The U.S. Surgeon General and I are on the same page. Recently I warned about the dangers of smart phones to our youth (Smart Phones Destroying Our Youth). This week Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General agreed.

Dr. Murthy has called for warning labels on social-media platforms, saying urgent action is needed to address a mental health emergency involving young people. Gareth Vipers, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells us Dr Murthy says warning labels, similar to those on alcohol and tobacco products, should accompany platforms to “regularly remind parents that social media has not been proved safe,” in an op-ed for The New York Times.

Murthy cited research showing that social media was an important contributor to a growing mental-health crisis among young people. “Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours,” Murthy said.

Four point eight hours! If you sleep eight hours, that leaves 16 hours for an average day awake. These young people are spending more than 25% of their waking hours on social media! Is there any wonder we have a problem?

The surgeon general didn’t name any social-media companies in the article. TikTok, Snapchat, X and Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Murthy has long warned of the risks of social media to young people, urging policymakers and technology companies to increase safeguarding efforts and strengthen standards for younger users. ​​“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis,” he said in a report published last year. “I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address.”

The report pointed to several studies examining a range of adverse effects of social media on adolescents. Those include online harassment, increased exposure to content related to self-harm and racism, and negative impacts on sleep, body image and physical activity.

The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series in 2021 showed internal research at the company found Instagram was harmful for a percentage of young users, primarily teenage girls with body-image concerns. The research reviewed by the Journal showed the platform made body-image issues worse for a third of teenage girls. Facebook, which became Meta in 2021, scrapped plans to create an Instagram platform tailored to children after lawmakers and others raised concerns over the popular app’s impact on young people’s mental health.

Government officials, lawmakers and technology companies have for years grappled with how best to manage the issue. Lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe are weighing plans to tighten online age restrictions. Last year, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed a law requiring social-media companies to verify users are 18 years or older, and require those under age 18 to receive the consent of a parent or guardian to open an account.

It is encouraging to see our U.S. Surgeon General take a stand on this issue of great significance to the health of our youth. Perhaps his action will give parents the motivation and encouragement they need to set standards for their children and enforce them.

Nearly seven million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s Disease. Approximately one in three seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia. It kills more than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. Over eleven million Americans provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s or other dementias. In 2024, Alzheimer’s and other dementias will cost the nation $360 billion. By 2050, these costs could rise to nearly $1 Trillion. These are just some of the alarming statistics about this disease from the Alzheimer’s Association website.

With that background, the good news is there is progress in developing new medicines to treat this dreaded disease.  The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal tells us a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee just unanimously recommended approval of a new Alzheimer’s disease treatment called donanemab, manufactured by Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals.

Lilly has spent more than 30 years and $8 billion working on Alzheimer’s treatments. Four clinical trials with another experimental drug had failed. After one pivotal trial in 2016 disappointed, some dismissed Lilly’s strategy of targeting amyloid plaque in the brain—a signature of the disease—and urged the company to abandon its Alzheimer’s drug research.

Instead, Lilly learned from earlier trials and made a major bet on donanemab, another anti-amyloid drug. Some patients in earlier trials suffered from other forms of dementia. Advances in brain imaging enabled Lilly to accurately diagnose and screen Alzheimer’s patients for its donanemab trial. Lilly also used brain scans to track disease progression.

Donanemab clears amyloid that had built up over decades and slows decline by an average of 35% over 18 months. While such benefits are modest, the drug can extend patients’ ability to function independently by months and, possibly, years. Patients also get precious more time with loved ones.

Catching and treating Alzheimer’s early, as with many diseases, improves the prognosis. Patients in earlier stages of the disease notably showed greater benefits from the drug. Nearly half experienced no decline after one year. Among those in the earliest stage, donanemab slowed decline on average by 60%.

Donanemab’s benefits continued even after patients stopped taking the monthly infusions. Nobody wants to be on a drug for the rest of their lives, especially one that carries a small risk of brain bleeding that must be continuously monitored. The FDA panel unanimously agreed that donanemab’s benefits exceed the risks.

Scientists disagree about Alzheimer’s causes, but many believe that amyloid drives a degenerative neurological cascade, which results in brain inflammation and neuron death. Amyloid develops decades before patients show cognitive symptoms. Donanemab is the third drug to show that removing amyloid early in the disease can slow decline.

If approved, donanemab will compete with the anti-amyloid lecanemab by Biogen and Eisai, which showed somewhat fewer side effects in trials. Donanemab requires an infusion only once a month compared to twice for lecanemab. Patients can weigh the risks against the benefits with their doctors and caregivers.

Meantime, artificial intelligence is accelerating the development of blood tests that can diagnose Alzheimer’s and predict it years before patients show cognitive problems. This holds the promise that anti-amyloid treatments might soon be used for prevention, as statins are for heart disease.

After Lilly’s major trial ended in failure eight years ago, many scientists declared Alzheimer’s untreatable. They were wrong. Lilly shows that perseverance can pay off. Let’s hope others will follow their lead and continue the fight to treat this dreaded disease that affects so many of our elderly citizens.

If you’re a football fan, you know that Tom Brady is The GOAT; the Greatest of All Time. There is no serious debate about this since he’s the only NFL player to ever win 7 Super Bowls – 6 with the New England Patriots and 1 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. No one else comes close.

If you like statistics, here are some more to consider. Brady threw for 89,214 yards and 649 touchdowns. He was selected to play in 15 Pro Bowls. He won 1 Comeback Player of the Year Award, 2 Offensive Player of the Year Awards, 3 MVP Awards, 5 Super Bowl MVP Awards in his 7 Super Bowl Championships. He played 23 years in the NFL and holds more than 50 NFL records.

This is amazing when you consider Brady was drafted in only the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft at pick number 199. That means 198 other players were thought to be better than the eventual G.O.A.T! What made Brady stand out so much compared to his other NFL brethren?

The answer is hard work. Here is an excerpt from his Hall of Fame acceptance speech delivered this past week at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots:

“I would encourage everyone to play football for the simple reason that it is hard. It’s hard when you’re young and to wake up in the offseason to go train and work out, knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes. It’s hard when you’re on your way to practice, weighed down with all your gear and it’s 90 degrees out and all of the other kids are at the pool or at the beach and your body is already completely exhausted from workouts and two-a-days. 

It’s hard to throw, block, catch and tackle and hit kids when they’re way bigger and way more developed than you, only to go home that night bruised and battered, but knowing that you have to show up the next day for just the chance to try again. 

But understand this — life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and bruises and hits along the way. And my advice is to prepare yourself. Because football lessons teach us that success and achievement come from overcoming adversity and that team accomplishment far exceeds anyone’s individual goals. 

To be successful at anything. The truth is — you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t. Consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts. If you look at all my teammates here tonight, it would be impossible to find better examples of men who embody that work ethic, integrity, purpose, determination, and discipline that it takes to be a champion in life.”

This is such a great – and needed – message to young people today. We live in a time of greater prosperity than generations before us – and that prosperity promotes complacency. The generation of my parents has been called The Greatest Generation by former TV anchor Tom Brokaw. That generation didn’t have anything given to them – they had to work hard for everything. They had to overcome the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. They knew the meaning of hard work and they would certainly agree with Brady that “life is hard.”

But life has always been hard. The only real difference is today’s young people haven’t learned this lesson yet – but they surely must if they are ever to succeed.

I played football and I wrestled in junior high and high school. The hard work of these sports prepared me for the harder work of college and medical school – and the even harder work of surgical training and residency when I often worked 130 hours a week. That hard work prepared me for success in life and I’m so glad I made the effort. Nothing in life that’s worthwhile comes easily. I agree with Brady – “Life is hard.” The sooner we all accept that the sooner we are prepared for success in life.