Tag: alcohol
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Make 2025 Alcohol-Free: A Healthier New Year
It’s the day before January 1…New Year’s Eve Day, as it were…and people are making plans to ring in 2025 as well as resolutions to make 2025 the best year yet. Me? I’m typing in my pajamas with no intention of leaving the house. One of the resolutions that pops up in the top 10…
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Universal Testing for Neonates: A Crucial Need
We know the government is here to help, but the unintended consequences of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) may make it one of the lousiest pieces of legislation ever passed – and amended and amended again. It’s like we’re trying to polish a turd. We know that drug testing is rife with…
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Prenatal Substance Exposure: A Neglected Health Crisis
Urine drug tests can be done for every patient in every hospital…but they aren’t. And that lack of testing everyone who is hospitalized could be considered discriminatory, especially when the group of patients all being tested, under the guise of not discriminating, is pregnant people, as if pregnant people are the only ones who may…
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Mandatory Reporting in Healthcare: The Prenatal Dilemma
Imagine that you’re a person working in the healthcare profession…perhaps a nurse or a doctor. And think about what caused you to go to school for all those extra years. Was it the desire to have lots of student debt? Maybe it was working all those hours, especially on weekends and holidays… Or perhaps it…
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When Medication Becomes a Hammer
I learned something new today…sort of. In part, CAPTA, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, “provides federal funding and guidance to States in support of prevention, assessment, investigation, prosecution, and treatment activities and also provides grants to public agencies and nonprofit organizations, including Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations, for demonstration programs and projects” (childwelfare…
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What Should Prevention Look Like?
I recently attended a presentation by the phenomenal Ira Chasnoff, MD. (You can find out more about him at NTI Upstream.) Dr. Chasnoff was doing research in the field of drug-affected neonates in the early 1990s, when I first started my career in the field of addiction. I had to wait about 30 years to…
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PEth Screening: Essential Tool for Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Recognition
Look! The Finnish results are in, and it is clear that asking about alcohol consumption during pregnancy doesn’t yield accurate results. In fact, of the 3,000 samples tested, positive Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) results during pregnancy were 8.4% or 253 individuals, despite self-reporting alcohol consumption being as low as 1.9% in 2020 but as high as 14% in 2017.…
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They’re Drunk On Your Dollars
People suffering from alcohol use disorder[…] were given alcohol – indeed, given alcohol to the level of intoxication – in the name of research.
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FASDs: Just Because We Don’t See Them Doesn’t Mean They’re Not There
Doctors can’t do it themselves. They need all of our help to educate about the harmful effects of PAE and diagnose FASDs.
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Alcohol: The Deadliest Drug
Alcohol is STILL killing more people annually than opioids ever did….alcohol kills slowly. Heroin kills fast. Fentanyl kills faster. Opioids can and do kill with a first use, but alcohol rarely does. Alcohol takes its sweet time…first destroying relationships, then entire families, and then actual lives.
Guided by Guida 