Stop Smoking Help

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.” More from the NY Times

Certain constituents in red wine may be able to reverse some of the damage caused by cigarettes, suggests a new study presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Vienna last week.

The small study found that red wine, but not its alcohol content, counteracted acute arterial dysfunction left by cigarettes. The researchers from Alexandra Hospital in Athens, Greece, reported that a dose of two glasses (250 mL) of red wine eradicated the harmful effect of one cigarette. Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

The team assessed the arterial function of 16 healthy adults after smoking one cigarette. They also measured the effects on this group of drinking two glasses of a Greek red wine, which had had the alcohol removed, and smoking one cigarette and again after drinking two glasses of normal red wine and smoking one cigarette.

The researchers claim that the non-alcoholic wine was tested against the original wine, to guarantee that there were no differences in flavor, color and taste and constituents, except from their alcohol content. This means that volunteers could not distinguish which type of red wine they consumed each time.

Results confirmed previous findings that after smoking one cigarette and for the following 60 minutes there is a significant arterial dysfunction. However, simultaneous consumption of either regular red wine or non-alcoholic red wine with smoking one cigarette did not cause any such dysfunction.

“Since the presence or absence of alcohol on the two types of wine didn’t influence the results, we can conclude that constituents of red wine other than alcohol are responsible for the reversal of arterial dysfunction caused by smoking,” said the researchers. More.

Some jobs involve engineering and selling industrial air filtration systems which are designed to remove process emissions. Process emissions like welding smoke for example which factory employees are exposed to all day every day.

Typically what happens is that a disgruntled employee makes a call to OSHA to report that the welding smoke level seems high, so it must be dangerous. This scenario happens relatively often in the real world, oddly enough OSHA’s response isn’t to ban welding smoke in the alleged facility or have lawmakers pass sweeping welding smoke bans in the workplace, rather; its response is to conduct air quality testing to determine if welding smoke levels pose a hazard in that particular facility.

OSHA doesn’t have a permissible exposure limit or PEL for “welding smoke” as a whole because welding smoke contains hundreds of hazardous components too long to list here. Components like hexavalent chromium, beryllium, lead, nickel, arsenic, asbestos, etc. But OSHA does have a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for the individual components of welding smoke.

So OSHA conducts air quality testing on the individual airborne components, if the results come in lower, or safer than its set PEL, the facility is given an acceptable bill of health and allowed to conduct business as usual. If testing yields results which exceed current OSHA PELs it doesn’t ban welding, rather it allows the facility to improve its air quality by upgrading its ventilation or filtration system. OSHA PELs are the safe acceptable level of exposure to humans for an 8 hour day, 40 hour per week time period.

So now let’s get back to secondhand smoke’..OSHA also has a pel for each and every one of the “hazardous” components of secondhand smoke. The five AQ test results above prove that secondhand smoke levels are 2.6 ‘ 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations. In other words, not a workplace health hazard.

People have called me a smoker’s rights advocate, however as a non-smoker it’s more accurate to call me a property rights, and jobs rights advocate. Whether pro-smoking ban activists admit it or not smoking bans eliminate businesses and jobs at an alarming rate, 258+ bars and restaurants and approximately 10,000 jobs in the Twin Cities have been eliminated since local smoking bans went into effect. More.

People often view quitting smoking as a question of willpower - a problem of the mental world. But like all mental processes, addiction eventually boils down to physical matter, to our brains and the chemicals that reside within. Neurological studies have found that smoking causes long-term changes to various parts of the brain including the dopamine system involved in feelings of pleasure, and the amygdala, involved in emotional responses. Even cues associated with smoking such as the smell of smoke or the sight of a cigarette, can trigger distinctive patterns of activity in these areas, and are likely to contribute to the urges that smokers feel.

Now, Nasir Naqvi and colleagues from the University of Iowa have tracked down the neurons that control the addictive urges of smokers to a part of the brain called the insula. Located deep inside the brain, the insula is involved in emotion. It collects and processes sensory information from the rest of the body, and translates them into conscious emotional experiences, such as cravings, hunger or pain. And in doing this, the insula could control cravings for cigarettes in response to smoking-related cues.

Naqvi found compelling evidence for this by looking at several smokers who had suffered brain damage, often because of a stroke. Many of these smokers successfully kicked their habits, but in those with damage to their insulas, something more unusual happened.

While most people find quitting a long and difficult process, those with insula damage quit easily and immediately. They never touched a cigarette again, and most importantly, never felt the urge to do so. They completely lost their addiction to smoking and were 22 times more likely to do so than smokers with other types of brain damage.

Naqvi believes that becoming addicted to nicotine causes the insula to change, making smoking just as necessary a bodily need as hunger or thirst. The insula processes information about sights, smells and feelings that relate to smoking and anticipates both the pleasurable effects of nicotine and the negative effects of nicotine withdrawal. The end result is a strong and conscious urge to smoke, that disappears when the insula is damaged. As one patient said, his body just “forgot the urge to smoke”. More.

The campaign is called Mpower, and most of the money will be going to poorer 3rd world countries, and middle class people in Russia. Bloomberg pledged $375 million over 4 years, Bill Gates pledged $175 million over 5 years. Doesn’t Bill have more money than Michael?

The Mpower campaign will urge governments to sharply raise tobacco taxes, prohibit smoking in public places, outlaw advertising to children and cigarette giveaways, start anti-smoking advertising campaigns and offer people nicotine patches or other help quitting.

The World Health Organization estimates that over a billion people will be killed from cigarettes in the 21st century.

Scientists have known about it for years, but now scientists have an explanation. Viral symptoms that are often mild in non-smokers can make smokers seriously ill. They used to think smoke caused the immune system not to respond properly, but now evidence is showing that might be wrong.

Yale ran an experiment on mice, exposing them to cigarette smoke over the course of two weeks. Then they infected them with a “mimic” flu virus. The immune system in the mice killed the virus like it normally would, but the exaggerated inflammation caused increased levels of tissue damage.

Essentially, instead of the immune system under-reacting to the infection, it over-reacts to it. The increase attack from the immune system causes the damage to your body and makes you more susceptible to future infections. “It’s like smokers are using the equivalent of a sledge hammer, rather than a fly swatter, to get rid of a fly” one scientists said.

Not only are you more prone to future infections, the over-reaction also causes harm to your body when it happens. The mice exposed to cigarette smoke and the flu had accelerated airway scarring, and emphysema. “If the exaggerated responses are verified in human studies, it will be the first explanation for why viral infections are more serious in smokers,” said Elias. “Once verified, we can find ways to prevent the destruction of lung tissue and the higher illness and death among smokers”.

Of course they will work on cures, but is it really worth it? Just put the cigarette down now instead of waiting for a cure, because they probably won’t ever have a cure. Just a way to keep you alive longer. I’m obviously not a scientists, but it’s hard to see how this scarring in your throat and airway passages wouldn’t be permanent. Just another reason to stop smoking today!

Tell me what you think of this new discovery in our comment section below!

It’s common knowledge that smoking cigarettes can cause a wide range of disease, and it looks like it’s time to add another problem to the list. A new study shows that cigarettes can cause your hair loss, too.

A recent study, published in the journal Archives of Dermatology, said that “statistically significant positive associations were noted between moderate or severe baldness and smoking status”.

Scientists studying the correlation between the smoking habits and hair loss of the Taiwanese men assessed family history and other relevant factors for hair loss before drawing conclusions. They found that even when taking these things into account, hair loss was still significantly increased in smokers.

Smoking is well known to damage the circulation, and so the theory is that smoking may damage the micro-circulation supplying blood to the follicles. Once the hair is no longer being ‘fed’, it cannot survive and falls out.

www.centreforhairloss.co.uk

Your body goes through tons of changes when you make the jump to being a non-smoker. A lot of them are very quick (20 minutes), giving you some serious incentive to quit smoking today, now.

20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drops.

12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.

2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.

1 to 9 months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.

1 year after quitting: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.

5 years after quitting: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker 5 to 15 years after quitting.

10 years after quitting: The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a continuing smoker’s. The risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix, and pancreas decrease.

15 years after quitting: The risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker’s.

Next time you have a craving to light up a cigarette, push that thought out of your head and think happy thoughts! If you think I’m crazy, think again. Recent research is showing that thinking of happy and pleasurable thoughts might help suppress the urge to smoke.

Aa cognitive neuroscientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey ran an experiment on cigarette smokers. He monitored their brain activity when they had a craving to smoke, and asked them too think about specific things. For example, if you close your eyes and imagine yourself on a snowy mountain getting ready to snowboard down a fresh mountain, you are suppressing the brain’s “reward center”, resulting in less of an urge to smoke.

It sounds a little flimsy at first, but it does make some sense. The only reason people are addicted to cigarettes is because their bodies need nicotine. So it beings craving the nicotine so you will put it in your body, and the reward is the relaxed feeling you get after smoking. By suppressing this reward, the body loses the urge to smoke (aside from physical addiction). It’s not perfect, but it’s an interesting study no less.

www.newscientist.com

When you decide to stop smoking, it can cause a bit of a shock to your body at first. Your body “misses” the nicotine you used to give to it. The withdraw symptoms you feel is your body trying to convince you to give it nicotine. Even though these withdraw symptoms don’t last long, it’s the number one reason most people can’t kick the habit.

One of the best ways to avoid the withdrawal symptoms is to drink a lot of water. This will help flush out all the toxins you have in your body from years of smoking. Drinking lots of water will also help combat the symptoms you may get from quitting in the first place. It’s important to really stick with this for the first week, since the first week is the hardest.

It’s a good idea to get into a healthier lifestyle when you quit smoking too. If you drink soda, start drinking water. If you eat a lot of fast food, go to the store and get some salad and fruit. You can’t kick a fast food habit overnight either, but if you eat healthier snacks, healthy food will soon follow naturally. Putting yourself in this healthy lifestyle will make you less likely to fall back into your dirty smoking habit.

Another great way to help you avoid the quit smoking symptoms is to actively avoid all smokers for the first few weeks of quitting. Smelling cigarettes will only make you suffer the withdrawal symptoms more. If you live with another smoker it will probably make your quitt attempt harder. Try to get them to quit with you and you can support each other. If they’re not ready to quit smoking yet, ask them to not smoke around you, and to smoke outside so you don’t smell it at all.

If your friends smoke, make a point of telling them you’re going to quit smoking, and ask them not to smoke around you if they can help it. If you have to, just avoid those friends for the first couple of weeks so your temptation is faded if they do choose to smoke around you.

Think about all the benefits of quitting too. Your skin will look younger. You’ll feel younger. You’ll have more energy and lung power, and you’ll feel better about life in general being a non-smoker.