Chilling Thing Hershey Just Said About American Consumers – Wolf Street

Hershey has put its corporate finger on an increasingly bedeviled American economic reality where businesses are confronted with this “bifurcation”: Selling to those few who benefited from the Fed’s monetary policies and the asset bubbles these policies have engendered; and trying to sell to the middle class whose stagnant incomes are being eaten up by the soaring costs of housing (result of Housing Bubble 2), healthcare, college, cars, and a million other things. These people have gone into debt to keep their head above water and thus have become the over-indebted modern-day proletariat that lives from paycheck to paycheck, without savings or emergency funds, struggling to make ends meet, and they simply have trouble spending money they don’t have. And businesses are now catching the drift: it’s going to be tough out there in this Fed-engineered economy.

Source: Chilling Thing Hershey Just Said About American Consumers | Wolf Street

The current state of our world economy explained in simple terms a child could understand:  Chocolate sales.

Vessel Blockage Common in Young Stroke Patients Who Smoke Pot | Medpage Today

Intracranial arterial stenosis was found to be the main etiology of stroke in cannabis users, occurring in 45% of these patients compared to just 14.5% of noncannabis users. Among non-users cardioembolism was the most frequent cause of stroke, occurring in 29.3% of patients compared to 14% of cannabis users.

Source: Vessel Blockage Common in Young Stroke Patients Who Smoke Pot | Medpage Today

YIKES.

Anesthesiology News – Increased Use of Hydromorphone Over Morphine Ups Adverse Events, Study Finds

At a time when there is growing concern about opioid abuse, hospitals are increasingly embracing a much more powerful painkiller without clear benefits, explained Padma Gulur, MD, lead study author, of the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at the University of California, Irvine.

Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in Boston, launched the study after noticing a four- to fivefold increase in the amount of narcotics being prescribed for pain. They examined data gathered in the University Health Systems Consortium from 38 hospitals covering more than 1.3 million patients who were given either hydromorphone or morphine. The goal was to determine whether opioid choice influenced outcomes.

The initial assumption was that MGH physicians were simply being more aggressive in treating pain. The researchers decided to look at whether the shift to hydromorphone resulted in better patient outcomes, as measured by readmission rates and other benchmarks. They found that hospital use of hydromorphone rose 17% and 22% among medical and surgical patients, respectively, from October 2010 to September 2013.

Source: Anesthesiology News – Increased Use of Hydromorphone Over Morphine Ups Adverse Events, Study Finds

A Blunt Discussion About Marijuana: Drug Has Risks, Benefits

A family physician and a patient provided their perspectives on the risks and benefits of medical marijuana during the 2015 Family Medicine Experience in Denver.

Source: A Blunt Discussion About Marijuana: Drug Has Risks, Benefits

According to a 2013 survey(www.samhsa.gov) by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 5.7 million Americans use marijuana daily, up from 3.1 million in 2006. Nineteen percent of Americans ages 18-25 indicated in the same poll that they had used marijuana in the past month. The drug is linked to nearly 500,000 ER visits annually.

Alternative Dementia Screening Tests | Physician’s Weekly

Alternative Dementia Screening Tests | News Brief

  

Chinese investigators suggest that there are multiples alternatives to the Mini-Mental State Examination that have comparable diagnostic capabilities for detecting dementia. The Mini-Cog test and the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-Revised were deemed the most effective alternative screening tests for dementia. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment was determined to be the optimal alternative for detecting mild cognitive impairment.

Source: JAMA Internal Medicine, September 2015.

Source: Alternative Dementia Screening Tests | Physician’s Weekly