A new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that the majority of smokers want to quit smoking. The study was reported in an article on Medicine Net Daily:

“Despite the known dangers of smoking, about 20% of Americans still light up, but almost 70% want to quit, a new government report shows.

‘This study is reassuring to us,’ Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a noon press conference Thursday…

…McAfee noted that most smokers who manage to quit do so without the help of drugs or counseling…

…Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death and disease, including cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other lung diseases. Each year in the United States, smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke kill some 443,000 people, the report noted.

In addition, for every smoking-related death there are 20 people living with a smoking-related disease, the agency said.”

Read the full article here: Smokers Want to Quit

It is reassuring that most smokers want to quit smoking; it is also appalling that a substance that kills so many people every year is still legally available in this country. The argument for banning tobacco products would not be so strong if the only people suffering from the effects of tobacco smoke were those who chose to smoke tobacco. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Non-smokers, including children, who breathe secondhand smoke are also affected, and even die as a result of someone else’s choice to smoke tobacco.

Here are some facts from the CDC about secondhand smoke:

• Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can be harmful to health.
• Secondhand smoke contains toxic and cancer-causing chemicals.
• Secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.
• Secondhand smoke causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and a number of health conditions in children, including middle ear infections, more severe asthma, and respiratory infections.
• About 4 in 10 nonsmokers in the US (40%, or 88 million people) continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke.
• Almost everyone who lives with somebody who smokes indoors is exposed to secondhand smoke. Children and teens are more likely than adults to live in homes where someone smokes indoors.
• About 54% of children (aged 3–11 years) are exposed to secondhand smoke. Children are most heavily exposed at home.
• About 47% of youth (aged 12–19 years) are exposed to secondhand smoke.
• About 56% of black nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke compared with about 40% of white nonsmokers and 29% of Mexican-American nonsmokers.

You can find more information about the dangers of secondhand smoke on the website of the CDC, http://www.cdc.gov.

An estimated 88 million non-smokers have their health put at risk by exposure to tobacco smoke. That is an appalling number, and the fact that we tolerate it as a people with no public outcry speaks volumes about our civilization.

thequitsmokingcenter.com

Quitting smoking can be a real ordeal for many smokers. I know when I quit, it took me three tries before I was finally successful.

The first two times I tried to quit, I spent many weeks struggling with cravings and nicotine withdrawal. Eventually, I caved in to the cravings, and began smoking again. Knowing that I was damaging my health and lowering my life expectancy were not enough to help me successfully quit smoking. I suspect there are many smokers in the same boat. I have recently come across a report about some new research using magnetic brain stimulation to reduce cravings.

The article was published on Medicine Net:

“In smokers, stimulating the brain in certain ways can manipulate their cravings for cigarettes, researchers have found.

The finding could lead to new treatments to help people kick the habit, according to the authors of the study published in the Oct. 15 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Using brain imaging technology, researchers from Duke University Medical Center identified several regions of the cerebral cortex and the limbic system, which is involved in emotion, that are activated during cravings. Based on these studies, they used noninvasive magnetic stimulation of these areas of the brain in an attempt to manipulate these cravings.”

Read the full article here: Brain Stimulation

While the research is still in the early stages, it seems like a promising technique that may one day help smokers reduce their cravings for cigarettes, and quit smoking successfully. I especially like the fact that the brain stimulation was done with noninvasive technology, hopefully the research will develop effective treatment strategies to help turn smokers into ex-smokers.

I will try to keep on top of this research, and report developments that may help with quitting smoking, as I learn about them.

thequitsmokingcenter.com

A study reported on MedicineNet’s website says that smoking has a similar effect on the lungs as cystic fibrosis.

“Smoking seems to have a similar effect on the lungs as cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic disease affecting the lungs and other organs, a new study reveals.

Researchers found that like cystic fibrosis, smoking leads to the production of sticky mucus that causes dry cough and infections. They concluded that cystic fibrosis treatments could potentially be used to treat smoking-related diseases — and vice versa.

Cystic fibrosis interferes with the movement of salt and water in the cells lining the lungs, trapping bacteria in thick mucus, resulting in potentially fatal infections. The researchers said that smoking has a similar effect, resulting in mucus that causes several health problems, including dry cough, chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

…cigarette smoke affects a protein that helps the lungs stay hydrated, known as CFTR. They found that smokers had a 60% drop in CFTR activity, compared to non-smokers.”

Read the full article here: Smoking’s Effects

(According to another article on the same website, one specifically about cystic fibrosis: “A defect in the CFTR gene causes cystic fibrosis (CF). This gene makes a protein that controls the movement of salt and water in and out of your body’s cells.“)

Basically, cigarette smoke is causing the same problem that a genetic defect causes in those suffering from cystic fibrosis. The big difference is that smokers are doing it to themselves, over and over again.

The article concludes with the statement that the best treatment for smoker’s cough is to quit smoking. I would like to echo that statement, and also suggest that the only way to prevent the many health problems associated with tobacco smoke is quitting  smoking. And as I have said many times before, there is no safe way to use tobacco. Protect your health by quitting now!

thequitsmokingcenter.com

I published a post back in August that talked about how women who smoke have a greater risk of having a heart attack than men who smoke. (You can read that post here: Heart Disease Risk.) I just came across an article that says that women who smoke also face a greater risk of heart attack complications.

“Smokers have heart attacks earlier than nonsmokers, and women smokers are also much more likely than men smokers to have complications after a heart attack, new research shows.

“Female smokers after a heart attack have about a two and a half times greater event rate — things like recurrent heart attacks — over a six-month follow-up,” says researcher Elizabeth Jackson, MD, MPH. Jackson is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, Ann Arbor.

Her research was published online in the American Journal of Cardiology.

While Jackson discourages both men and women from smoking, the new study finds that women smokers do much worse in that period after an attack than do men smokers.”

The article was published on MedicineNet, and you can read the full article here: Heart Attack Complications

It is important to note that the risk for both male and female smokers is higher than non-smokers for heart attacks, smokers generally begin having heart attacks at a much younger age than non-smokers. Of the heart attack patients in the study, “The average age of the nonsmoking men was 64 and of the smoking men, 55. The average age of the nonsmoking women was 69 and of the smoking women, 56.”

I have said before that each study seems to come up with more health risks of smoking, the benefits are non-existent. It is hard to understand why new smokers start, given what we now know. (When I first started smoking, the health risk that was raised most frequently was “Smoking stunts your growth.” As a child, there were still television commercials that mentioned doctors recommending particular brands of cigarettes. We have come a long way since; we have learned about the many carcinogens, and other toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke. Why would anyone start smoking now?)

thequitsmokingcenter.com

I recently found an article which made a radical suggestion, that the government could save money by paying Medicare recipients to quit smoking.

“Last month, President Obama proposed cutting almost $72 billion from Medicaid, the program that provides health care to America’s poor. Such deep reductions are necessary, he declared, to bring down our staggering national debt.

But what if there were a way to both save taxpayer dollars and improve Medicaid patients’ health? We can achieve both if we are willing to consider an unorthodox solution: Pay Medicaid recipients who are smokers to quit using cigarettes.

Thirty-three percent of the Medicaid population smokes, compared with 20% of the U.S. population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

…Research on addiction has repeatedly demonstrated that small payments have persuaded even cocaine addicts to stop using. Furthermore, in my research, I have found that the financial motivation to quit is more effective for low-income smokers than a motivation based on health concerns.”

The article was written by Jody Sindelar,  a health economist and professor at the Yale School of Public Health, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. You can read the full article here: Pay to Quit

While I think getting people to quit smoking is a great idea, I see several problems with the suggestion to pay smokers to stop smoking.

The first is that non-smoking medicare recipients may think they are being short-changed, and protest payments to people who have been voluntarily indulging a destructive habit. (I know that it is not quite voluntary for cigarette smokers because of the addictive nature of tobacco, but I am trying to look at it from the standpoint of the nonsmokers, who will not get the additional payment.)

Add to that the reluctance of our current government to spend money on anything besides “defense” and it seems like this proposal may be dead in the water. But maybe it will get people thinking about new ways to help tobacco  smokers quit smoking.

thequitsmokingcenter.com