Today seems like a perfect day for discussing marijuana. (The date is 4-20).
Listen to this:
"Using marijuana a few times a week is enough to physically alter critical brain structures according to a new study..."
The study involved only young people.
Kids should be told about this. But if we want kids to listen to us, we should stick to the truth. If we exaggerate the negatives, kids won't trust us and will stop listening. For example, kids shouldn't be told, "If you smoke you will get lung cancer." They should be told that their risk of lung cancer will increase, and so will the risk of those who breathe their smoke.
Here's a story about a hoax intended to scare people about marijuana. Some of us are not amused by this satirical website. Politico says, "The Daily Currant isn't funny." I have to agree, at least in regard to this story, which was neither entertaining nor enlightening.
Sorry, teenagers. It's not looking so good for marijuana: a new study links casual marijuana use with significant changes to parts of the brain
Study: More County 7th Graders Are Smoking Pot
The county's "Report Card on Children and Families" was presented to the Board of Supervisors this week.
Posted by Michelle Mowad (Editor)
April 19, 2014
Teen pregnancy, child abuse and arrests among San Diego's youth declined over the past few years, but alcohol and tobacco use remained prevalent and marijuana use increased among seventh-graders, according to a report presented to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
Between 2011 and 2013, researchers compiling the biennial "Report Card on Children and Families" measured progress in 25 areas that indicate health and well-being, including prenatal care, immunization, academic achievement and attendance.
The study is designed to provide elected officials, other policymakers and the public with a comprehensive look at trends related to the health and well-being of the county's children, teens and families.
"The San Diego County Report Card on Children and Families is more than a collection of charts and numbers," board Chairwoman Dianne Jacob said. "It helps us step back and take a measure of our most important treasure, which is our children."
The detailed report by the nonprofit Children's Initiative showed improvements in 13 areas and little or no change in 10 others, Children's Initiative CEO Sandra McBrayer said.
More low-income families were accessing nutritional assistance and the number of residents with health coverage held steady. However, poverty in San Diego County also increased, which left more than 142,000 kids living below the local poverty level last year.
This year's report also included, for the first time, five indicators in adults that affected health from childhood -- oral health, obesity, substance abuse, poverty and health coverage. Obesity and oral health figures held steady but were not improving, and poverty and health coverage among adults were moving in the wrong direction. The percentage of adult smokers dropped.
"We're trying to demonstrate in this report card that childhood behaviors last a lifetime," McBrayer said.
The report also called attention to several areas with little available data, including human trafficking, untreated mental health needs and issues facing refugee children. It includes recommendations for improvement in San Diego County and outlines national best practices to make improvements, McBrayer said.
"Communities and heath departments don't have to think up what to do. We actually show them what's proven to be done to improve the indicator," McBrayer said.
—City News Service
Showing posts with label teen brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teen brain. Show all posts
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Sorry, teenagers. It's not looking so good for marijuana: a new study links casual marijuana use with significant changes to parts of the brain
DEA photo of marijuana; chocolate cake might be a better option since cocoa has antioxidants and phytochemicals.
A lot of kids are going to be unhappy about this news. But there are other things to enjoy. How about some chocolate?
Casual marijuana use linked to brain changes
Karen Weintraub
USA TODAY
April 15, 2014
Using marijuana a few times a week is enough to physically alter critical brain structures, according to a new study published Tuesday in The Journal of Neuroscience.
"Just casual use appears to create changes in the brain in areas you don't want to change," said Hans Breiter, a psychiatrist and mathematician at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who led the new study.
There is actually very little research on the potential benefits and downsides of casual marijuana smoking — fewer than four times a week on average.
In his study, done in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, scientists looked at the brains of 20 relatively light marijuana users and 20 people who did not use it at all. All 40 were college students in the Boston area.
The study found volume, shape and density changes in two crucial brain areas — the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala — involved with emotion and motivation and some types of mental illness. "This is a part of the brain you do not want to mess around with," Breiter said.
The more marijuana the students smoked, the more their brains differed from the non-users, the study found.
The brain continues to develop well into the 20s, and even into the 30s, said Breiter, who is concerned about the long-term impacts of marijuana use on the developing brain.
Staci Gruber, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research, said Breiter's findings are consistent with her own, although she has focused on somewhat heavier users.
"There have been a growing number of studies that suggest that marijuana use in emerging adults is associated with differences in brain structure and cognitive abilities," said Gruber, also the director of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital outside Boston. "I'm not saying (pot smoking) is analogous to shooting heroin or cocaine, but it's also not quite the benign substance people thought it was."
Responding to a study that found a decline in IQ points among people who used marijuana regularly, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told USA TODAY recently that people should be more aware of these potential brain impacts.
"Perhaps it would be better if ... there was a little bit more recognition of that particular consequence," he said.
Gregory Gerdeman, a biologist and neuropharmacologist at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he has no reason to doubt the new study's findings but worries generally about marijuana research funded by federal agencies, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is charged with limiting drug use. (The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health as well as the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Northwestern Medicine's Warren Wright Adolescent Center.)
"If you're getting money from the drug czar's office, that money's not going to continue if you don't end up publishing something that at least supports the general story of the danger of drug abuse," Gerdeman said.
He said it doesn't surprise him that heavy pot smoking might make it difficult for students to reach their intellectual potential. But still, he said, "if it were my child, even with this study, I'm more comfortable with young people having a casual marijuana habit than drinking regularly."
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Recent Studies Raise the Possibility That Male Brains Are Wired for Focus, Female Brains for Multitasking
Boys and girls brains start to differentiate in adolescence.
"Broadly speaking, women in their 20s had more connections between the two brain hemispheres while men of the same age had more connective fibers within each hemisphere. "Women are mostly better connected left-to-right and right-to-left across the two brain hemispheres," Dr. Verma said. "Men are better connected within each hemisphere and from back-to-front."
"That suggests women might be better wired for multitasking and analytical thought, which require coordination of activity in both hemispheres. Men, in turn, may be better wired for more-focused tasks that require attention to one thing a time. But the researchers cautioned such conclusions are speculative."
Differences in How Men and Women Think Are Hard-Wired
Recent Studies Raise the Possibility That Male Brains Are Wired for Focus, Female Brains for Multitasking
Robert Lee Hotz
Wall Street Journal
Dec. 9, 2013
So many things come down to connections—especially the ones in your brain.br/>
Women and men display distinctive differences in how nerve fibers connect various regions of their brains, according to a half-dozen recent studies that highlight gender variation in the brain's wiring diagram. There are trillions of these critical connections, and they are shaped by the interplay of heredity, experience and biochemistry.br/>
No one knows how gender variations in brain wiring might translate into thought and behavior—whether they might influence the way men and women generally perceive reality, process information, form judgments and behave socially—but they are sparking controversy.br/>
"It certainly is incendiary," said Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology and director of the University of Southern California's Imaging Genetics Center. He is directing an effort to assemble a database of 26,000 brain scans from 20 countries to cross-check neuroimaging findings. "People who look at findings about sex differences are excited or enraged," he said. br/>
Combined brain scans of 949 subjects, ages 8 to 22, show how neural connections differ by gender. Male brains, top, have more connections within hemispheres (blue lines). Female brains, bottom, have more between hemispheres (orange lines). Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences/University of Pennsylvaniabr/>
Researchers are looking at the variations to explain the different ways men and women respond to health issues ranging from autism, which is more common among men, and multiple sclerosis, which is more common among women, to strokes, aging and depression. "We have to find the differences first before we can try to understand them," said Neda Jahanshad, a neurologist at USC who led the research while at the University of California, Los Angeles. br/>
Dr. Jahanshad and her UCLA collaborators conducted a 2011 brain-imaging study of healthy twins, including 147 women and 87 men, to trace connections in the brain. She discovered "significant" sex differences in areas of the brain's frontal lobe, which is associated with self-control, speech and decision-making. br/>
In the most comprehensive study so far, scientists led by biomedical analyst Ragini Verma at the University of Pennsylvania found the myriad connections between important parts of the brain developed differently in girls and boys as they grow, resulting in different patterns of brain connections among young women and young men. br/>
The team imaged the brains of 949 healthy young people, 521 females and 428 males, ranging in age from 8 to 22. Like Dr. Jahanshad's team, Dr. Verma employed a technique called Diffusion Tensor Imaging to trace how water molecules align along the brain's white-matter nerve fibers, which form the physical scaffolding of thought. The study was reported earlier this month in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. br/>
Pairs of scan images show gender differences in brain wiring in childhood (1), adolescence (2) and young adulthood (3). Male brains are on left, female on right. University of Pennsylvania, Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.br/>
The neural patterns emerged only when combining results from hundreds of people, experts said. In any one person, gender patterns may be subsumed by the individual variations in brain shape and structure that help make every person unique.br/>
Dr. Verma's maps of neural circuitry document the brain at moments when it is in a fury of creation. Starting in infancy, the brain normally produces neurons at a rate of half a million a minute, and reaches out to make connections two million times a second. By age 5, brain size on average has grown to about 90% of adult size. By age 20, the average brain is packed with about 109,000 miles of white matter tissue fibers, according to a 2003 Danish study reported in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.br/>
Spurred by the effects of diet, experience and biochemistry, neurons and synapses are ruthlessly pruned, starting in childhood. The winnowing continues in fits and starts throughout adolescence, then picks up again in middle age. "In childhood, we did not see much difference" between male and female, Dr. Verma said. "Most of the changes we see start happening in adolescence. That is when most of the male-female differences come about."br/>
Broadly speaking, women in their 20s had more connections between the two brain hemispheres while men of the same age had more connective fibers within each hemisphere. "Women are mostly better connected left-to-right and right-to-left across the two brain hemispheres," Dr. Verma said. "Men are better connected within each hemisphere and from back-to-front."br/>
That suggests women might be better wired for multitasking and analytical thought, which require coordination of activity in both hemispheres. Men, in turn, may be better wired for more-focused tasks that require attention to one thing a time. But the researchers cautioned such conclusions are speculative.br/>
Experts also cautioned that subtle gender differences in connections can be thrown off by normal disparities in brain size between men and women and in the density of brain tissue. Other factors, such as whether one is left- or right-handed, also affect brain structure. br/>
Also affecting results are differences in how computer calculations are carried out from one lab to the next. "With neuroimaging, there are so many ways to process the data that when you do process things differently and get the same result, it is fantastic," Dr. Jahanshad said.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Arrests of teenagers are probably surprising parents of the Stephentown 300 who planned to take the victim to court
How many of these parents are lawyers--or have lawyers--who figure that well-off people deserve good reputations no matter what they do?
"As of the census of 2010...the racial makeup of the town was 96.7% White, 0.31% African American, 0.21% Native American, 0.14% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander,and 0.77% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.11% of the population...About 5.7% of families and 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.0% of those under age 18 and 7.0% of those age 65 or over."--Wikipedia
Parents aren't doing their kids a favor when they teach them to ignore the rights of others. And they certainly are not doing the country a favor.
Parents want to sue ex-NFLer for outing brats
[Photos of graffiti, damage]
By Jeane Macintosh
September 20, 2013
Former NFL offensive lineman Brian Holloway initially thought the Twitter photos showing young people partying at his family’s second home in upstate New York were a hoax. Then he saw pictures of teens standing on the dining room table he bought with his Super Bowl bonus.
Parents of the hundreds of teens who broke into and destroyed former NFLer Brian Holloway’s upstate vacation home are threatening to sue him for outing their brats on Twitter — saying he’s spoiling their chances of getting into college.
“You would not believe the calls that have come in, threatening to firebomb me or hurt or sue me — any manner of things,” the stunned Holloway told The Post Thursday as he toiled away cleaning up the damage at his 200-acre spread in Rensselaer County.
The teens defaced Holloway’s home with graffiti.
“Some complained that this will ruin their kids’ college plans. Others have threatened me, saying ‘Take my kid’s name down or I’m gonna press charges against you.’
“You’re going to press charges against me? C’mon, now. If that were one of my children, they would be doing a year’s worth of apologizing,” said Holloway, a father of eight.
Holloway estimates that the teens caused about $20,000 in damages
The former New England Patriots offensive lineman learned of the debauched bash — attended by some 200-300 trespassers — after many of the punks gleefully posted photos and texts on social media from inside the out-of-control crash party that left 10 shattered windows, urine-soaked carpets, gouged oak floors and walls covered in graffiti and holes.
Holloway estimates the damage at more than $20,000 and took to social media to try to track down the vandals so they could be held responsible.
A handful of parents have apologized for their kids’ actions — saying they hadn’t known about the party or that their kids lied to them, he said.
But only one parent and child showed up this week at a planned cleanup of the stately Stephentown home, about 25 miles from Albany and near the Massachusetts border.
Holloway said he has hauled away more than 10 massive trash bags of liquor bottles, and found drug paraphernalia strewn across his property.
“How is this OK? How did we lose our way, that this is acceptable behavior? And how do we find our way back?” said Holloway, who had to delay last week’s planned launch of his new women’s-oriented football site, HerLeague.net, to fly to New York and deal with the mess and an ongoing police probe.
The drama started on Aug. 31, when Holloway — home with his wife and kids at their year-round Lutz, Fla., home — learned from his 19-year-old son that dozens of kids were tweeting about a party at the New York country house.
Holloway watched in disbelief as the scene unfolded on Twitter. The revelers came from at least nine surrounding high schools and a local college.
“They had planned to stay there for three full days, if you can believe that,” Holloway said.
He was trying to reach local cops when someone tweeted that sheriff’s officers were on the scene.
“The sheriff came and got everyone out of the house without injury or violence, which is impressive with the amount of drinking and drugs going down and kids in a very dangerous state of mind,” Holloway said.
Holloway, who found “170 tweets from the party within its first three hours,” re-posted them to a Web site to help identify the house crashers and urge them to change their behavior.
6 Arrests In Vandalism Of Former Patriot Brian Holloway’s Home
George M. Walsh
Associated Press
September 26, 2013
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Six people were arrested Thursday on charges they were among hundreds of young partygoers who trashed a former NFL player’s vacation home, and police said more arrests were expected.
The arrests came after former New England Patriots and Los Angeles Raiders offensive lineman Brian Holloway said he signed papers authorizing the Rensselaer County sheriff to bring charges in the Labor Day weekend party, which was attended by up to 400 teenagers.
Holloway said that among those charged was a young man he had taken into his family for a time as a homeless teen, who’s accused of organizing and promoting the party. He said investigators have told him the number of people charged could end up in the hundreds as they work through the sheer volume of participants.
“Everyone that broke the law, I’m pressing charges against,” Holloway said. “The parents had a chance and students had a chance to come forward, and only four did.”
Holloway, who played offensive tackle for the Patriots and Raiders in the 1980s, gained national attention by reposting party pictures the teens had put on social media websites. He said he posted them on the website helpmesave300.com in an effort to get the teens to come forward, take responsibility for their actions and change their behavior.
[See earlier story below.]
...Police said a ringleader of the party was 19-year-old Seth Hawk, the young man Holloway said he had taken into his family a few years ago. Hawk, of Grafton, faces felony charges of burglary and criminal mischief and misdemeanor charges of endangering the welfare of a child and unlawfully dealing with a child. He’s accused of advertising the party and providing alcohol.
Three of the other arrested people face felony charges including burglary and larceny, and two are charged with misdemeanors, including trespassing. They range in age from 17 to 21.
A phone number wasn’t available for Hawk, and authorities said they didn’t know the names of the arrested people’s lawyers.
Holloway said Hawk was a classmate of his son and had a troubled youth but found stability living as part of his family when he was about 15. He said hearing about Hawk’s involvement “was a shocker.”
“We’re still pulling for him,” he said. “This may be the thing to get him on track.”
An Open Letter to the Parents of the Stephentown 300
Kelly Lynch
Huff Post
09/24/2013
What planet do you live on?
Last week, word got out that your children had broken into a home in Stephentown, NY and threw a party. More than 300 of them partied and drunkenly smashed windows, urinated on the floors, stood on tables, punched holes in the ceiling and stole a statue that was part of a memorial for the owner's stillborn grandson. Oh, it gets better. Before, during and after the party, they tweeted about it and posted pictures of themselves engaged in this behavior.
Way to go.
The house is owned by former NFL player Brian Holloway. It is his second residence, paid for in part by his Super Bowl bonus. He lives in Florida and the Stephentown house is on the market. He watched this unfold online while at his home in Florida. Instead of demanding the arrest of your kids, he instead created a website, www.helpmesave300.com, where he reposted their photos, identified the people involved, and called for ways to reach out to young people and show them that there are better ways to spend their time than drinking, drugs and vandalism.
He is a better person than I would have been in that position. It takes class and compassion to see beyond the urine stained carpets, broken windows, damaged walls and blatant disrespect to reach out to your kids. He even offered to welcome these derelicts back to his house for a picnic, where they would work together to make repairs and clean up the mess they left behind. I don't know that the rest of us would have been able to react the same way.
And one kid showed up. One, out of the 300 teens who were there.
Instead of dragging your kids back to apologize and clean up the mess, you lashed out at Brian Holloway, threatened to firebomb his house, and are now planning to sue him. For what? For identifying your kids online. Well guess what? Your little Johnny did that himself the minute he tweeted that iPhone photo standing on the dining room table, holding a red solo cup filled with beer.
Look, I don't blame you for what your kids did. Heck, I don't even really blame them. Teens will be teens, and they do stupid things sometimes. We've all been there. It's not fair to judge parents on the mistakes their kids make. It is how you handle that behavior afterwards that reflects on you as a parent...
"As of the census of 2010...the racial makeup of the town was 96.7% White, 0.31% African American, 0.21% Native American, 0.14% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander,and 0.77% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.11% of the population...About 5.7% of families and 6.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.0% of those under age 18 and 7.0% of those age 65 or over."--Wikipedia
Parents aren't doing their kids a favor when they teach them to ignore the rights of others. And they certainly are not doing the country a favor.
Parents want to sue ex-NFLer for outing brats
[Photos of graffiti, damage]
By Jeane Macintosh
September 20, 2013
Former NFL offensive lineman Brian Holloway initially thought the Twitter photos showing young people partying at his family’s second home in upstate New York were a hoax. Then he saw pictures of teens standing on the dining room table he bought with his Super Bowl bonus.
Parents of the hundreds of teens who broke into and destroyed former NFLer Brian Holloway’s upstate vacation home are threatening to sue him for outing their brats on Twitter — saying he’s spoiling their chances of getting into college.
“You would not believe the calls that have come in, threatening to firebomb me or hurt or sue me — any manner of things,” the stunned Holloway told The Post Thursday as he toiled away cleaning up the damage at his 200-acre spread in Rensselaer County.
The teens defaced Holloway’s home with graffiti.
“Some complained that this will ruin their kids’ college plans. Others have threatened me, saying ‘Take my kid’s name down or I’m gonna press charges against you.’
“You’re going to press charges against me? C’mon, now. If that were one of my children, they would be doing a year’s worth of apologizing,” said Holloway, a father of eight.
Holloway estimates that the teens caused about $20,000 in damages
The former New England Patriots offensive lineman learned of the debauched bash — attended by some 200-300 trespassers — after many of the punks gleefully posted photos and texts on social media from inside the out-of-control crash party that left 10 shattered windows, urine-soaked carpets, gouged oak floors and walls covered in graffiti and holes.
Holloway estimates the damage at more than $20,000 and took to social media to try to track down the vandals so they could be held responsible.
A handful of parents have apologized for their kids’ actions — saying they hadn’t known about the party or that their kids lied to them, he said.
But only one parent and child showed up this week at a planned cleanup of the stately Stephentown home, about 25 miles from Albany and near the Massachusetts border.
Holloway said he has hauled away more than 10 massive trash bags of liquor bottles, and found drug paraphernalia strewn across his property.
“How is this OK? How did we lose our way, that this is acceptable behavior? And how do we find our way back?” said Holloway, who had to delay last week’s planned launch of his new women’s-oriented football site, HerLeague.net, to fly to New York and deal with the mess and an ongoing police probe.
The drama started on Aug. 31, when Holloway — home with his wife and kids at their year-round Lutz, Fla., home — learned from his 19-year-old son that dozens of kids were tweeting about a party at the New York country house.
Holloway watched in disbelief as the scene unfolded on Twitter. The revelers came from at least nine surrounding high schools and a local college.
“They had planned to stay there for three full days, if you can believe that,” Holloway said.
He was trying to reach local cops when someone tweeted that sheriff’s officers were on the scene.
“The sheriff came and got everyone out of the house without injury or violence, which is impressive with the amount of drinking and drugs going down and kids in a very dangerous state of mind,” Holloway said.
Holloway, who found “170 tweets from the party within its first three hours,” re-posted them to a Web site to help identify the house crashers and urge them to change their behavior.
6 Arrests In Vandalism Of Former Patriot Brian Holloway’s Home
George M. Walsh
Associated Press
September 26, 2013
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Six people were arrested Thursday on charges they were among hundreds of young partygoers who trashed a former NFL player’s vacation home, and police said more arrests were expected.
The arrests came after former New England Patriots and Los Angeles Raiders offensive lineman Brian Holloway said he signed papers authorizing the Rensselaer County sheriff to bring charges in the Labor Day weekend party, which was attended by up to 400 teenagers.
Holloway said that among those charged was a young man he had taken into his family for a time as a homeless teen, who’s accused of organizing and promoting the party. He said investigators have told him the number of people charged could end up in the hundreds as they work through the sheer volume of participants.
“Everyone that broke the law, I’m pressing charges against,” Holloway said. “The parents had a chance and students had a chance to come forward, and only four did.”
Holloway, who played offensive tackle for the Patriots and Raiders in the 1980s, gained national attention by reposting party pictures the teens had put on social media websites. He said he posted them on the website helpmesave300.com in an effort to get the teens to come forward, take responsibility for their actions and change their behavior.
[See earlier story below.]
...Police said a ringleader of the party was 19-year-old Seth Hawk, the young man Holloway said he had taken into his family a few years ago. Hawk, of Grafton, faces felony charges of burglary and criminal mischief and misdemeanor charges of endangering the welfare of a child and unlawfully dealing with a child. He’s accused of advertising the party and providing alcohol.
Three of the other arrested people face felony charges including burglary and larceny, and two are charged with misdemeanors, including trespassing. They range in age from 17 to 21.
A phone number wasn’t available for Hawk, and authorities said they didn’t know the names of the arrested people’s lawyers.
Holloway said Hawk was a classmate of his son and had a troubled youth but found stability living as part of his family when he was about 15. He said hearing about Hawk’s involvement “was a shocker.”
“We’re still pulling for him,” he said. “This may be the thing to get him on track.”
An Open Letter to the Parents of the Stephentown 300
Kelly Lynch
Huff Post
09/24/2013
What planet do you live on?
Last week, word got out that your children had broken into a home in Stephentown, NY and threw a party. More than 300 of them partied and drunkenly smashed windows, urinated on the floors, stood on tables, punched holes in the ceiling and stole a statue that was part of a memorial for the owner's stillborn grandson. Oh, it gets better. Before, during and after the party, they tweeted about it and posted pictures of themselves engaged in this behavior.
Way to go.
The house is owned by former NFL player Brian Holloway. It is his second residence, paid for in part by his Super Bowl bonus. He lives in Florida and the Stephentown house is on the market. He watched this unfold online while at his home in Florida. Instead of demanding the arrest of your kids, he instead created a website, www.helpmesave300.com, where he reposted their photos, identified the people involved, and called for ways to reach out to young people and show them that there are better ways to spend their time than drinking, drugs and vandalism.
He is a better person than I would have been in that position. It takes class and compassion to see beyond the urine stained carpets, broken windows, damaged walls and blatant disrespect to reach out to your kids. He even offered to welcome these derelicts back to his house for a picnic, where they would work together to make repairs and clean up the mess they left behind. I don't know that the rest of us would have been able to react the same way.
And one kid showed up. One, out of the 300 teens who were there.
Instead of dragging your kids back to apologize and clean up the mess, you lashed out at Brian Holloway, threatened to firebomb his house, and are now planning to sue him. For what? For identifying your kids online. Well guess what? Your little Johnny did that himself the minute he tweeted that iPhone photo standing on the dining room table, holding a red solo cup filled with beer.
Look, I don't blame you for what your kids did. Heck, I don't even really blame them. Teens will be teens, and they do stupid things sometimes. We've all been there. It's not fair to judge parents on the mistakes their kids make. It is how you handle that behavior afterwards that reflects on you as a parent...
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Teenage drinking raises risk of early dementia, study suggests
Teenage drinking raises risk of early dementia, study suggests
Swedish study identifies heavy drinking as a teenager as the most serious of nine risk factors for young onset dementia
Denis Campbell, health correspondent
The Guardian
12 August 2013
Heavy drinking as a teenager is the single biggest risk factor for developing dementia unusually early, according to new research.
A study of almost 500,000 Swedish men identified "alcohol intoxication" as a late adolescent as the most serious of nine separate risk factors for young onset dementia (YOD) – that is, dementia before reaching 65.
Researchers led by Prof Peter Nordstrom, of Sweden's Umea University, examined the records of 488,484 men conscripted into military service in the country at an average age of 18 between 1969 and 1979, 487 of whom were later diagnosed with YOD at an average age of 54.
About 800,000 people in the UK have dementia, of whom more than 17,000 developed it before they turned 65, according to the Alzheimer's Society. Two-thirds of sufferers are women and a third are men.
Other "late adolescent risk factors" identified by the researchers included stroke, use of amtopsychotic drugs, depression, father's dementia, drugs intoxication other than alcohol, low cognitive function at conscription, low height at conscription and high systolic blood pressure at conscription. Together the nine factors accounted for 68% of the 487 YOD cases found at follow-up.
Men with at least two of the nine risk factors, and who fell in the lowest third of the study participants for overall cognitive function, had a 20-fold increased risk of developing YOD, the researchers found.
"We are a long way off knowing exactly why some people develop dementia and others don't. However, what this study shows once again is that many of the things we are beginning to identify as risk factors are controllable", said Jess Smith, a research officer at the Alzheimer's Society. "Kicking excessive teenage drinking or drug habits into touch and treating conditions such as depression early could be key to reducing your risk of dementia in later life."
Swedish study identifies heavy drinking as a teenager as the most serious of nine risk factors for young onset dementia
Denis Campbell, health correspondent
The Guardian
12 August 2013
Heavy drinking as a teenager is the single biggest risk factor for developing dementia unusually early, according to new research.
A study of almost 500,000 Swedish men identified "alcohol intoxication" as a late adolescent as the most serious of nine separate risk factors for young onset dementia (YOD) – that is, dementia before reaching 65.
Researchers led by Prof Peter Nordstrom, of Sweden's Umea University, examined the records of 488,484 men conscripted into military service in the country at an average age of 18 between 1969 and 1979, 487 of whom were later diagnosed with YOD at an average age of 54.
About 800,000 people in the UK have dementia, of whom more than 17,000 developed it before they turned 65, according to the Alzheimer's Society. Two-thirds of sufferers are women and a third are men.
Other "late adolescent risk factors" identified by the researchers included stroke, use of amtopsychotic drugs, depression, father's dementia, drugs intoxication other than alcohol, low cognitive function at conscription, low height at conscription and high systolic blood pressure at conscription. Together the nine factors accounted for 68% of the 487 YOD cases found at follow-up.
Men with at least two of the nine risk factors, and who fell in the lowest third of the study participants for overall cognitive function, had a 20-fold increased risk of developing YOD, the researchers found.
"We are a long way off knowing exactly why some people develop dementia and others don't. However, what this study shows once again is that many of the things we are beginning to identify as risk factors are controllable", said Jess Smith, a research officer at the Alzheimer's Society. "Kicking excessive teenage drinking or drug habits into touch and treating conditions such as depression early could be key to reducing your risk of dementia in later life."
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Why the teen brain is drawn to risk
"...[W]hile adults tend to prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty, as family therapist Virginia Satir once put it, the same may not be true for teens."
Why the teen brain is drawn to risk
By Maia Szalavitz
TIME.com
October 8, 2012
If you're the parent of a tween, be warned: your cautious 10-year-old is bound to turn into a wild child in a few short years, with seemingly no regard whatsoever for safety. Indeed, teenagers have the double the risk of dying compared to their preteen selves.
Adults have long reckoned with ways to protect adolescents from their own misjudgments. Only recently, however, have researchers really begun to understand how the teen brain is wired and that some of what appear to be teens' senseless choices may result from biological tendencies that also prime their brains to learn and be flexible.
Take teens' perception of risk. It's certainly different from that of adults, but not in the ways you'd expect.
Research shows, for instance, that teens tend to wildly overestimate certain risks -- of things like unprotected sex and drug use -- not to lowball them as one would predict.
So, it may be that teens' notorious risk-taking behavior stems not from some immunity to known risks, but rather, as a new study now suggests, from their greater tolerance to uncertainty and ambiguity -- that is, unknown risks.
"Relative to adults, adolescents engage more in unknown risks than they do in known risks," says Agnieszka Tymula, a postdoctoral student at New York University and the lead author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Teens, it seems, love the unknown.
TIME.com: The half-baked teen brain: A hazard or a virtue?
To examine the differences in risk-taking between teens and adults, researchers studied 33 healthy adolescents aged 12 to 17, along with 30 normal adults aged 30 to 50. They all engaged in a gambling game, in which they could take a definite $5 reward or choose between the possibility of getting a much larger payout or nothing at all.
The payout was based on whether there was a greater number of red or blue poker chips in a stack of 100; to vary the ambiguity, larger or smaller portions of the stacks were hidden from view.
In this way, the trials provided different amounts of information about the risks involved: for example, in some trials, participants could choose between the $5 and a clear 50% chance of winning $50. In others, however, they had a choice between $5 and varying amounts of money, up to $125, but the probability of winning appeared to vary from 25% to 75%. In reality, they always had a 50% chance of winning, but were led to believe their odds varied, which allowed researchers to look at how participants thought about ambiguity.
Survey: 17% of high schoolers drink, smoke, use drugs during school day
"If the risks are known, adolescents engage (in risk-taking) less than adults do, but if they are unknown, this is reversed," Tymula says. In fact, when the payout was known to be $125, adults always gambled -- but this was not so for teens.
"I think (the finding) adds very nicely to the literature," says Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University, who was not associated with the research. "The new breakthrough here is that it extends our knowledge about adolescent risk-taking into the realm of ambiguity aversion."
Reyna's own research has shown how excessively teens tend to overestimate risk: for example, when asked about the risk of AIDS in one study, adolescents estimated that a teenage girl who is sexually active has a 60% chance of contracting HIV. (The actual odds are miniscule for most Americans.)
This perception, however, doesn't prevent teens from engaging in risky behavior. Why? Because teens have a different style of information processing, Reyna argues. They may get lost in the details about specific risks and overly focused on possible rewards, while ignoring the overall "gist" of the problem -- i.e., the ultimate consequences.
In the case of unprotected sex, for example, even if the odds of contracting HIV are low, a bad outcome would be irreversible. Unlike teens, adults tend to focus on the end result and the consequences.
TIME.com: Teens' IQ may rise or fall over time
Oddly, teens' information-processing style seems to rely on the uniquely human "rational" parts of the brain. Reyna's work has shown that adolescents carefully think about risks most adults wouldn't even consider taking -- like, say, playing Russian roulette -- using their prefrontal cortex.
They use quantitative reasoning and take about twice as long as adults do before responding, while adults immediately have a negative reaction to such risks, stemming intuitively from the insula, and almost automatically say no.
So why might the teenage brain be wired this way? Their greater tolerance for uncertainty and the unknown -- and an increased desire for and focus on rewards -- probably helps them leave the nest.
Such explanations are speculative, Reyna cautions, but notes that "in rats, for example, adolescent rats are more likely to explore a new environment. You don't know what you're going to find: that's sort of the definition of a novel environment. If you are more ambiguity tolerant, that would enable that sort of exploration."
In other words, it takes some acceptance of uncertainty and comfort with not knowing in order to learn and to be open to new knowledge.
"We come into the world with limited knowledge about what kind of consequences we will experience after making decisions and also about how likely these different outcomes are," says Tymula. "But, of course, we want to learn, so this tolerance for unknown risks might stem from an underlying biological feature that makes learning about the unknown less unpleasant for adolescents than it is for adults."
An early part of learning any type of new skill -- from typing to teaching -- is accepting instruction and consciously thinking about all of the tactics and techniques involved in performing the skill.
While novices need to think step-by-step, however, experts will have incorporated the best routines into their brains to the point that they become automatic. This may be why the teen brain uses the higher-order cortex for risk decisions: it hasn't yet made enough of them to develop an intuitive reaction that it can "offload" to other brain regions.
Such new information about how the teen brain works -- and why its characteristics shouldn't simply be seen as negative or dysfunctional -- is only just beginning to inform teen health programs.
Reyna, for example, has studied how teaching "gist"-based reasoning can help teens avoid dangerous sexual choices, finding that teens who are taught to focus on potential, catastrophic negative outcomes, rather than the odds, make fewer risky sexual decisions and have fewer partners.
Tymula suggests that allowing teens opportunities to safely experiment -- for example, a simulator that shows sober teens what drunk driving is like -- could also help, by making an unknown risk seem more real and known. Allowing teens the opportunity to take risks in a safe context could also help them develop expertise that underlies gist-based thinking.
Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that while adults tend to prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty, as family therapist Virginia Satir once put it, the same may not be true for teens.
TIME.com: What goes on inside the brain of a misbehaving boy?
This story was originally published on TIME.com.
Why the teen brain is drawn to risk
By Maia Szalavitz
TIME.com
October 8, 2012
If you're the parent of a tween, be warned: your cautious 10-year-old is bound to turn into a wild child in a few short years, with seemingly no regard whatsoever for safety. Indeed, teenagers have the double the risk of dying compared to their preteen selves.
Adults have long reckoned with ways to protect adolescents from their own misjudgments. Only recently, however, have researchers really begun to understand how the teen brain is wired and that some of what appear to be teens' senseless choices may result from biological tendencies that also prime their brains to learn and be flexible.
Take teens' perception of risk. It's certainly different from that of adults, but not in the ways you'd expect.
Research shows, for instance, that teens tend to wildly overestimate certain risks -- of things like unprotected sex and drug use -- not to lowball them as one would predict.
So, it may be that teens' notorious risk-taking behavior stems not from some immunity to known risks, but rather, as a new study now suggests, from their greater tolerance to uncertainty and ambiguity -- that is, unknown risks.
"Relative to adults, adolescents engage more in unknown risks than they do in known risks," says Agnieszka Tymula, a postdoctoral student at New York University and the lead author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Teens, it seems, love the unknown.
TIME.com: The half-baked teen brain: A hazard or a virtue?
To examine the differences in risk-taking between teens and adults, researchers studied 33 healthy adolescents aged 12 to 17, along with 30 normal adults aged 30 to 50. They all engaged in a gambling game, in which they could take a definite $5 reward or choose between the possibility of getting a much larger payout or nothing at all.
The payout was based on whether there was a greater number of red or blue poker chips in a stack of 100; to vary the ambiguity, larger or smaller portions of the stacks were hidden from view.
In this way, the trials provided different amounts of information about the risks involved: for example, in some trials, participants could choose between the $5 and a clear 50% chance of winning $50. In others, however, they had a choice between $5 and varying amounts of money, up to $125, but the probability of winning appeared to vary from 25% to 75%. In reality, they always had a 50% chance of winning, but were led to believe their odds varied, which allowed researchers to look at how participants thought about ambiguity.
Survey: 17% of high schoolers drink, smoke, use drugs during school day
"If the risks are known, adolescents engage (in risk-taking) less than adults do, but if they are unknown, this is reversed," Tymula says. In fact, when the payout was known to be $125, adults always gambled -- but this was not so for teens.
"I think (the finding) adds very nicely to the literature," says Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University, who was not associated with the research. "The new breakthrough here is that it extends our knowledge about adolescent risk-taking into the realm of ambiguity aversion."
Reyna's own research has shown how excessively teens tend to overestimate risk: for example, when asked about the risk of AIDS in one study, adolescents estimated that a teenage girl who is sexually active has a 60% chance of contracting HIV. (The actual odds are miniscule for most Americans.)
This perception, however, doesn't prevent teens from engaging in risky behavior. Why? Because teens have a different style of information processing, Reyna argues. They may get lost in the details about specific risks and overly focused on possible rewards, while ignoring the overall "gist" of the problem -- i.e., the ultimate consequences.
In the case of unprotected sex, for example, even if the odds of contracting HIV are low, a bad outcome would be irreversible. Unlike teens, adults tend to focus on the end result and the consequences.
TIME.com: Teens' IQ may rise or fall over time
Oddly, teens' information-processing style seems to rely on the uniquely human "rational" parts of the brain. Reyna's work has shown that adolescents carefully think about risks most adults wouldn't even consider taking -- like, say, playing Russian roulette -- using their prefrontal cortex.
They use quantitative reasoning and take about twice as long as adults do before responding, while adults immediately have a negative reaction to such risks, stemming intuitively from the insula, and almost automatically say no.
So why might the teenage brain be wired this way? Their greater tolerance for uncertainty and the unknown -- and an increased desire for and focus on rewards -- probably helps them leave the nest.
Such explanations are speculative, Reyna cautions, but notes that "in rats, for example, adolescent rats are more likely to explore a new environment. You don't know what you're going to find: that's sort of the definition of a novel environment. If you are more ambiguity tolerant, that would enable that sort of exploration."
In other words, it takes some acceptance of uncertainty and comfort with not knowing in order to learn and to be open to new knowledge.
"We come into the world with limited knowledge about what kind of consequences we will experience after making decisions and also about how likely these different outcomes are," says Tymula. "But, of course, we want to learn, so this tolerance for unknown risks might stem from an underlying biological feature that makes learning about the unknown less unpleasant for adolescents than it is for adults."
An early part of learning any type of new skill -- from typing to teaching -- is accepting instruction and consciously thinking about all of the tactics and techniques involved in performing the skill.
While novices need to think step-by-step, however, experts will have incorporated the best routines into their brains to the point that they become automatic. This may be why the teen brain uses the higher-order cortex for risk decisions: it hasn't yet made enough of them to develop an intuitive reaction that it can "offload" to other brain regions.
Such new information about how the teen brain works -- and why its characteristics shouldn't simply be seen as negative or dysfunctional -- is only just beginning to inform teen health programs.
Reyna, for example, has studied how teaching "gist"-based reasoning can help teens avoid dangerous sexual choices, finding that teens who are taught to focus on potential, catastrophic negative outcomes, rather than the odds, make fewer risky sexual decisions and have fewer partners.
Tymula suggests that allowing teens opportunities to safely experiment -- for example, a simulator that shows sober teens what drunk driving is like -- could also help, by making an unknown risk seem more real and known. Allowing teens the opportunity to take risks in a safe context could also help them develop expertise that underlies gist-based thinking.
Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that while adults tend to prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty, as family therapist Virginia Satir once put it, the same may not be true for teens.
TIME.com: What goes on inside the brain of a misbehaving boy?
This story was originally published on TIME.com.
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