Heat Stroke Kills Children and Pets

Here are several tips for preventing injuries or deaths to children and/or pets left in cars:

• Get in the habit of always opening the back door of your vehicle every time you reach your destination to check to make sure no child - or pet - has been left behind.
• Keep a large stuffed animal in the child's car seat. Right before the child is placed in the seat, move the stuffed animal to the front passenger seat as a visual reminder that your child is in the back seat.
• Put something you'll need on the floorboard in the back seat in front of your child's car seat (cellphone, handbag, employee ID, briefcase, left shoe, etc.). This ensures you open the back door of your vehicle to retrieve your belongings.
• Make arrangements with your daycare provider or babysitter to call you within 10 minutes if your child does not arrive as expected.
• Never leave children or pets alone in or around cars, not even for a minute. Instead, use drive-thru services when available.
• Keep vehicles locked at all times, even in the garage or driveway, and keep car keys and remote openers out of reach of children.

Opioid, Heroin Deaths Continue to Climb

Overdose deaths from both prescription opioids and heroin continued to rise in 2011, the most recent year for which data were available, according to the CDC. While prescription opioid deaths followed a more than decade-long trend and increased about 2% to 16,917, heroin deaths jumped by 44% -- from 3,036 in 2010 to 4,397.

Officials with the CDC said the increase in heroin deaths may be partly due to users having less access to prescription opioids and switching to the illicit drug. It can be said that about 75% of heroin users say they started out by using prescription opioids.

The increasing number of heroin deaths also coincides with anecdotal reports about rising heroin use among people who have had diminished access to prescription opioid painkillers. The prescription opioid death number is getting close to stabilizing, but added that it's "still bad because it hasn't gone down." That number has been on the rise since 1999, when it was 4,030. In 2010, the figure was 16,651.

Doctors are trying, but they need to do a better of job of screening for opioid abusers by checking prescription drug monitoring programs in their states for patients who are doctor shopping, and by using urine screens to detect if they are using illicit drugs.

Andrew Kolodny, MD, a long-time advocate of tighter controls on opioids, said the growing deaths from heroin and opioids is something that could have been predicted 10 years ago. "I see this as all the same problem, an epidemic of people addicted to opioids," said Kolodny, chief medical officer of Phoenix House, a national addiction treatment organization. "Treatment has to be easier to access than pills or heroin."

We are seeing more heroin use, and presumably the new users of heroin are people who run out of their ability to get prescription opioids. In a way it is an unintended consequence.

Deaths involving benzodiazepines, which are commonly used concomitantly with opioids, also continued to rise, showing up in 31% of opioid overdose deaths in 2011, up from 30% in 2010.

Prescription drug overdoses more than doubled in the past 13 years in Orange County, a deadly increase that has closely mirrored the popularity of their illicit use, according to a report recently released. Illegal drugs – such as cocaine and heroin – used to make up the majority of overdose deaths. In 2012, however, 57 percent of overdose deaths in the county involved prescription drugs, such as Vicodin, Oxycontin and Codeine, the report states.

The steep increase in prescription drug deaths has been nearly in sync with the increasing use of them among addicts, officials said, with users over the years seeking out pain medication to obtain a high similar to heroin.

Last year, 2013, illegal drugs were behind 20 percent of Orange County’s 330 overdose incidents.

Prescription drugs were involved in 57 percent of the cases, 188 deaths. The remaining 23 percent of cases involved both illegal and prescription drugs, the report found. The report detailed all death investigations by the coroner’s office for 2012, but officials singled out the increasing appearance of prescription drugs, noting the flip from illegal to prescription drugs.

Drugs such as Oxycontin, Opana, Codeine and Vicodin are increasingly being used, and sold, by people seeking a high, officials said, often with deadly consequences. Narcotics investigators in Orange County have been seeing the trend for years on the street, he said, and it’s a trend that’s occurring across the country.

There has been a surge in the use of opioid drug - heroin and prescription painkillers - in the United States, and this rise in popularity has some calling it an “epidemic.” Here in Orange County, public health officials say there is a growing problem with opioid abuse and subsequent overdoses.

The increase in heroin use across the country is interconnected with an expanding opioid market, driven by the high demand for prescription painkillers, such as Oxycontin and hydrocodone. As a general class of drugs, opioids have a high potential for abuse.

Across North Carolina, there has been a more than 300 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths since 1999, according to the state Center for Health Statistics.

One important part of that approach is the use of the medication, naloxone, which can quickly reverse an overdose caused by opioid medications and even heroin. This was possible due to a state law passed in 2013 that gave doctors the ability to prescribe naloxone to a person at risk of opioid overdose, as well as that person’s friends and family members. Naloxone is just one piece of a larger effort to address substance abuse and misuse, particularly with prescription and other opioids.

Simply put ... THERE IS NO "MAGIC" PILL ... WITHOUT SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES!

Today - Begin Where You Are

Do you wish to succeed in life? Try beginning where you now are. Utilize the tools you have at hand. Expect the best and then follow through and DO your best. That is all it takes.

Of course you must have a goal, whether it be immediate, intermediate or long term. You must know what you want. You must have an ideal, you must have vision. The Bible says, "Where there is no vision the people perish." Those with no vision wander about in a desert of non-belief, fear, and doubt until despair enters their mind. This is true of the individual or the mass. There seems no way out, and you can't win unless you believe you can be changed.

What is your problem? could it be ill health? Do you suffer pain? Are you nervous? Are you groggy from taking too much medicine, too many drugs, tranquilizers, aspirin, and/or perhaps even alcohol? Begin now to get rid of these false idols. There is a better way, a right way, and most importantly - the proper way. You will never find answers in a bottle or drug. You may ask what you can do. What other way is open to you?

Your body is fearfully and wonderfully made, as has often been said. This being true, what have you to fear? Why doubt the laws of nature? Begin now, where you are, to set nature's laws to work for you and you will find the way to approach a more abundant life. What does this mean, you may ask?

Chiropractors have a different approach to health problems. No drugs, no surgery, nothing to swallow, and no shots. It's not that we do not "believe" that modern medicine is injurious, but it would be a last resort unless a true emergency should present. Have you wondered how this works?

I point out that health comes from "up down inside and outward" and in no other way. Health depends entirely upon the nervous system that stems from the brain and spinal cord with its network of nerve fibers forming a direct medium of contact between brain cells and tissue cells.

You may have heard it said that the spine is the strength and support of the body. This is true, but the use of the spine has many ramifications. The spinal column supports the head housing the brain. It also serves for the articulation of all the larger bones and the attachments of major muscles and ligaments. Through this medium you are enabled to have strength, activity, and function; however, more is needed. this is supplied through the brain, spinal cord, and its nerve fibers already mentioned.

The spinal cord is a great cable of nerves that descends from the base of the skull down through the greater length of the spinal column. the spinal column is provided with openings between the vertebrae where nerve bundles emit separating into countless nerve fibers that form a direct contact between the brain cells and all structures of the body. Through this medium all activity and function take place enabling the body to perform a more perfect state of health.

Sometimes however, there is dis-ease (want of ease) with its various symptoms and you may become ill. You have pains, indigestion, nervousness, and various other disorders. As a result you take something for it, or you go to a doctor for a prescription to be filled at a pharmacy. These sometimes work, but more often cause side effects worse than the original complaint. "A drug is not a drug unless it causes side effects." Eli Lilly.

What has caused these problems? We point out that in everyday life you are subject to falls, accidents, and mishaps that sometimes displace one or more vertebrae to a degree so nerves are pinched. This in conjunction with malfunction and the emotions results in various health problems.

X-rays of the spine and other tests can determine the spinal cause of the problem. Then gentle spinal adjustments are given, and in due time health can be restored again. Are you in doubt?

Begin now, where you are. Go to your chiropractor and perhaps you too can discard your medicines. The way will be opened to a more abundant life.