Tag: Cigarette

Categories
News on Health & Science

Smokers at Greater Risk of Mishaps

[amazon_link asins=’B00I1OJUEY,B071LP3HGK,B07511TRBK,B06XSGXLJC,1596913282,B0785NLY7K,B078N6KXZT,B076D2P5Q7,B078SX8TH6′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’55d01d77-f2a4-11e7-9ef8-31d3904d7179′]

We have all heard the perils of drunken driving and talking on the cell phone while driving. But here’s a new one. Studies suggest that smoking while driving is a leading contributor to injuries, and motor vehicle crashes….click & see

You may click to see:->Plea to ban drivers from smoking

Studies done in US have pointed out that smoking causes risk factors for injury including fires, depressed reflexes, non-coordination, impaired fitness and, possibly, depressed moods.

The study done by B N Leistikow, D C Martic and S J Samuels interviewed adults (ages 18 plus) and followed up for vital status after a gap of five years using the National Death Index (NDI). Participants were classified as never smokers (fewer than 100 lifetime cigarettes), ex-smokers, and current smokers (smokers by baseline self report).

For smokers, cigarettes per day were recorded into 1-14, 15-24 and 25-plus cigarettes-per-day categories.
The study found that smokers have significant dose-response excesses of injury and death, independent of age, education and marital status. This supports earlier studies suggesting that smoking may be a leading contributor to injuries.

In fact, researchers have suggested that the correlation of smoking and driving should be studied in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Also, smoking-involved crashes may be studied in the same manner as alcohol-involved crashes.

Dr Ashok Seth, chairman and chief cardiologist of Max Heart Institute, says: “This is an interesting study. Smoking and driving may lead to accidents, and smoking is a distraction – far more distractive than any activity in the car. The accidents may occur as cigarette is an inflammable object, and lead to fires.

It may make the smoker distracted and spoils his concentration with one hand constantly engaged and moving to drop the ash. Smoking is also believed to release certain hormones which pump up confidence levels, leading to errors.”

The study is of critical importance to India, where smoking is responsible for about one in 20 deaths of women and one in five deaths of men in the age group of 30-69 years. By 2010, it is estimated that smoking will lead to one million deaths in the country.

Says Dr Anoop Misra director and head, department of diabetes, Fortis Hospitals: “Tobacco smoke contains high quantity of carboxy haemoglobin, which replaces normal haemoglobin and transiently decreases oxygenation of brain.

Smoking impairs certain motor reflexes and has adverse effects on message transfer in brain due to shifts in neurochemicals.

All these would impair any complex motor task as driving. Those who are heavy smokers or relatively new smokers are worst affected. Over long periods, smoking causes permanent damage to neurons and this results in decline of intellectual functions.”

You may click to see:->PREVENT TOBACCO-CAUSED BRAIN DAMAGE

Sources: The Times Of India

Related articles
Categories
News on Health & Science

Smoking Doesn’t Make You Happy

[amazon_link asins=’0615482155,B00UMHOJ4O,B01BW0P5MO,B00008IHL1,B01C8RE396,B01MFCQQWM’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’ec4a6965-d2c1-11e7-b46e-6d3a744568c4′]

If you think that smoking is one of the few pleasures left to you, think again. Going by a study, puffing does not make people happy.

CLICK & SEE

Researchers at Peninsula Medical School in Britain have found that smokers experience lower average levels of pleasure and life satisfaction compared with non-smokers, the ScienceDaily has reported.

According to lead researcher Dr Iain Lang, “We found no evidence to support the claim that smoking is associated with pleasure, either in people from lower socio-economic groups or in the general population.

“People may feel like they’re getting pleasure when they smoke a cigarette but in fact smokers are likely to be less happy overall — the pleasure they feel from having a smoke comes only because they’re addicted.

The researchers came to the conclusion after looking at the relationship between smoking and psychological wellbeing of a group of around 1,000 people, aged 50 or above.

They used a measure of quality of life called CASP-19 and found that smokers experienced lower average levels of pleasure and life satisfaction compared with non-smokers.

The studies for the research categorised people as never-smokers, ex-smokers and current smokers, and used household wealth as an indicator for socio-economic position.

“These results show smoking doesn’t make you happy — in fact, it is associated with poorer overall quality of life.

“Anyone thinking of giving up smoking should understand that quitting will be better for them in terms of their well-being — as well as their physical health — in the long run,” Dr Lang said.

Click to see also:->

Smokers ‘make their children ill’

Call to end child passive smoking

‘Clear smoking link’ to cot death

Timeline: Smoking and disease

Smoke ban urged for foster 

 Smokers ‘will die 10 years early’

Sources:The Times Of India

Related articles
Categories
News on Health & Science

Smokeless Tobacco Vs Cigarettes

[amazon_link asins=’B00I1OJUEY,B071LP3HGK,B07511TRBK,B06XSGXLJC,B00VH95OMM,B0785NLY7K,B076D2P5Q7,1596913282,B014RJ4UXW’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’028cc5af-e486-11e7-99f1-35ad11b1ac7f’]

A new study has found that smokeless tobacco, the kind users put between cheek and gum may be almost as effective as cigarettes in delivering nicotine and carcinogens.
Smokeless tobacco, the kind users put between cheek and gum, is one way to satisfy a craving for nicotine without offensive smoke. But a new study has found that it may be almost as effective as cigarettes in delivering nicotine and carcinogens.

CLICK & SEE

Researchers tested the urine of 420 smokers and 182 users of smokeless tobacco for cotinine, a marker of nicotine exposure, and for a group of closely related powerful carcinogens called NNAL. The subjects had been recruited for smoking reduction studies, and the measurements were taken just before the studies began.

Smokeless tobacco users had, on an average, 74 per cent higher levels of NNAL in their urine than smokers, and 94 per cent higher levels of cotinine.
In animal studies, NNAL has been shown to be highly carcinogenic, causing tumours in the lung, pancreas, nasal mucosa and liver of rats. “The main message of this study is that smokeless tobacco cannot be regarded as safe, because it delivers just as much of one of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke as cigarettes do,” said Stephen S Hecht, the lead author of the study, published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, and a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of Minnesota. “While it may be safer than cigarettes, it is not nearly safe enough,” he added.

Countering suggestions that smokeless tobacco might be a less harmful alternative for people unable to give up tobacco, the researchers wrote that smokeless tobacco is very risky, and should be discouraged.

Source:The times Of India

Related articles
Categories
Health Alert

Killers in packs

[amazon_link asins=’B0752CGLBS,B01MY15BZ3,B072PRRM91,B01K881IJA,B06XZW79KJ,B074JKTH6H,B077BMH79P,B074DWL557,B071Z7RBQ2′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’9d3aa947-dbcf-11e7-8683-d5258ff0ef87′]

Smoking was once considered macho, high-class and sophisticated. James Bond, Fidel Castro and socialites smoked publicly and elegantly. Now smoking has sunk way down in the etiquette scale and is socially unacceptable. Smoking in public places such as offices, trains and movie theatres is banned in many countries including India.  Cigarette packets carry the warning: “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health. Yet, there is no serious effort to implement a 2004 law banning the sale of cigarettes to minors. As a result, 7-8 per cent of teenagers in India use tobacco, as cigarettes, beedis or as chewing tobacco.

CLICK & SEE

Cigarettes are made up of finely shredded tobacco leaves and stem rolled in a special kind of paper. When smoked or chewed, tobacco provides the body with a rush of nicotine and around 600 other addictive, harmful and cancerous chemicals. These produce elation and euphoria. Eventually, the intervals between “fixes” become shorter and the number of cigarettes smoked increases.

Addiction to tobacco is both genetic and environmental. A preconditioned individual reared in a conducive environment will eventually become addicted.

As the tobacco smoke enters the lungs, it paralyses the cilia. (These are small hair-like projections from cells lining the airways and are responsible for removing foreign particles.) The smoke can then settle in the interior of the lungs, causing destruction and difficulty in breathing. Attempts to clear the material are futile and result in hacking and unproductive cough. There are repeated bacterial and viral infections. Oxygenation becomes insufficient. The person may go into heart failure and become permanently breathless.

The build up of toxins can eventually lead to cancers — in the lung, urinary tract, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, pancreas, stomach and blood (acute myeloid leukaemia).

In those who do not develop cancer, tobacco damages several organs. The teeth become yellow, plaque ridden, loosened from the sockets and may eventually fall. Conversation becomes difficult because of halitosis (bad breath). The bones weaken leading to early osteoporosis.

New evidence shows that the chemicals in tobacco alter the body metabolism, precipitating glucose intolerance and the changes associated with the metabolic syndrome X. Diabetes sets in, and the lipid levels are altered. Atherosclerotic plaques build up in the blood vessels, leading to heart disease, paralysis, stroke and vascular disease. The blocks in the peripheral vessels cause pain while walking and numbness, burning and tingling in the limbs.

The IQ (intelligence quotient) falls and the smoker’s cognitive skills decline faster than in non-smokers. This makes early dementia a very real possibility.

Women who smoke during pregnancy place themselves and their foetuses at great risk. They tend to have small babies. Also, there is a much higher incidence of abnormalities of the digits in the child. Fingers and toes may be more or less than normal or stuck together.

Non-smoking men and women who live in close contact with smokers suffer all the ill effects of smoking without the pleasures of addiction. Passive smokers are the single largest international group of victims of substance abuse.

More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol consumption, motor vehicle injuries, suicides and murders combined. Smoking causes diverse and silent deaths — an unpublicised form of slow suicide. The others diseases and causes of death receive far more media publicity.

Giving up smoking is not easy. As with all other addictions, it involves reconditioning of the body and the mind. Quitting has to be abrupt and overnight. There is no slow, weaning process.

Face-to-face interactive counselling on a one-is-to-one basis is very successful in motivating people to quit.

Medication to counter the urge to smoke is available in India. The sustained-release bupropion SR is a non-nicotine drug that supposedly reduces the craving by affecting the same chemical messengers in the brain that are activated by nicotine. It is expensive, the dosage has to be individualised, and it has to be taken for a prolonged period. Motivation and persistence are usually lacking in smokers, and thus the medication has not been a success in India.

Nicotine gum is available in some of the larger cities.

Most young smokers are convinced that they have the willpower to quit whenever they want to, but in reality 90 per cent are still smoking five years later. Many sincerely believe that complications will side step them and affect others!

It is never too late. Smokers who do manage to quit get a second lease of life. On average, they live longer and are healthier than those who continue the habit.

If you want to stop, grit your teeth and “just do it”.

Source:The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
News on Health & Science

Kids of smoking parents have more nicotine

[amazon_link asins=’B00VH95OMM,B0799K8VNV,B000NHSALG,B07CWJRC57,B07B4YFXYM,1939267838,B075GPM75V,B071LP3HGK,B06XSGXLJC’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’28113b36-8e17-11e8-91b7-7950fa699f44′]

A new study has found that children, who have at least one smoker parent, have 5.5 times higher levels of cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine, in their urine.

CLICK & SEE

The study, published online ahead of print in Archives of Disease in Childhood, showed that having a smoker mother had the prime independent effect on cotinine in the urine – quadrupling it. Having a smoking father doubled the amount of cotinine, one of chemicals produced when the body breaks down nicotine from inhaled smoke to get rid of it.

The study was led by researchers from the University of Leicester Medical School and was done in collaboration with Warwick University.

Sleeping with parents and lower temperature rooms were also linked to increased amounts of cotinine.

Cotinine was measured in 104 urine samples taken from 12-week old infants. Seventy one of the babies had at least one parent that smoked and the parents of the other 33 were non-smokers.

“Babies affected by smoke tend to come from poorer homes, which may have smaller rooms and inadequate heating. Higher cotinine levels in colder times of year may be a reflection of the other key factors which influence exposure to passive smoking, such as poorer ventilation or a greater tendency for parents to smoke indoors in winter,” the authors said.

Sleeping with a parent is a know risk factor for cot death and the authors suggest that one reason for this could be breathing of, or contact with clothing or other objects contaminated with, smoke particles during sleep.

Nearly 40 percent of under-fives are believed to be exposed to tobacco smoke at home, and smoke may be responsible for up to 6,000 deaths per year in the US alone in young children.

“Babies and children are routinely exposed to cigarette smoking by their caretakers in their homes, without the legislative protection available to adults in public places,” the authors said.

But they admitted that there are realistic difficulties in preventing smoking in private homes because it relies on parents or caretakers being educated about the harmful effects of passive smoking on their children and then acting on that knowledge.

Source:The Times Of India

Related articles
css.php