Potential Drug Treatment for Gambling Addiction
Researchers have found that problem gamblers tend to have a greater amount of dopamine (a "reward" chemical naturally found in the brain) released during winning gambling activities than the amount released in non-problem gamblers, the Australian Associated Press reported. This discovery, researchers say, may eventually lead to the development of new drugs to combat gambling addiction.
"We assume that something is going wrong with the reward system of the brain of gamblers when they just keep on playing and losing a lot of money," explained Dr. Ulrich Schall, a psychiatrist at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
"What we have found is that the dopamine system is more sensitive and responsive in gamblers than non-gamblers," he said.
Schall, whose study was sponsored by the Hunter Medical Research Institute, presented his findings to the 7th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry in Berlin. Even though Schall believes that drugs could eventually be developed to help problem gamblers achieve normal dopamine levels, he suggests that behavioral therapy will still be useful.
American Study Promotes Naltrexone for Problem Gamblers
Gambling addiction is a costly problem, says TheWBALChannel.com, the website of a news station in Baltimore. The site reports that male problem gamblers typically incur between $54,000 and $92,000 in gambling debts. Women, meanwhile, are likely to gamble away about $15,000 on average.
For some of these troubled gamblers, a new drug treatment may prove beneficial. Research is showing that naltrexone, a drug approved by the FDA in 1995 to treat alcohol addiction, may also help fight off the urge to gamble. A study of 45 patients suffering from gambling problems found that naltrexone helped about three quarters of the participants, giving addiction counselors hope that another weapon has been added in the battle against problem gambling.
Driving Your Text Message
SMS, the text service that can send messages of up to 160 characters, is the driving force behind the growth of mobile data services. So popular is SMS, which stands for short message service, that the Global Standard for Mobile (GSM) Communications Standards estimates that by the end of this year more than 15 billion messages will be sent monthly. Last September, for example, there were nearly 560 million text messages sent in the United Kingdom alone. Germany, however, is the leader of all European nations in using SMS, with an estimated 1.5 billion messages going out each month. Europeans account for about 60 percent of all global SMS traffic.
A spokesman for the GSM association told Yahoo! News that there are many innovative new uses for SMS, such as gambling, blind dates, religious services and advertising. Plus, with the eventual advent of LMS (long message service) many small businesses will jump on the message service for more affordable ways to promote their products and services.
British Children Prefer PCs over TV
Children in the United Kingdom are turning off their televisions and switching on their home computers, sometimes spending up to 70 hours a week online, according to a study by the Family Assurance Group. Three thousand U.K. families, including 4,500 children, took part in the survey.
The findings have alarmed some experts and parents, who expressed concern that children are spending too much time online and not enough time experiencing life. One percent of the children were found to surf the Internet 50 to 70 hours per week, while 17 percent of the children surveyed reported watching 10 or more hours of television per week.
Computer usage is cropping up in discipline too, as 14 percent of the parents surveyed said they are taking away computer privileges from their kids. In contrast, 16 percent of parents say they take away television viewing privileges as a method of punishment.