Note: The contents of this blog are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice or substitute for professional care. For medical emergencies, dial 911!
You should think about protecting your pets from secondhand smoke. According to researchers at Oklahoma State University, secondhand smoke has been determined cancer-causing for household pets, such as dogs, cats, and birds
"There have been a number of scientific papers recently that have reported the significant health threat secondhand smoke poses to pets," says Dr. Carolynn MacAllister, an Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Service veterinarian. "Secondhand smoke has been associated with oral cancer and lymphoma in cats, lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as lung cancer in birds."
The news about smoking just keeps getting worse and worse. When we will get the hint?
To those who follow cancer on a daily basis, it may be no surprise that lung cancer is the leading type of cancer that kills globally. With billions of cigarettes being smoked each year in probably every country in the world, t should not come as a surprise that lung cancer occurs in such large numbers.
1.3 million lives each year are snuffed out due to lung cancer, yet my guess is that over a billion people continue to smoke worldwide. That's just a guess, but when 300 million smoke in China alone, it's probably a good guess.
If that weren't enough, about 60 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer die within a year of officially being diagnosed, and almost 75 percent die within two years. Are you still smoking or know someone who is? Read that last sentence again and again.
Did you know the number one symptom of lung cancer is a persistent cough? Other symptoms include bouts of wheezing, shortness of breath, trouble swallowing, blood-streaked sputum, and a hoarse voice.
Did you know 28 percent of all cancer deaths are due to lung cancer and that it's the number one killer among both men and women?
Did you know that Hookahs -- used to inhale tobacco through a water pipe -- let in the same cancer-causing substances as cigarettes and are just as harmful as smoking, despite the fact that many people believe they are safer?
African-Americans are exposed to more pro-tobacco advertising than Caucasians according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study published this month.
The senior author of the study, Brian A. Pimack, M.D., Ed.M., and his colleagues analyzed data from both predominantly African-American and Caucasian markets. They calculated the concentrations and density of tobacco advertising in each market. Concentration of tobacco advertising is the number of tobacco ads divided by total ads. The concentration of pro-smoking signage is 70 percent higher for African-Americans and there are about 2.6 as many advertisements per person in African-American areas as compared to Caucasian areas.
According to Dr. Pimack, this study suggests that African-Americans may be special targets of the tobacco industry.
You might think, like many people do, that smokeless tobacco products are safe alternatives to cigarettes. Wrong.
According to researchers at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, smokeless tobacco users are exposed to higher amounts of carcinogenic molecules than cigarette smokers. In a study of 182 users of chewing tobacco or oral snuff and 420 cigarette smokers, they found snuff users were exposed to higher levels of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) than smokers. NNK is a human carcinogen known to produce lung cancer. In laboratory animals, it also contributes to cancers of the pancreas, nasal mucosa, and liver.
Published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, this study serves to remind us that there is only one safe alternative to smoking -- not smoking.
A new government report on cancer addresses not only the tobacco industry, but also the food industry and the federal government. The report calls on the federal government to "cease being a purveyor of unhealthy foods."
According to the report, federal, state and local policies have made healthful food more expensive and less available while cutting back on physical education classes in schools.
The report recommends encouraging doctors and insurance companies to offer more programs regarding nutrition, smoking cessation and exercise. The report also urged Congress to authorize the FDA to regulate tobacco and to increase the cigarette tax. President Bush currently opposes such an increase in the cigarette tax.
Smoking is a well-known risk factor for bladder cancer and is responsible for 50% of the incidence in men and 25% of the incidence in women. Earlier studies have suggested that quitting smoking might reduce the risk of cancer incidence. Researchers have recently shown that quitting smoking is also effective not only to lower the original occurrence, but also to reduce the risk of relapse.
There are countless methods we can use for optimizing our health. Each of us can surely rattle off a bunch right now. Give it a try. Quick. Name three actions you can take to improve your body, your mind, your soul. Good. Now remember what you picked -- and make each one happen.
In a recent newspaper article, one journalist listed 25 ways to live a healthy life. They're all super ideas. But I only have space today for seven. Here they are. Stop back in two weeks, and I'll give you another seven. Keep your weight in check
Make sure your weight is appropriate for your height, age, sex, and body frame. The American Institute for Cancer Research reports that having an ideal body mass, eating properly, and exercising can reduce the risk of cancer by 30 to 40 percent.
I have recently been thinking on the reasons we do not do the things that we know are good for us.Why do we continue to eat fatty foods? Why do we not exercise? Why do we continue smoking? Why do we do these things while we know the consequences?
Why did my aunt go in for her mastectomy without quitting smoking beforehand? Why did she go outside for a cigarette right after coming out of the ICU after recovering from a collapsed lung? What is it that prevents me from exercising every day? Why do we still suffer from diseases that are either totally or partially preventable if only we would change our lifestyles?
One answer could be found in research done at MIT. It seems that our brains form neural pathways when we have an ingrained habit. So, our brains will not let us change! That would be the easy answer, wouldn't it? How do we then explain the people who do change? The people who stop smoking, stop eating junk and start exercising? I think we all know the answer. They made a decision and stuck to it. Their health became more important to them than their habits. We can change our minds.
My aunt decided that her cigarettes were more important to her than anything else. Before she passed away she wondered if there would be cigarettes in heaven. I hope heaven changed her mind. Can you change your mind today?
More ideas on quitting smoking from the researchers on the Cochrane team. How about a hospital stay?
Since hospitals are smoke-free, any smoker has to stop smoking while in the hospital, whether for a tobacco-related disease or not.
The researchers found that smokers in the hospital are particularly open to information about quitting smoking. However, only intensive interventions with at least 30 minutes a day of counselling and at least one month of supportive care after the stay show any benefit. They found that adding nicotine replacement therapy or bupropion to the plans had some additional effect, although it was not statistically significant.
Maybe we should try to offer some sort of inpatient stays to smokers who want to quit, even if they are not sick right now?
The main goal of programs aimed at smokers has been to help them stop smoking completely. There has been little attention to helping them reduce their use. However, some people are willing to try to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoke while they are unwilling to quit completely.
The team found that between 6% and 9% of people using nicotine replacement products managed to reduce their use of cigarettes, which was certainly better than the control groups where only 1-3% reduced their use. The team also found no evidence that the treatments that aimed to reduce use diverted people from stopping completely.
However, the researchers point out that there is no evidence that reducing the number of cigarettes used has any health benefits, other than leading people to one day quit smoking entirely.
I can read this analysis two ways. One way tells me that reducing the number of cigarettes is not an unreasonable path to completely quitting smoking one day. That's promising. The other way seems to say that reducing the number of cigarettes doesn't improve health anyway, so you might as well smoke more? I'll go with the first. Less cigarettes has to be better than more.
Under the bill, the FDA would have the authority to decide what the labels should say and show and where they should be placed. The bill is sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy.
According to Harvard's Allan Brandt in an interview wtih the Washington Post, the current labels have lost "almost any public health benefits that they may once have had. They are seen as diluted and old, and they don't influence smokers."
About 52 senators support the bill and it is backed by the American Cancer Society and other health organizations.
What do you think? Do you think larger, more graphic warnings on cigarette packages would deter smoking in the U.S.?
Vince Rennich claims they fired him for speaking out in favor of a smoking ban. The ban was originally written to ban smoking in all 11 casinos, but the council later compromised and lowered the ban to cover 75 percent of the gambling floor. The ban took place April 15.
Rennich was fired a week after testifying before a state Senate committee about the risks of second hand smoke. His lawsuit claims that he should have been protected under the Conscientious Employee Protection Act, known as the "whistleblower" law.
Rennich has not been able to find work and is currently paying over $1,300 a month just to have health insurance for him and his family. That money is coming from his savings and various fundraisers held by family and friends.
A new study shows that younger smokers trying to quit are less likely than older smokers to use tools such as patches to medications to help them, a new study out of the University of Illinois at Chicago shows.
Dr. Susan J. Curry and her team analyzed data from over 6,500 smokers from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey. Over 30 percent of smokers 25 and older had tried medication compared to only 18 percent of younger smokers. According to Curry, current smoking cessation and prevention program focus either on older people with smoking-related illness or younger people who haven't yet started to smoke.
Curry says that more research is needed to find out how to reach younger smokers regarding the available treatment options for quitting smoking.
Who knows which pieces of cancer information floating around out there are actually true? I don't. Do cell phones cause cancer? Some say yes, some say no, I say I'm confused! Luckily, I happened upon this Discovery Health article that highlights a variety of myths and then offers the lowdown on each one. Here are seven of them:
Myth #1. There is currently a cure for cancer, but the medical industry won't tell the public about it because they make too much money treating cancer patients.
Chalk this up to urban legend. And consider this: doctors, laboratory scientists, and their families and friends die of cancer at the same rate as everyone else in the United States. How about this: medical breakthroughs happen all the time and are quickly applied. Think about antibiotics and vaccines -- like the polio vaccine -- that have transformed health care. How about this? Not too long ago, less than one in 10 kids with leukemia survived 10 years. Now, the cure rate is nearly 80 percent. Seems like progress to me.
You should think about protecting your pets from secondhand smoke. According to researchers at Oklahoma State University, secondhand smoke has been determined cancer-causing for household pets, such as dogs, cats, and birds
To those who follow cancer on a daily basis, it may be no surprise that lung cancer is the leading type of cancer that kills globally. With billions of cigarettes being smoked each year in probably every country in the world, t should not come as a surprise that lung cancer occurs in such large numbers.
Did you know the number one symptom of lung cancer is a persistent cough? Other symptoms include bouts of wheezing, shortness of breath, trouble swallowing, blood-streaked sputum, and a hoarse voice.
African-Americans are exposed to more pro-tobacco advertising than Caucasians according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine 
You might think, like many people do, that smokeless tobacco products are safe alternatives to cigarettes. Wrong. 
A new government 
There are countless methods we can use for optimizing our health. Each of us can surely rattle off a bunch right now. Give it a try. Quick. Name three actions you can take to improve your body, your mind, your soul. Good. Now remember what you picked -- and make each one happen.
I have recently been thinking on the reasons we do not do the things that we know are good for us.Why do we continue to eat fatty foods? Why do we not exercise? Why do we continue smoking? Why do we do these things while we know the consequences?
More 
The main goal of programs aimed at smokers has been to help them stop smoking completely. There has been little attention to helping them reduce their use. However, some people are willing to try to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoke while they are unwilling to quit completely.
On Wednesday, 
Who knows which pieces of cancer information floating around out there are actually true? I don't. Do cell phones cause cancer? Some say yes, some say no, I say I'm confused! Luckily, I happened upon this 
