Kick the habit of calling smoking a habit, it’s an addiction: lung association

2011/05/28 par Laisser un commentaire

By Canadian Press

Smoking is not just a bad practice but a serious addiction that makes quitting difficult, the Ontario Lung Association said Thursday as it called for a ban on referring to lighting up as a “habit.”

The media, government and the public should drop the word “habit” to help change the off-base attitude that smokers are dealing with a moral, not a medical, issue, the association said.

Many believe smokers could easily butt out if only they had enough willpower, but the fact is nicotine is as addictive as heroin or cocaine, association president George Habib said.

Dr. Peter Selby with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health said down grading addiction as simply a habit keeps smokers from understanding the real hold cigarettes have on them.

“If they recognize that, wait a minute, this is more than just a habit, or that it’s not a habit but it’s an addiction, then they’ll say the next step is ‘let me go and get some help for it,’” said Selby.

Quitting smoking after 32 years was the hardest thing Toronto’s Allan Hobbs ever did.

Raised by a family of smokers, he lit his first cigarette at 18. He tried to quit several times but was newly motivated after watching his father and uncle die from smoking-related illnesses in the summer of 2007. Hobbs used a smoking cessation aid and quit smoking that fall at the age of 50.

Now 54, Hobbs can admit he knew he was addicted but said many smokers don’t want to admit that to themselves.

“It’s hard to admit you have an addiction as opposed to a habit,” he said. “But if you’re a daily smoker who buys cigarettes regularly and has to leave at 10:30 for your morning cigarette break it’s an addiction… and it controls you,” he said.

A Leger Marketing survey of 1,011 Ontario adults earlier this month found almost one in five smokers said they believed smoking is only a habit. About 27 per cent of smokers surveyed believed smoking is an addiction, while 35 per cent of former smokers and 46 per cent of non-smokers recognized it as an addiction.

Smokers have been seduced by marketing campaigns designed to convince them lighting up is just a lifestyle, said Selby.

“We’ve seen that kind of clever marketing,” he said.

“Smokers then internalize the idea…when in fact they’ve been very cleverly addicted to a very dangerous product by having nicotine delivered to their brains in a very addictive format.”

About five million Canadians smoke, the association said. About two million of those live in Ontario, and at least half have tried to quit in the past year without success.

Seventy-nine per cent of smokers surveyed said they would be more likely to try at least one smoking cessation medication if they were free of charge.

Habib said most smokers can’t quit cold turkey and politicians need to step up.

He advocates counselling, nicotine replacement therapies and medications that people can afford through a drug plan.

The association’s ‘abolish the word habit’ program is being sponsored by the drug company Pfizer Canada Inc.

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Toenail Nicotine Test May Predict Lung Cancer

2011/03/14 par Laisser un commentaire

By WebMD

The finding comes from the toenails of 210 men with lung cancer and a comparison group of 630 men without lung cancer enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. Most of the 33,737 medical professionals in this long-term study donated toenail clippings in 1987.

The 20% of toenails containing the highest amounts of nicotine identified men at the highest risk of lung cancer. These men were 10.5 times more likely to have lung cancer than the 20% of men with the least nicotine in their toenails.

Even when taking into account reported smoking — that is, when comparing men at similar levels of cigarette use — men with the most nicotine in their toenails were over 3.5 times more likely to get lung cancer than those with the least toenail nicotine.

“Regardless of whether you are a smoker or a nonsmoker exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke, we can now better measure your exposure and predict your risk,” study researcher Wael K. Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD, tells WebMD. Al-Delaimy is chief of the division of global health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

Why toenails? Al-Delaimy was looking for a way to evaluate secondhand smoke exposure. He first measured nicotine in hair. But while working at Harvard with study co-author Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, he learned that Willett and colleagues had collected a large number of toenail samples from medical professionals.

“Given that hair and toenails are formed of the same kind of tissue, I thought maybe we could analyze toenails for nicotine,” he says. “Toenails can be stored at room temperature for years. And they represent nicotine exposure during the past year.”

In fact, Al-Delaimy and colleagues have shown that toenail nicotine levels are closely linked to smoking status six years prior to collection of clipping samples. And they have also shown that toenail nicotine levels predict the risk of heart disease in women. Women with the highest toenail nicotine levels have a 42% higher risk of heart disease than do those with the lowest levels.

“We knew tobacco was harmful, but we are now learning it is even more harmful than we had previously measured,” Al-Delaimy says. “We are getting a better estimate of the true risk of tobacco’s lung effects. And this could be applied to other disease outcomes such as coronary heart disease, too.”

The findings don’t surprise tobacco and health expert Michael Eriksen, ScD, director of the institute of public health at Georgia State University. Eriksen was not involved in the Al-Delaimy/Willett study.

“As this study shows, evidence of exposure to smoke can be found throughout the entire body — even the tips of your toes — and that this exposure to smoke increases the risk of lung cancer,” Eriksen tells WebMD via email.

Al-Delaimy and Willett report their findings in the American Journal of Epidemiology, published online ahead of print on March 2.

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Smokers have 10 times more wrinkles than non-smokers

2011/03/14 par Laisser un commentaire

By The Med Guru

Though cigarettes are outright bad, starting with bad breath and finishing with such serious conditions as cancer and emphysema, one major factor generally ignored is that nicotine ages the skin prematurely.

It is easy to pick out a regular smoker in a crowd not just by the stench of stale cigarettes but simply by skin quality as well. Smokers have pale, ashen skin and ten times more wrinkles than non-smokers.

According to experts, the constant exposure to lit cigarettes and being surrounded by the toxic smoke can bring early onset of wrinkles.

Negative impact of smoking on skin
It has been proven that tobacco smoke is second only to sun exposure as the leading cause of skin damage.

Cigarettes contain toxins such as carbon monoxide and tar that have an adverse impact on the body. Hence, the brain diverts the vitamins away from the skin to counter the problem.

In addition, smoking interferes with the absorption of Vitamin C and A, which provide skin protection on a regular basis. Also, tobacco smoke produces free radicals that steal electrons from skin cells and damage them.

Nicotine is a diuretic. This means that it absorbs liquids from the body and causes dehydration.

Smoking also decreases the capillary blood flow to the surface of the skin, depriving it of the much needed oxygen and nutrients. As a result, skin becomes dry, thin, and has pale appearance.

Smoking is known to reduce the amount of collagen and elastin in the skin. These proteins help to keep skin tight, soft, and elastic.

Moreover, the pursing of lips and squinting to keep out smoke create unsightly face wrinkles around the mouth and eyes over time. Also, smokers develop more hollowed cheeks from many years of dragging on cigarettes.

Although, it is quite impossible to bring skin to the pre-smoking condition, the damage caused to the skin can be arrested if you quit because the skin will start to repair itself.

Other hazards of smoking
Besides causing wrinkles, smoking cigarettes can cause yellow eyes and teeth and bad breath.

On a more serious note it can lead to all kinds of health problems, including emphysema, lung cancer, bronchitis, pneumonia and many other illnesses.

Male smokers have a higher risk of a low sperm count and erectile dysfunction, while female smokers may have a harder time getting pregnant.

Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to experience ectopic pregnancies which can be fatal for both mom and baby.

Other risks of smoking during pregnancy include lower birth weight and birth defects. Women who smoke during pregnancy are also more likely to deliver prematurely or miscarry.

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Your Brain on Nicotine: Smoking May Thin Its Outer Layer

2010/12/07 par Laisser un commentaire

By myhealthnewsdaily.com,

The researchers scanned the brains of 22 smokers and 21 nonsmokers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In the smokers, an area of the cortex known as the left medial orbitofrontal cortex was thinner. And the more a person smoked, the thinner this brain area was.

Changes to the orbitofrontal cortex have previously been linked to drug additions and compulsive behavior.

“Since the brain region in which we found the smoking-associated thinning has been related to impulse control, reward processing and decision-making, this might explain how nicotine addictioncomes about,” study researcher Simone Kühn said in a statement.

And because heavier smoking was linked to more pronounced thinning, the results “suggest that smoking may have a cumulative effect on the brain,” said Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, the journal in which the study was published.

“This concerning finding highlights the importance of targeting young smokers for antismoking interventions,” Krystal said.

While previous work has linked tobacco smoking with brain abnormalities, including brain decay, the new study is the first to look specifically at the habit’s effect on cortical thickness, the researchers said. The cortex is involved in many of the brain’s so-called “higher order functions,” such as language and memory. A thinner cortex has previously been associated with normal aging and impaired cognition.

The researchers said they’re planning future studies to examine the effects of quitting smoking on the brain.

The study is published in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

 

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Report: Smoking during pregnancy affects genes involved in brain development

2010/12/01 par Laisser un commentaire

By newsleader.com,

The findings, presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, may explain why the children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to develop such psychiatric disorders as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, autism and drug abuse.

Researchers found that when rodents were given nicotine during pregnancy, their offspring showed changes in myelin genes in specific regions of their brain’s limbic system – structures involved with emotion. The effect was strongest in the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain important for decision-making.

“Our research shows that gestational treatment with nicotine significantly modifies myelin gene expression in specific brain regions that are involved in behavioral processes,” says Ming Li, a professor in the U.Va. Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, who led the study. “Myelin deficits have been observed in adults with various psychiatric disorders. Our findings suggest that abnormal myelination may contribute to the psychiatric disorders associated with maternal smoking.”

Previous research has shown that maternal smoking during pregnancy has various long-lasting neurobehavioral effects on offspring, Li said. Many psychiatric disorders associated with smoking during pregnancy begin or change symptomology during adolescence, a period of continuous development of the central nervous system. Most of these disorders are thought to be mediated by dysfunction of the limbic system, a collection of brain nuclei that mature during adolescence.

Li’s research team also identified gender differences in nicotine’s effects. Myelin-related genes increased in the prefrontal cortex of the male offspring but decreased in the females. The opposite was observed in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus, a brain region involved in the regulation of stress and appetite, among other functions.

“These findings suggest that maternal smoking may affect daughters and sons differently,” Li said.

In addition, the substantial and long-lasting changes by the low dose of nicotine administered to rodents in the study imply that nicotine replacement therapy during pregnancy may carry many of the same risks to children as does smoking during pregnancy.

“While further studies are necessary to determine a direct correlation of our initial findings,” Li said, “our research lends weight to the necessity of educating women to avoid smoking during pregnancy.”

 

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Smoking during pregnancy ups SIDS risk

2010/11/16 par Laisser un commentaire

By timesofindia.indiatimes.com,

Researchers Hemant Sawnani, Erik Olsen, and Narong Simakajornboon, from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Ohio, summarized the evidence from both human and animal studies, showing nicotine (in cigarette smoke) interferes with the development of the parts of the brain that control breathing.

Prenatal exposure to cigarette smoke puts infants at a 2- to 5-fold increased risk of SIDS and contributes to premature birth – another risk factor for SIDS.

Nicotine exposure in utero leads to altered breathing patterns and ventilatory responses that compromise respiratory arousal and auto-resuscitation.

Infants of mothers who smoked during pregnancy have more pauses in breathing (infant apnea) and have decreased ability to wake up from sleep in response to low oxygen.

This sheds light on why smoking during pregnancy increases risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS, crib death).

“These findings highlight the importance of public health policies to prevent the development of tobacco dependence in adolescent girls and the importance of treatment of maternal tobacco dependence prior to pregnancy,” said Harold Farber, associate professor of Pediatrics, Section of Pulmonology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.

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UK: Smoking Breaks at Work no Longer “Free”

2010/11/02 par Laisser un commentaire

By topnews.co.uk,

Norfolk’s Breckland Council imposes a new rule for smokers to no longer include cigarette breaks in their working time but check-out every time they want to go for a smoke.

After England, Northern Ireland and Wales introduced the smoking ban in public spaces in 2007, smokers were forced to leave their offices for a cigarette in order to guarantee a smoke-free working environment. Now, the ability to smoke outside is limited as well because employees need to compensate for the time losses caused by cigarette breaks.

The pro-smoker lobby criticizes the decision as “tyrannical” and underlines that only smokers have to check out if they leave their desks while their non-smoking colleagues are still allowed to go for coffee or fresh air breaks.

The Lobby’s Director, Simon Clark, points out: “Are they going to introduce clocking in and off for people who go on the internet, on Facebook, or people who want to have a cup of coffee? Many smokers believe having the occasional cigarette allows them to refocus”.

The Council justifies its decision by simply balancing out the extra time smokers take in comparison to their co-workers. An official underlines: “I think people have to accept that some non-smokers do feel a little bit of resentment across the table when they are sitting there and their colleagues keep getting up and going out of the building”.

The Council stresses the fact that smokers should not be urged to stop smokingafter the decision but be conscious about not taking their working time for the additional breaks. The new smoking rule is interpreted by the public policy advisors as an issue of fairness.

 

 

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Ban smoking on campus

2010/10/26 par Laisser un commentaire

By app.com,

The board of trustees at Brookdale Community College is expected to vote next month on a campuswide ban on smoking. The only place smokers could light up would be in their cars.

The policy, which would take effect in January, should be adopted, as long as the college makes a commitment to providing smoking cessation for students and staff who want to break their addiction to nicotine.

The current policy allows smoking only at six gazebos around campus. College administrators are well within their rights to pursue policies that will benefit both the campus and the health of the students. And smokers at Brookdale should be grateful that their campus does not go as far as as other colleges: Ocean County College, for example, enforces a total ban on smoking on campus.

At the Oct. 14 board of trustees meeting, Brookdale President Peter Burnham said the penalty provisions of the ban would be phased in gradually, with offenders initially being given warnings. Repeat offenses could result in fines of up to $200.

The goal here should not only be to safeguard the health of nonsmokers and the beauty of the campus, but to give those students and faculty addicted to nicotine one more incentive to quit their expensive habit.

 

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Anxiety Make it Harder to Kick the Habit

2010/10/26 par Laisser un commentaire

by emaxhealth.com,

A new study conducted by the University of Wisconsin concludes that smokers with a history of anxiety disorder have a more difficult time trying to quit smoking making it harder to kick the habit.

Tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death and disabilty in the United States. Nicotine is highly addictive and can be hard to quit. While overall quit rates for the study were high, participants with anxiety diagnoses were much less likely to quit smoking.

Study results also showed that anxiety diagnoses were very common among participants and that more than a third of them met criteria for at least one anxiety diagnosis in their lifetime.

Many smokers claim that they smoke to calm their nerves and cigarettes have helped them to get through some of life’s most trying challenges however, they contain nicotine, which is an addictive drug and is a stimulant which is known to cause excitement. It will also intensify worries and make them seem bigger than they are which can lead to an anxiety disorder.

Out of all 1,504 study participants, 455 had had a panic attack in the past which included 199 social anxiety disorders, and 99 generalized anxiety disorders. There has been other research that has shown that up to 25 percent of the more than 50 million smokers in the U.S. had at least one anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Researchers are starting to notice that very little research has addressed smoking in this population.

Lead author Megan Piper says it surprised her that the nicotine lozenge and patch alone or in combination failed to help patients with an anxiety history to quit smoking. “Further research is needed to identify better counseling and medication treatments to help patients with anxiety disorders to quit smoking,” Piper says.

Smokers in the study with anxiety disorders also reported higher levels of nicotine dependence and withdrawal symptoms prior to quitting. Researchers are excited to discover that anxiety makes it harder to kick the habit. Anxiety medications alone haven’t boosted cessation rates and Piper is planning further research to test other quit-smoking counseling interventions and medications with patients who have had an anxiety diagnosis.

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Smoking isn’t just bad for your lungs

2010/10/26 par Laisser un commentaire

By UsaToday,

No matter how you slice it, puffing on a cigarette, or any other tobacco product for that matter, simply ups the ante for more health complications. Smoking causes nearly 1 in 5 deaths each year. About 8.6 million Americans suffer from smoking-related chronic conditions, including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and heart disease.

Cancer

The smoking-cancer link is well-known to most: Smoking causes at least 30% of all cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Smoking increases the risk of at least 15 cancers, including those of the throat, nasal cavity, lip, mouth, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, cervix, kidney, bladder and stomach, as well as acute myeloid leukemia.

 

 

Diabetes

Diabetes and smoking don’t mix. Tobacco use can elevate blood sugar levels and lead to insulin resistance, say experts at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The more you smoke, the bigger your risk: More than 20 cigarettes a day almost doubles smokers’ risk of developing diabetes, compared with nonsmokers’. “People with diabetes already have higher cardiovascular risks,” says David Kendall of the American Diabetes Association. Smoking “just adds to the burden of that risk.”

Heart

Smoking’s assault on the heart doubles or triples the risk of dying from coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the USA, the American Heart Association says. The toll is enormous: Each year, nearly 900,000 people die of coronary heart disease.

That’s because smoking narrows blood vessels supplying the heart and other parts of the body; it also promotes blood clotting, raises blood pressure and weakens the biggest artery in the abdomen, sometimes causing it to burst, a condition called abdominal aortic aneurysm, AHA says. Secondhand smoke kills 23,000 to 70,000 people prematurely each year.

Pregnancy and childhood

During pregnancy, smoking increases the risk of complications that can endanger a mother’s life. It nearly doubles the risk of having a low-birth-weight baby and is a leading cause of preterm labor, the March of Dimes says. Smoking causes an estimated 910 infant deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Babies who breathe in secondhand smoke are at increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, asthma, ear infections and other problems.

Skin

If you’re going for a rosy glow, nix the smokes.

“The nicotine in cigarettes causes narrowing of the blood vessels in the outermost layers of your skin,” says internist Richard Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic. “This impairs blood flow. … Your skin doesn’t get as much oxygen, an important nutrient.”

He says tobacco contains more than 4,000 chemicals, many of which can damage collagen and elastin, fibers that give skin its strength and elasticity. As a result, skin begins to sag and wrinkle prematurely.

Quitting improves skin’s health and appearance, says cosmetic dermatologist Hema Sundaram, author of Face Value. She says smoking also raises the risk of skin cancers, slows its healing rate and worsens hormonal imbalances during perimenopause and menopause.

 

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