This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://blog.hopebythesea.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.hopebythesea.com/feeds/posts/default.

More Deaths Are Caused By Addiction In Alaska

The colder parts of the country have always been plagued by alcoholism and addiction. Long winters and very little work is the perfect recipe for heavy drinking. In many parts of America there is no authority present to control drunk driving, which means that in a place like Alaska a person can drink for many years without seeing many consequences, if any, from the law. More deaths are caused by addiction in Alaska than any other one thing. In fact, "nine of the 10 leading causes of death in Alaska - all but Alzheimer's disease - include alcohol, tobacco or other drug addiction as an underlying cause", the Juneau Empire reported March 15.

David Driscoll of the University of Alaska Anchorage and colleagues examined seven underlying causes of death in communities in the north polar region of the globe. They determined that many deaths in Alaska are preventable with the aid of community programs and education about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Smoking is a leading cause of many health problems including cancer, heart disease and stroke. Alcohol use, aside from being highly addictive, can contribute to serious liver and pancreas problems, as well as, influence the onset of diabetes. There are many cases of people committing suicide while under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. Cold, dark and depressing climates in conjunction with drugs and alcohol can be a recipe for disaster - many people simply lose the will to continue living.

Unfortunately, places like Alaska, Montana, and northern Maine have very limited education due to the lack of funding. It is very difficult getting teachers out to the middle of nowhere to teach a few kids. Many kids are home schooled and are influenced heavily by the actions of their parents. If a child is around a parent all the time who happens to have a drinking problem, the child will without a doubt adopt some of that parent's behavior. Without community outreach programs and better schools in rural areas it is unlikely this pattern of addiction related death will change.

Blood Test Could Identify Heavy Drinkers

Testing for drugs and alcohol has been a controversial subject for some time now. Employers have been drug testing employees to determine whether or not someone who works for them has a drug problem. What about people who strictly have an alcohol problem? Up until now there was no way to tell if someone had been up all night drinking whiskey. Not only does that affect places of employment determining whether or not someone has a problem, but, also drug treatment facilities that let their clients go about the town without supervision had no way to determine, short of a breathalyzer, whether or not clients had been drinking. Breathalyzers will tell you if someone is drunk, but it will not tell you if someone had been drunk recently. A blood test that could identify heavy drinkers could greatly help start the process of recovery much sooner.

Penn State University recently has been experimenting with alcohol and ways of identifying if someone is a heavy drinker. Researchers claim that by measuring a set of protein changes in the blood linked to alcohol use could help create a more precise test for identifying an alcohol problem."Unlike routine testing for illicit drugs, you can't just look for a trace of alcohol because many people enjoy a drink in a responsible manner and alcohol is very quickly metabolized. Discriminating between excessive and responsible levels of drinking makes this a greater challenge", said Willard M. Freeman, department of pharmacology and lead investigator, reported ANI.

17 proteins were identified by researchers at Penn State, which accurately predicted the amount of alcohol used 90 percent of the time, with non-human primates. The amount of alcohol consumed, directly affected the way protein levels would rise or fall in the subjects.

Researchers separated usage into three categories:

• no alcohol use
• drinking up to two drinks per day
• drinking at least six drinks per day

"We observed that the levels of some proteins increased or decreased with as little as one or two drinks a day. These same changes occurred with heavier levels of drinking. We also found other proteins that responded only to heavy levels of drinking. Combined, these proteins allow us to classify subjects into non-drinking, alcohol-using, and alcohol-abusing groups," Freeman said.

The research was published online in the journal Biological Psychiatry.