Drug & Alcohol Intervention Help - We Get Them In to Treatment : NYC Intervention Specialists

In obese people, the fat tissue often produces too many bad hormones and too few good ones, says Susan Fried, director of the Clinical Nutrition Research Unit of Maryland at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Fried and other scientists discussed the latest research on fat cells here at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society. Fried talks about the relationship between obesity and fat cells.

Q: Do people have different numbers of fat cells? 
A: A person at a healthy weight might have 10 billion to 20 billion, and an obese person can have up to 100 billion. Babies are born with about 10 billion. You naturally increase the number of fat cells, like other kinds of cells, as you grow.

Q: Is everybody born with the same number of fat cells?
A: No. There is a genetic component to how many you have, but I would say less than 5% of obese people have a genetic tendency to have a greatly excess number. It appears in animal experiments that animals that are overnourished in the womb and shortly thereafter tend to have more fat cells.

The number can increase at any time if you overeat long enough and hard enough. When your fat cells get to a maximum size, they send a signal to (fat-precursor) cells to become full-fledged fat cells. It may be that having too many hungry fat cells somehow makes us eat more.

But overweight people (those who are not obese but are one to 30 pounds over a healthy weight) don’t generally have an excess number. You can gain 30 pounds easily by increasing the size of current fat cells and not adding new ones.

Q: What do white fat cells do?
A: White fat cells store energy and produce hormones that are secreted into the blood. In theory, if we overeat, our fat cells will produce a little more of the hormone leptin, which will go to our brain and tell us we have plenty of energy down here; not to eat any more. If it worked perfectly, no one would get fat, but it doesn’t work perfectly, so many of us do get fat.

When fat cells are small, they produce high amounts of some hormones such as adiponectin. It is a good guy because it keeps the liver and muscles very sensitive to insulin and fights diabetes, heart disease and other diseases. But in obese people, fat cells tend to shut down the production of adiponectin, and that has bad effects on health, and it’s one reason people develop diabetes and heart disease.

Q: Does losing weight shrink the size of your fat cells?
A: If you are eating less energy than you require, your cells release fat for fuel and then shrink. If you are obese and have 100 billion fat cells and you lose a lot of weight, your fat cells may go down to a normal size, but you still have 100 billion. So you may still be overly fat, but you will be healthier since small fat cells produce more of the good fat hormones like adiponectin.

Q: Can you explain the new discoveries about brown fat?
A: While a white fat cell stores energy, a brown fat cell’s job is basically to generate heat. We always thought brown fat was only in human babies and helped keep them warm. Now there is more evidence that there are more brown fat cells in adults than we originally thought. Brown and white are not really related because they don’t come from the same precursor cell or stem cell.

Brown fat cell comes from the same kind of precursor cell as a muscle cell. Even though there are very few brown fat cells in adult humans, it looks like there is a lot of variability between people. There is increasing evidence that some humans, particularly lean ones, tend to have brown fat cells mixed in with their white fat cells in some regions of their body. So if we can figure out how to persuade the body to make more brown fat cells, we may be able to fight the tendency to gain excess weight.

Where in the world did I get this behavior? I swear it started young young, before I’d learned it from anyone. Don’t get me started on why. Why, why why!?

—

A friend I’ve worked with for the past year asked me to jump in with him on a discussion of the origin of his addiction. He walked out of treatment after five days, and wonders still why his family is not “supporting him in his recovery” even though each time recovery pops up he turns the other way and runs.

He is sidetracked by the why and the where questions. Where did I get this? And why? 

From my experience the origin has to do with genetics, family of origin, and experience. One, two or a mixture of three in various states of undress. The question of why though is a distraction. I had to stop, and stay stopped, and then the question of why began to reveal itself. 

One way we look at this question is with the Family Map. It’s called the genogram, and shows in patterns, shapes, and dates the history and how it relates to the now. A tool in helping understand and get our heads around the problem in the effort to solve it.

The Fix. It’s not impossible, no matter how it feels right now.

I will soon get married. 72 hours and counting, until I’ll get to walk down the aisle, exchange vows before family and friends - and just like that (well, not JUST like that…a lot of work went in to this moment in time!) I’ll be hitched. 

The before picture - single. The after picture - married.

This enormous change in a blink of the eye takes me back. It reminds me, how it was when I was out there, lost and confused with regard to my drinking. There’s the “before I stopped” and the after. Separated by one moment, one decision. 

One person who will be absent from the wedding is my mom. Back in April she had her own moment. One in which everything too, changed. She had a stroke, and the picture above I snapped with my camera phone was at the hospital as I held her hand and I didn’t think she would live.  Moments matter. A life’s course can change in one.

By the time I next post, I will be a married man. Here’s to that, and recovery and life.

- Brad

Please pass the cure! Now. Right now! Be quick about it.  

One truth is that to get to recovery there is more than one route to travel. None will be easy, (short of being locked up away from that which compels) but accessible and available to most.

So we craft a plan, with options.

True, ‘Plan A’ is the one that resonates most strongly with the family and myself prior to introducing it. But the goal is recovery and wellness - not  a specific way to get there. There is more than one way, and certainly more than my way.

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program is pitching an addiction cure book. It’s a commercial. They guarantee money back if your loved one is not completely cured. It’s like the intervention hotline that pitches a 100% success rate. Makes fear feel better, but it’s not true. Nothing is 100%, except water maybe; which is 100% wet.

‘The Plan’, crafted in love, delivered with care, conviction, purpose and authenticity continues a conversation from which may spring another plan. 

Change is hard, dusty work. The skill set required to carry through with a plan is often more challenging than the agony of sitting in defeat. We are comfortable in the mess, the despair, the pain. We know that. We know how it feels, and smells, and tastes. This recovery stuff, is different entirely.

So here’s to making hope happen. One plan at a time, one family at a time. And if ‘Plan A’ is not the one, craft another. 

Onward!

Brad

“Oh my God! He’s going to die right now!”

That is the line that woke me, Friday morning at 3am. Connected to the voice of a mom, who found her son literally dying for help. Call 911, now, I say. Pause. “He’s not really dying…he’s just overdone it again and is a little bluer this time.”

Oh my God, is right.

The feelings of being all alone in this effort to get someone we love to change, can be overwhelming and over time, becomes normalized. “I feel alone” becomes “I am alone…” and the hope of helping in the face of this terribly lonely problem recedes from view.

But you are not alone. This is truth. And it is the number one tool in reaching out and initiating change in the lives of those we love who are drowning in addiction.

Truth is, that truth is our number one tool. A feather sometimes, a little heavier as needed. 

Call us. Change Begins, I promise.

- Brad

It grates on families. Grates on the skin of your soul. The second guessing. The waiting until the “right” time to act with new direction and focus.

And so this Grate Wait is the painful in-between. The in-between the pause that concern causes, and the action that the dying requires.

Just do it. Try something new today. Ask him or her, if they wanna talk treatment? If they want to talk help. And so this always grating wait, ends when you start with the new, the helpful, the right.

It’s like this - we throw the life preserver to the one drowning. Knowing that there are motivators to grabbing on, other than the fact that their legs are tired. To name a few:
1) it sucks to be tired and wet
2) there are sharks in these waters
3) birthday cake is too good to check out now!

The Grating Wait ends when you say it does.

- Brad

I’m working with two families at present, where a family member is seriously obese. 500+ pounds obese. Like other addictions, food speaks to the brain’s pleasure center. Though in some ways it is unique. Like water, food is a must. We are hardwired for it from birth. Don’t eat, and you’ll die.

But overeat, and the consumption is no longer answering this native call to live, but some other call.

In Overeaters Anonymous (OA) it’s called “being in the food.” The recovery from active food addiction is called “abstinence” as once a food plan is in place, one abstains from the food that is triggering, the food that doesn’t make the food plan cut.

Keeping an accurate food journal is a baseline for OA work. Outside the realm of Twelve Step support groups, food journaling is accepted as a key piece of changing ingrained patterns of behavior. Below you’ll see an article that hit the news wires today, reflecting this truth.

I like Bob Greene’s THE BEST LIFE website’s food journal application (www.TheBestLife.com). It’s more than just a food journal - and at roughly $20 per month, it will cost you something. But what it will give you is worth it I think.

If food is your “thing”, consider making lifestyle changes to get better. To LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE. Forget the diet, the yo-yo, and the defeat, and try a food journal, coupled with focus on quality of food, and quantity of food. And then get moving!

Onward!

Brad

—

Back to Story - Help
Study shows value of food diary in losing weight
By Will Dunham
Tue Jul 8, 3:25 AM ET
Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.

The findings buttressed earlier research that endorsed the value of food diaries in helping people lose weight. Companies including Weight Watchers International Inc use food diaries in their weight-loss programs.

“For those who are working on weight loss, just writing down everything you eat is a pretty powerful technique,” Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland said in a telephone interview.

“It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations,” said Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.

The study involved people from four U.S. cities: Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their average weight loss was about 13 pounds (6 kg). But those keeping food diaries six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds (8 kg) compared to 9 pounds (4 kg) for those not regularly keeping a food diary.

The average age of people in the study was 55.

They were asked to eat less fat, more vegetables, fruit and whole grains, exercise 180 minutes a week mostly by walking, attend group meetings, and keep a detailed food diary.

Blacks made up 44 percent of the people in the study. The researchers noted that blacks Americans have a higher risk than whites for conditions linked to obesity including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

“Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal or sending yourself a text message will suffice,” Dr. Keith Bachman, another Kaiser Permanente expert, said in a statement.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy

Irreplaceable. That’s what the family is in the life of the addicted. Whether ushering in sane solutions and help, or enabling and impotency. The latter come from not owning, that THEY’VE GOT THE POWER. So in spite of headlines like the following (which are true and reflective of the enormity of the issue of addiction and loss) we stand ready and empowered.

We help you make hope happen.

Onward!

Brad

—

Americans on Top in Drugs
Jul 1 12:07 PM US/Eastern

Americans are the world’s top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws, according to an international study published in the online scientific magazine PLoS Medicine.

The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.

In second-place New Zealand, just 4.3 percent of study participants had used cocaine, and 41.9 percent marijuana. The research was conducted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, based on World Health Organization data from 54,068 people in 17 countries.

Rates of participation differed from country to country, and researchers noted uncertainty over how honestly people report their own drug use.

“Nevertheless, the findings present comprehensive data on the patterns of drug use from national samples representing all regions of the world,” a PLoS statement said.

A vast majority of survey participants from the United States, Europe, Japan and New Zealand had consumed alcohol, compared to smaller percentages from the Middle East, Africa and China.

The data also revealed socioeconomic patterns in drug use. Single young adult men with high income had the greatest tendency to regularly use drugs.

Drug use “does not appear to be simply related to drug policy,” the researchers wrote, “since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies.”

In the Netherlands, where drug policy is more liberal than the United States, 1.9 percent of survey participants said they had used cocaine and 19.8 percent marijuana.

Twelve US 12 states including California permit medical use of marijuana, but possession and use remains prohibited under federal law.

And despite the US government’s massive anti-drug efforts, the United States remains the world’s top drug market, one amply supplied by South American cartels.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency has observed ever larger quantities of illegal drugs pouring into the country.

“We are seizing greater quantities of illegal drugs than ever before,” said a DEA statement last week.

In 2007, agents seized 41 metric tons of cocaine in just two raids, and denied drug traffickers record-breaking revenue of 3.5 billion dollars for the year, it said.