HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                                             IN today’s society, many experience loneliness. It affects people of all AGES and of all RACES, SOCIAL STRATA, and CREEDS. Have you ever been lonely? Are you lonely now? Actually, all of us at one time or another have felt the need for companionship –for someone to lend us an ear, to offer us reassurance or possibly to echo our deep feelings or inner thoughts, and to understand us as a person. We have a need for someone who is sensitive to our emotions. Coping with loneliness is not easy. Powerful emotions are involved. How can a person deal with loneliness? What have some done to overcome this powerful feeling? Tina likes to be alone when making some decisions, but she feels that loneliness can be dangerous. When...

                                       In 1982, when women were diagnosed with AIDS, it was thought that they must have been infected through intravenous drug use. Soon, it was realized that women could become infected through normal sexual intercourse and that they are at special risk of contracting HIV. Worldwide, women now make up 50 percent of adults living with HIV/AIDS. “The epidemic disproportionately affects women and adolescent girls who are socially, culturally, biologically and economically more vulnerable, and who shoulder the burden of caring for the sick and dying,” reports UNAIDS. Why is the growth of the disease among women a special concern to AIDS workers? HIV-infected women often face more discrimination than men, especially in some developing lands. If a woman is...

               In a report to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, researchers at Duke University alluded to a link between the way gambling is advertised and belief in the supernatural. The report states: “Many [lottery] ads are unabashedly materialistic. Yet this is not the materialism of hard work and perseverance but rather of genies and magnetic lamps, rooted in hopes, dreams, and superstition. And every lottery manager knows that many of his or her best customers base their bets on personal superstitions, astrological tables, self-styled seers, and the venerable ‘dream books’ that list numbers corresponding to names, dates, and dreams. Rather than emphasizing that all numbers have the same probability of being selected and that playing popular numbers will reduce a person’s expected payoff in pari-mutuel games, lottery agencies have chosen to encourage players to choose ( and stick with)...

                                     Drugs are like sledgehammers,” points out Dr. Eric Nestler. Indeed, a single dose of these chemical sledgehammers can be deadly. “Crack cocaine, for example, has been known to kill people the first time they used it,” explains the book Drugs In America. The new wave of synthetic drugs can be just as hazardous. “Gullible youngsters buying drugs at a ‘rave’ party can have no idea of what chemical cocktail is about to bombard their brains,” warns the United Nations World Drug Report. For most youngsters, however, the descent into the depths of drugs addiction is gradual one, as the following examples illustrate.                          ...