Freedom from Smoking

Great American Smokeout (2), 2009

2009-11-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow (November 19th, 2009) is the Great American Smokeout 2009 – a day on which smokers across the country are encouraged to try to go the whole day without using any tobacco - and then to consider staying that way. The American Cancer Society have produced a series of tips on quitting smoking, which can be accessed...

Great American Smokeout: a great day for clinicians to help patients quit.

2009-11-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

This Thursday, November 19th is the 2009 “Great American Smokeout”. This is a day that has been set up by the American cancer Society as one day each year for all smokers to try to quit, and to make it last for at least the whole day. Of course, the idea is that once the smoker is off to a good start they will try to keep it going for another day, and another. So if you are a smoker, this is an...

Nicotine receptors take over a month to normalize after quitting

2009-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Nicotine withdrawal symptoms typically peak in the first week of abstinence and return to normal at around 3-4 weeks. It has long been known that certain nicotinic receptors (particularly the beta-2 subtype) are closely involved in nicotine addiction, and that smokers have a larger number of nicotine receptors in their brains than non-smokers. When the smoker quits, this large number of vacant,...

Make Yours A Smoke-free Home (2)

2009-11-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

A new report was published today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), showing wide variability in exposure to secondhand smoke and cigarette smoking prevalence across the United States, but overall things are moving in the right direction. Around 8% of the adult population report exposure to tobacco smoke while at work, and a similar number report it at home. 45% of...

Combination NRT gets higher quit rates: new study

2009-11-11T03:00:00.000-08:00

A new study published this month in the journal “Archives of General Psychiatry” aimed to compare the effectiveness of some of the main medicines for stopping smoking and their combinations. The study, by Dr Megan Piper and colleagues at University of Wisconsin, recruited just over 1500 smokers seeking help to quit, and randomly allocated them to use either, placebo nicotine replacement, the...

Sir John Crofton (1912-2009)

2009-11-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

One of the world’s most eminent medical doctor’s, died earlier this week in his home city of Edinburgh, Scotland, at the age of 97. Sir John Crofton had a great many notable achievements during his dazzling career but he is perhaps most noted for his pioneering work developing effective treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis. He was Professor of Respiratory Diseases and Tuberculosis, University...

A Classic Study: The lung Health Study

2009-10-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Every now and again I like to pick one of the classic research studies on smoking cessation in order to highlight some of the key findings. Today I’m going to focus on the part of the Lung Health Study. The Lung Health Study is certainly one of the best smoking cessation studies ever carried out, partly because of the comprehensive nature of the assessment and follow-up of its 5,887 participants...

More adolescent smokers becoming addicted to menthol cigarettes

2009-10-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

I have previously written about the increasing evidence that smokers of menthol cigarettes find it harder to quit. (You can find previous posts on menthol by typing “menthol” in the “Search health experts” box on the right). Today I want to highlight the growing evidence that a higher proportion of adolescent smokers are smoking menthols and that those who so, get addicted quicker. Some of the...

Are tobacco manufacturers secretly controlling nicotine levels?

2009-10-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

This morning I noticed a news article in the online version of the Swedish/English newspaper, “The Local’ discussing claims that the Swedish tobacco Company “Swedish Match” had added a secret substance to some of their snus (Swedish moist snuff) products to make them more addictive. The article went on to document that the company acknowledges that it has introduced some new brands with higher...

Secondhand smoke causes heart attacks

2009-10-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

Last week the U.S. Institute of medicine (IOM) released a new report on the role of exposure to other people’s cigarette smoke in increasing the risk of coronary artery disease and heart attacks. The IOM requested a 10-member expert committee to review the evidence on the effects of secondhand smoke (SHS) and bans on smoking in public places on rates of heart attacks. When evaluating the effects...

Do you butt out?

2009-10-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

With the increasing cost of a pack of cigarettes (in New Jersey it's around $8 per pack) and the worsened economy, many smokers have changed their smoking habits because they can no longer afford to smoke a pack per day. The simplest way people adjust is to smoke fewer cigarettes per day. Some may switch to cheaper brands (generic, discount, or little cigars). One of the other things we have...

Menthol: it helps the poison go down easier

2009-10-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

I’m writing from the second conference on menthol and cigarettes, in Washington DC. This conference was organized to review the evidence on the effects of menthol in cigarettes and to discuss what further research is necessary and what actions should be taken. To me, the presentations appeared to suggest that right now the evidence that menthol cigarettes are more harmful to health is weak....

You CAN quit smoking

2009-10-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Most tobacco smokers say they would rather quit. Most have already tried to quit smoking before but have not yet been able to quit and stay quit. One of the effects of repeated unsuccessful quit attempts is that the smoker can lose confidence that they can succeed in quitting. So the purpose of this article is to explain why now, more than ever, it is possible to quit. When considering the...

What about flavored cigars?

2009-10-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the power to regulate tobacco products we will see more meaningful moves to reduce the harmfulness and addictiveness of tobacco, as well as to reduce its addictiveness to young people. However, we should also expect the tobacco industry to respond by trying to find loopholes that help it get around these regulatory moves. The first...

World Conference on Tobacco or Health, Mumbai, 2009

2009-10-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of improvements in information technology is that many conferences are now being made freely available on the internet. I’ve previously highlighted the excellent presentations on smoking cessation that are freely available from the website of the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference ( http://www.uknscc.org/ ) But today I’d like to recommend the website of the 14th...

Varenicline ( Chantix ) does not produce depression or suicide: new study

2009-10-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

The smoking cessation medicine, varenicline, has proven safe and effective in numerous placebo-controlled trials, but in the post-marketing phase there were numerous reports of patients experiencing “neuropsychiatric effects” ranging from poor concentration all the way to suicide. In July 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required the manufacturers of both varenicline and bupropion...

Outcomes of tobacco treatment in rural USA

2009-09-30T22:08:00.001-07:00

I’ve previously talked about the outcomes of our tobacco treatment services here in New Jersey and also in the UK. But New Jersey is the most densely populated state in this country, and so I was interested to see a paper that examined the outcomes of similar services for low-income smokers in rural Arkansas, USA. The paper was published by Dr Christine Sheffer (College of Public Health,...

Mortality risks of smoking and obesity.

2009-09-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

Both smoking and obesity cause increased health problems, but it is unusual to find an analysis of their separate and combined effects in a single study. One such study was published by Dr Freedman and colleagues of the National Cancer Institute in 2006. They analyzed a nationwide, prospective mortality study of U.S. radiologic technologists (64,000 women and 18,000 men) who were recruited...

Debunking myths about self-quitting (1989): a classic study.

2009-09-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

Every now and again I’d like to pick a classic research study from the past which shaped our understanding of smoking cessation. Today I’m going to focus on a paper by Dr Sheldon Cohen and 16 other researchers (recognized experts in the field 20 years later) entitled “Debunking myths about self-quitting. Evidence from 10 prospective studies of persons who attempt to quit smoking by...

Help for young smokeless tobacco users: mylastdip.com

2009-09-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

A month ago I wrote about the health risks from using smokeless tobacco: http://www.healthline.com/blogs/smoking_cessation/2009/08/how-harmful-is-snuff-smokeless-tobacco.html Today I’d like to mention a relatively new website that is designed to help young smokeless tobacco users (aged 14-25) to quit using smokeless tobacco, and to participate in a national cancer Institute-funded study of the...

Smoking and multiple sclerosis (MS)

2009-09-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

When thinking of the health risks of smoking, almost everyone is aware that smoking causes lung cancer and respiratory diseases. The connection between inhaling smoke into the lungs and developing diseases of the lung is immediately plausible. But every year medical researchers discover more and more diseases that are worsened by smoking. One example that recently caught my attention is...

New study shows how nicotine stimulates drug-associated memories.

2009-09-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the laboratory of Professor John Dani, at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas have published new research that helps explain how nicotine creates memories of drug-related cues. In a series of studies of laboratory mice they found that mice would learn to go to a place where they received nicotine (a paradigm called “conditioned place preference”). In addition to reinforcing...

Smoking after cancer diagnosis: Comment by Patrick Swayze’s doctor on CNN’s Larry King

2009-09-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Many people were saddened to hear of the recent death of the actor Patrick Swayze, after an almost two year battle with pancreatic cancer. Patrick Swayze was a very successful actor, most noted for his leading roles in the hit movies, Ghost and Dirty Dancing. Within the past week, one of Patrick Swayze’s oncologists, Dr George Fisher, was interviewed on the CNN “Larry King Live” show and made...

Smoking and HIV.

2009-09-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago, people who found out they had the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) felt as though they had been given a death sentence. At that time we did not have medicines that had been shown to be very effective in slowing the progression of the virus and preventing the onsite of diseases associated with AIDS. A large proportion of people who are HIV+ are also smokers, partly because some...

NRT to reduce and eventually quit smoking: does it work?

2009-09-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

The package labeling recommendations and normal practice for use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT, i.e. nicotine patch, gum etc) involves the smoker in picking a day when they will abruptly stop smoking, and start using the NRT as a substitute for smoking. However, over recent years product labeling in some countries (e.g. Great Britain) have allowed some of these products to be used to help...