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AIKEN-AUGUSTA’S MOST SALUBRIOUS NEWSPAPER • FOUNDED IN 2006

MARCH 17, 2017

How shift work affects health — and how to survive ’til morning

The Walking Dead Memo to all expectant women, aggressive motorists, bar patrons and substance abusers: kindly arrange your affairs so as to have your next medical emergency during normal business hours. Thank you.

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ouldn’t that be nice? In the real world, however, there is always going to be the need for around-the-clock staffing. Babies come into the world whenever they feel like showing up, whether it’s 3 pm or 3 am; drunks behind the wheel do some of their best work after midnight; many factories run 3 shifts, meaning someone is always working midnights; police and security guards know mayhem and hijinks tend to break out more often under cover of darkness. So while sleep is always at a premium for some people, March 2017 has been a bad month for the roughly 100% of human beings who need sleep. Item #1: On March 10, the group that establishes work standards

for U.S. medical school graduates (that is, for residents and interns) scrapped the old 16-hour shift limit for fi rst-year residents and replaced it with a new rule approving shifts of 24 hours straight effective July 1. Item #2: This past Sunday morning, Americans lost nearly 325 million hours of sleep in a single second, the time it took for the official time to go from 2:00 am Standard Time to 3:00 am Daylight Saving Time. Millions of people experience sleep disruptions every time we spring forward and fall back. This week especially, sleep is front and center for us all. Let’s talk about outside challenges to a good night’s sleep and what we can do about it. Please see SLEEP page 2

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN A monthly series by an Augusta drug treatment professional

THE REHAB QUAGMIRE by Ken Wilson Executive Director, Steppingstones to Recovery Before doing an intervention, make sure you understand the many faces of “rehab.” “He’s gone to rehab” could mean many things to John Q. Public. All that glitters is not gold! First, there’s “detox,” meaning medically supervised oversight to insure that an addict/alcoholic safely withdraws from chemicals. This could be done on an inpatient hospital basis, or as an outpatient doing “ambulatory” detox. In an ideal world, careful evaluation should be done by a medical professional specializing in chemical dependence before such programs are begun. For acute alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawals, for instance, an inpatient stay is usually recommended because if not medically monitored properly, a patient is at risk of a seizure and possible death as a result of physical withdrawals. For a less risky patient coming off alcohol or benzos it may be possible for a medical doctor to prescribe an ambulatory detox routine for “detox” at home. In such a case, the medication must be in the hands of a responsible individual other than the patient. An addict might take the whole bottle of pills in a single day with disastrous results. These days I do not know of an insurance company that will authorize an inpatient admission for opiates alone with no other diagnosis. A qualified doctor knows the safe medications to Please see REHAB page 6

NOW ACCEPTING NEW CUSTOMERS! 706.722.4653 • www.iuiscrubs.com FB: internationaluniformscrubs 1216 Broad St. in beautiful downtown Augusta “Come get in our pants!”

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Mar17 17 by Daniel Pearson - Issuu