Three articles of interest today from around the web… Why Six Hours of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All, A Rising Tide of Drug Use and Disorders, and Antidepressant Withdrawal – the Tide is Finally turning
Why Six Hours Of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All
“Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to both your health and productivity. Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. But results from one study impress just how bad a cumulative lack of sleep can be on performance. Subjects in a lab-based sleep study who were allowed to get only six hours of sleep a night for two weeks straight functioned as poorly as those who were forced to stay awake for two days straight. The kicker is the people who slept six hours per night thought they were doing just fine.” (Read More)
A Rising Tide of Drug Use and Disorders
Cannabis and opiods lead the pack for drugs use and the results are devastating. “The number of persons who have drug use disorders and require treatment services is currently estimated at 35 million, up from 30.5 million, and the number of deaths resulting from drug use rose to 585,000 in 2017. Meanwhile, prevention and treatment efforts continue to fall short.” (Read More)
Antidepressant withdrawal – the tide is finally turning
“Withdrawal reactions when coming off antidepressants have long been neglected or minimised. It took almost two decades after the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) entered the market for the first systematic review to be published. More reviews have followed, demonstrating that the dominant and long-held view that withdrawal is mostly mild, affects only a small minority and resolves spontaneously within 1–2 weeks, was at odd with the sparse but growing evidence base. What the scientific literature reveals is in close agreement with the thousands of service user testimonies available online in large forums. It suggests that withdrawal reactions are quite common, that they may last from a few weeks to several months or even longer, and that they are often severe. These findings are now increasingly acknowledged by official professional bodies and societies.” (Read More)
