Six things that are bad for us

1.  Booze is now second only to tobacco on the deadliest drugs list, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Between 2002 and 2014 alcohol-related deaths have surged 37 percent.  Alcohol has been linked to at least seven forms of cancer.

2.  Opiods like morphine, oxycodone, and methadone, used as supposed pain killers, may actually increase patients’ sensitivity to pain over the long term, according to a University of Colorado study.

3.  Marijuana may take a long-term toll on mental health, particularly damaging learning and memory, and reducing blood flow to almost all parts of the brain, according to researchers.

4.  With the prolific use of cell phones, distracted driving is killing thousands every year.  And now public health experts attribute some ten percent of all pedestrian injuries to distracted walking.  You may want to just hang up and walk.

5.  Insomnia, which has a variety of causes, such as too much self-imposed stress in work or home life, adversely affects learning, memory, and emotion, according to a Chinese study.

6.  Trampolines are damned dangerous, period.  They were responsible for 7,000 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2014 alone. 

But, wait a minute.  Haven’t we really known this stuff all along?  Logically?  Intuitively?  Why do we seem to always need more studies to illustrate the obvious?

Phil