log blood pressure readings to help doctors monitor response to new medications or simply to track progress.

Not only would this save the doctor and the patient time, but it could also cut costs. Since its switch to digital healthcare about ten years ago, Denmark has saved an estimated $120 million per year.

Although the system has come a long way, there are still a few kinks to work out. With the rapid change of technology, doctors and patients alike have had to adapt quickly to make the most use of these services. Budgeting, too, can be a challenge for the tax-funded program.

“We’re trying to streamline now,” Otto Larsen, director of the agency that regulates the system, said in a story by the New York Times. “There are too many systems out there.”

More and more technology is being developed to help doctors make diagnoses from afar Much of Europe has switched to electronic record-keeping, and many are embracing the switch to “telemedicine.”  U.S. legislators questioning whether a similar structure could work for the United States.

“It was a natural progression for us,” Larsen said. “We believe in taking care of our people, and we had believed this was the right way to go.”

Only time will tell whether or not the trend in digital healthcare will effectively spread.

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Could exposure to TV and new media be harmful to your children? A report released Tuesday by the nonprofit group Common Sense Media suggests that it might. The report reviewed studies on media and health from the last 30 years and found that 80 percent of them showed that more time spent watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Web led to negative health effects in children and adolescents.

The study, a meta-analysis conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Yale University, and California Pacific Medical Center looked at 173 studies published since 1980 that examined the relationship of media exposure with seven different health outcomes, including tobacco use, sexual behavior, obesity, academic performance, and drug/alcohol use. Many of the studies reviewed were largely focused on television but some examined the effects of video games, films, music, and computer and Internet use.

Three quarters of the studies found that increased media viewing was associated with negative health outcomes. The strongest relationship was found between media exposure and obesity: 86 percent of the studies suggested a strong relationship between increased screen time and obesity.

As a group, the studies also offered strong evidence that children who get more media exposure are more likely to start smoking, use drugs and alcohol, perform poorly in school, and begin sexual activity earlier than those who spend less time in front of a screen. The studies linking media exposure and Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were less conclusive.

Due to the increasingly pervasive presence of media in modern society, parents and educators may want to carefully consider the effects of media on children in their care. The researchers recommend that parents place limits on the amount of media their kids consume, and urge them to make smart, age-appropriate choices. They also believe educators should implement media literacy programs in their schools and policymakers need to make media education programs a national priority.

For more information about children’s health, visit the Healia Health Community on Child Health. For information on childhood obesity, see the Healia Health Guide on Weight Management.

 

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