A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sheds light on just how fragile the relationship between patients and opioid addiction is. The past decade has seen a tremendous rise in not just opioids (20,101 deaths in 2015), but in heroin overdoses (12,990 in 2015), an addiction which is often spurred by the inability to afford or procure prescription drugs.
The new study confirms what many know to be true; it’s the quick ramp-up to addiction that makes these widely prescribed drugs so popular. A short-term (five-day) prescription for opioids increases any patient’s risk of dependency and long-term addiction.
Here’s the graph in question, with the lines representing the likelihood of addiction both one year from initial prescription and three years from initial prescription.
The study found that 6 percent of users given a one-day supply of opioids were using them—prescribed or otherwise—a year later. That’s a somewhat jarring statistic in its own right, knowing that a single prescription equates to a 1 in 16 chance your dependence on that drug will run for the next year.
When the initial supply of opioid increases from a one-day supply to a six-day supply, the likelihood that a person will be using them a year later jumps from 6 percent to 12 percent.
And with a 12-day supply, that figure doubles again to a 24 percent likelihood of a year-long relationship with opioids.
Of course, there are caveats to taking these numbers out of context. More serious conditions would warrant longer initial and long-term painkiller usage. Frankly, any reason for a person to be on a year-long course of opioid treatment is cause for alarm. Further, it’s believed that the effectiveness of opioids to fight pain long term diminishes over time.
“There’s nothing magical about five days versus six days, but with each day your risk of dependency increases fairly dramatically,” said the CDC’s Bradley Martin, one of the study’s authors.
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The study takes pains to indicate that their assessment of long-term use isn’t to be confused with long-term addiction, but it doesn’t require much in the way of logical gymnastics to realize the longer someone takes an addictive opioid, the risk for addiction rises. As such, if you don’t want a patient to endure the risk of addiction one year from now, is an opioid the best initial treatment, given the rising likelihood that they’ll continue taking the drug?
It’s a question, among many others, that will need to be addressed as we witness the worsening epidemic of opiate and opioid addiction in the United States.
Hollywood loves a superpower. Not all involve capes or cosmic rays. Some are cognitive: characters who can remember everything. In movies and on TV, viewers repeatedly encounter those with extraordinary minds who glance once at a page, a room or a face – and later recreate every detail with surgical precision.
You see it everywhere: “Suits,” “Sherlock” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Even in children’s literature there’s fifth grader Cam Jansen, who activates her photolike memory by saying “Click!”
Most recently, it appeared in the television series “The Pitt,” set in a hospital emergency department. When the digital patient board suddenly went offline, medical student Joy Kwon saved the day by effortlessly reciting from memory every lost detail – names, rooms, doctors, conditions, vitals. It’s a gripping moment. The stakes are high, recall is perfect, and the implication is clear: Some people have minds that function like high-resolution cameras.
The idea of photographic memory is simple and powerful: Experience is captured objectively, stored completely and retrieved perfectly. See it once, keep it forever.
There’s just one problem. There’s no scientific evidence it exists.
Human memory does not work like a recording device. It’s a reconstructive process even among those with the most extraordinary skills. When you recall an event, memory doesn’t just hand you your experiences the same way every time. It’s never a matter of simply accessing, retrieving and playing back a static record of a stored slice of the past.
Rather, you reconstruct the past by piecing together the remnants of experience available to you in the moment of recollection. It’s a process shaped by a range of factors, including the search cues you use; your present knowledge, attitudes and goals; and your current state of mind or mood.
Because each of these factors is dynamic and changing, you’ll remember the past differently today – if ever so slightly – from how you remembered it yesterday, and differently from how you’ll remember it tomorrow. What you remember is not only incomplete but also inexact.
A closer look at extraordinary memory
Some people, such as memory competition champions, do have extraordinary memories. They can memorize thousands of digits or entire decks of cards in minutes. Their feats are real, but they don’t come from a memory that takes mental snapshots.
Instead, these people rely on strategies – mental frameworks built through thousands of hours of deliberate practice to scaffold their memory in specific domains. Without these strategies and in other aspects of life, their recall looks pretty much like everyone else’s. Experts’ performance reflects better methods, not different machinery.
In the scientific literature, the ability that comes closest to photographic memory is eidetic imagery: a form of visual mental imagery in which people claim they can briefly continue to “see” pictures they carefully studied and that are then removed from view.
This ability is rare, is seen mostly in children, and usually disappears by adolescence. Even at its peak, however, it falls short of the Hollywood ideal. Eidetic images fade quickly and are not perfectly accurate. They can include distortions and even details that were not seen.
It’s exactly what you’d expect from a reconstructive memory system – and exactly what you would not expect from a literal recording.
Forgetting is a feature and not a flaw
The myth about photographic memories feeds into the idea that your memory has failed if you can’t remember – that if your memory worked right, it would operate like a camera. When you can’t retrieve information or you lose it entirely, it can feel like something has gone wrong.
For instance, people use their memories of the past to forecast the future. Perfect memory would be a liability. Forgetting washes out the details of specific episodes and retains the gist so you can apply past experiences to novel situations, not just those that exactly match what happened before.
Forgetting also guards your emotional health. The dulling of memories for negative events, like say an embarrassing episode, makes it easier for you to move on than if you reexperienced all the details in full force every time the event came to mind.
Forgetting protects your sense of self as well. Memories of your past form the foundation of your identity. To help maintain a stable self-concept, people selectively modify or even forget those memories that challenge their views of themselves.
The rare individuals who come closest to having near-perfect memory often reveal the downsides. People with highly superior autobiographical memory can remember nearly every day of their lives in vivid detail. If you ask one of these people to recall what they did on Nov. 24, 1999, they likely can tell you.
Their extraordinary ability seems to come from a habitual, even compulsive, reflection on their past and a focus on anchoring memories to dates. However, this skill is limited to autobiographical events, and they are prone to various kinds of memory distortions and errors just like everyone else.
While this ability might sound like an advantage, many people with highly superior autobiographical memory describe it as exhausting. They struggle to move past negative experiences because their memories make them seem as sharp as ever.
Accurate – and empowering – view of memory
Beliefs about “perfect memory” shape how people judge students, eyewitnesses, patients and even themselves. They influence legal decisions, educational practices and unrealistic expectations about what human minds can – and should – do.
Letting go of the camera metaphor could be a step toward better understanding how memory works. The brain is not a roll of film, it’s a storyteller – one that edits, interprets and reshapes the past in light of the present.
Many people finish the workday not just tired but wired. Their mind keeps racing, their body feels tense, and even in moments that should be restful they feel a lingering sense of urgency. Conversations replay in their mind, unfinished tasks resurface, and their nervous system seems unwilling to power down.
You may recognize this experience. It has become so common that it is often accepted as the norm in modern professional life. Yet this persistent state of activation carries consequences for physical health, especially for people prone to headaches.
As a board-certified neurologist who specializes in headache medicine, I see a lot of patients whose pain increases from the high-pressure work culture prevalent today. While it might seem beyond your control, there are some steps you can take.
The nervous system perceives and processes both stress and pain. Built to be highly adaptable, it continually responds to internal signals and external factors, constantly recalibrating to maintain balance. When the brain continuously perceives ongoing demands without adequate recovery, it keeps the body in a prolonged state of alertness.
During these periods of ongoing stress, hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline remain persistently elevated. In this sensitized state, signals that would typically be ignored or interpreted as minor can start to feel much more intense.
This means that persistent exposure to stress may drive up frequency and severity of migraine episodes. In addition, muscle tension in the neck, shoulders and scalp – a frequent effect of stress – can cause tension headaches, too.
Extended periods of sitting, sustained concentration and physical tension during the workday can contribute to the development of tension headaches in the later hours of the day.
Poor sleep, too much desk time and other factors can exacerbate the effects of stress on the nervous system, leading to headaches. ChadaYui/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Poor sleep can, in turn, perpetuate the stress cycle, leaving the brain further sensitized and increasing the likelihood of headaches the following day. This loop can be difficult to break, as fatigue reduces resilience and amplifies the sense of being overwhelmed that comes with stress.
In addition to affecting sleep, chronic stress impairs concentration and cognitive function. When the brain remains in a state of constant vigilance, scanning for demands and threats, it becomes harder to focus, be creative and solve problems. As a result, productivity declines, errors become more frequent and frustration mounts, adding to the overall stress burden.
Headaches that occur alongside these cognitive challenges can further disrupt daily life, making even routine tasks feel difficult.
Managing work stress
Understanding the connection between stress and the nervous system points to some steps you can take to shift the nervous system out of its constantly activated state. You’ll never eliminate stress entirely – that’s neither realistic nor necessary. But it is possible to create intentional space for the body to reset:
Build small transitions into your day. Instead of immediately jumping from work to other obligations, take five to 10 minutes between activities to pause, breathe deeply, stretch or sit quietly. Even brief pauses can reduce muscle tension and lower stress hormone levels.
Add physical activity into your routine. Regular movement, such as walking, yoga or gentle stretching, helps regulate the nervous system by processing stress hormones more efficiently. It also improves blood flow and promotes the release of endorphins, which are natural pain modulators.
Pay attention to posture and ergonomics. Change the chair or screen height, take breaks to move, and relax your shoulders and jaw to prevent tension headaches.
Try to set boundaries around work. When possible, limit after-hours email, define a clear end to your day and designate certain areas within your home as work-free zones.
Seek support if headaches persist. A medical evaluation can look for underlying causes and guide appropriate treatment options. Physical therapy, behavioral therapy and pain reprocessing therapy can address physical and emotional contributors to headaches.
Small, consistent strategies that address both biological and lifestyle causes of headaches can minimize the effects of chronic stress and encourage nervous system regulation. Over time, these strategies can gradually reduce headache frequency and severity, improving overall quality of life.
Spring means beautiful flowers, fragrant lilacs – and lots of tree pollen coating cars and setting off sneezing, wheezing and headaches.
As an allergist and immunologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, I help patients with seasonal allergies and associated allergic diseases manage their conditions, and one question comes up year in and out: Will this season be worse than last year?
When someone talks about having allergies, they are referring to a condition called allergic rhinitis or allergic conjunctivitis – inflammation of the nose or eyes related to allergen exposure. This results in itchy, watery eyes, runny nose, sneezing, congestion and nasal passage itching. They show up when allergens are in the air, during spring, summer and fall.
Pine cones release pollen on a windy April day in Fairfax County, Va. Famartin/Flickr, CC BY-SA
Those pollen proteins become problems when the immune system develops an allergic antibody known as IgE to these proteins. When several IgE molecules bind to the allergen when it lands on the tissues of the eye or nasal passages, the cells release molecules such as histamine, prostaglandins and leukotrienes. These molecules interact with blood vessels and nerves to trigger the symptoms that allergy sufferers know all too well.
Which pollens cause allergy symptoms?
Pollen season starts with the trees.
In late winter and early spring, trees begin releasing pollen in many places in the United States. Not all trees follow this schedule – mountain cedars, or juniper trees, for example, can release clouds of yellow pollen from November through January in Texas, causing a condition known as cedar fever.
As the year progresses, grasses will emerge and their pollen will cause symptoms through most of the summer – typically April to July.
Then ragweed and other weeds release pollen that causes symptoms into the fall until a freeze stops their pollen production.
What makes one pollen season worse than others?
Several factors can influence how bad a season can be when it comes to seasonal allergies. The two big ones are the length of the growing season and the amount of pollen in the air. Both are expanding.
Over the past several decades, as global temperatures have risen, the growing season has lengthened in many parts of North America. Once temperatures begin to be above about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 Celsius), trees will begin to emerge from dormancy.
That’s what the Western U.S. saw in 2026, as an unprecedented warm spring drove the early emergence of tree pollen. In some locations, growing season is two weeks longer on average than in the 1990s and more than four weeks longer than in the 1970s.
Growing seasons are getting longer across the United States. Climate Central, CC BY
Another factor driving pollen production is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, largely from the burning of fossil fuels. Higher carbon dioxide levels increase plant growth, leading to longer pollination periods and more pollen produced by plants. With higher pollen counts, more people can develop symptoms. Consequently, I have been seeing more patients who are experiencing allergies for the first time.
Rain and humidity can affect pollen counts as well. Rain can temporarily scrub pollen from the air. But humidity and moisture after the rain will result in ruptured pollen granules, resulting in pollen that is easier to carry on the wind and breathe in. This is particularly the case with grass pollen.
The first is to try to avoid the allergen by making changes in your home to reduce exposure. Keeping windows closed during the pollen season will reduce the amount of allergen that can enter your home. Wiping down pets with a damp towel can reduce the amount of allergens they bring in. Avoiding using clotheslines can reduce pollen levels on washed items.
Changing clothes or showering after being outdoors can reduce the amount of allergens that remain on you.
Pollen on a car hood offers a sense of just how much pollen can get into the air. Scott Akerman/Flickr, CC BY
To know when allergens are getting worse outside, watch the pollen forecast from the National Allergy Bureau. As a general rule, pollen counts are highest in the morning. However, outdoor air pollutants can increase in the afternoon when pollution, including particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, reach peak levels in the midday and afternoon heat.
Do medications work?
Medications can help alleviate symptoms. A saline nasal rinse can reduce mucus and allergens inside the nasal passages. For mild symptoms, daily nonsedating, or second-generation, antihistamine can be effective.
Daily use of nasal steroids can be helpful for people with moderate to severe allergies, but they can take several weeks to reach peak effect. A nasal antihistamine spray can provide additional benefits.
Antihistamine eye drops can also be helpful. In a dry climate like Colorado’s, nasal dryness can contribute to congestion, so using nasal hydration such as saline sprays can ease symptoms.
If medications don’t help, you could speak with an allergist about the possibility of immunotherapy – allergy shots – but they require weekly and monthly shots over several years. While allergy shots are effective at reducing allergy symptoms and the need for medications, they do have side effects, such as local site reactions and asthma symptoms, and they may trigger a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis.
Allergies can be miserable but manageable – even in an overproductive year like much of America is seeing in 2026. Understanding what’s causing them and finding the right solutions for you can make it easier to enjoy those flowers and walks in the sunshine.
