Scans Show Psychopaths Have Brain Abnormalities…Click the link below to read full article.

Scans Show Psychopaths Have Brain Abnormalities

By JANICE WOOD Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 11, 2012

    new research shows that psychopathy is linked to specific structural abnormalities in the brain.

The study, published in theArchives of General Psychiatry and led by researchers at King’s College London, also confirmed that psychopathy is a distinct sub-group of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), said Nigel Blackwood, M.D., from the College’s Institute of Psychiatry and lead author of the study.

He noted that most violent crimes are committed by a small group of male offenders with ASPD, but only about a third of these men are true psychopaths (ASPD+P). Psychopaths are characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, and use aggression in a planned way to secure what they want, whether it is status or money.

Previous research has shown that psychopaths’ brains differ structurally from healthy brains, but until now, none have examined these differences within a population of violent offenders with ASPD, Blackwood said.

“Using MRI scans we found that psychopaths had structural brain abnormalities in key areas of their ‘social brains’ compared to those who just had ASPD,” he said.

He noted there is a clear difference between those with ASPD and those with ASPD+P.

“We describe those without psychopathy as hot-headed and those with psychopathy as cold-hearted,” he said.

“The cold-hearted psychopathic group begin offending earlier, engage in a broader range and greater density of offending behaviors, and respond less well to treatment programs in adulthood, compared to the hot-headed group. We now know that this behavioral difference corresponds to very specific structural brain abnormalities which underpin psychopathic behavior, such as profound deficits in empathizing with the distress of others.”

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 44 violent offenders diagnosed with ASPD. Crimes committed included murder, rape, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm. Of these, 17 met the diagnosis for psychopathy (ASPD+P) and 27 did not (ASPD-P). They also scanned the brains of 22 healthy non-offenders.

The study found that ASPD+P offenders displayed significantly reduced grey matter volumes in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles compared to ASPD-P offenders and healthy non-offenders.

These areas are important in understanding other people’s emotions and intentions and are activated when people think about moral behavior, the researchers noted. Damage to these areas is associated with impaired empathizing with other people, a poor response to fear and distress, and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.

“Identifying and diagnosing this sub-group of violent offenders with brain scans has important implications for treatment,” Blackwood continued. “Those without the syndrome of psychopathy, and the associated structural brain damage, will benefit from cognitive and behavioral treatments. Optimal treatment for the group of psychopaths is much less clear at this stage.”

Original article click HERE:

Source: King’s College London 

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Chronic Childhood Stress Leaves Lasting Impact on Brain. An interesting article…

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 29, 2014

Extreme stress experienced during childhood, such as poverty, neglect, and physical abuse, might alter the parts of the brain responsible for learning, memory, and the processing of stress and emotion.

These changes may be linked to negative effects on behavior, health, employment, and even the choice of romantic partners later in life, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“We haven’t really understood why things that happen when you’re two, three, four years old stay with you and have a lasting impact,” said Dr. Seth Pollak, co-leader of the study and UW-Madison professor of psychology.

“Yet,” noted Pollak, “early life stress has been linked to depression,anxiety, heart disease, cancer, and a lack of educational and employment success.”

“Given how costly these early stressful experiences are for society … unless we understand what part of the brain is affected, we won’t be able to tailor something to do about it,” said Pollak, also director of the UW Waisman Center’s Child Emotion Research Laboratory.

The study involved 128 children, approximately age 12, who had experienced either physical abuse, neglect early in life, or came from low socioeconomic status.

The children and their caregivers underwent in-depth interviews, reporting behavioral problems and their cumulative life stress. The researchers also took images of the children’s brains, focusing on the hippocampus and amygdala, parts of the brain involved in emotion and stress processing. These images were compared to similar children from middle-class households who had not been maltreated.

The researchers outlined each child’s hippocampus and amygdala by hand and calculated their volumes. Both brain structures are very small, especially in children, and the researchers believed that automated software measurements might be prone to error.

The findings showed that children who experienced any of the three types of early life stress had smaller amygdalas than children who had not. Children who lived in poverty and children who had been physically abused also had smaller hippocampal volumes.

Putting the same images through automated software showed no effects. Behavioral problems and increased cumulative life stress were linked to smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes.

“For me, it’s an important reminder that as a society we need to attend to the types of experiences children are having,” Pollak said. “We are shaping the people these individuals will become.”

But the findings, say the researchers, are only markers for neurobiological change — a display of the robustness of the human brain, and not a crystal ball to be used to see the future.

“Just because it’s in the brain doesn’t mean it’s destiny,” said study author and UW Ph.D. graduate Jamie Hanson.

The study is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Article courtesy and originally from: www.psychcentral.com

Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Marijuana Put My Crohn’s Disease Into Remission and It’s Not A Joke! A story of truth and inspiration!

Marijuana Put My Crohn’s Disease Into Remission and It’s Not A Joke

Marijuana Put My Crohn’s Disease Into Remission and It’s Not A Joke

I usually do not want to talk about having Crohn’s Disease. It is just a reality I have lived with for nine years, but never exactly dinner table discussion or an amusing anecdote shared with friends over drinks. It has been not just a major inconvenience in my life; it has altered its course significantly. The subject is emotionally difficult to explain. It’s personal. For lack of a better word, unpleasant.

I feel compelled to share now, although I don’t really want to, because a new study has proven smoked marijuana has a near 100% success rate in putting Crohn’s Disease into remission. I am sick of everyone making jokes about my involvement in the marijuana legalization movement; I’m sick of having to stay quiet about what I do around family or in public for fear or upsetting someone’s delicate sensibilities about “drugs” like marijuana. Let me tell you a thing or two about drugs, marijuana and Crohn’s Disease. It’s not a joke and it is not about “getting high” for me.

It is difficult to explain to people what Crohn’s is, because it involves the digestive system and people like to just think it is IBS. It is not IBS. It’s especially hard to explain because the causes are unknown; it is a chronic illness that was only given a name in 1932.

Genetic factors can signal its onset, but I had no such forewarning. My mom was adopted in the 1960s, when laws pertaining to adoption allowed all records, including medical, to remain locked—even fifty years after the laws have changed. Some digging produced some vague birth records showing a great-grandmother and some other distant biological relatives who died of their intestines exploding inside of them. My doctors urged me to find family members who had the illness so they could try to find patterns. We found my biological grandmother in Pennsylvania, but she wanted nothing to do with either me or my family and refused to provide any medical records.

I began fasting in middle school, but I didn’t start seriously starving myself to the point of illness until my sophomore year of high school. Not the point of this article, so I am not going in depth. Some people believe malnutrition can be a trigger for those who carry the gene. I think so, too. By my senior year I was in such terrible pain I would double over crying at night, unable to sleep. A nutritionist my doctor sent me to said it was my vegetarian diet and I needed more protein. I started puking everything I ate. The starving became involuntary.

The day I graduated high school all the other kids were lined up ready to process into the auditorium and talking about their college plans, I was sitting against a wall trying to regain my composure to get up and walk across the stage with everyone else, biting on my own hand to get through the pain so hard I broke skin. That summer before college was pretty miserable. I was in and out of doctors’ offices while trying to make plans to move over 300 miles away for college.

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease three days before I moved into the dorms at San Francisco State. I spent much of my first semester in my dorm bed under mounds of blankets with the heat blasting because I couldn’t eat food and I just never could get warm. As it turned out, I had a blockage in my large intestine that had caused inflammation, which in turn shut my whole body down.

I was desperately trying to maintain a normal social life just after moving to a brand new place and without friends. That November before going to a dinner party a co-worker was throwing, I decided to shower and get ready in our shared hall bathrooms. I got in the shower and shivered so hard I couldn’t stop shaking. I kept turning the knob higher and higher until my skin was lobster red and near blistering. Though I had begun to burn my skin, I couldn’t feel it. I reluctantly got out of the shower and moved into a stall to put my clothes on. As I zipped up the back of my dress I started to get dizzy. I clutched a wall for a moment, telling myself to keep it together, before I collapsed on the concrete floor.

A couple of minutes later a girl from down the hall found me on the floor, lifted me up and walked me back to my room. The first thing I said was “don’t tell my mom, I have a party to go to tonight…” before passing out in the bed again. Thankfully, she and my roommate ignored my suggestion and found my mom’s number in my cell. She told them to take me to the hospital immediately.

When I got there, the doctor was ready to do emergency surgery to remove the blockage.  I stubbornly pleaded with the doctors to find another way – after all, I had this crazy idea I was going to complete my Bachelor’s Degree in only three years and it was late in the semester to be dropping my classes for a surgery. The surgeons kept a tube snaked through my nose and esophagus to my stomach for two days while it drained the bile built up behind the blockage to the point of turning toxic. The buildup had triggered anemia, which in turn caused the coldness and fainting.

Luckily, the doctor who treated me knew a specialist and major researcher in the field at UCSF, a world-renowned medical research school.

The specialist removed the tube, allowing me to speak aloud for the first time in days (until then I had been communicating via slips of paper I handed my mom, littered with obscenities directed towards the nurses and other doctors). We agreed to do the surgery over spring break in March as long as I promised to take the prescribed medications and my condition didn’t worsen.

I started taking a lot of pills. I was always the youngest person by at least 40 years in my local pharmacy. One of the pills, Asacol, I seemed to be taking all day with no perceived benefit. The one that stood out the worst for me though—Prednisone. Prednisone is a steroid used to reduce inflammation and is typically prescribed to people suffering with arthritis. It caused me to gain 10 pounds of water weight almost immediately. When I stood up to walk to class I would have sloshly ankles within minutes, so I started taking a shuttle to the other end of campus when I became unable to make the walk. My otherwise clear skin broke out in a bad way. I had mood swings; any little thing would set me off crying or picking fights. I remember one particularly depressing Friday night when the dorms were abuzz with partiers and I was watching Oprah with my feet propped up and crying into a carton of strawberry ice cream like a pregnant woman.

I made it to March, miserably, and then I went in for surgery. Because I was only 18-years-old they wanted to do what they could to not to scar up my body too much, so they did the surgery laparoscopically (with lasers) and pulled the damaged part of my intestine out through my belly button and glued it back together. While this procedure avoided any major scarring, to this day my skin’s misalignment becomes apparent when I gain and lose weight, which I do constantly because… I have Crohn’s Disease.

I came out of the surgery a little angry. A nurse commented to me that the surgery was more painful than childbirth so it should be a breeze when I start popping them out. Why the hell would an 18-year-old who just had their body torn open even give a fuck about childbirth?! I think it was her way of telling me it was okay that I was constantly tapping at the morphine drip button they put in my hand. I was using it to put myself to sleep. I was even angrier when they started telling me about all the meds they wanted to give me and when they told me that I had an 80% chance of having to do this again in two years, and AGAIN two years after that until I would eventually have to carry a bag because I didn’t have enough intestine left. Fucking gross, I wasn’t going to accept it. The doctors painted a very bleak and expensive picture of my future, right when it was just getting started.

“The doctors painted a very bleak and expensive picture of my future, right when it was just getting started.”

I had smoked marijuana regularly in high school, Proposition 215 had already passed but there were no medical marijuana clubs in my conservative, rural, part of California. We still had to buy our marijuana from shady street dealers. I felt so cool and so terrified at the same time going to buy marijuana with a friend the very first time. I think the guy we bought it from was part of a local gang.

Moving to San Francisco and seeing the dispensary and medical card ads in the back of the free weeklies was a revelation. I was nervous about getting a medical marijuana recommendation because of the rumors I heard about government watch lists. But I knew I  didn’t want to take any more of those pills, the effects of the pills were worse than the actual Crohn’s both mentally and physically.

I also had classmates at Journalism school chastise me for wanting to write about medical marijuana, like it was some funny joke. I stopped telling people about it unless they were already “in the know.”

My first “pot doctor” put me at ease immediately. He started telling me how I should use it for my Crohn’s Disease, how it would help me stop the pills and actually feel better. He made me feel normal, comfortable. I got to ask him all the questions my traditional doctors wouldn’t answer and he answered honestly. He said there needed to be more studies, but from what he was seeing with other people like me, marijuana was working. I asked my doctor at UCSF about it on the next visit, she briefly said she had heard encouraging things but she couldn’t recommend marijuana to me. Politics, you understand.

Over the years I researched holistic medicine and integrated that into my daily routine. I also smoked a lot of pot. I would be lying if I said I only smoked pot to ease the pain. Sometimes I smoke pot because I like it. Sometimes my brain is just as sick as my body and it feels good to do something to help myself instead of relying on everyone else.

“I would be lying if I said I only smoked pot to ease the pain. Sometimes I smoke pot because I like it, sometimes my brain is just as sick as my body and it feels good to do something to help myself instead of relying on everyone else.”

This March marked eight years since my surgery and this August will mark nine since my diagnosis. I show no signs of needing surgery again in the foreseeable future. My health is one hundred percent attributable to my decision to ignore everyone’s discouragement years ago and replace all those drugs with marijuana.

Besides the occasional Crohn’s complication (it is an autoimmune disease so I get all kinds of bizarre symptoms through germs I come in contact with, everything from the common cold to shingles and inflamed eyes), I am healthy and have been able to live an otherwise normal life because of my choice.

Like I said, this is a story I have never wanted to tell, but one I now think is important to share. People still go to jail for marijuana. All across the country military-style SWAT raids are conducted on peaceful people because of marijuana. I bet at your dinner table with your “straight” friends and family you still won’t talk about it because they don’t want to hear it or you are afraid of getting busted. Weed isn’t just hippies, nag champa and reggae music. It’s how people like me—your friend, a person you may have met casually, your family, your coworker, your teenage daughter buying pot from a drug dealer—get through life, which is after all, what we are all really trying to do, right?

If you found this story inspiring or, just enough to change your mind for chronically ill patients to have a choice about their treatment, please sign the petition below!

Please sign the Cannabis Compassion and Care petition. The link is directly below.

To sign the Cannabis Compassion and Care Petition allowing Safe, Legal Access to Americans, CLICK HERE.

Original article from: http://www.ladybud.com/2013/05/15/marijuana-put-my-crohns-disease-into-remission-and-its-not-a-joke/

Diabetes…Does it run in your family? Are you at risk? Do you have Pre-Diabetes? by Emery Myers RN, Diabetic

Diabetes

#Diabetes is usually a lifelong (chronic) disease in which there is a high level of sugar in the blood.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors

I am an insulin dependent diabetic. I was diagnosed a year ago with a fasting blood sugar of over 300 and a Hemoglobin A1C of 13.9, which is twice what it should be. I was a registered nurse, bodybuilder, fitness person, ate right, etc. The disease can attack anyone, the saddest is when the disease attacks KIDS!

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas to control blood sugar. Diabetes can be caused by too little insulin, resistance to insulin, or both.

To understand diabetes, it is important to first understand the normal process by which food is broken down and used by the body for energy. Several things happen when food is digested:

• A sugar called glucose enters the bloodstream. Glucose is a source of fuel for the body.
• An organ called the pancreas makes insulin. The role of insulin is to move glucose from the bloodstream into muscle, fat, and liver cells, where it can be used as fuel.

People with diabetes have high blood sugar because their body cannot move sugar into fat, liver, and muscle cells to be stored for energy. This is because either:

• Their pancreas does not make enough insulin
• Their cells do not respond to insulin normally
• Both of the above

There are two major types of diabetes. The causes and risk factors are different for each type:

• Type 1 diabetes can occur at any age, but it is most often diagnosed in children, teens, or young adults. In this disease, the body makes little or no insulin. Daily injections of insulin are needed. The exact cause is unknown.
• Type 2 diabetes makes up most diabetes cases. It most often occurs in adulthood. But because of high obesity rates, teens and young adults are now being diagnosed with it. Many people with type 2 diabetes do not know they have it.
• There are other causes of diabetes, and some patients cannot be classified as type 1 or type 2.

Gestational diabetes is high blood sugar that develops at any time during pregnancy in a woman who does not have diabetes.

Diabetes affects more than 20 million Americans. Over 40 million Americans have pre-diabetes (which often develops before type 2 diabetes). If your parent, brother or sister has diabetes, you may be more likely to develop diabetes.

Symptoms

High blood sugar level can cause several symptoms, including:

• Blurry vision
• Excess thirst
• Fatigue
• Hunger
• Urinating often
• Weight loss

Because type 2 diabetes develops slowly, some people with high blood sugar have no symptoms.

Symptoms of type 1 diabetes develop over a short period. People may be very sick by the time they are diagnosed.

After many years, diabetes can lead to other serious problems. These problems are known as diabetes complications and include:

• Eye problems, including trouble seeing (especially at night), light sensitivity, blindness in the future
• Painful sores and infections of the leg or foot, which if left untreated, leads to removal of the foot or leg
• Nerves in the body can become damaged, causing pain, tingling, and a loss of feeling, problems digesting food, erectile dysfunction
• Kidney problems, which can lead to kidney failure
• Weakened immune system, which can lead to more frequent infections
• Increased chance of having a heart attack or stroke

Signs and tests

A urine analysis may show high blood sugar. But a urine test alone does not diagnose diabetes.

Your health care provider may suspect that you have diabetes if your blood sugar level is higher than 200 mg/dL. To confirm the diagnosis, one or more of the following tests must be done.

Blood tests:

• Fasting blood glucose level — diabetes is diagnosed if it is higher than 126 mg/dL twice. Levels between 100 and 126 mg/dL are called impaired fasting glucose or pre-diabetes. These levels are risk factors for type 2 diabetes.
• Hemoglobin A1c test —
  • Normal: Less than 5.7%
  • Pre-diabetes: 5.7% – 6.4%
  • Diabetes: 6.5% or higher
• Oral glucose tolerance test — diabetes is diagnosed if glucose level is higher than 200 mg/dL 2 hours after drinking a glucose drink. (This test is used more often for type 2 diabetes.)

Screening for type 2 diabetes in people who have no symptoms is recommended for:

• Overweight children who have other risk factors for diabetes, starting at age 10 and repeated every 2 years
• Overweight adults (BMI greater than 25) who have other risk factors
• Adults over age 45, repeated every 3 years

Treatment

With type 2 diabetes, the disease may be reversed with lifestyle changes, especially losing weight through exercising and eating healthier foods.  Also, some cases of type 2 diabetes can be improved with weight-loss surgery.

There is no cure for type 1 diabetes.

Treating both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes involves medicines, diet, and exercise to control blood sugar level.

Getting better control over your blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels helps reduce the risk of kidney disease, eye disease, nervous system disease, heart attack, and stroke.

To prevent diabetes complications, visit your health care provider at least two to four times a year. Talk about any problems you are having. Follow your health care provider’s instructions on managing your diabetes.

Support Groups

American Diabetes Association | www.diabetes.org

Prevention

Keeping an ideal body weight and an active lifestyle may prevent type 2 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented.

References

1. Alemzadeh R, Ali O. Diabetes mellitus. In: Kliegman RM, ed. Kliegman: Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 19th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Elsevier Saunders; 2011:chap 583.
2. Amorosa LF, Lee EJ, Swee DE. Diabetes mellitus. In: Rakel RE, Rakel DP, eds. Textbook of Family Medicine. 8th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Elsevier Saunders; 2011:chap 34.
3. American Diabetes Association. Standards of medical care in diabetes — 2013. Diabetes Care. 2013; Jan;33 Suppl 1:S11-S61. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
4. Eisenbarth GS, Polonsky KS, Buse JB. Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. In: Kronenberg HM, Melmed S, Polonsky KS, Larsen PR. Kronenberg: Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. 11th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2008:chap 31.

Review Date: 6/27/2012.

Reviewed by: Shehzad Topiwala, MD, Chief Consultant Endocrinologist, Premier Medical Associates, The Villages, FL. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.

Original Article at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002194/

Additional Information At: http://www.diabetes.org/