In order to expand upon research that shows smoking raises bad cholesterol (LDL) and lowers good cholesterol (HDL), a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health recruited 1,500 smokers. The investigators report that among the 36 percent of the smokers who had successfully quit a year later, an average increase of about 5 percent in HDL cholesterol was noted, even though the group that quit smoking gained an average of approximately 10 pounds. This led the researchers to believe that the additional weight gain might actually be masking even greater benefits in HDL-cholesterol levels.
Harm Reduction
While the EPA tries to remove harmless substances from its hazards list, public health officials in Washington’s King County are doing quite the opposite by proposing a ban on the use of e-cigarettes in public places. Their rationale includes a host of nonsensical excuses, such as e-cigarettes lead to secondhand smoke, they are so similar in appearance to regular cigarettes that they’ll just confuse other bar patrons and encourage them to light up the real thing, and they are known to possess such carcinogenic chemicals as nitrosamines and diethylene glycol. If there were any veracity to these claims, then these would be great reasons to ban e-cigarettes, but as William T.
An annual survey shows that for the first time, teen marijuana use may be higher than cigarette smoking, Reuters reports. Conducted by the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the survey of approximately 46,000 students from 396 schools found that 16 percent of eighth graders admitted to using marijuana compared to 14.5 percent last year, while 21 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana in the past 30 days compared to 19.2 percent who admitted to smoking cigarettes. More startling is the finding that six percent of the high school seniors surveyed use marijuana every day, up from five percent last year.
Children who have no smokers in their families but who reside in apartment buildings have higher levels of cotinine, a by-product of tobacco smoke, in their blood than similar children who dwell in detached, single-family homes, a new study in the journal Pediatrics finds. After surveying and taking blood samples of children between the ages of 6 and 18 from 2001 to 2006 who live in smoke-free homes, study author Dr. Jonathan Winickoff of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston found that children living in apartments have higher blood levels of tobacco smoke contaminants.
Apparently even a whiff of tobacco smoke can threaten your health, according to a report released yesterday by U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. The report, “How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease,” insists upon a policy of zero-tolerance toward second-hand smoke and asserts that even low-level exposure to cigarette smoke, whether inhaled directly, or via second-hand exposure, can cause cardiovascular and inflammatory disease. To this end, the report uses a lot of frightening language and claims that any amount of smoke can damage your DNA and cause cancer, or provoke inflammatory vessel changes and heart attacks.
Yesterday marked another victory for e-cigarette manufacturer NJOY after a federal appellate court in Washington, D.C. unanimously upheld a lower court’s previous injunction against the FDA’s attempt to regulate the products as drugs or medical devices. The appeals court said that the e-cigarettes should instead be regulated under the less stringent 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which allows the FDA to control tobacco products’ packaging and marketing.
Now for some more good news on the harm reduction front: While cigarette sales have fallen by 17 percent since 2005 due to robust health campaigns and steeper taxes, smokeless tobacco products sales have grown by an annual rate of approximately 7 percent, reports The Chicago Tribune. The increase in sales of smokeless tobacco products can be partially attributed to their invisibility. For addicted smokers stuck in a smoke-free office environment all day long, these products relieve them of their nicotine craving.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside may as well tell smokers looking to switch to e-cigarettes to keep smoking regular cigarettes based on their study claiming that current versions of the cigarette alternative present a range of issues that pose possible public health risks.
Another study in Human Reproduction, which examined 13,815 Danish women, reported that women who smoked for part or all of their pregnancy bore daughters began menstruating at a slightly younger age than the daughters of non-smokers.Menarche is the age at which a girl has her first period. Early menarche has been linked to higher rates of heart disease and breast cancer, among other health risks.
If there weren’t already enough reasons for cigarette smokers to quit, more incentive just appeared in the form of a longitudinal study published in the December issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism. The report demonstrated that Blacks who smoke face a dramatically increased likelihood of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Further, the more smokers light up, the greater the risk. Heavy, long-term smoking increases the chances of developing RA by 2.37 times on average.
Secondhand smoke supposedly contributed to one percent of the worldwide mortality rate during the course of 2004, according to a study published in last week’s The Lancet. Using disease-specific relative risk estimates and other approximations, the study came up with a figure for the rate of secondhand smoke-related exposures and their effects among children and adult non-smokers from 192 countries in the year 2004.