Effective Addiction Treatment – Principle Procedures Discussed

Brain

Principles of Effective Drug Addiction Treatment . If addicted seek help from the experts

Addiction is a devastating health condition even though it is treatable; it is an illness which affects the brain function and behavior by making alterations in the brain structures and functions which then results into changes running long after recovery from the drug addiction. This may explain why recovering drug addicts are at risk for relapse even after long periods of abstinence and notwithstanding the potentially devastating consequences.

Complexity

Due to its complexity, there is no single treatment which is applicable for everyone. Amalgamating various treatment settings, interventions, and services to an individual’s specific problems and needs is critical to their eventual success in returning to productive functioning in the family, workplace, and to the society.

Accessibility

Treatment should be accessible because an addict may not be keen about entering treatment, maximizing on the readily available services the moment people are ready for treatment is critical. Potential patients can be lost if treatment is not readily accessible. As with other chronic diseases, the earlier treatment is administered the better.

Multiple needs

Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just their drug addictions. To be realistic treatment must address the individual’s drug abuse and any related medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems. It is also important that treatment be appropriate to the individual’s age and gender.

Treatment duration

The duration of treatment will depend on the individual’s needs and the level of their addiction. Studies has established that drug addicts require at least 3 months in treatment to significantly reduce or stop their drug use however the best recovery is realized with longer durations of treatment. Recovery from drug addiction is often a long term process and frequently requires multiple episodes of treatment. As with other chronic illnesses, relapses to drug abuse can occur and should signal a need for treatment to be reinstated or adjusted. Because individuals often leave treatment prematurely, programs should include strategies to engage and keep patients in treatment.

Counseling

Individual or group counseling and other behavioral therapies are the most commonly used forms of drug abuse treatment. Behavioral therapies vary in their focus and may involve addressing a patient’s motivation to change, providing incentives for abstinence, building skills to resist drug use, replacing drug-using activities with constructive and rewarding activities, improving solution finding skills, and facilitating better interpersonal relationships. Also, participation in group therapy and other peer support programs during and following treatment can help maintain abstinence.

Medication

Medications are an important element of treatment for many patients, especially when combined with counseling and other behavioral therapies. For example, methadone and buprenorphine are effective in helping heroin addicts or other opioids stabilize their lives and reduce their illicit drug use. Naltrexone is also an effective medication for some opioid-addicted individuals and some patients with alcohol dependence. Other medications for alcohol dependence include acamprosate, disulfiram, and topiramate. For people addicted to nicotine, a nicotine replacement product (like patches, gum, or lozenges) or an oral medication (such as bupropion or varenicline) can be an effective component of treatment when part of a comprehensive behavioral treatment program.

Assessment

An individual’s treatment and services plan must be assessed continually and modified as necessary to ensure that it meets his or her changing needs. A patient may require varying combinations of services and treatment components during the course of treatment and recovery. In addition to counseling or psychotherapy, a patient may require medication, medical services, family therapy, parenting instruction, vocational rehabilitation, and/or social and legal services. For many patients, a continuing care approach provides the best results, with the treatment intensity varying according to a person’s changing needs.

Mental disorders

Many drug-addicted individuals also have other mental disorders. Because drug abuse and addiction both of which are mental disorders—often co-occur with other mental illnesses, patients presenting with one condition should be assessed for the other(s). And when these problems co-occur, treatment should address both (or all), including the use of medications as appropriate.

Detoxification

Medically assisted detoxification is only the first stage of addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long-term drug abuse. Although medically assisted detoxification can safely manage the acute physical symptoms of withdrawal and, for some, can pave the way for effective long-term addiction treatment, detoxification alone is rarely sufficient to help addicted individuals achieve long-term abstinence. Thus, patients should be encouraged to continue drug treatment following detoxification. Motivational enhancement and incentive strategies, begun at initial patient intake, can improve treatment engagement.

Effectiveness

Treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective. Sanctions or enticements from family, employment settings or the criminal justice system can significantly increase treatment entry, retention rates, and the ultimate success of drug treatment interventions.

Monitoring

Drug use during treatment must be monitored continuously, as lapses during treatment do occur. Knowing their drug use is being monitored can be a powerful incentive for patients and can help them withstand urges to use drugs. Monitoring also provides an early indication of a return to drug use, signaling a possible need to adjust an individual’s treatment plan to better meet his or her needs.

Treatment Programs

Treatment programs should assess patients for the presence of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases as well as provide targeted risk-reduction counseling to help patients modify or change behaviors that place them at risk of contracting or spreading infectious diseases. Typically, drug abuse treatment addresses some of the drug-related behaviors that put people at risk of infectious diseases. Targeted counseling specifically focused on reducing infectious disease risk can help patients further reduce or avoid substance-related and other high-risk behaviors. Counseling can also help those who are already infected to manage their illness. Moreover, engaging in substance abuse treatment can facilitate adherence to other medical treatments. Patients may be reluctant to accept screening for HIV (and other infectious diseases); therefore, it is incumbent upon treatment providers to encourage and support HIV screening and inform patients that highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has proven effective in combating HIV including among drug abusing populations.

Finally these are just a few notable principals of helping yourself be free from drug addiction however it will be necessary that you seek professional advice from the experts like doctor Dalal Akoury who has been in the addiction discipline for over two decades helping people the world over. Doctor Akoury also founded AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center where together with her team of experts are focusing on Neuroendocrine Restoration (NER) to reinstate normality through realization of the oneness of Spirit, Mind, and Body, Unifying the threesome into ONE.

Effective Drug Addiction Treatment – Principles Procedures Discussed

Low Dose Chemo and Cancer Treatment

June 28, 2014

Low dose chemo is an effective alternative cancer treatment approach

Insulin potentiation therapy (IPT) is the utilization of low doses of chemotherapy and insulin in treatment of cancer. The insulin potentiation therapy may also be used in treatment of other chronic diseases. The use of low dose chemotherapy is safer as compared to conventional chemotherapy that leave patients with many life threatening side effects. The conventional chemotherapy does not only kill the cancerous cells but also kill the healthy cells in the patient’s body leading to a period of intense pain, loss of appetite, loss of hair, weakness, fatigue and even weight loss. The ability of coping with the side effects of conventional chemotherapy varies from patient to patient but generally the experience is not for those faint at heart. These inconveniences have led the patients to look for other safer alternatives in cancer treatment and doctors as well as other medical researchers have been looking for alternatives that can help the cancer patients to be treated more effectively with less severe side effects.

The history of Insulin potentiation therapy (IPT) can be traced back to the early 1920s when insulin was first used in the attempt to treat patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Donato Perez Garcia, Sr. developed IPT and used it to put cancer patients to coma in an attempt to treat them of cancer. His sons took the practice a head and today very many doctors now recommend the use of IPT in treatment of cancer, Needless to mention several publications have been made to avail information in support of this approach to cancer treatment.

Insulin and Cancer

Insulin is the hormone charged with the responsibility of transporting glucose through the bloodstream to the cells to provide energy. This glucose is needed by both healthy cells and the cancerous cells to survive.

One of the notable difference between cancer cells and healthy cells is that cancer cells depend entirely on sugar and glutamine which is a form of amino acids found in highly concentrated animal proteins. The cancer cells will therefore use all the sugar (glucose) that is found in the bloodstream leaving the healthy cells with inadequate sources of energy to survive on. The healthy cells having no glucose left to utilize become starved and this explains why most cancer patients are always weak and rapidly lose weight.

The amount of insulin used to transport the glucose into the cancer cells is much higher as compared to the amount of insulin hormone used to transport glucose into the healthy cells. Averagely the cancer cells need 16 times more insulin hormones to feed its cells with the glucose.

The cancer cells are very fast in grabbing the glucose available in the blood and that is the basis through which PET scan works. During PET scan a radioactive agent is introduced into the bloodstream within a glucose molecule and since the cancerous cells are the first to race for sugar, they become visible through the scan.

IPT works in the same way as the PET scan, the low doses of chemotherapy drugs are administered in the bloodstream within the glucose molecules and so the cancer cells come scrambling as they are faster in response to glucose than the healthy cells. They utilize the ‘poisoned’ glucose and get killed sparing the healthy cells. In IPT healthy cells are not killed as it happens in the conventional chemotherapy where both the cancerous and the healthy cells are killed. This explains why patients on low dose chemotherapy do not suffer severe side effects as common with patients undergoing conventional chemotherapy.

Potentiation in the IPT is an English word derived from a verb ‘potentiate’ which means to give more power or other to make more potent. In this therapy insulin is used to make conventional chemotherapy more powerful and effective in killing the cancerous cells.

A study that was done at the George Washington University in 1981 revealed that when insulin is mixed with a chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, its strength in killing the cancerous cells improved greatly. With that high potency, patients no longer needed to be given so many drugs to kill the cancerous cells. This combination not only made cancer treatment more effective but also gave convenience to patients as they did not have to use too many drugs to keep healthy.

In numerous ways insulin can help in treatment of cancer patients. Being a hormone that encourages growth, it will trigger cell multiplication by dividing. This allows healthy cells to be more while it puts the cancer cells in a more vulnerable state to be killed by the poisoned glucose molecule in that as the cell divides, it becomes more exposed to the chemotherapy drug in the glucose molecules speeding their death frequency.

IPT is surely a clever way to kill the cancer cells. You see, Insulin is also known to promote detoxification process as it makes the cells more permeable. This makes it easy for the toxins to be removed from the cells. Detoxification is a crucial procedure in cancer treatment and can be highly achieved through IPT as opposed to the conventional chemotherapy.

The use of low dose chemotherapy has gained popularity over a time and doctors have endorsed this alternative cancer treatment. Going by the simple physiology discussed herein you can see how effective the IPT approach to cancer treatment is. Other advantages that the patient enjoys are that the whole procedure does not leave the patients with life threatening side effects as common in conventional chemotherapy. The drugs given to patients are also manageable as they are more potent. Healthy cells are safe and the patients do not become bald.

Cancer treatment is subject to new inventions and that gives you a reason to find a reliable source of information that will update on the latest medical inventions geared towards making cancer treatment more effective. Contact Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) who is more experienced in cancer treatment so that you can learn more on cancer treatment and management.

Low dose chemo is an effective alternative cancer treatment approach

Risk Factors for an Addiction

June 5, 2014

Risk Factors for an Addiction-Drug Addiction

The risk for drug addiction are many and known to many, precaution must be taken early

We all live in an environment where nearly everything is addictive and knowing the root causes and the risk factors that can lead to drug addiction so that we can take early precaution. Nonetheless it is also important to clarify that a risk factor is just an indicator for an addiction and not an actual cause of addiction.

Risk factors are contributors to the likelihood of someone developing an addiction. This doesn’t mean that they will become an addict rather that they are susceptible to doing so. These are used by rehabilitation centers, clinics and online sources as a means of determining the causes of a person’s addiction and planning their treatment.

Risk factors include:

Environment
Genetics
Personality
Social isolation
Injury, illness or disease
Type of substance

Environment

This includes family life, surroundings, friends, education and employment.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Family life/surroundings

If you come from a stable family background then there is probably less chance of you developing an addiction although drug addiction can affect any background. However, if you live in a place where drug addiction is seen as acceptable or happens on a regular basis then this can be a risk factor. Being brought up in a house in which drug addiction is prevalent and seen as the norm may encourage you to think the same.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Friends

Your friends often have a major influence over what you say and do and if they engage in drug taking then there is strong chance that you will do the same. Peer group pressure is difficult to resist and many people find themselves undertaking activities they may never have contemplated in order to be part of the group.

Smoking, drinking or taking drugs are often seen as forms of rebellion, growing up or as means of ‘proving’ yourself. This may be more of an issue for young men who traditionally have consumed large amounts of alcohol as a statement of masculinity. In other words, you are more of a man if you can hold your drink.

However, ‘binge drinking’ has become more of a problem amongst young women with the rise of the ‘ladette’ and the resulting behavior that goes with this tag. Young women are consuming more alcohol than before which may be storing up problems in the future.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Education

Young people like to experiment with drink, drugs or cigarettes but they may also feel compelled to do so especially if their group of friends already does so. Smoking behind the bike sheds was something that many people tried when they were at school but nowadays it is not uncommon for drugs or alcohol to be consumed on school premises. Many pupils will openly smoke on their way to and from school as well as during the day.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Employment

If you are employed in a company where drug use is common amongst employees or the nature of the job results in people using drugs or alcohol as a means of coping then it can be hard to resist. People under extreme stress or who work in physically and emotionally challenging roles can turn to alcohol or drugs as a way of relieving their stress. Ironically, doctors have some of the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Genetics

It has been suggested that our genetics play in part in whether we will become addicts or not. Experts claim that some people inherit genes which increase their vulnerability to drug addiction or their brain chemistry functions in such a way that they are drawn towards certain substances.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Personality

There are people with a particular type of personality who are more susceptible to addiction than others. This includes people who have a nervous or anxious disposition, lack confidence or find it difficult to control their temper. If you have low self-esteem, find it difficult to make friends or say no then you may be at greater risk.

Social isolation

An addiction such as alcohol or drugs can help someone who is lonely, feels isolated or who has withdrawn themselves from society. In this sense their addiction is seen as a ‘comforter’ or a ‘coping mechanism’ and in their own minds enables them to cope.

Injury, illness or disease

An addiction can develop from legitimate substances such as prescription drugs. These are prescribed to treat an illness or injury but people can become dependent upon these. It is only when the drug is withdrawn or the dose reduced that a problem comes to light.

Risk Factors for Addiction-Type of substance

Some drugs are more addictive than others. Drugs such as cocaine, heroin or nicotine can cause an addiction the first time they are used whereas others will lead to a dependency over a period of time, e.g. prescription drugs. Addiction is often the result of more than one factor. These risk factors plus a vulnerable personality can lead to an addiction. Having known these risk factors we as a society and as a nation extending to the world over must take appropriate measures to ensure that we stop this menace permanently. To effectively do this we need the professional opinion of expert. For instance doctor Dalal Akoury the chief executive and Founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center is one of the best practicing doctor globally that has offered addiction treatment naturally offering her exclusive NER Recovery Treatment to other physicians and health care professionals through training, clinical apprenticeships, webinars and seminars. Anyone suffering for from whatever kind of addiction at whatever stage will get real professional touch from the expert and within no time you will be back on track living your life to the fullest.

Risk Factors for an Addiction-Drug Addiction

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