It seems like a simple question. Do you drink too much alcohol? But one person’s social drinking may be someone else’s too much. So how can you tell if you’re drinking too much and what exactly is drinking too much?
First, we need to decide on what is a drink – what drinks are equivalent to each other. Generally, in North America, a standard drink is one that has about 0.6 fluid ounces of pure alcohol. But how much that is in your drink depends on what it is you are drinking. Generally, standard drinks are:
•   12 oz beer
•    5 …read more

If this wasn’t such a serious topic, it would almost be funny.

Farmers, who want to earn a living, grow tobacco for big tobacco companies.
Big tobacco companies buy the tobacco to turn into cigarettes and chewing tobacco.
Big tobacco companies spend millions and millions of dollars on salaries, production, advertising, and sales.
Government rakes in millions and millions of dollars on income tax from tobacco company employees, sales (and other) tax on equipment purchased, gas employees use to get to work, and so on.
Big tobacco companies rake in millions and millions of dollars in profit.
Smokers get sick from using big tobacco company’s products.
Smokers …read more

Teens and alcohol have long been a source of concern for many parents – and adults in general. Different cultures believe different things and even legal ages for alcohol consumption change according to where you are.
I live in Quebec where the legal age is 18, while our neighboring province Ontario’s legal age is 19. At the same time, an hour south of us, across the Canada/United States border, the age is 21. (One thing I can’t figure out is why you can allow an 18-year-old to own a gun, join the army, get married, vote, buy a house, etc, but …read more

Researchers are working on a vaccine to prevent cocaine addiction and they’re making progress. Is this a good thing or a waste of time and resources?
Between two and three million people in the United States are addicted to cocaine and about one-third of drug-related emergency room visits are the result of cocaine use.
Treating cocaine addiction is not easy. There aren’t any medicines that can help overcome the addiction; detoxification is the mainstay treatment. If a vaccine was available, researchers feel they could reach more than the approximately 800,000 addicts who receive treatment now.
The hope of researchers is that a cocaine …read more

Does Twitter make you dumber?
According to one psychologist, yes it does.
Dr. Tracy Alloway from University of Stirling in Scotland, who studies working memory, recently told an audience at the British Science Festival that some social-media behaviors are much more conducive to developing working memory than others.
In her opinion Facebook is good while twitter is not.
In fact, she sees microblogging activities such as twitter as reducing a person’s attention span.
On the other hand, Alloway sees participating in facebook as enhancing intelligence.
Interesting but I’m not buying it. To me, both social media behaviours can be as intelligence enhancing or intelligence numbing as …read more

Are you addicted to the internet?
Not sure?
Well, according to reSTART, the first US rehab center for Internet Addiction,  if you have  5 or more of the following signs and symptoms, the answer is probably yes
So, go ahead and check it out. Think about your internet and computer use and then answer yes or no to the following:

   Failed attempts to control behavior
 Heightened sense of euphoria while involved in computer and internet activities
Craving more time on the computer and internet
Neglecting friends and family
Feeling restless when not engaged in the activity
Being dishonest with others
Computer use interfering with job/school performance
Feeling guilty, ashamed, anxious, …read more

Is the Economy Keeping You Awake at Night?
If so, you might be happy to know that you are not alone. A recent National Sleep Foundation poll has found that 1 in 4 Americans say that concerns and worries over personal finances, fear of job loss, and the economy is keeping them up at night. 
Instead of sleeping, we are spending more time tossing and turning and watching late night television shows.
We are also taking more drugs. 
Prescriptions for sleep medications has also grown, topping 56 million in 2008. Good news, I guess, for the pharmaceutical companies selling GABA-enhancing  ‘Z drugs’  (Ambien, Lunesta, Rozerem) …read more

Feeling too tired for sex? Well, if you’re living in Britain you are not alone.
A recent study by Nuffield Health, a non-profit organization, has found that on the whole, Britain has turned into a ‘couch potato nation’, too lazy to get up and change the television channel if the remote was broken and simply too tired for sex.
The results, which come from a poll conducted of more than 2000 adults throughout Britain, showed that…

36  percent would not run to catch a bus
52 percent of dog owners can’t be bothered walking the dog
73 percent have no energy for sex
64 percent are …read more

There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ when it comes to smoking. It affects all of us.
As an ex-smoker I truly understand the ease in which smoking can change from a casual fling to a full blown addiction. And I know how very, very difficult it is to give it up.
But as a health professional, I have seen the damage that smoking can do.
Therefore, I’d like to recommend that everyone have a read of this free e-book Toward a Tobacco Free World, written by by Kaiser Permanente psychiatrist and UCLA researcher Dr. Michael Rabinoff.  It not only highlights the societal costs worldwide …read more

It’s a good month for coffee and chocolate.
First, there was news about a study that found that caffeine reduces muscle pain caused by exercise and now researchers in England seem to think that mental arithmetic becomes easier when chocolate is involved.
But before those of you trying to complete your tax returns go nuts on chocolate, you’d better have a good read of the study because it’s not as clear cut as us chocoholics would like it to be. Yes, it seems that the study participants, after partaking in large amounts of flavanols (the compounds found in chocolate), did do better …read more