The Drug Addiction; The Problem of Obesity | Discussion

Draper, J. (2017). Cocaine addicts could be at a higher risk of DEMENTIA due to a build-up of iron in their brain, Mail Online. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4245618/Cocaine-use-raises-risk-dementia.html

The negative impact of the drug addiction on the psychological condition and physical health of addicts is well-known, but J. Draper refers to the recent study which reveals the possible connection between the cocaine addiction and the risk of the development of dementia. The author of the article provides a brief description of the study and its main findings. The main idea is the revelation of the increased amount of iron in the blood of cocaine addicts. The author argues that the elevated level of iron may trigger the development of serious health problems like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. However, the overall conclusion the author makes is uncertain because the author argues that the mechanism of the development of the Parkison’s disease is different from the mechanism traced in cocaine addicts. Even though both the cocaine addiction and the Parkinson’s disease involve the elevated level of iron, the latter still has a different mechanism of the progress of the disease compared to the mechanism observed in cocaine addicts. Such a conclusion questions the main idea of the entire article clearly stated at the beginning of the article and in the title of the article that the cocaine addiction increases the level of iron in blood and, thus, increases the risk of the development of dementia.

Therefore, the author of the article omits a considerable part of the scientific study he refers to in his article that results in such a confusion and the obvious gap between the thesis statement and the conclusion made by the author. At the same time, the author does not provide details of the study, including very fragmentary information about participants of the study, methodology used and essence of the study. Instead, the author of the article reduces the article and the analysis of the study to the basic identification of the purpose of the study and discussion of conclusions of the study which turn out to be highly controversial.

However, the author does not provide the detailed analysis of the study and behavioral changes that occur to drug addicts under the impact of changes in the blood and brain as noticed by the study discussed by the author. At the same time, major causes and motivations of drug addiction discussed above can provoke and stimulate the development of drug addiction, but, in actuality, the development of drug addiction is much more complicated process and takes certain time. In this respect, it should be said that it is consistently easier to solve the problem of drug addiction at the early stages of its development.

First of all, it should be said that the development of drug addiction actually starts from the moment when an individual takes a drug for the first time. In fact, this moment is often considered to be insignificant because people are convinced that they will never be drug addicts if they just try to take some drugs. However, this is a very dangerous moment because drugs may involve an individual. It is very important that an individual could cope with the desire to continue his/her experience of drug consumption because the further consumption of drugs contributes to the development of a habit and an individual takes drugs regularly.

This stage is consistently worse compared to the previous one because the regular consumption of drugs is the indicator of drug addiction. In actuality, this means that an individual develops a physiological dependence on drugs. As a rule, people start from light drugs that do not produce a profound impact on their psychological, physical and mental health. At the beginning, people using drugs can have the feeling of euphoria that stimulates the further consumption of drugs. Gradually, people become dependent on the drug consumption. However, in the course of time, drugs do not produce the desirable effect that forces drug addicts to experiment and consume new drugs and increase their dose. Naturally, such experiments produce a destructive impact on their health and undermine not only physical but also psychological and mental state of a drug addict.

Eventually, the drug consumption does not bring the desirable euphoria. Instead, it becomes a physiological necessity to consume drugs and increases the dosage. In such a way, a drug addict turns to be in a kind of vicious circle since he/she may be willing to stop taking drugs but he/she cannot do it because of the profound physiological changes and the lack of moral and spiritual power to give up taking drugs. In such a situation, an individual apparently needs psychological and even medical help in order to overcome drug addiction that implies the change of the lifestyle of the individual.

In this respect, it should be said that the change of the lifestyle is an essential condition of the solution of the problem of drug addiction because this problem affects dramatically the behavior of people. To put it more precisely, at the early stages of the consumption of drugs, the behavior of an individual starts to change. Basically, the change occurs under the impact of drugs that stimulates self-assurance of an individual and makes his/her behavior more aggressive and challenging. In fact, an individual can hardly control his/her actions, especially in the state of intoxication. Gradually, the behavior of an individual becomes more and more unpredictable.

At the same time, the longer an individual takes drug the more dramatic are the changes in his/her behavior. To put it more precisely, at the beginning of drug addiction, some elements of anti-social or illogical behavior may be observed basically when an individual is in the state of intoxication. However, as he/she becomes more dependent on drug consumption, the need in drugs increases. This means that the individual needs to take drugs more often and in larger doses. This stimulates the aggressiveness of an individual provoked by the lack of drugs and physiological need in drugs. As a result, the behavior of an individual becomes not only extremely aggressive but also unpredictable.

Furthermore, it should be said that the social behavior of an individual is characterized by the growing isolation of the drug addict from his social environment. As the matter of fact, unpredictable and aggressive behavior naturally leads to the destruction of the traditional social links an individual had before the development of drug addiction. In this respect, it is not only friends and colleagues of a drug addict that suffer from negative changes in his/her behavior but it is primarily his/her family that becomes the first victim of drug addiction. Many specialists (Leavitt, 2003) point out that often drug addiction leads to the destruction of families, increases divorce rates and provokes conflicts within families. Naturally, a drug addict can potentially be left alone with his/her problem.

At the same time, isolation of a drug addict is only a part of his/her problem. The growing need in drugs naturally stimulates the individual to spend more money on the acquisition of drugs. Gradually, this burden becomes financially unaffordable for a drug addict that forces him/her to commit crimes in order to gain more money and get another dose of drugs (Wolf, 2002, p.152). In such a way, a drug addict gradually transforms in an anti-social personality that represents a serious threat not only to his/her social environment but to him-/herself as well because cases of suicide among drug addicts are not rare.

The author of the article does not get deeper into the essence of the problem. He does not refer to other studies which reveal many noteworthy facts about behavioral as well as physiological changes in drug and cocaine addicts, in particular, as discussed above. Therefore, the author of the article misses the methodology and detailed information on conditions of the study and how results of the study were obtained. The information granted by the author of the article is superficial. This is why arguments and conclusion made by J. Draper is quite controversial. The one fact that is certain and clear is that the cocaine addiction raises the level of iron in addicts, but whether the cocaine addiction leads to dementia or not is still unclear and conclusions made by the author are not persuading.

Seeber, E. (2017). Study finds increased risk of obesity in working night shifts, Perth Now. Retrieved from https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/study-finds-increased-risk-of-obesity-in-working-night-shifts-ng-3ccd0e88b7e2d5d5196b858675a7121a

Obesity is a serious problem that threatens not only to the individual but also to the public health. In such a context, the article written by E. Seeber is particularly noteworthy because it gives insights into possible causes and risk factors that may trigger obesity. The author of the article refers to one of the recent studies, which explored the impact of working night shifts on the development of obesity. The article provides a brief description of the study with the focus on the purpose of the study, a brief description of the population involved in the study, and the key findings of the study. The author of the article reduces the analysis of the study to convey what she believes to be the most important findings and facts about the study. This is why the author leads the audience to the conclusion that working night shifts is a risk factor that may trigger obesity because of the slowdown of metabolism.

Findings of the study are very important and E. Seeber agrees that the finding of the study she discusses in her article challenge conventional view on obesity. However, the author does not provide the detailed analysis of other factors, namely food habits and lifestyle of people, as major factors that contribute to obesity. Instead, she focuses on metabolism changes in people working night shifts as the risk factor. In this regard, the study of other factors is also very important, and the author should not reduce her study to one risk factor because other risk factors could also impact change in people working night shifts. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that, in actuality, fast food is one of the major causes of the development of obesity. Fast food contains a large amount of fats and low amount of protein. As a result, the accumulation of fats in human body leads to the development of obesity. The weight of an individual increases that leads to the development of obesity. Fast food may also trigger metabolic changes but the author does not provide detailed information whether participants of the study, who were involved in the experiment, stick to any diet or not. If not, they could be vulnerable to the negative impact of fast food and unhealthy eating and that unhealthy behavior could have been just aggravated by conditions of the experiment that resulted in the slowdown of metabolism. The author of the article just omits such details of the experiment she discusses and just mentions basic findings of the study.

In addition, contemporary people tend to lead a sedative lifestyle. The development of new technologies, automation of production processes, and consistent changes in the technological environment decreased the level of physical activities and increased the sedative lifestyle. For instance, a manager working in an office spends his/her working hours in the office working with clients and using PC or laptop that means that the manager sits and does little physical activities. When the manager comes home, he/she watches TV, uses his/her PC or laptop, and carries on avoid physical activities. Such lifestyle has become a norm for many people. People do little physical activities at work as well as at home. As a result, they do not use the energy accumulated within human body after the consumption of food that leads to the development of obesity.

At this point, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that the development of obesity increases the risk of the development of many health problems. In this regard, the development of cardiovascular diseases is closely intertwined with obesity. In addition, obesity can lead to the development of other health problems, including problems affecting the skeleton, breathing and other vitally important systems of human body. Therefore, obesity provokes a consistent deterioration of health of individuals and public health at large.

The deterioration of health provoked by obesity increases the costs spent on health care services because the treatment of health care problems provoked by obesity increases the spending on health care services. Patients with obesity need more expensive treatment because they have multiple health problems provoked by obesity. However, high health care costs are unaffordable for many people because they cannot cover their health care insurance and pay for essential health care services. In such a way, obesity increases the pressure on the national health care system.

Hence, the prevention of obesity is essential for the improvement of the public health and prevention of development of numerous health problems in individuals. The prevention of obesity is more efficient than its treatment because, if an individual has already got overweight, he/she may have considerable problems with the treatment of obesity and its negative effects. Therefore, the prevention of obesity helps individuals to prevent the development of other health problems. The prevention of obesity is helpful and less costly compared to the treatment of obesity and related health problems.

In such a situation, the prevention of obesity should start from the realization of the health problem. In fact, often people refuse from recognizing the fact that they suffer from obesity. Instead, they believe that they can lose weight any time they wish. However, in actuality, they cannot lose weight easily because it needs a lot of efforts to lose weight fast. Moreover, overweighed individuals need to have special diet and workout program to lose weight.

In fact, dieting is an important part of losing weight and preventing obesity. In this regard, individuals should refuse from fast food and consume healthy food instead to prevent obesity. The healthy food involves the balanced nutrition, including fruit and vegetables, organic food and the ban of fast food. In such a way, people can lose their weight as they consume low-fat and low-calories food.

In addition, people need to work out and to lead active lifestyle. Physical exercises are crucial for the prevention of obesity. As individuals do physical exercises or any physical activities, they burn calories and lose their weight. Hence, they prevent the development of obesity and become healthier because physical activities have positive effects on vitally important systems of human body.

However, E. Seeber provides rather superficial analysis of the problem of obesity and prefers to omit the nutrition and lifestyle as causes of obesity. Instead, she draws the attention of the audience to findings of the specific study, which she describes in her article. Such reductionism is misleading because readers may believe that working night shifts may be a serious or even the major risk factor, whereas nutrition and lifestyle are still the major, determinant factors that lead to the development of obesity, as the analysis of other studies shows, whereas working night shifts is just another risk factor.

References:

Addiction Research Foundation. (1997). Co-occurring Mental Disorders and Addictions: Scientific Evidence on Epidemiology and Treatment Outcomes. Toronto : Addiction Research Foundation.

Beaudoin, C. (1997). A Comparison of In-treatment Female Alcoholics and Female Alcoholics from the General Population. Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba.

Blood, L. (1995). Choices Program: A Treatment Outcome Study: Preliminary Results. Nova Scotia Department of Health, Drug Dependency Services.

Draper, J. (2017). Cocaine addicts could be at a higher risk of DEMENTIA due to a build-up of iron in their brain, Mail Online. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4245618/Cocaine-use-raises-risk-dementia.html

Haden, M. (1997). Program Evaluation Report: The Central Clinic. Alcohol and Drug Services, Ministry for Children and Families, Province of British Columbia.

Harvey-Jensen, Z.A. (1995). Adolescent Treatment: Excellence Through Evaluation. Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission.

Koob, G.F. (1997). “The Neurobiology of Drug Addiction.” J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci; 9:482-497 [1]

Nestler, E. and Malenka, R. (Mar. 2004). “The Addicted Brain”. Scientific American, pg. 78-83.

Leavitt, F. (2003). The Real Drug Abusers. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Wilbur, B.D. (1997). Health Standards: Edition 1. Public Health Services and Drug D ependency Services. Nova Scotia Department of Health.

Wolf, M. (2002). “Addiction: Making the Connection Between Behavioral Changes and Neuronal Plasticity.” in Specific Pathways Molecular Interventions, 2:146-157.

Seeber, E. (2017). Study finds increased risk of obesity in working night shifts, Perth Now. Retrieved from https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/study-finds-increased-risk-of-obesity-in-working-night-shifts-ng-3ccd0e88b7e2d5d5196b858675a7121a

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
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[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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