105 What's Killing up to 2k College Students a Year, How to Choose Extracurriculars and more with Dr. Jill Grimes MD College Health Specialist

Welcome to the MindBodySpace podcast, where you can boost your resilience just by listening. To help us help you, please subscribe to this podcast and sign up for the newsletter at mindbodyspace.com/podcastnewsletter. There is now solid evidence that stress can affect our biology down to the cellular level, affecting our health, performance, and happiness. In these complex times, it's so important that we educate ourselves on useful versus toxic stress so that we can live our best lives. Hi, I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a lifestyle medicine specialist and a fellowship-trained radiologist who's seen many preventable diseases from the inside out. My passion is sharing science-backed antidotes to toxic mental and physical stress so that you can focus on what's most important to you. Today, I'm so excited to have with us again, Dr. Jill Grimes. She's a board-certified family medicine physician who is passionate about prevention. She's the author of the award-winning humorous and evidence-based book, "The Ultimate College Student Health Handbook." Handbook, your guide for everything from hangovers to homesickness. She's also the author of Seductive Delusions: How Everyday People Catch STDs, which converted an awkward and boring subject to an engaging educational resource. In today's conversation, we're going to talk about how to counter the stress of being injured as a student athlete or anyone for that matter. We're also going to talk about what's killing up to 2,000 college students a year. We're going to dive into the topic of weed, hint, it's not the kind they had way back when, how to tell if someone has an STD, and we'll even touch on informed consent. And a little bonus, how to find love, or at least someone compatible to date.

Hi, Jill, how are you? Thank you so much for coming back on the Mind Body Space podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be back.

Yay. I'm so excited to have you back. Our last episode, we talked about so many topics. And first, we're going to start off with a question from one of our listeners. All right, and she asked about athletes and injuries, and this is so common. I definitely have heard about this, uh, myself, just, you know, with the kids that I know, student athletes getting injured. And what do you do on that downtime, you know, because it's such a big part of their lives, you know. And when you're healing from an injury, there's a lot of wellness issues to be addressed, including mental wellness, physical wellness, getting back to where you wanna be, and also refocusing your mind on what needs to be done because now you're not playing as much or you're not on the field. So that was the question from one of my listeners, and Jill is gonna answer that.

All right, I wish I had one super easy pithy answer, but like you said, the thing is there's so much to address with this. So particularly for a student athlete, and this is honestly true whether it's club or the varsity teams, for many students, especially early on in their college career, that is their identity. That was their identity in high school. And that is, I mean, that is just 100% their identity. And if you take a football player, for example, and he gets an ACL injury and has to have surgery and he's out for the season, It is a huge loss. And so part of the question, you know, how do we support them as parents? One is understanding that they are literally grieving a loss, even if they're— even if they're working towards getting back. And honestly, many don't. So that's a reality too. But, you know, they're dealing with that whole transition in addition to transitioning to college.

So first is validating, right?

Right.

It's an actual loss.

Exactly. Being there to validate that this is a real loss. It's not something trivial. Even if this is not your star quarterback for a huge football school, this, this could be, um, golf, volleyball, whatever. And it might be club, but, but that still was part of their identity. And the reality is that when— if they are truly taken out and they are not even going to be sitting— if they're not going to even be sitting with the team, which again is more the case for, you know, club and, um, intramurals, etc., they're gonna— they're most likely gonna lose that friend group to some extent. And so helping them, you know, just being a support for them on the academic level, if they are truly a student athlete, they have huge advantages. Um, I mean, meaning like a scholarship athlete, they— I, I was flabbergasted when I got into college Health to realize the extent of tutors, and they have so many resources that the rest of students do not. So, mm-hmm, and in some cases I think they're held out of classes a bit longer than others would because really they're afraid of reinjury. They don't want an accidental injury on campus. But one really basic thing that we do in, in Student Health is when someone say they have an ACL injury of their knee, they can actually, this is so basic, but they can get a parking pass usually. You know, you get a temporary parking pass so that they can get to classes easier. This sounds really simple, but that just the physical ability to get to and from class is a big barrier to overcome. So know that that type of thing is available.

Mm-hmm. Unless of course you're on a campus that has no cars and you know, one kid who has to take lots of stairs. That can be a little rough, but maybe they have some extra help that they can give them somehow.

Yes, most campuses now have some workaround. Some of the older ones, I'm sure where you are, all the much older schools in the country maybe have very limited access. That's a good point. The major thing though is helping them. If it's a knee, it doesn't mean that they can't work out. And remember that exercise, of course, is one of the best things we can do to raise our serotonin levels in our brain. And if you take away intense scheduled exercise, you know, that's, that's not helping their mental health either. I mean, and of course their trainers and stuff, if they're varsity, would help them with cross-training and pool, um, swimming, aerobic stuff. Again, if it's, if it's your intramural athlete, you know, what you could do as a parent perhaps would be to buy them some personal training sessions. Most college campuses have very affordable personal training in their gyms. That's a big help because one, you've got a scheduled thing to do and two, you know, and obviously guidance and you can focus on different parts of your body while the other part is rehabbing.

Mm-hmm. And so I just want to add to that, adjusting your mindset, right? So if your knee's out, there's so many other parts of your body that you can work on and possibly even strengthen for prevention of another injury. So a lot of people don't pay attention to posture, for example, and that's one of the most important things, like all the tiny little muscles. So even Novak Djokovic, he works on a Pilates reformer machine. So maybe try something new like that and you can strengthen other parts of your body.

That's exactly what I was going to say. And, you know, working more on balance with yoga or Pilates. There's a lot of different things that ordinarily you might not have had time for this may actually be an opportunity to change your style of your approach to your total body health.

Mm-hmm. I teach a lot of musicians, and musicians are like athletes in the sense that they do a lot of repetitive movements. They're tiny muscle athletes. I had a student who broke a finger, and we suggested that they do all of their normal repertoire, but without using that finger. And it really strengthens the way that you think about the music, and it's a different way to integrate the material. So it was actually not downtime.

That's interesting.

You know, maybe they dropped the note, or maybe they used a different fingering.

I'm a flautist and a pianist. I'm imagining like, like just dropping one finger, depending which finger it is, how hard it is. Yeah.

Oh, you are? I didn't know that. Yeah, that actually makes you think about the music a different way. I'm not a music teacher. I teach resilience, but Yeah, that's what I suggested, and it worked out.

Yeah.

That's very interesting.

So let me recap. You said validate their grief because it's part of their identity. But then after the validation of grief, I just want to add, maybe you can help them change their mindset and curiosity around other topics that maybe they hadn't explored before because they spent so much time being an athlete.

Right. I wanted to say that as well, that a lot of times the student athletes don't— in truth, so they don't have as much need, but they also just don't have the ability or time to explore all the millions of different clubs that are on campuses. And maybe, you know, this is their window of time to be able to explore some of that. I always tell freshmen coming into college that they should look at— they should join 3 different clubs, like a service club, a passion club, a really fun club, maybe if they're into politics. But, you know, find 3 completely different kinds of clubs and try them out. And maybe one will stick, maybe none will stick, but, you know, it helps you just really have that full college experience of meeting different people and connecting on all different levels.

That's a great— I love that. The three different, totally different areas that you can get involved in. I love that suggestion. Thanks. I have this machine, it's called the Tonal, and it's an AI machine. It does exercises with me. And there's this coach on there. His name is Coach Jackson. And I love his workouts because he was a baseball player, and he had so many injuries, and he does all of this PT inside of the workouts, and it's like one of the best workouts, and it keeps me injury-free. So you can learn a lot, right, about your body when you're injured. So maybe change perspective after you validate that grief. Then you said ask for help and look for resources, right? So the kid can also look for resources. Maybe the parent could help them.— but mostly the kid. I find that it's hard for me. I think it's easier for the student to look and reach out on campus for help instead of the parent.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, the only thing that I feel like the parent's role is to be supportive. I do think offering something like, like I said, like the personal training sessions, you know, that is something you could offer because as parents, we want to do something. Sometimes what we need to do is sit on our hands. Yes.

I mean, you know, I found that both schools—

my son went to Harvard.

And my daughter is at Princeton, and both schools are very receptive if I ever had any issues. Like, I've only called once, but they have been very receptive to parents calling if there's an issue. One was like possible mold in a room, and they're very on top of that. So I think that it's possible for parents to actually call and help their kids if they need it.

Yes, I agree. In general, we should let the kids definitely do that, like calling to see what resources there are so that If you want to tell your kid what resources are out there, I think that's, that's good. Most of the time we just need to be pushing them in the right direction.

Yes.

Yes.

So the 3 things: validate their grief, ask for help, look for as many resources as you can. There's a lot, especially for athletes or for non-athletes, I'm sure as well. And then work out and focus on other ways that you can strengthen your mind and your body and reach out to other people. Because you might need to reach out for different kinds of friend groups now.

Exactly.

That's great advice. Thank you so much. And now you wanted to talk about a hot topic, binge drinking and/or weed and self-medicating. You know, anxiety is pretty rampant these days.

Yes.

Especially on college campuses. So I thought that we could talk about that next.

Great. This is definitely something I am super passionate about.

Because you go on college campuses a lot, right?

I do. I just—

and you see it firsthand.

I do. And you know, when I ask what percentage of your friends— I never ask, you know, like, oh, let's see a show of hands, who's using weed? What percentage of your friends, your peer group, is using weed? You know, 0 to 25%, 25 to 50%, 50 to 75%, 75 to 100%. And it's generally in the 50 to 100%. Now I will say I tend to speak to large groups. I speak in the Greek system a fair amount.

Mm-hmm.

I always emphasize though to those students and everybody else and to you parents, I want you to know that about 30% of students choose not to drink through college, drink or use drugs happily.

And that's a big number. People would be surprised to know that, 1 out of 3.

Having said that, it depends strongly, strongly on your peer group. And if I talk to a, on your standard college campus, your standard pledge class for a frat, if I said 30%, you know, they would think I'm an idiot. They literally would stop listening to me because that's why I ask, what percentage of your peer group? Now, I could also go to a Young Life group, which is a Christian group that tends to not drink, and I mean, it's probably 75% that do not, okay, um, drink, and maybe 100% that don't use weed. It's not Everybody.

And they also vary throughout their years.

For sure. Yeah. And sometimes there's a lot more freshman year, even though they all have fakes.

And then they can change over time.

Yeah. And then they grow up. But, you know.

So let's talk about like green out, brown out, and black out and what that means exactly.

Yes.

I'm sure all the kids who are listening already know, but maybe other people don't.

So passed out means unconscious. So obviously that's completely dangerous. That is, that's alcohol toxicity. You are unconscious. That's an emergency. And college students have no business trying to take care of or watch over someone who is unconscious. That's a big thing.

So how do you know if you're a college student that your friend is unconscious? Can you tell them?

You can't wake them up.

Like you shake them, you yell?

Literally try and wake them up.

Okay.

And, or if their breathing has slowed down to less than, Really, I'd say anything less than 12 breaths per minute. Officially, I think it's 8, but you know.

But I'm not sure college students, usually when they see their friends, they're also drunk. So I don't know how they're gonna count that, but I guess just relatively, if you can't wake them up.

The easy thing is if you can't wake, I just tell 'em, if you can't wake them up or they look bad, they look pale, shaky, bluish. I mean, like any, if you have any question seek help. That's, that's the real take-home message, because so many times, like, I don't want to get my friend in trouble because they're underage drinking. Okay, no, I mean, we can't— you know, they all know if someone's been drinking and they're throwing up to lay them on their side. That's called the Bacchus position, and, and that's helpful, right? The reality is, if somebody's repeatedly throwing up, they need to go to the emergency room. And that's, you know, college students need to have a lower threshold for seeking help. We, we have 1,500 to 2,000 deaths per year in college students that are alcohol-related.

2,000?

Yeah, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. It depends on the year. 1,500 on average.

So it includes alcohol-related accidents?

Yes, including even drunk driving. But I'll tell you, this generation, they Uber. They're very— by and large, they're better than their parents about if they have even 1 or 2 drinks, they don't drive. Now, the problem is what they do way worse than their parents is that they purposely blackout drink. Okay, so let's go back. So passed out is unconscious. Blacked out means that the next day they're going to have a memory gap. And what happens is when you basically do shots, when your alcohol— when your blood alcohol level raises too quickly, too high, it turns off your hippocampus so you can't take short-term memories and make them into long-term memories. So it stops that process. So you literally have there are no memories there. And people can show you pictures of you or remind you what you were doing, but it's not— nothing's going to click and make that come back. There is truly a blackout of memory. And gray out or brown out just means patchy memory loss. And basically, most of the time, kids just talk about blackout. I'm going to go get blackout drunk.

Your hippocampus is that deep part of your brain that forms memories, and I believe that the dendrites stop sending signals. So part of your neuron, it stops sending signals to the other neurons, and so you're literally damaging your brain.

Yes. And that's the other thing, is that everyone kind of gets now that multiple concussions are bad. It took us decades to, to get that.

Yeah.

And we don't know what the long-term ramifications are of this kind of newish phenomenon of very frequent blackout drinking.

I mean, concussions, we know that it can cause chronic depression, it could cause brain damage, as you were saying, dementia. And I want to say, because you said new, right? And, and that's something that I want to talk about a little bit, if we can go off on this little tangent for a second.

Sure.

When you said new, I don't think parents are aware of how much the kids are drinking.

It's a completely different quantity, you know. Yeah, back in the day, a lot of parents drank back in the day. Yeah, absolutely they did. And there were beer bongs. And why were there beer bongs? To get more alcohol in faster. Um, and so yes, I'm not saying no one ever blacked out, but the difference is rather than starting with beer, many kids start with vodka. It's vodka shots, that's the thing, or tequila. It tends to be doing shots, and it's really dangerous because the biggest danger, honestly, to me, is across social media, it's this blackout or back out, you know, that's what they say on you know, Friday night, Thursday night, Wednesday night, who knows, but they're intentionally drinking. That's how they wild party. And it's a social norm in some subsets of college students. And I don't mean to be picking on the Greeks, but it is more common in the Greek system. And many fraternities and sororities are doing a great job of educating about this, and I'm not trying to be negative about that.

Oh yeah, no. And also I've heard about a lot of kids blacking out in their rooms by themselves.

Yes. And part of that is when you're seeing on social media, when this is a perceived social norm, obviously increases the amount. And it's just they don't realize how dangerous it is. And they're frequently bragging about, you know, I did this post on social media about blackout drinking, and I was talking about how there's no set amount of exactly how much you have to drink, how fast, because it depends on, you know, is your stomach full? Are you absorbing the alcohol? A million different factors, how big you are, whether you're male or female.

But on average, also, when they're doing the shots, like, they're not measuring it out. So sometimes they're even just drinking and they don't know how many. I think most of them don't know exactly how many they drink when they get to that point.

Actually, a lot of them do because it's a point of pride, okay, of how many shots they've done. But for women, it's 4 or more drinks in less than 2 hours. For guys, it's 5 or more in less than 2 hours. And of course, the immediate response is, oh my gosh, so when I drank 9 in 30 minutes blah, blah, blah. And like, that, that, um, and they may have because many of them have tolerance, but that doesn't— just because you have tolerance and you aren't getting buzzed from it as much doesn't mean that it's stopping your body's physiological responses. So you're losing your gag reflex as that blood alcohol level goes up. You're still irritating your stomach lining, you're still irritating your liver. You may throw up but not have a gag reflex, and that's how you choke and aspirate and can die. I mean, this is, you know, it's really— it's nothing to glorify or encourage. And, you know, there's this whole, oh, kids will be kids, and, you know, whatever. And as an extension of that, if I can move on to weed—

wait, don't go to weed yet, because I have a bone to pick with— everybody's always saying 4 drinks for girls, 5 drinks for guys. But however, it's so dependent on how much you can tolerate. So some kids don't have a specific enzyme. For example, I don't, and a lot of Asian kids don't have this enzyme in their liver and they can't process it as well. Other— and on the other spectrum, if you have a high tolerance, I think those are the people that are also at great danger because they can go on to serious alcoholism, you know, because that's something that if you can tolerate something very well, it doesn't really affect you as much as other people. You know, for me, if I drink a little bit, I really instantly feel it. The next day I'll be sick, you know. So it's kind of like, oh, my brain doesn't get as addicted to it. But it's when you can form that tolerance.

Some people get very sleepy and, and tired when they drink, and other people, the more they drink, the more energized they get. And it's the people who are the life of the party who, the more they drink, the louder and more boisterous and more energized they get. Those are the people who are indeed more at risk for alcoholism, not surprisingly. Makes sense.

Okay. Yeah, especially if that's how you relieve stress and that's like one of the only ways you relieve stress, and maybe your personality is a little less introverted when you're drinking, right? So that's what you mean by when you get all life of the party. Yes.

I mean, it— because, you know, it— the first thing that alcohol affects is our prefrontal and frontal lobe, and that, you know, judgment and, and So a lot of students will say, "Well, why would I do something when I'm really drunk that I wouldn't do ordinarily?" You know, and you've lost judgment. It's something you would have thought of, maybe. I don't think you do anything you never would have thought of, but the thing is there's a big difference between thinking about, "Oh, I'm gonna jump off this roof into a swimming pool," and then going, "Well, that would be really stupid because I'm probably gonna, you know, get hurt." judgment about that, and that's cut off.

And then you might actually do it, and if you do it, you might not remember the next day because your neurons stopped working, literally, right?

And to go back— so to go back to the blackout issue, think about where that goes with consent, because of course if someone is drunk, they cannot consent. But young adults partying, drinking, being sexually intimate is obviously very common, and most college campuses have actually done a very good job talking about consent. Consent is just not saying no or saying yes once. It's ongoing, enthusiastic, verbalized consent. However, someone could be giving you ongoing, enthusiastic, verbalized consent tonight, but they had— turns out they'd had a bunch of shots, and they— and the next day they don't have a memory of that consent. Which creates obviously numerous issues.

So it's literally like you're a different person.

Well, and again, you know, you might realize that you say that you were physically intimate with somebody, but you may not remember giving consent.

I see.

Because you don't, you don't even remember, you don't remember the intimacy, right? You have a blackout of that. So everybody needs to think about this, and this is just not a guy-girl issue. This We see this both genders increasingly. Used to be just like a male issue. Um, it's definitely not. It's both genders. And anyway, there's so many different layers of that. And I will say that young people have literally said to me, you know, if I'm like, well, you know, you need to be concerned about— like, there's— they're talking about blackout drinking and why should they care. And to the extent of literally saying, if I were sexually intimate with somebody and I don't remember it, like if I were sexually assaulted, if I didn't remember it, what difference does it make? Literally saying that.

And I don't know about you, but I'm kind of in shock at that last statement that they don't care if they don't know what happened to them while they're blacked out. So wow, there's a lot to unpack right here. I'm going to get back to this in a future episode, hopefully with a therapist. Before we go on, I just wanted to let you know that the Science of Stress Management and Resiliency training course for busy people A self-paced course with mini daily lessons designed to help you create habits of self-care that actually stick is now available for purchase on mindbodyspace.com, so make sure that you check that out. Also available is a digital Relax to Soar planner. It's like a coach that's always with you so that you can get things done while performing at your mental and physical best.

It's like, well, let's start with, you know, you could get a sexually transmittable infection.

Mm-hmm.

And/or if the person is able to become pregnant, you could be pregnant. Aside from all the psychological and other issues, I mean, just straight up, but they're not thinking about those consequences because this is something I've been preaching about for, gosh, 2 decades now, is that you can't tell by looking who has a sexually transmittable infection. They are super common. Genital herpes, super common. Thank goodness we have the HPV vaccine, so now we're seeing way less genital warts. That used used to be much bigger deal, but, you know, HIV is still out there, gonorrhea, chlamydia, et cetera. Yes.

And now we know that that's one of the highest risks for throat and mouth cancer for young men.

Yeah, right. So—

And women, I guess, women and men. Throat cancer is just like on the rise because of this, yeah.

Very grateful that we have the HPV vaccine, but young people looking at other beautiful, smart, fabulous young people don't ever— they just don't think that that's not the kind of person that gets an STD. It's like, yeah, the kind of person that gets an STD is the kind of person who's sexually intimate, period. That's it. It doesn't matter how much money you have or where you are, what school you're at, you know. I don't care if you're at Harvard— no offense, um, you know— but the cream of the crop, Harvard, Princeton, Ivies, whatever, Stanford, yeah, anywhere, you know. It's just sexually transmitted infections are still out there. And so that is That, that is a message that we need to get across.

And not to mention, as a radiologist, I've seen the brains of chronic alcohol users and literally your brain shrinks. Your brain shrinks and your ventricles, you know, the fluid in your brain gets larger.

Yes.

And you lose your frontal lobe and your emotional intelligence doesn't develop because that's what it shuts down when you're drunk. And it's actually also a depressant. People take antidepressants. Use of alcohol, whether you're just drinking on the weekends or every day, is a depressant. So you might end up being depressed. And eventually people do get depressed.

Yes.

And then one last thing on this. When you mentioned seeing your friend and they're unconscious or seeing an acquaintance, and if you don't report, what happens if something happens to that person?

Yes. I mean, there, there are an increasing number of cases in the setting of hazing and pledging where people are being held responsible for not acting. That's true.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. And now you're going to go on to weed, your second favorite subject.

Yes. So parents.

This is a huge issue. Yeah.

I'm starting with the parents. The kids could listen. Because my issue is parents assume that today's weed is the same as their pot from the early '80s or '70s, and they're completely different substances. They shouldn't even be called the same thing. Back then, the THC concentration, which is the active, uh, ingredient that makes, you know, that's psychoactive, was 5%-ish. Now we have concentrated forms that are literally up to 99%, and the common ones that, that are not concentrates, just even the common ones, are at least 20% and up to 30%. And it's not the same drug.

Is it— is this when you go into the stores and whether it's legal in the, in the state? Is that what you're talking about, when you go into a store and buy weed?

Both. The day, at least where it's legal, you're There's some regulation. It's not tight, but you have a better, you have a much higher chance of getting what you think you're getting. Weed is sold by weight. And so illegal drug dealers add things to increase the perceived potency, like adding in LSD, which is acid, or formaldehyde, or adding in glass particles to make it heavier so that you're now inhaling that into your lungs.

Oh my gosh.

It just sells for more. So at least legalize your—

why do they add formaldehyde? Because that's like poison.

It is a poison because it makes it seem more potent. If you have a reputation of, you know, when people are buying it, they're buying it for the buzz that, you know, they want the most bang for their buck. So if you have a reputation for something being more potent, it's there. So different substances are added.

For those of you who don't know, formaldehyde is something that we preserve dead tissue with.

Yeah. Kind of think of it for like the biology pickled frogs. Yeah. And many times in the ER, they call it wet weed when someone comes in and they think all that they've consumed is weed, but then drug screens show that they got LSD, which is acid, uh-huh, not what they were intending to get. But what I want parents and students alike, young adults alike, to understand is with these higher concentrations of THC, we are seeing very different things. Like, there's a perception of weed that, oh, it's mellow, you know, you have a couple puffs of a joint and you're, you're mellow and calm. These— there's so many different layers of this. There's different kinds of weed, there's different strains, but in general, this concentrated ones, we're seeing much more psychosis, straight-up psychosis, with more hallucinations and, and scary things, you know, thinking someone's after you. So when you're seeing cars driving at 95 miles an hour down a, you know, in a 55-mile-per-hour zone. Every time I see that, I think, oh my gosh, I wonder if that person's, you know, high on weed. It's a different reaction. And we, we know that it can flip on a switch. When you have a psychotic episode, you may turn on a switch that isn't easily turned back off. And so we know that there's a link with schizophrenia So you can actually start having schizophrenia beginning with a weed episode?

Yes.

I mean, and is that an unmasking? Would you have developed it anyway or would you not if you'd never flipped that switch? We don't know, but frequently we'll see someone in a manic episode from it. And it's not the same drug. It's more addictive. It's not making people mellow and calm. And along the lines of being more addictive, people develop dependence on it. And then people say, well, I'm just using it to go to sleep. I'm using it to calm my mind at night, using it to help my insomnia. Well, guess what? It also causes insomnia as withdrawal if you try and stop it. So really, you know, the next night now you're getting in this vicious cycle of needing it to feel better, but then it's creating more problems. And that's true of anxiety. That's true of insomnia. I mean, if you ask any psychiatrist on a college campus, what do they think about weed? I would— I think you'd be hard-pressed. I've never met one anyway. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one that's like, oh yeah, I think that's a good idea. By and large, you're like, no. And, and, you know, I understand that we are seeing, you know, we're self-selecting a population that's having problems with it because that's what we see. I acknowledge that.

You're saying that there's probably people out there who do it and don't have a problem with it at some point, right? Is that what you're saying? But you just never know who.

Yeah, the problem is it's Russian roulette, you know. You don't, you don't know which— are you going to be that one that gets addicted? So many students think that they're only just going to, you know, it's just going to be a social thing, they're just going to do it on the weekends. But it does— it has the immediate effect, except when it doesn't— it has the immediate effect of making you calm. Except that same person, same type of weed or weed from the same store or dealer, and one time they take it and they have a bad trip. They get, they get anxious, like super anxious and paranoid and feel miserable. And you can't predict why that is or when that is. But most of the time when people inhale it, they get an immediate relief of anxiety, and then they start using it more. You know, it was just for one thing, and then, well, now it's for insomnia at night. And then the next thing you know, it's an all-day thing. And there's other problems that you can get, like the cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. If you, if you are somebody that is using— it's typically people who are using pretty heavily, so using cannabis every day, multiple times a day. But if you find that you are getting really nauseous and throwing up and having trouble with that, and the only thing that relieves it is hot showers, that's cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. And a lot of times people have to be hospitalized for that because the only way to fix it is to stop the cannabis. And so we have to give them IV fluids and support with anti-nausea medicines, etc.

And I mean, it's, it's, um, wow, that's so interesting because they used to treat some chemotherapy nausea with cannabis. But I guess you can get a hyper— yeah, you have to have the right dose, right? And you're usually— right, it's not— people are self-medicating, that's not really—

yeah, yeah, it's not intuitive. You would think, wait a minute, it's an anti-nausea thing, It causes munchies, uh, not so much.

Oh wow, cool. I never heard of that before. Thanks for bringing that up.

Yeah.

Because it's legalized in so many states—

at— for age 21—

people have a misunderstanding that you can't get addicted to it.

And that's just not true, and at the higher concentrations we're seeing more.

And the same with alcohol. Even though it's legal, you can get addicted, obviously. And if something else was killing 2,000 college students a year, people would be very upset about that. I don't understand why it continues. But thank you for speaking about it, Jill. Really. And it's such an important topic. And if you want to know more, Jill is on TikTok so you can follow her on TikTok.

Actually, I'm the TikTok College Doc.

Oh, nice. TikTok College Doc.

You can check me out there.

If you forget some of this, you can go on there and look. Yeah, right.

I'm relatively new on there. But the other thing I'd like to address today is about edibles.

Oh yes.

Here's my little spiel about edibles. Number one, they're so cute. I mean, it's gummy bears, right? It's gummy bears and brownies and cookies and bright colors, and they look like little kids could just eat them, which happens, which is a terrible thing. And we need to change the force more of the packaging laws. But the thing is, how many people eat a portion of a gummy bear? Like if you're eating gummy bears, not edibles, but just like, I mean, does anybody eat just the head off of a gummy bear and stop there?

No.

So the recommended recreational starting dose for somebody, if they don't use cannabis on a regular basis and they're legal and they're 21, the recommended first dose is, uh, 2.5 milligrams. And that is one fourth of a gummy bear. And what happens is people see these as, I mean, they look so innocent, right? And so one, they'll pop the whole gummy bear in their mouth, or I mean, that happens a lot. Um, but the biggest thing is when you inhale something or even when you drink alcohol, you get the effects pretty quickly. With an edible, it's going to take a minimum of 30 minutes and frequently 60 or 90 minutes till you even feel it. And nobody waits that long to feel the best. They're like, oh, you know, I don't feel anything from that. I'm gonna have a little bit more.

And then so then they have more, and then it's just like literally eating candy, right?

And whether it's a candy bar, I mean, there's so many different ways. But for a lot of particularly young adults and also adult adults, they're, oh, I would never smoke anything. I know not to do that. That's horrible for your lungs and everything else. And that's a lot of people get that, but they're like, oh, well, it's probably not as bad for you as alcohol, so I'll try this edible, it's legal. One, it transiently raises your blood pressure and your pulse. And so if you're an adult with hypertension, not a good plan. Do not.

Okay, kids, don't give your parents gummy bears.

Also, but you really need to be aware with edibles that it is, it's, it is a long thing. It's going to stay in your system 8 to 12 hours. It's not going to kick in. Yeah, it's not going to kick in for a while. So you just have to be—

Wow, I didn't know that.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, I'm definitely not trying those. I have like borderline hypertension all the time.

Not a good plan. So they are not as benign as they look and the packaging is really misleading.

Okay, thank you for those tips. I want to ask you one more question because you wrote something in the survey that I was interested in and it is February and it was Valentine's Day 2 days ago, so You mentioned something about having the best husband for 28 years.

I do.

Supporting you. Do you have any tips on how to meet and figure out who is the right person for you? I know some of it is obviously just guessing and you kind of, you know, you don't like plan everything out, right? That's just not possible.

Yeah.

But maybe you can give us a couple of tips.

So it's such a different climate now, and online dating is how the vast majority of people still meet. I mean, not still meet, but meet, meet now. I can see the positive that you literally can screen out if you're honest. You can certainly find people who are like-minded. But at the end of the day, I think I still feel like organically joining an organization, being involved in something that you really are passionate about, whether that's a service thing, a faith-based thing, feeding the homeless, going and making sandwiches. If that is your passion and you meet someone there who's willing to spend their time doing that too, I think you're gonna connect well like that.

But, um, I love that. So if you take an awesome value or awesome character trait like kindness or compassion and you join something that actually takes action doing that, you might meet other people who feel the same way, which is—

Exactly.

—really one of the most amazing character traits, is kindness, supportive person in your life, right? Because you have to be a team together, right?

And whatever your passion is, I mean, that might be a role-playing game. You might want, you know, if you're a super— if you're a creative, it could be Dungeons and Dragons. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be church. I mean, it could be politics, it could be food if you're a foodie, and you just, you know, you want someone who shares that passion, taking a cooking class, anything like that.

But that's great advice. I met my husband at work, so I think that we had a lot in common. And, you know, we were interviewed for a book. It's called Make Your Move by John Berger. He's a finance writer turned romance data writer. He also came to the conclusion that, you know, if you're in a certain workplace, for example, I know it's it's hard to have romance in the workplace, but he says that those kind of marriage relationships or marriages last longer because you do have so much in common and you've also been vetted, you know, in a way, right? Oh, interesting. Workplace. I guess that goes for college campuses too, right?

I think that's true. You have such a great chance in college and grad school to meet people that are completely different from you or very like-minded, but it's a great place to— and time to meet and try totally different things that may turn out to be your passion. You may not know that you have a passion for X, Y, or Z, um, until you just try some different experiences. That's part of that whole join 3 totally different clubs, do different things. One of our daughters joined juggling club. She didn't juggle, uh, you know, just as a random thing, a completely fun, frivolous— actually great for hand-eye coordination, and it turned out good during COVID you could do it outside. There's lots of pluses to that one. But it doesn't have to be something that, that is the most important thing. Just, you know, keeping your mind open to meeting different people. Yeah, I love it.

I love it. Okay, so what were the 3 clubs again? That was awesome. Right?

So faith or service-based, and then a passion, whether that's politics or whatever, and then something totally frivolous like juggling club. There's circus clubs at schools. Yeah, it's just something just out there that you wouldn't ordinarily do. I mean, there's Harry Potter clubs, there's Quidditch teams, there's so many different things. But just 3 different kinds of things, you know. Some people will be like, okay, well, I want to do a cappella singing and I want to be in the Pitch Perfect group, right? Well, not everyone's going to make that, so that's fine if that's one of the things you want to try for, but don't put all your eggs in one basket because if it's an exclusive thing where they can cut people. I mean, you don't want to do 3 exclusive things and then, you know, start off with nothing.

And then obviously if they don't have— like, I would want to join a magic club, but if they don't have it, you can start it.

That is very true.

Start your own club. And even if it's just you and one other person. Yep. It could grow. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Jill, so much for being here and speaking out about all of these topics that people are pretty shy about. I mean, a lot of people are shy about talking about— wait, what am I saying?

I'm like, a lot of people— they're awkward topics people don't want to address.

Yes, a lot of people don't want to address these topics for various reasons. We can get into that another time. But thank you for speaking out for the health of our students and us as well.

Well, thank you for giving me the venue to do it.

I appreciate Thanks again. Take care. All right, you too.

That was Dr. Jill Grimes. And for more golden science-backed tips from our last conversation, go to mindbodyspace.com/podcast/40. That's the number 4-0. And follow her on her TikTok, College Doc, D-O-C. You can find this link in the transcription and the show notes. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review. It helps us so much. Subscribe at mindbodyspace.com/podcastnewsletter, and you'll get special tips, roadmaps for listening to specific topics, and you can ask us questions. Please share this podcast with curious people who want to learn about science-backed antidotes to stress less and be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, this is Dr. Juna Bobby MD wishing you and your loved one's wellness.