Smoking cannabis regularly triples severe depression risk, study of Bristol teenagers finds.

Heavy users most at risk of bipolar disorder, say researchers who studied more than 3,000 Bristol people.

Regular cannabis smoking can almost triple a teenager's risk of suffering depression early in adulthood, according to new research.
A study of more than 3,000 teenagers growing up in the Bristol area found those who used cannabis were much more likely to suffer bipolar disorder by the time they reached adulthood.

It found marijuana caused a condition known as 'hypomania' - periods of elated mood, overactive and excited behaviour and reduced need for sleep. These are telltale symptoms often experienced as part of severe depression - and have a serious impact on day-to-day life.

The study published by Schizophrenia Bulletin is the first to test the link between cannabis use in adolescence and hypomania in early adulthood.

It followed 3,370 male and female participants - comparing rates of cannabis use when they were 17 with cases of hypomania by the time they were 22 or 23.

Researchers analysed data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, also known as Children of the 90s, which charts the health of families in the Bristol area.
They found there was a 'dose-response relationship', meaning heavy users were most at risk - but any cannabis consumption still increased the depression risk, albeit less powerfully.
The research is the first to investigate the association between adolescent cannabis use and hypomania in early adulthood, whilst controlling for important other factors that might explain this connection, such as psychotic symptoms.
Psychiatrist Dr Steven Marwaha, of Warwick University, said: "Cannabis use in young people is common and associated with psychiatric disorders. However, the prospective link between cannabis use and bipolar disorder symptoms has rarely been investigated.

"Adolescent cannabis use may be an independent risk factor for future hypomania, and the nature of the association suggests a potential causal link. As such it might be a useful target for indicated prevention of hypomania."
Dr Marwaha's team found those who smoked any amount of cannabis at 17 were almost twice as likely to develop the disorder by 23. But regular abuse - at least two to three times a week - nearly tripled the risk.

This was after taking into account gender, early environmental risk factors, alcohol and other substance abuse, along with depression and psychotic symptoms at the age 18, which could have effected the results.
The factors that most increased the risk of abusing cannabis and suffering hypomania were being male, or suffering sexual abuse as a child.
Cannabis use was also found to mediate the association of both childhood sexual abuse and hypomania, and male gender and hypomania.

The Class B drug is one of the most commonly-used illegal substances in western countries. So-called 'problematic use' in the general population is as high as 9.5 per cent in the US, while in the UK, 2.6 per cent of the population - about one person in every 38 - reported having been cannabis dependent in the last year.
Dr Marwaha said: "Its use is particularly common in young people. A recent study reported 31 per cent of young people have used cannabis three or more times by age 18 years.
"Cannabis use is linked to multiple harms, including cardiovascular disease, motor vehicle accidents, and mental health problems. Younger people are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of cannabis use."

The analysis indicated three pathways whereby cannabis use was associated with subsequent hypomania.

Dr Marwaha said: "First, adolescent cannabis use is independently associated with hypomania in early adulthood. This effect was independent of other key risk factors for hypomania including other drugs use, hazardous alcohol use, psychotic symptoms, and depression in late adolescence.
"Second, male sex is significantly indirectly associated with hypomania, through an increased likelihood of cannabis use. Harmful use of cannabis is more frequent in men than women, and this study shows its use in men may be much more important in the pathway to hypomania.
"Finally, childhood physical or sexual abuse is indirectly associated with hypomania through an increased likelihood of cannabis use. Both childhood abusive experiences and cannabis use in adolescence and adulthood have been shown to be connected to the expression of bipolar disorder psychopathology and to markers of its severity.

"Furthermore, previous studies have demonstrated that childhood trauma and cannabis use are also linked, with some studies indicating a prospective association independent of markers of deprivation or family dysfunction.
"The prospective analysis presented here is the first to show that cannabis use in adolescence may be part of the mechanism whereby childhood abuse can lead to bipolar disorder psychopathology.
"It appears that cannabis use seems to be one response of an individual to traumatic childhood experiences that can lead to harmful psychopathology in young adulthood."
Although the precise mechanism by which cannabis might lead to hypomania is unclear, studies indicate the brain is particularly vulnerable to the effects of cannabis use during adolescence.
Dr Marwaha said: "It has the potential to adjust reward system sensitivity and can interfere with mechanisms related to establishing connections during development."
Cannabis causes signalling changes, reducing the uptake of the feelgood chemical dopamine, he added.

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/smoking-cannabis-regularly-triples-severe-866472 

Johnny Hallyday, French rock star, dies aged 74.

The singer known as the ‘French Elvis’ passed away according to his wife Laeticia after a battle with lung cancer.

Photograph: Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images.

(Wednesday 6 December 2017 02.26 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 6 December 2017 02.49 GMT).

France’s biggest rockstar, Johnny Hallyday, the leather-trousered “French Elvis” who sold over 110m albums over a career spanning more than half a century, has died aged 74.

“Johnny Hallyday has left us. I write these words without believing them. But yet, it’s true. My man is no longer with us,” his wife Laeticia Hallyday said on Wednesday.

“He left us tonight as he lived his whole life, with courage and dignity.”

Hallyday had been battling lung cancer.

Veteran singer denounces ‘alarmist’ reports in some media and says while cancerous cells have been discovered, ‘I am doing well and am in good fitness’

The singer, whose hits were little-known outside the French-speaking world, went from a quiff-haired young heart-throb who introduced US-style rock and roll to France in the 1960s to the ageing bad-boy “Patriarch of French pop”, a national monument, akin to music royalty, plastered over the cover of celebrity magazines.

His more than 55 years of stardom were marked by contradictions. He was musically eclectic veering from French ballads to blues, from country and western to prog-rock, sometimes seen as rebellious, but most often adored by several generations for his comforting light touch.

“Johnny is the Victor Hugo of tunes; if he dies, France stops,” his equally cheesy entertainer friend Carlos once said.

Within minutes of the confirmation of his death the French Presidency issued a statement saying: “There is something of Johnny in all of us.”

Hallyday was often mocked as an air-headed rocker yet he protested that he was smarter than people thought. He was capable of delivering searing and acclaimed film performances, and once acted for the auteur-director Jean-Luc Godard.

Hallyday’s trademark was astonishing stage-shows – in over 50 tours he played to more than 28 million people — where his hip-swinging stunts inevitably involved bursts of flames, plumes of smoke or arriving on stage after being winched down from a helicopter high above the stadium. So famous was he in France that Jimi Hendrix once played as his support act.

Once asked to name the best compliment that could be bestowed on him, Hallyday said: “The show was good tonight”.

Born Jean-Philippe Smet in Paris, the son of French mother and Belgian father, he was abandoned as a baby by his parents and raised by an aunt among cabaret singers and performers. He first took to the stage as a teenager, borrowing the name Hallyday from an American relative. Being abandoned by his parents had left a void he said he had always struggled to fill. Despite his black-clad rocker image, he would say he was afraid of the dark.

Part of Hallyday’s extraordinary appeal through the generations was his fragility — he survived an early suicide attempt, had been candid about depression and needing cocaine to get out of bed and work, and he had bounced back from years of serious health problems. During five marriages – marrying one wife twice – he was a staple of the gossip magazines, but when journalists turned up at posh hotels to meet him, he would present himself as a self-effacing, ordinary bloke.

Hallyday briefly lived in London as a child, when the relatives who raised him, artists and dancers, were working there. He said he had often recorded in London. “I was very good friends with Jimi Hendrix, I knew Mick Jagger, John Lennon. Rod Stewart is a friend. We’d all record in the different studios and meet for tea.”

In later years — constantly weighed down by layers of metal skull jewellery and a cigarette — Hallyday’s status as the nation’s top entertainer meant he was fawningly courted by politicians, including his friend the right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy. He was given national honours by the right’s Jacques Chirac, although he was careful to stay friendly with everyone. Constantly questioned by the media about his tax affairs, in 2007 he based himself in Switzerland for tax purposes, but much of his earnings come from the French market and were still subject to tax there. He latterly lived in Los Angeles with his wife and two young daughters.

Once asked by Le Figaro for his best memory on stage, he cited his surprising 2012 gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The UK was a market he never cracked but a flood of French ex-pats had flocked to the show. “There was a very “rock and roll” atmosphere,” he said. “People were getting onto the stage, like they did in the 1960s. I hadn’t seen that for some time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/dec/06/johnny-hallyday-french-rock-star-dies-aged-74-lung-cancer?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=255425&subid=19413045&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

The Best Retelling of the Jesus Story Isn’t from Narnia or Harry Potter

Our culture has produced plenty of fine remakes, but nothing beats the Old Testament prequel.

Image: Pearl / Lightstock.

The problem with well-known stories is that they grow dull through familiarity. When narratives become part of the cultural fabric—think Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, or Hamlet—they may retain their charm, but they will usually lose their edge. So creative people find ways of retelling them that capture the drama and basic storyline of the original, but with a twist. Move Romeo and Juliet to New York, and you get West Side Story. Turn Cinderella into a prostitute, and you get Pretty Woman.

The most obvious example is the best-known story of all. No matter how well we know the gospel, we can find new perspectives: Aslan dying for Edmund, Jean Valjean’s encounter with grace in Les Miserables, or Harry Potter taking the killing curse upon himself before the resurrection stone brings him back to life. But the best examples of fresh reads on the gospel come not from fiction but from Scripture itself.

Take the story of Joseph, for instance. As we are introduced to him in Genesis 37, Joseph, like Jesus, is favored by his father, honored in front of his family, and given a vision of the whole of Israel worshiping him. This prompts jealousy and hatred from his brothers, who conspire to kill him, even as he comes to serve them. Reuben intercedes for him, as Pilate later will for Jesus, but Joseph is eventually thrown into a pit anyway and sold for pieces of silver through the mediation of Judah (whose name, in its Greek form, would be Judas). Blood is presented to Joseph’s father—the blood of a goat, the animal which makes atonement in Leviticus.

The parallels continue in Genesis 39. After he avoids being murdered out of jealousy, Joseph finds safety in Egypt. As he grows older, all that he does prospers because God is with him. He fights temptation and wins. Nevertheless, he is accused of doing something he did not do and is unjustly imprisoned. Throughout his ordeal, we are told, “the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love” (39:21, ESV throughout).

In Genesis 40, Joseph is sandwiched between two criminals. One is a baker, a maker of bread; the other is a cupbearer, a server of wine. Joseph prophesies the salvation of one and the death of the other, when they look virtually identical to us, just as Jesus will promise one of the criminals, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Joseph remains faithful, despite suffering injustice. He waits for God to raise him up.

When, in Genesis 41, Joseph is finally vindicated, he emerges from the pit with a new face and new clothes (41:14). So does Jesus. Joseph’s appearance is immediately hailed as good news for the nation: Pharaoh says, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the spirit of God?” (41:37). It is the same with Jesus. Joseph is exalted to the right hand of the highest authority (like Jesus), with emissaries sent before him (like us), crying out to all who can hear, “Bow the knee!” (41:43). The result is blessing for the world in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, as we find in Jesus. The world comes hungry to Joseph and finds that he is the only one who can provide food that satisfies. In a far greater and more lasting way, we discover the same thing in Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Connections like this help us make more sense of the Joseph story, and they open up new angles on the Jesus story. At the same time, they hint at other, subtler lessons. Joseph feeds the nations, and only then, after a protracted back-and-forth, is he reconciled with his Israelite brothers. Does this prepare us for Paul’s argument that the salvation of the Gentiles will, after a time, lead to the salvation of Israel? (By Andrew Wilson).

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/november/best-retelling-jesus-story-narnia-harry-potter.html