Drug Abuse in College – How to Get Your Loved Ones Back

Violence is breaking out due to gang wars over drug territory. Are your kids in college safe from this?
Over 75 college students were arrested in San Diego State University in May 2008, for drug dealing on campus. 2 kilograms of cocaine, ecstasy pills, marijuana, illicit prescription drugs, meth, psychedelic mushrooms, guns etc were seized by police.
One half of all college students binge drink, abuse pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs. (ref: National Center on Addiction & Substance Abuse or CASA).
College can be a great place to get an education, but if a loved one has drug abuse problems, you should be planning their rehab program 1st. I’ve sent many college students to long-term drug rehab programs that use the social / educational model of recovery after drug abuse was discovered to be ruining a young person’s life.
College students seem to do very well with social / educational methods of rehab as they aren’t expected to admit they are powerless over their addiction. In fact the opposite is true. Social / Education rehab models consider a drug abuser is completely responsible for their drug abuse – but their lives are simply out of control.
What Drugs Of Abuse Should You Be Concerned About?
College students abused pharmaceuticals at higher rates than drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. Pain killing pharma had a 343% increase in abuse amongst students. (ref: CASA)
Anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax and Valium had a 450% rise in abuse in the college crowd.
Often drugs like Xanax are used to mask the after effect symptoms of meth and cocaine. So again, Rx use can be a visible indicator of other drug abuse as well.
Drug & Alcohol Abuse Damages The Mind
Drug abuse creates inabilities to differentiate between actuality and delusion. Drug users are purposefully imposing delusion into their lives with drug use. They only get upset when they no longer know the difference between reality and illusion. The line of reality slides over gradually, rarely all of a sudden.
What are the indicators of drug abuse?
The biggest indicators of college drug abuse are slides down of GPA and inability to handle course loads anymore. Communication level and frequency changes when people move from use to abuse. It often looks like depression or apathy or loss of goals in life. Those are symptoms of drug / alcohol abuse as well.
However, the biggest indications of drug abuse is lack of communication, lying and avoiding specific questions from parents or family members. Do your kids resist coming home or having you see them on campus? All these types of behaviors are indications of drug abuse.
Does Drug Rehab Work For College Students?
Yes, absolutely and work well. But if a rehab program hasn’t worked for you in the past, meaning they’ve relapsed, you need to re-evaluate the types of programs available. There is more than one way to achieve success in life and more than several ways to end drug addiction.
But be sure the goal of the program and your loved one is to end their drug addiction for real.
Determining the goal of the drug rehab model as well as the goals of the college student goes a long way in starting on the road to straight living and often straight A’s.

Eldercare Solutions For the Sandwich Generation

Ava has flute lessons at 4:00. Dad has a doctor’s appointment at 5:00. And you have no clue what you’re going to whip up for dinner. As a member of the sandwich generation-those who care for both their children as well as their aging parents-you’re in a unique situation. You’ll feel stress in your mind, your body, and even your pocketbook. This guide will help you assemble an eldercare solutions team that can make you feel a little less sandwiched.
Non-medical in-home care
In-home care providers are a favorite solution for many children caring for aging parents. These companies offer a wide variety of services designed to enhance to help your parent in the tasks of everyday living. Professional in-home care can provide assistance with bathing or toileting. They can also perform light housekeeping, such as changing linens or unloading groceries. What’s more, these companies offer companion eldercare solutions services. That means Dad has someone to play checkers with while you’re at a day-long conference.
Adult day care and other senior activities
From day trips to the local tourist trap to water aerobics, you can find a number of local services to keep Mom or Dad active. Church groups and social service agencies are two good sources for activity-related eldercare solutions. Your local agency on aging can also provide a list of resources for you to contact.
Family and Friends
Many of us have a circle of family and friends-and when it comes to caring for aging parents, it’s important to tap into that resource. Have a family meeting to decide how each person can help. Maybe your retired Aunt can become Mom’s taxi service. Perhaps your spouse can take over cooking one night a week. Teens can take on responsibility, too, by picking up prescriptions or taking over one of your typical household chores.
Even if your family consists simply of you and your aging parent, you can still find solutions to make your life less stressful. For instance, ask a neighbor to watch a movie with Dad while you slip away for dinner. If help with household stuff will help make caring for aging parents easier, ask a church youth group if they’d be willing to trim the fire bushes. Have a neighbor with a ladder? Exchange a home-cooked meal for clean gutters.
Professional Services
Caring for aging parents comes with a price tag, especially if you’re part of the sandwich generation. Experts estimate it costs more than $16,000 a year to pay for child care and elder care. That’s why it’s important to enlist the help of professionals who can help guide you through the numbers. Consult a financial advisor who has experience in eldercare solutions.
Remember to ask your parents about getting legal advice regarding living wills and medical powers of attorney. Putting these documents into place now, when your parent is still relatively health, can save the family future heartache and conflict when a serious illness strikes.
Don’t let the stress of raising children and caring for aging parents take its toll on your life. By planning and finding the right kind of help, you can find an eldercare solution you and your aging parent can live with.

The Secret to Getting Your Aging Parents to Accept Eldercare Services – Start With Their Pets

Your parents need more help than they’re willing to admit. They bristle at the thought of elder care services and independent living programs, and they have fired all the in-home helpers and housekeepers you’ve hired for them. How might you prevail upon them to accept some assistance? Ask them about their pets.
They surely want the best for their animals and might be willing to let somebody take their dog for an occasional romp or change the litter box a couple of times a week.
Pet owners often make decisions about their own health and circumstances based on the impact the decisions would have on their pets. “I can’t go into the hospital over night for the test the doctor ordered-who would feed and walk Fluffy?” Your parents might welcome assistance that would make it easier to keep the animal at home and in good health and spirits. And, accepting help for the pet is easier than admitting you need help yourself. Still, help is help, and accepting help for the pet is a face-saving way to ease in to help for oneself.
There are various dog walking and pet sitting services, and some are fully bonded and insured. Local animal shelters and veterinary practices have referral lists. Neighbors with pets probably have recommendations too. A responsible teenage neighbor looking for pocket money might also be a good resource.
When was the last time your parents’ pet went to the vet for an exam and shots? Getting an animal into a carrier is hard enough for many pet owners in the prime of their-and their pet’s-life. It may well be impossible for your parents to catch the cat, put it in the carrier and carry the carrier to the car they shouldn’t be driving anyway.
The way to make assistance tolerable is to get clear and detailed information about what your parents want help with and how they want to be helped. Starting with a topic they’re willing to consider, help with a trip to the vet, you can follow this good experience with others like help with shopping and eventually with in-home help.
Do your parents want help with:
• Walking the pet
• Feeding and watering the pet
• Cleaning up after the pet, inside or out
• Getting the pet ready to go to the vet
• Taking the pet to the vet
• Staying with the pet if your parent is out of town or in the hospital?
No matter how experienced the provider of eldercare services is, he/she cannot anticipate each client’s preferences and may not ask in sufficient detail to get adequate information. Use these questions to help your parents get clear on exactly what they want help with and how they want to be helped, and to train the helper so he/she can provide elder care services they will accept.

Natural Health Treatments Are Most Effective When Using Homeopathy

Natural health treatments are best treated when the whole of you is taken into consideration. Typical health treatments isolate parts of you, dealing only with your eye, your big toe, you digestion, etc. But how can this make sense, bearing in mind the whole of you is all connected?
Let’s look at a more efficient way of considering the whole of you in your treatment.
Consider shock. Initially this can cause an increase in your heart rate, make you sweat more, make you extremely anxious, agitated and restless. Your body is preparing you for flight – to flee from a potentially dangerous situation. However, often shock comes after the danger has passed, such as in a bad accident. Fleeing is no longer necessary, although it would have resolved the shock.
This unresolved shock remains in your system forever, unless it is energetically treated. This can lead to ailments such as high blood pressure, panic attacks, heart conditions and other serious health issues.
But by resolving the shock with an energetic health care modality such as homeopathy, the related health issues are also resolved.
Homeopathy works at an energetic level, which is highly appropriate given that you are an energy being. Many people find this concept hard to understand, in this current climate where the focus of ill health is on the physical, or outside forces. However, natural treatments as a whole, and homeopathy in particular, understand that this is a very limited way of looking at health. And normally, an ineffective one.
It does mean a change of mindset. But given the fact that worldwide health is at an all time low even, or perhaps especially, in those countries where medicine has never been more available, it may be a long overdue change.

Fast Food Statistics – Choices Matter

Fast food statistics let us know that fast food can be an unhealthy option. A quickie burger is a popular choice among people who don’t want to cook, or who are under time pressures and don’t have time to cook. But instead of buying takeout why not make your own fast meals at home?
What’s in a Fast Meal?
Here is a quick statistic on a fast food meal. A cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake have around 1,000 calories. About 17% percent of those calories are from protein, which is not too bad. But around 39% of those calories are from saturated fat and that’s not good. And around 44% are from refined carbohydrates, which is constipating and fattening.
Too much saturated fat in the diet causes high levels of cholesterol in the blood and risk of heart disease. Children may quickly burn up calories from fat in a typical fast food meal, but for most adults those calories quickly turn to body fat and cellulite.
Nutrition of Fast Food
A regular portion of fries has about 210 calories and 10 grams of fat. A 4-ounce hamburger, without the cheese has around 420 calories and 20 grams of fat, plus a whopping 690 grams of sodium! Yikes that is a lot of sodium for a small hamburger. A medium soft drink boasts about 210 calories and 50 of those calories are from sugar.
Eating fast food is a convenient way to grab a bite, but fast food in undeniably unhealthy in many ways. Fast food does not have any fiber whatsoever, which leads to constipation that can later develop into colon cancer. The saturated fat content of fast food is not healthy for the heart. It’s never a good idea to eat fast food more than a couple of times a month, and for some people, never.
Making Your Own Fast Meal
If you enjoy eating hamburgers once in awhile, the alternative is to make your own. Mix ½ pound ground meat with ½ pound ground turkey. Add seasonings of your choice. Form into patties and broil in the oven. Take two whole potatoes and wash and scrub thoroughly. Cut potatoes into French fry wedges. Toss some olive oil, sea salt and paprika on the potatoes and bake for 45 minutes at 400-degrees.
Time Saving Tips
The rush, rush mentality of society has made many people flock to the nearest fast food joint for meals. But there are healthy eating alternatives. Here are a few tips:
If you live close to your work, simply go home for lunch. If you don’t have the luxury of working close to home, bring lunch to work with you.
If you have to eat out, choose a salad bar, soup, or light sandwich. Bring your own salad dressing with you instead of using those fattening creamy dressings.
Have a well-stocked pantry at home full of healthful foods such as beans, brown rice, pasta and other whole grains. When you cook, make more than you will need and freeze the rest in individual servings for work or when you don’t feel like cooking.
Be prepared. Make lists of what you are going to eat throughout the week. On the night before going to work do most of the prep work, so when you come home from work all you have to do is cook the food.
Cook in your crock-pot. The crock-pot does the cooking for you.

3 Big Reasons To Avoid Digestive Health Medicine

Due to our unhealthy western diet and it’s highly processed foods that many of us eat too regularly, we now have more disease and digestive disorders than ever before in known human history. This downward health spiral has worked out well for the medical industry and pharmaceutical industry. They have a digestive health medicine that can treat every problem you have.
The operative word here being “treat”, not cure. Our health industry is not interested in finding a cure for anything, that’s not what brings in the business.
Let’s take constipation as an example
Constipation is one of the most common digestive disorders we have. If you search for a medicine for it you will be prescribed or guided to several products like:

  • bowel cleaning solutions
  • bulk-forming laxatives
  • fecal softeners
  • stimulant laxatives
  • 5HT4-receptor agonists
  • peripheral opioid-receptor antagonists

All these categories have many products that are all made with drugs. Most of these problems can not only be treated by most people by diet, but most likely cured for good. There are several problems with treating these symptoms with drugs;
1. Drugs can never cure your problem, they can only provide temporary relief for the symptoms until they hit you again.
2. All drugs come with the possibility of negative adverse side effects.
3. Drugs will cause other symptoms unrelated to the symptom they were made to treat, causing you to seek out yet another prescription for another drug that will create another problem.
This is happening everywhere. There are more people on medication now than ever before. Many people are and will be, many unnecessarily, on medication for the rest of their lives. Your doctor is more than happy to prescribe a medication as long as you need it, and once you start, you will always need it.
Natural treatments door digestive health problems
Let’s look at the above list again. Do you really want to take a drug as a bulk-forming laxative? Over-use of laxatives can lead to serious side effects;

  • they can cause kidney stones or failure
  • they can body dehydration and rob it from vitamins and minerals
  • they can damage bowel function
  • pro-longed use can eventually make them stop working altogether

How about dietary fibers we can get from eating all-natural grains such as unrefined oats, barley and the best one of all; bran. Not only will these build up bulk in the intestinal tract, but will also leave your body with digestive enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Consume plenty dietary fiber and you won’t need stimulant laxatives or fecal softeners, or bowel cleaning solutions.

Affordable Dental Care – Top 3 Ways Of Having Affordable Dental Care

The lack of affordable dental care has cause people to go without seeing a dentist. This can lead to tooth decay and gum disease. These types of problems can lead to other health care problems like infections if untreated. It can also be painful and costly if dental problems continue to go untreated.
By getting the proper affordable treatment it can protect you from tooth decay and gum disease. There are a lot of procedures that can help you save money. By practicing basic dental care it can save fewer trips to the dentist office. An excellent way to start would be to develop healthier dental hygiene.
Affordable Dental Care-Checkups
Routine checks up can help make dental care more affordable by getting your teeth examine and clean. It is recommended to see a dentist twice a year. A dentist can detect any oral health problems in the early stage. A routine checkup may include cleaning, polishing, prevention, and X-rays.
Affordable Dental Care- Good Brushing
Brushing is an additional key to keeping affordable dental care because it prevents cavities and reduces the chances of tooth decay. Brushing can prevent bad breathe too. Regular brushing can help slow down the time spent with visiting a dentist. Besides making your teeth last forever, you can save money by preventing dental problems and reduce any other dental procedures. Overall it is important to have proper oral health care.
Affordable Dental Care – Dental Discount Plan
A good quality discount dental plan that is not insurance can be a perfect way to getting affordable dental care. A membership fee is usually paid by a consumer who wants to receive dental treatments for a discount. There are no insurance companies involved with a discount dental plan. The discount plan will cut down the cost. If you can’t afford dental insurance then this may benefit because it beats having nothing at all.

Suffering From Drug Abuse

Many people do not realize that they suffer from drug abuse problems. There are many different substances that count as drugs. Abusing these substances might only mean using them to a degree more than they were intended.
For instance, caffeine is a drug. There are many different ways that a human being can take caffeine into their body. In this day and age there are like five different kinds of energy drinks at any gas station market. Each of these energy drinks will contain a high amount of caffeine. If someone were to drink many of these energy drinks in one day, then they would be suffering from drug abuse. Still, if someone asked them if they had a problem with abuse, they might not think that they do.
There are definitely harsher forms of abuse than caffeine abuse. Hardcore drugs have the potential to wreck the human body a lot more than the lesser drugs. Still, the lesser drugs can harm the body quite a bit as well.
The problem is that some people associate drug abuse with illegal drugs. There are many drugs that are very legal to buy. These drugs can be abused. What it all boils down to is that everyone has to be careful about what they take into their body. The government isn’t going to make everything that’s bad for the body illegal. Instead, they are going to leave some decisions up to the people. That means that people need to be learned enough to figure out what they should or shouldn’t take into their body.
Sometimes people are having an illegal abuse problem without even knowing about it. When a doctor prescribes a certain amount of medication, it is illegal to go beyond the prescribed amount. There are many people who don’t seem to think there is a problem with this. In fact, there are some doctors who make a living on over-prescribing people medication. They are actually helping people with their abuse.
I feel that part of thing that drives abuse in middle class society is the fact that moderately wealthy to extremely wealthy people don’t think that they can have a drug abuse problem. They think they are somehow above the entire drug abuse situation.
That’s just not true. Anyone who has access to drugs can have an abuse problem. Drugs are incredibly addictive, and so everyone is subject to having a problem with them. The sooner high society admits that they suffer from drug abuse as much as everyone else, the sooner we can all start solving this problem together.
Still, this won’t happen until drug abuse is more clearly defined for people. Simply put: drug abuse is abusing drugs. Legal drugs that are overused are being abused. It’s as simple as that. The problem with most types of drugs is that they are so addictive that people can’t help but take more of them than they should. This is why abuse is even a problem.