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Heroin long term effects on the body organs

Heroin long term effects

Heroin long term effects on the body organs. The drug abuse development into addiction complications often begins little by little and grows in to serious health complication.

Heroin long term effects on the body organs: The heart and blood vessels

Many of the long-term effects of heroin are closely linked with the dangers of intravenous drug use. Although heroin can be injected into muscles, smoked or snorted, users prefer IV injection because it is the fastest way to get that euphoric rush. Just in a few seconds of the injection heroin will be able to meander through the blood and into the brain barrier, where it’s converted into morphine which is a powerful narcotic, by the brain. Doctor Dalal Akoury MD who is an addiction expert is registering that one of the greatest dangers is that unlike the germ-free solutions and pharmaceuticals that are injected into the veins in a clinical setting, the heroin injection done in the street is obviously not pure or clean. This is a further risk for health and besides all the users who inject heroin directly into their bloodstream, they are not just doing that but are also passing on substances known as diluents which are primarily responsible for the enhancement of the effects of the drug in question. In one of the study analysis it was established that injectable heroin might contain the following:

  • Caffeine
  • Procaine
  • Starches or sugars
  • Paracetamol
  • Strychnine
  • Fentanyl

Besides sharing of needles and other equipment may also be responsible for injecting bacterial contaminants. Bacteria traveling through the bloodstream may cause infections in the circulatory system, including the blood vessels and the heart itself. In heavy heroin users, abscesses and subcutaneous tissue infections (cellulitis) may occur, and veins can become scarred and permanently damaged.

Heroin long term effects on the body organs: Exposure to disease

Like all other drugs the use of heroin for a long time is likely to introduce your body to a collection of blood-borne diseases. Like for instance, sharing needles and having unprotected sex while you’re under the influence can expose you to deadly viral infections like hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Hepatitis can cause permanent damage to your liver, interfering with your body’s ability to metabolize nutrients and eliminate toxic wastes. Hepatitis C, which is becoming increasingly common among IV heroin users, can cause serious long-term complications including:

  • Jaundice
  • Chronic fatigue and weakness
  • Weight loss
  • Cirrhosis of the liver
  • Liver cancer

Heroin long term effects on the body organs: The lungs

Even though the use of heroin is believed to bring high its addicts, this may not be so when it comes to the central nerve system. Heroin for sure will slow down your central nervous system and suppresses your body’s involuntary processes, like respiration. Besides that it will also suppress the impulse to cough, a healthy reflex that clears all the debris, mucus and harmful organisms from your lungs. If this continues then it causes your lungs to be vulnerable to lung complications like pneumonia and tuberculosis. Of all these concerns, what is very painful is that most long term heroin users often neglect their health thereby resulting in general health deterioration by worsening the consequences of lung diseases.

Finally in dealing with all effects of heroin, it is important to note that all is not lost no matter the state you are in. Doctor Akoury and her team of experts are available at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center to turn around your condition into jubilation if only you can schedule for an appointment with her today.

Heroin long term effects on the body organs: The heart and blood vessels

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Sobriety obstacles to heroin addiction

Sobriety obstacles

Sobriety obstacles to heroin addiction includes all the factors increasing addiction risk on drug users.

Sobriety obstacles to heroin addiction: Why treatment can be difficult?

From the expert point of view doctor Dalal Akoury MD is registering that there are several challenges that could lead to the sobriety obstacles to all substance of abuse and more so to heroin. From her decades of experience in addiction treatment, she acknowledges that it could be difficult to treat heroin addiction because of several reasons including the following:

Withdrawal symptoms

This is a serious sobriety obstacle in the sense that when a heroin addict attempts to stop using cold turkey, the symptoms of withdrawal can be devastating. Vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, bone and muscle pain, restlessness, cold flashes and overwhelming cravings for the drug will plague addicts trying to escape from their habit, and with the discouragement their resolve to quite will sabotage their campaign for sobriety even before it begins. Remember that sobriety obstacles is not simply a matter of willpower. It’s worth noting that heroin addiction is a life-altering brain disease and holding it at bay is extraordinarily difficult. Therefore, the brain must be reprogrammed over time if any successful treatment is to be realized.

Failure to appreciate the long-term recovery process and possible relapse

The time spent in the rehabilitation center is only the first step on the road to long-term sobriety. Addiction has deeper roots than you can ever imagine, meaning that, the initial stages of recovery will require weeks of detoxification followed by years of consistent follow-up therapy and peer group interaction and for heroin, medicinal cures may also be used. Take note of the possibility of relapse which is very normal and when it happens, picking up the pieces to the recovery process is a better way of defeating sobriety obstacles.

Neglecting the underlying psychological problems

In most cases, drug abuse is a coping mechanism for people who have severe and unaddressed psychological and emotional issues. Heroin addiction is such a serious threat, however, that getting through detox and finding sobriety must take precedence for all addicts regardless of their backgrounds and personal histories. Consequently, deep, underlying problems may not be dealt with as quickly, proactively and openly as they should be, allowing them to lie in wait in the shadows where they can easily destroy the recovery process.

Addicts frequently return to the scene of the crime

Finally when recovering patients are allowed back home from the rehab, they (heroin addicts) often fall back in with the same triggers. Remember that substance abuse often develops in a (dysfunctional) social context, meaning that, when recovering addicts return to their old lives, it can be difficult to avoid the triggers that motivated their heroin dependency in the first place. The greatest regret is that in most cases, they join company with the same friends they were using drugs with. This is very disastrous and a serious sobriety obstacle by all standards. Old habits will definitely reassert themselves pretty quickly when addicts fail to make a clean break with the past. Now that you are well informed of the sobriety obstacles, you can make the right decision in your journey to full recovery. In the meantime doctor Akoury will always be there should you need any help along the way.

Sobrieties obstacles to heroin addiction: Why treatment can be difficult?

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Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose: Symptoms and treatment of heroin overdose

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose is everyone’s in the fight against drug addiction responsibility

Have you ever imagined life without drugs? This is not just intended to drug users but to everyone. The presence of drug abuse in any society is not just affecting the direct users, but also indirectly to their caregivers, family members and friends. Using drugs can only be compared to the body. If the body is healthy there is comfort and contentment all through, however if any part of the body is not well and is in pain the whole body will be suffering from that one condition. In the same way when one member of the family is misusing drugs, he will suffer directly but his family, friends and relatives will equally bear the pain indirectly. Therefore in the interest of offering lasting solution to this devastating problem, acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose would be very important as this will enable caregivers an opportunity to act timely before the addiction get out of manageable levels. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the direction heroin abuse is taking is worrying, currently more than 50 percent of people who use heroin have an addiction to the drug. This calls for an intervention so as to prevent further escalation of the problem. If you are wondering how to get this information, today is your lucky day because you are at the right place where health information is delivered with a lot of professionalism. Doctor Dalal Akoury is a veteran expert in addiction and she will be speaking to us about acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose in human life.

According to the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center which is one of the leading pioneers in natural and holistic addiction treatment formulated by doctor Dalal Akoury, heroin comes in a powder form that ranges from bright white to dark brown that users administer into their bodies either by mixing with water to inject, smoke or snort. Besides that, the other element of heroin is that which is known as the black tar heroin. This type of heroin has some resemblance of a tar. This type of heroin (black tar heroin) is typically injected into the by its users. Doctor Akoury advices that these drugs are very strong and dangerous and therefore when a person exhibits heroin overdose symptoms after using the drug, such individuals needs to seek and get help for the experts immediately. This treatment will be available at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury. All you have to do on your part is to call her today and schedule for an appointment with her for the commencement of your recovery journey. Now that you know where to get help, let us get into the discussion even as you consider making that appointment.

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose: What is an overdose?

The term overdose medically has been misconstrued by many. Ignorantly you will hear discussions around overdose from people in hospitals or along the streets, and in most cases majority really doesn’t understand what it means. Doctor Akoury says that will occur when someone takes a large amount of a substance. Take note of the singular expression. It is not as many think that it is only the new users of heroin or those who use the drug most frequently. That is a misconception; overdose is an occurrence which can happen to any person. Nonetheless users are at risk of suffering an overdose because they might take a higher dose than intended. On the other hand long-term users of the drug can also suffer an overdose because of the tolerance the person has to the drug. It is however very important to appreciate that majority of people who take heroin cannot get the same rush after several uses as they did in the beginning. In that case, to get that initial rush, the user must take increasingly larger doses. The body adjusts to each new amount, which makes the person take larger and larger doses. When the body can no longer adjust to the increased levels of heroin in the system, it reacts in the form of heroin overdose symptoms. In addition, a user might encounter an unexpectedly pure batch of heroin, so that user injects more of the active ingredient than anticipated. This is sincerely very frustrating and all we can do is to pool together to bring this problem to a manageable levels.

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose: The future of integrative addiction

In an effort to have everyone on board in the fight against drug addiction, overdose and its consequences, AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center, one of the leading pioneers in natural and holistic addiction treatment, will be conducting the first ever Educational, Functional and Integrative Addiction conference tailored for professional including doctors, counselors, nurses and addiction therapists. The conference is schedule for August 23-25 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This new cutting edge in Addiction Medicine and it will be conducted by the most influential group of leading visionaries specializing in the latest advances in natural and integrative addiction medicine, under the theme “The Future of Integrative Addiction”.

We are very passionate about this integrative addiction conference 2015 whose mission is to deliver prevention education awareness options and support to patients including the physicians dealing with addiction globally. Our aim is to empower those physicians to be involved in the determination of their personal best answer for addiction by promoting patient-physicians awareness of a more natural yet still profoundly effective addiction treatment options that result in you thriving while surviving during treatment and recovery. We have prepared a very rich menu for you and throughout the integrative addiction conference 2015 we will be covering topic like addiction as a holistic body ecosystem derangement, the interaction between stress, survivorship, pain and addiction, the genetic and epigenetic influences on the disease of addiction, the role of hormonal imbalance in the disease of addiction, psycho neuroendocrine immune restoration essential to reverse addiction as well as new and future therapies in the horizon for addiction treatment including stem therapy for psycho neuroendocrine immune restoration.

With this rich menu you can’t afford to miss this one in a lifetime health conference. We want therefore to take this earliest opportunity to invite you whole heartedly to come and let us compare our experiences in dealing with this problem of addiction. for further enquiries about the conference, you can send all your queries to the event organizer through the email address or sharon@integrativeaddiction2015.com log in to the event web site for more www.integrativeaddiction2015.com you can also make a direct call to Sharon Phillips the event planner on telephone number 954 540 1896

 

Acknowledging the presence of heroin overdose: Symptoms and treatment of heroin overdose

 

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Various health complications of Heroin abuse

Various health complications of Heroin abuse: Short and long term effects

Various health complications of Heroin abuse

Various health complications of Heroin abuse can be corrected if treatment is sought in good time

While looking at the elaborate information about heroin addiction in our previous article, we noted that various studies have established the undoubted prevalence of heroin addiction in this generation. Doctor Akoury establishment of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center has been taking the lead role in creating awareness about the scourge of addiction and most importantly offering lasting solutions to the victims. This is the spirit that every other organization should have and meticulously implement for us to have a vibrant healthy and economically productive society. Because of the addictiveness nature of heroin, the various health complications of heroin abuse are very indiscriminative and everybody is vulnerable in equal measures. With the help of professionals from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury, we are going to explore with a view of understanding some of the effects of heroin abuse in our health.

As we had mentioned before that there are three major means of administration of heroin into the body with injection being the most predominant, it has also been established that soon after injection or inhalation and heroin crosses the blood brain barrier. And while in the brain, heroin is converted to morphine and binds rapidly to opioid receptors. With these done abusers will typically report feeling a surge of pleasurable sensation, a “rush” which now brings us to the understanding of some of the short term effects of heroin abuse.

Various health complications of Heroin abuse: Short-term effects of heroin abuse

  • “Rush”
  • Depressed respiration
  • Clouded mental functioning
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Suppression of pain
  • Spontaneous abortion

The intensity of the rush is a function of how much drug is taken and how rapidly the drug enters the brain and binds to the natural opioid receptors. It is important to note that heroin is particularly addictive because it enters the brain so quickly. With heroin, the rush is usually accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and a heavy feeling in the extremities, which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and severe itching. Doctor Akoury further explains that after the initial effects, abusers usually will be drowsy for several hours. Mental function is clouded by heroin’s effect on the central nervous system. Cardiac functions slow. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death. Heroin overdose is a particular risk on the street, where the amount and purity of the drug cannot be accurately known.

Various health complications of Heroin abuse: What are the long-term effects of heroin use?

One of the most detrimental long-term effects of heroin is addiction itself which is a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain. Heroin also produces profound degrees of tolerance and physical dependence, which are also powerful motivating factors for compulsive use and abuse. Other long-term effects of heroin abuse may include the following:

  • Addiction
  • Infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C
  • Collapsed veins
  • Bacterial infections
  • Abscesses
  • Infection of heart lining and valves
  • Arthritis and other rheumatologic problems

The common denominator with all addictive drugs is that their users will become their prisoners. In the same way heroin abusers will by and by spend more of their time, energy and resources in obtaining and using the drug. And once addicted and are now prisoners of drugs, their primary purpose in life will be to seek for the drug and use it disorderly thereby making very significant changes in their brains. Besides that as they continue abusing the drug, physical dependence develops with higher doses of the same. This will then cause the body to adapt to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms occurring should the drug use be stopped abruptly. When we talk about withdrawal, it is important to note that this can take place even within few hours from the last usage. The following are some of the symptoms of withdrawal restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold sweats with goose bumps (“cold turkey”), and leg movements. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 24 and 48 hours after the last dose of heroin and subside after about a week. However, some people have shown persistent withdrawal signs for many months. And even though heroin withdrawal may never be fatal to healthy adults, this may not be so with unborn children in the womb, it can cause death to the fetus of a pregnant addict.

When using heroin, it is important to note that the continued use of this substance may lead to the user being addicted to it. And this happens; many addicts will have to endure many of the withdrawal symptoms to reduce their tolerance for the drug so that they can again experience the rush. In the past explains doctor Akoury, physical dependence and emergence of withdrawal symptoms were believed to be the key features of heroin addiction. However studies have revealed that this may not be the case entirely, since craving and relapse can also occur weeks and months after withdrawal symptoms are long gone. We also know that patients with chronic pain who need opiates to function (sometimes over extended periods) have few if any problems leaving opiates after their pain is resolved by other means. This may be because the patient in pain is simply seeking relief of pain and not the rush sought by the addict.

Various health complications of Heroin abuse: What are the medical complications of chronic heroin abuse?

Finally medical consequences of chronic heroin abuse include scarred or collapsed veins, bacterial infections of the blood vessels and heart valves, abscesses (boils) and other soft-tissue infections, and liver or kidney disease. Lung complications (including various types of pneumonia and tuberculosis) may result from the poor health condition of the abuser as well as from heroin’s depressing effects on respiration. Many of the additives in street heroin may include substances that do not readily dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys and the brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. Immune reactions to these or other contaminants can cause arthritis or other rheumatologic problems. And of course, sharing of injection equipment or fluids can lead to some of the most severe consequences of heroin abuse – infections with hepatitis B and C, HIV, and a host of other blood-borne viruses, which drug abusers can then pass on to their sexual partners and children. With these explanations, it is only prudent that if you are struggling with heroin addiction, then you need to seek for immediate treatment which can be done professionally if you schedule for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury MD and founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center. Up on receipt of your request they will slot you in for treatment and help you all the way to reclaim your life back professionally and confidentially.

Various health complications of Heroin abuse: Short and long term effects

 

 

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Elaborate information about Heroin addiction

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction: What is heroin?

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction is very necessary for the proper administration of treatment

Have you ever imagine life free of any kind of substance abuse? The benefits of that will be overwhelmingly very healthy and productive. That is the kind of life that we are championing for you and your family as experts from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury who is also the founder of the facility. In her over two decades of practice in medicine and in matters addiction in particular, doctor Akoury has over the years been a champion of addiction solutions to many victims globally. She says that for anyone to effectively deal with drug addiction, every individual needs to be well equipped with elaborate information about heroin addiction and all other substance of abuse including alcohol miss use. Because many people are suffering because of lack of knowledge doctor Akoury founded this facility and she has been using it as a plat form of creating awareness to the societies on matters relating to the protection of their health. In this article, our focus is going to be on the elaborate information about heroin addiction. Therefore what is this drug heroin?

In simple terms, heroin is an illegal and highly addictive drug. It is one of the most abused and also most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as “black tar heroin.” Doctor Akoury says that although these days purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is “cut” with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment.

It is believed that originally heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder and it is associated with several street names including “smack”, “H”, “skag”, and “junk”. Other names may refer to types of heroin produced in a specific geographical area, such as “Mexican black tar”.

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction: What is the Scope of Heroin use in our societies?

The available statistics is worrying and according to the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which may actually underestimate illicit opiate (heroin) use, an estimated 2.4 million people use heroin at some time in their lives, and nearly 216,000 of them reported using it within the month preceding the survey. The survey report estimates that there were 141,000 new heroin users about two decades ago and that there has been an increasing trend in new heroin use since that time. A large proportion of these new users were smoking, snorting, or sniffing heroin with majority of them being under the age of 26. The report also indicated that the estimates of use for other age groups also increased, particularly among youths age 12 to 17 and the incidence of first-time heroin users among this age group also increased fourfold subsequently from the 1980s to 1995.

Yet in another study the 1996 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which collected data on drug- related hospital emergency department (ED) episodes from 21 metropolitan areas, estimates that 14 percent of all drug-related ED episodes involved heroin. Even more alarming was the fact that between 1988 and 1994, heroin-related ED episodes increased by 64 percent that is from 39,063 to 64,013.

NIDA’s Community Epidemiology Work Group (CEWG), which provides information about the nature and patterns of drug use in 20 cities, reported in its December 1996 publication that heroin was the primary drug of abuse related to drug abuse treatment admissions in most cities including Newark, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston, and it ranked a close second to cocaine in New York and Seattle. These statistics clearly shows that heroin addiction is with us and it is time to step forward progressively to root it out from our systems says doctor Akoury. Before we get into how heroin is used, let us further look at another set of studies conducted by NHSDA for more clarity about heroin abuse.

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction: National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA)

The 1996 NHSDA shows a significant increase from 1993 in the estimated number of current (once in the past month) heroin users. The estimates have risen from 68,000 in 1993 to whooping 216,000 in 1996. Among individuals who had ever used heroin in their lives, the proportion that had ever smoked sniffed or snorted heroin increased from 55 percent in 1994 to 82 percent in 1996. During the same period, the proportion of users who injected heroin remained about the same, at about 50 percent. With these data it is evident that the prevalence of heroin addiction cannot be ignored any longer. People are literally suffering both in public and in private and it is now time for action. We have able experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center who are well trained and are of high standards of experience to help you go through this problem of heroin addiction. Take that step of faith right now and schedule for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury for the commencement of your addiction recovery treatment.

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction: How is Heroin Used?

Now in conclusion of this article let us consider some of the modes of usage of this drug heroin. There are three major ways of administering heroin which usually include injection, sniffing or snorting or through smoking. Typically, a heroin abuser may inject up to four times a day. Available facts indicate that intravenous injection provides the greatest intensity and most rapid onset of euphoria (7 to 8 seconds), while intramuscular injection produces a relatively slow onset of euphoria (5 to 8 minutes). However when heroin is sniffed or smoked, peak effects are usually felt within 10 to 15 minutes. Although smoking and sniffing of heroin do not produce a “rush” as quickly or as intensely as intravenous injection, NIDA researchers have confirmed that all three forms of heroin administration are addictive.

From our observation at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center, it is becoming clearer that of the three administration applications, injection continues to be the predominant method of heroin use among addicted users seeking treatment not just from our facility but across the board globally. Nonetheless specific studies have also perceived a shift in heroin use patterns, from injection to sniffing and smoking. In fact, sniffing or snorting heroin is now a widely reported means of taking heroin among users admitted for drug treatment in most rehabilitation centers across the globe. Finally it may not matter which method is commonly used, the bottom line is that people are being addicted to the drug and lasting solution must be sought timely. If you are enclosed in this bracket of suffering, talk to us today and we will be more than willing to help you get your life back.

Elaborate information about Heroin addiction: What is heroin?

 

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