Care for a study pill?

Use of ADHD drugs as study aid by students raises concerns. 

Like steroids?: Standard drugs for treating attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are being used by some US sudents to help them stay awake as they cram for exams.

A UNIVERSITY of Kansas freshman took a break from shooting hoops with friends outside his dormitory to talk about what some students call “study pills”.

As final exams approached last semester, he took a few doses of a prescribed stimulant. “But all they did was make me feel nervous,” said the chemical engineering major. “I’m off of it now.”

He still has a vial of leftover pills he used for his attention issues in high school. And that’s why he asked that his name not appear in this article: He didn’t want to be pressed by dormmates to supply them with an illegal focus boost for upcoming finals.

The controlled stimulants that many college students seek, if only for a momentary edge, carry familiar brand names such as Adderall, Vyvanse, Focalin and Ritalin. They’re all standard drugs for treating attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, often successfully.

Their misuse, however, is thought to be on the rise at campuses in the US – creating a potentially serious health hazard and trips to the emergency room for students not diagnosed for ADHD.

The extent of the problem is anyone’s guess. Because of what experts consider a lack of reliable research, illicit dealing of ADHD drugs either is infrequent on campus or something so commonplace as to be the college crowd’s best-kept secret.

“The only people who don’t know about it are the parents,” said University of Kentucky communications professor Alan D. DeSantis. “I’m sure the majority of my students will be using at some time during finals week. It’s really built into the climate and culture of today’s college life.”

‘Study pills’

DeSantis has analysed several years’ worth of surveys of Kentucky undergraduates to conclude that at least one-third of the student body has taken ADHD medication without prescriptions. Another 8% use the drugs legally under a doctor’s supervision, he said, and half of them provide pills to other students.

The incidence of use appears to be higher among Kentucky seniors and juniors than for younger students, DeSantis added.

Assessing a variety of surveys, a 2008 study published in the Journal of American Child Adolescent Psychiatry offered a not-so-precise range of 5 to 35% of college-aged people taking attention-deficit stimulants not prescribed for them.

A University of Missouri survey found a usage rate in between.

About 12% in a sample of Mizzou students admitted to using controlled stimulants or painkillers, prescribed or illegally, said Kim Dude, director of the University of Missouri’s Wellness Resource Center. “Eighty-five percent of the students don’t use any of that.”

But she does agree with the KU freshman – don’t let on if you’ve got attention-deficit pills.

“We urge students and their parents from the start: Don’t tell anybody,” Dude said. “They’ll run into peer pressure to sell it or give it away” to other students.

This month, data-miners at Brigham Young University issued a study that tracked Twitter references to study pills.

Searching keywords such as “Adderall,” “college” and “cramming” over a six-month period, lead researcher Carl Hanson revealed, “We don’t have all the answers” on the frequency of legal use or abuse. But the study did conclude that tweets about the drug were heaviest among students in the US Northeast and South, and lightest among students in the Plains and Southwestern states (including California).

Also, the report summary stated, “Tweets about Adderall peak sharply during final exam periods.”

Said Hanson: “I’m concerned about the social norm-ing thing. If students perceive (taking stimulant medication) as normal because it’s talked about and tweeted a lot, they’ll take the risk.”

Easy to get

Katharine Beach became addicted when she was a KU student.

“It’s sad how many doctors would fill prescriptions for me,” said Beach, 26 and now clean.

Diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when she was 18, the medication at first helped her focus and stay awake to study. But after she started drinking heavily, Beach chose to give up booze and find a new fix.

“It’s called cross-addiction,” said Beach, who graduated last year with a degree in applied behavioural science.

Student health services at KU required her to jump through too many hoops before filling prescriptions. (“They’re onto students who want something quick,” she said.) So, relying upon private medical clinics in Lawrence, Kansas City and her psychiatrist in Colorado, Beach procured five times the recommended dosage of Adderall to keep her buzz.

“Everyone around me knew I didn’t drink anymore ... but (that) something else was going on,” she said. “I’m positive I would have switched to cocaine or maybe meth down the road.”

Her health insurance carrier got wise and stopped funding her prescriptions. Her parents caught on after Beach maxed out their credit card. She entered treatment and works today at a University of Colorado rehabilitation centre, helping addicts.

Dealing with the consequences

Millions of Americans have taken prescribed ADHD medication – often intermittently – without experiencing negative side effects. But an under-30 generation raised on the practice might not be aware of the dangers of taking even modest dosages without a thorough diagnosis, said psychiatrist Tahir Rahman of the MU School of Medicine.

“If you’re depressive or have bipolar disorder, taking a drug such as Adderall could be throwing gasoline on a fire,” Rahman said.

In the US, the number of emergency room visits related to abuse of ADHD drugs rose to 31,224 in 2010 – more than double the number recorded five years earlier, according to a report released in January.

Such ER visits by people aged 18 to 25 nearly quadrupled during that time, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Association reported.

It is not known how many of those patients were college students.

“I hear students talk about it all the time,” said Kate Baxendale, a junior studying journalism at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She and another student wrote about the problem in the university newspaper after agreeing to not identify stimulant users by name.

Baxendale has never taken Adderall, she said, but others in her dorm have sold it. “At a time like this (finals week), they can sell for US$20 (RM60) a pill,” she said. The sellers ration their prescribed medication because they need some for themselves.

The university’s health services do not have medical doctors to prescribe controlled stimulants, so students taking them must get the drugs elsewhere.

Colleges around the US are tightening their procedures to limit student access to stimulant medicine.

“Some campuses have stopped prescribing stimulants outright,” said Stacy Andes of the American College Health Association. Others, including KU, require students to present copies of at least two diagnostic tests given by doctors or mental-health professionals.

The drugs easily can be obtained off campus in most college towns, said DeSantis of the University of Kentucky. A clinic or family practitioner may ask patients to fill out a questionnaire that asks if they have trouble focusing or completing assignments.

“For the most part, students (seeking medication) know how to answer those questions,” DeSantis said.

Downing Adderall to perform better on tests raises questions beyond medical ones: Is it the educational equivalent of using steroids to cheat in sports? Are students who choose not to use stimulants, or those who can’t afford them, chasing degrees at an unfair disadvantage?

Psychiatrists debate whether the drugs do much at all to help people not diagnosed with ADHD, other than to keep them awake so they can cram for tests.

Girding up for finals in a library study room at UMKC, Govinda Koirala wrinkled his nose when asked if he would ever consider a pharmaceutical boost.

“I drink coffee,” said the junior studying mechanical engineering. “And the latest I stay up studying is 11.30pm,” His secret to academic success? “Just relax. Sleep well. Do what’s good for your mind.”

Must work. Koirala is pulling a 3.91 grade-point average. – The Kansas City Star/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

By RICK MONTGOMERY The Star/Asia News Network

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Exercise can affect your DNA

Exercise doesn't only improve your appearance, it can alter your genes, cutting your risks of obesity and diabetes, a new Swedish study finds.

While inherited DNA cannot be altered, the way that genes express themselves can through exercise, diet, and lifestyle, researchers from Lund University Diabetes Center explained, noting that a workout can positively affect the way cells interact with fat stored in the body.

Lead author Charlotte Ling, associate professor, and her team looked at the DNA of 23 slightly overweight but healthy men aged around 35. The men previously didn't exercise but attended indoor cycling and aerobics classes for six months. “They were supposed to attend three sessions a week, but they went an average 1.8 times,” says associate researcher Tina Rönn.

Using technology that analyses 480,000 positions throughout the genome, they could see that epigenetic changes had taken place in 7,000 genes (an individual has 20,000 to 25,000 genes). A closer look revealed genes linked to diabetes and obesity, also connected to storing fat, had also been altered.

“We found changes in those genes too, which suggests that altered DNA methylation as a result of physical activity could be one of the mechanisms of how these genes affect the risk of disease,” said Rönn.

“This has never before been studied in fat cells. We now have a map of the DNA methylome in fat,” Lind added.

The findings, announced this week, appear online in the journal PLOS Genetics.

A separate study published this March in the journal Cell Metabolism shows that when people exercise for as little as 20 minutes, it can alter their DNA almost immediately. - AFP Relaxnews

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Groom-to-be RM36,000 poorer !

A MAN is now RM36,000 poorer after his bride-to-be conned him, reported Harian Metro. 

The 39-year-old housing contractor had never met the 25-year-old and only knew her through the Internet for six months, the report said.

The woman, whom he met via an online social networking site, claimed to be a trainee doctor who recently graduated from a local university in Penang.

She also claimed to be an orphan and was in financial difficulties. “She made various promises, including her readiness to be my wife.

“That got me concerned and I also felt sorry for her, what more after she told me that her parents had just passed away,” he told the daily.

According to the report, the woman SMSed him on the first day of their online encounter and asked for RM30 as she was short of money.

“A few days later, she said she had some family problems in the village and asked for RM1,000 which I banked in,” he added.

The amount, the report stated, grew over time from RM2,000 right up to RM20,000 purportedly to build a house in the village with promises that the money would be returned once she started working.

“I deposited the money without any suspicion.

“Overall, I deposited RM36,000 into three different accounts involving 64 transactions,” he told the tabloid.

The woman then ignored his calls and later sent him a SMS to state that everything was a lie.

“I was shocked to receive the SMS. I was conned of RM36,000,” he told the daily after lodging a police report in Alor Gajah.

The Star/Asia News Network -Other News & Views
Compiled by FLORENCE A . SAMY, NG SI HOOI and A. RAMAN

Women coax men to seek help for 'manhood problems'

MEN who seek medical help for sexual dysfunction are usually forced by their wives to make the doctor’s appointment, clinical andrologist Dr Mohd Ismail Mohd Tambi told Metro Ahad.

He was quoted as saying that the men would try to avoid consulting medical experts over “manhood problems” because of their ego and fear of embarrassment.

“More women are making the appointments on behalf of their husbands,” he said. “Even on the rare occasions that men themselves seek help, it is because their wives forced them to.”

Men who faced such problems, he said, made matters worse by opting for “short-cuts” by taking pills and other products to “boost their energy”.

These so-called medication, if taken without a doctor’s advice, could even lead to death, Dr Mohd Ismail warned.

Quoting statistics from the latest H4rd Poll by pharmaceutical company Pfizer Malaysia, he said more than 40% of Malaysian men, including those in their 20s, suffered sexual dysfunction.

“Even more shocking, the majority of them can perform for about a minute only,” he said, adding that some wives then resort to divorcing their husbands. “Others have extramarital affairs to satisfy their needs.”

The Star/Asia News Network -Other News & Views
Compiled by NG SI HOOI, P. ARUNA and and A. RAMAN

Misreading of events, the war games: US-Japan 'Dawn Blitz, US-Philippine 'CARAT', Russia-China joint naval drill

 

US - Japan War games: An amphibious vehicle landing on Red Beachat Marine Corps Camp Pendleton - AP

Yet again, unrealistic assumptions about China’s military power are producing unhealthy and unhelpful pronouncements about the region’s future.

FOR two weeks in June, US and Japanese military forces converged on southern California for amphibious war games designed to boost their attack capacity against a third party.

The “Dawn Blitz” exercise near San Diego involved 1,000 Japanese troops with three of their warships and several attack helicopters, and more inputs from the US forces. Mock Air-Sea Battles (ASBs) were staged on San Clemente Island and Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

War games are repeatedly staged between the US and Japan, but Dawn Blitz was the most ambitious yet for Tokyo. For the first time, Japanese troops and warships traversed the Pacific to prepare for war.

Dawn Blitz also saw joint preparations on all planetary fronts: land, sea and air. In involving armies, navies and air forces, it implied plans for more than just strictly “Air-Sea Battles”.

The war games came after China’s re-assertion of sovereignty around the disputed Pinnacle Islands in the East China Sea in April, which China calls Diaoyutai and Japan calls Senkaku. That move in turn came after Japan nationalised the uninhabited islands.

Dawn Blitz also came just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping met his US counterpart Barack Obama in California. How was China’s response to the exercises?

Diplomats and government spokespersons in Beijing remained tight-lipped, as they did in Washington and Tokyo.

However, Japan’s Kyodo News Service, citing unnamed Japanese officials, reported that China had asked the US and Japan to cancel the military exercises. Nobody would confirm or deny that such a request had been made.

It is doubtful if such a request would ever be met. If China showed that the US-Japan military drills were an irritant, there could be more of them.

Last week, a six-day joint military exercise between US and Philippine forces took place in the South China Sea. CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) 2013 came after Manila complained of Chinese assertions of sovereignty over disputed islands, following Philippine moves deemed provocative.

Such exercises have energised Philippine nationalists into thinking that the US would come to the Philippines’ “defence”, however widely defined, in any altercation with a third party.

That assumption has been elevated into an argument for intemperate Filipinos to enlarge and extend military operations in disputed territories. Such actions would never be contemplated without the prospect of US intervention, yet they are based entirely on the untenable presumption that there would surely be such interventions.

Sober observers would question the extent and conditions that would make US military interventions in East Asia compelling. But in the heat of sabre-rattling and self-righteous posturing, sobriety is easily and often lost.

Events that otherwise would be regarded as significant or of interest may also be overlooked. Chinese officials may not be forthcoming with telling remarks on such occasions, but neither are Chinese policymakers standing still.

On the day that US-Philippine drills were launched (June 27), China’s southernmost Hainan province established a “maritime fishery resource breeding and research base” in the waters of Zhongsha Islands or Macclesfield Bank.

The islands are claimed by China and Taiwan, with conflicting reports of whether the Philippines also claims them. Complicating the issue is the fact that the “islands” are not really islands because they are completely submerged, so that territorial claims over them are inadmissible under UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea).

Nonetheless, Philippine nationalists who are not otherwise distracted might find cause to be alarmed by the establishment of a Chinese “base” in such a place at such a time. Notwithstanding the innocuous official purposes of fishery resource breeding and research, it is a timely observation post in a strategic location.

But if Philippine or Japanese nationalists are hunting for hotter, full-blooded causes to rant over, they will have little difficulty after the joint military exercises with the US.

On Friday, China and Russia launched military drills in Peter the Great Bay and the Sea of Japan. Already, the occasion has prompted speculation about a “China threat”.

Beijing and Moscow see it differently, of course. For other countries in the region, if the US and Japan or the Philippines can do it, why not Russia and China?

Officials in Beijing and Moscow see their military exercises as safeguarding the peace, security and sovereignty of the region. They also say that the drills are routine, and set in “the context of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries”.



An objective account of the situation would approach the following positions.

First, no country or alliance of countries can have a monopoly of conducting military exercises permitted under international law. Such drills have happened before and will continue to happen.

Second, military exercises by allies tend to “inspire” similar exercises by others. Ultimately it should not matter who started them, only that they be conducted lawfully and peaceably.

Third, a question: do war games promote or threaten peace? Unless a prevailing peace has clearly been broken as a result, the answer may seem moot or academic.

Seen from several angles, tensions in parts of the South China Sea and adjacent waters have lately provoked discussion of the prospect of war involving the US and China.

That prospect is currently most improbable. Yet however unlikely a development, there are those in some of the interested countries already contemplating it.

Given a choice, neither China nor the US will want to consider waging war with the other. However, the prospect is increased when third countries attempting to further their national interests oblige the US to intervene in regional disputes.

Some analysts promote such dire outcomes with three narrow outlooks.

The first assumes that Chinese military upgrades in recent years resulted directly from such events as the 1996 US show of force in the Taiwan Straits, following Chinese missile tests and military exercises in the area. But major policy decisions like military modernisation have more complex roots than that.

China has for decades endured an outdated military infrastructure and hardware, even as it remained bogged down with an oversized army in need of retraining. Economic growth has enabled the sea change, beginning with demobilisation to cut down staff numbers while relying more on technology.

The second unhelpful assumption is more specific: that China’s military modernisation is focused on anti-access or anti-denial capabilities. Thus Chinese forces are seen to be concentrating on blocking the movements of US forces as the dominant power in East Asia.

Such an analysis typically neglects considering how China’s military development spans a range of offensive and defensive functions, including but not necessarily being obsessed with blocking US military manoeuvres. But negative readings will in turn spawn negative outcomes, making for self-fulfilling prophecies.

The third misreading of events presumes that China seeks to challenge and replace US military domination of the region. But why would savvy and pragmatic Chinese leaders want to incur the high costs of doing that, when US naval patrols in the Pacific are already safeguarding shipping routes in serving various national interests, particularly China’s?

Military exercises have a logic of quantity, that is more of them will beget even more of them. But sound analysis needs a logic of quality, where common and easy assumptions are critically and continually questioned.

Behind the headlines by Bunn Bagara

> Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

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