1. Be around for your kids – Maybe you don’t think that lighting up that cigarette is cutting years off your life. You probably don’t give it much thought. But the truth is that smoking reduces your lifespan by an average of 13 to 15 years. If you’re a heavy smoker and think you’ll be around to see your kids and grandkids grow up, that’s not a very likely scenario. Half of all regular smokers will eventually die from smoking addiction. Is that butt worth it? You can quit now – even if you’re older and have smoked for years — and your circulation will improve immediately and your lungs will begin to repair the damage done by smoking. Within one year, you’ll cut your risk of heart disease almost in half, and diminish the risk of stroke, lung disease and cancer. Even older, long-term smokers benefited from quitting smoking. Among smokers who quit at age 65, men gained 1.4 to 2.0 years of life and women picked up 2.7 to 3.4 years.
2. Breathe easier – Wheezing, gasping for breath and other breathing difficulties can be virtually eliminated if you decide to quit smoking and stick to the plan. One study found that middle-age smokers and former smokers with mild to moderate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (commonly known as COPD) were able to breathe easier after they quit smoking. Interestingly, the women showed twice as much improvement as the men in the study after one year of quitting smoking.
3. No more incessant coughing and spitting up phlegm – One sure sign of a chronic smoker is that awful smoker’s cough. Ditto the constant coughing and spitting up phlegm. Sometimes you cough so hard that you make yourself sick. Nausea frequently accompanies all this built-up congestion and phlegm. Imagine what your lungs feel like! Excellent reasons to resolve to quit smoking now.
4. Keep your cognitive abilities intact – Research shows that smokers who quit have better memory and reasoning skills than those who continue to smoke. This makes sense, since smoking blocks the carotid artery, cutting off blood supply to the brain’s cells. Long-term smoking has harmful effects on memory, problem-solving, ability to think clearly, and IQ.
5. Be more confident – When you do decide to quit smoking, just knowing that you are doing something great to improve your health can boost your self-confidence. This is an added inducement to keep on going with your smoking cessation plan. It’s like the second-wind you get in an endurance race – except this is a race for your life.
6. Be kind to your heart, lungs, and other organs – Heart health, along with that of your lungs and other organs are greatly affected – and not in a good way – when you continue to smoke. Rack up years of constant smoking and you’re looking at some serious damage to your overall health. Smoke from cigarettes, cigars and pipes is as bad for your heart and arteries as it is for your lungs. Don’t feel like you can play that game of pickup basketball with your buddies like you used to or catch the ball with your children? Maybe you’re not as able to do the things you like and have resigned yourself to a less active lifestyle. If you quit smoking, you can likely regain some of your stamina. If you make the decision to stop smoking, it’s the biggest health gift you can lavish on yourself. Secondhand smoke is also damaging to your health. So, when you quit, avoid being anywhere near others who smoke. It certainly seems worth strongly considering the choice to quit smoking today.
7. Rest easier – Did you know that people who smoke are more likely to snore than nonsmokers? Smoking – and snoring at night – is also linked to daytime drowsiness. Catch up on your winks and wake up feeling more alert and well-rested. This is another excellent reason to quit smoking now.
8. Be a role model – Instead of preaching something you don’t do yourself, when you quit smoking you’ll be a great role model for your children and others in the family. Did you know that when you quit, your spouse is 67 percent more likely to quit as well? Not only that, but research shows that your example of quitting smoking is likely to result in 36 percent of your friends quitting too.
9. No more chilled out in winter – Forget about that freezing feeling in winter. That’s another benefit if you quit smoking. Because your blood is circulating more and your heart and lungs are getting the right amount of oxygen, you’re improving your body’s internal thermostat. Think of it this way: you’ll be able to toss those hand-warmers.
10. Have a healthier mouth – Smoking puts you at risk for cancer of the mouth. In addition, tobacco smoke can also cause bad breath, tooth decay and gum disease. Smoking makes your teeth yellow and discolored. But you can put a stop to the damage with the decision to quit smoking now.
11. Take care of breast health – Females who smoke have a 25 to 32 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer. There’s no simpler way to put it. Do yourself a huge favor and make the decision to quit smoking now.
12. Have a better chance of getting pregnant – It may not be the first thing you think about when you’re mulling over the idea of getting pregnant. When you’re contemplating starting a family, one of the best things you can do is to quit smoking. That’s because smokers have a greater risk of being infertile.
13. Maintain hair color longer – Research shows that cigarette smokers are four times more likely to have their hair turn gray early. Unless you want to keep the hair color industry profitable and don’t mind monthly (or more frequent) touch-ups, giving up smoking can allow you to keep your natural hair color longer. It’s just another reason to quit smoking now.
14. Love that clear skin – Who doesn’t appreciate having clear skin, especially if you’re a female? When you smoke, what happens is that the toxins in cigarettes change the oil secretions in your face. And don’t forget about the stains on your fingers from all that nicotine. Ugh – that’s so unsightly. There is a way out of this, however. You can kiss those many breakouts good-bye if you give up smoking for good.
15. No more tobacco smell on clothes and hair – When you’re deep into your smoking addiction you probably don’t notice or even think about the smell that clings to your hair and clothes. You don’t, but others do. Once you stop smoking for good, you won’t be able to tolerate that smell anymore. You’ll need to have the clothes that you haven’t worn in some time that have been hanging in your closet dry cleaned or washed and it’s probably a good idea to have the house aired out, the walls and curtains washed, and so on. Don’t forget about your car. Cigarette smoke sticks in the car too. The good news is that once you quit smoking for good, you can say good riddance to that old tobacco smell.
16. Feel great about your willpower and determination – Quitting smoking isn’t easy, and it certainly does involve a great deal of willpower and determination. Smoking is an addiction and while you don’t ask to have an addiction, you do make the decision to quit. Only you can do that. Sometimes it takes a little longer for some smokers to come to this decision than for others, but the fact of the matter is that it’s never too late to quit. Refer back to some of the statistics that show benefits for even long-term smokers in their mid-60s and you’ll see that there’s always good that comes from quitting smoking.
17. Think about your pets – What do you think happens to your pets, your precious kitty and dog, from your second-hand smoke? The fact is that second-hand smoke puts your family pets at risk for cancer. And both dogs and cats are affected. Sure, they’ll still come to you for a pet or a treat, but they can’t tell you that your smoking is killing them. Think about your pets and make the decision to quit smoking now.
18. Save money – Think about the thousands of dollars you’ve spent on cigarettes in the past. That’s money that literally went up in smoke, never to return. The only residuals you have from smoking all those years are bad ones – the effect to your health chief among them. Once you make the decision to quit smoking now, you’ll be putting some savings away or finding good use for the money elsewhere.
19. Ability to feel relaxed and satisfied – Remember how often you felt the craving to smoke, and constantly felt unsatisfied? Never being relaxed unless you were smoking? Always feeling like you had to have a cigarette to be in control? Those unnatural feelings will be a thing of the past once you make the decision to quit smoking now and follow through with a well-crafted plan to put your intention into action.
20. Enjoy the taste of food again – It’s probably been a long time since you were able to enjoy your meals. That is, to really enjoy the taste of the different foods, to appreciate the flavors and textures of all that you eat – instead of just eating because you have to. Even if you don’t think that you’re missing anything, you’ll be pleasantly surprised once you give up smoking for good and suddenly realize just how fantastic food tastes. It will be like you’re born again, just beginning to figure out what different foods taste like. This is another very good reason to quit smoking now.

There are many more reasons to quit smoking now, including never having to experience the taste of cheap tobacco; headaches and dizziness; painful heartburn at night and after drinking coffee; being easily winded; taste of copper in the mouth; colds and bronchitis that never seem to go away; increased heart rate and sweating; increased rate of hypertension; high rate of anxiety; feeling dependent on nicotine; having to rush out to get cigarettes at all hours; having to crack the car window in all kinds of weather; smoking alone when others are non-smokers; throbbing headaches and migraines, and never getting all you want done because of all the time you’ve wasted smoking.

Doesn’t this sound like there are plenty of reasons to re-think whether smoking is such a good deal after all? In fact, after reading through this, you may have already come to the conclusion that quitting smoking now is something that you’d really like to do.

Now, what?

The best recommendation is to talk with your family doctor or healthcare professional. Make a plan and talk with your doctor about implementing it as well as resources to help you quit. There’s lots of help available online as well, including the Freedom from Smoking online program through the American Lung Association.

Remember the A’s from the American Lung Association:

Avoid the situation.

Alter the situation.

Choose Alternatives to smoking.

You can do it. Believe that you can, but don’t get discouraged if it takes you more than one time quitting smoking to quit smoking addiction for good. Sometimes it takes four or five attempts to put smoking behind you. That’s why support is so essential. Join a support group once you’ve quit so that you can have those reinforcements and ongoing encouragement as you begin your new life smoke-free and healthier.

As the ones who’ve quit say, keep trying to quit until you quit for good. But we’d add to that these words once again: You can do it. Believe that you can.

A new form of tobacco is in fashion, however. Kids are now playing cool with hookah smoking, in which a smoker uses a water pipe to deliver tobacco smoke to his lungs. A new study sought to explore the use of hookah among high school students and the attitudes that high school students have towards its use (Smith, et al., 2011).

The researchers recruited students from three high schools in the San Diego area, focusing on juniors and seniors. A total of 689 students were surveyed out of a potential total of 691 students.

The students were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked them about hookah use and cigarette use. They were also asked questions about the perceived danger of hookah, along with its social acceptability among their peers and the acceptability of chewing tobacco, cigars and cigarettes.

The researchers found that 83 percent of the students were familiar with the concept of a hookah or water pipe, even if they had only heard of the device. More than one-quarter of the students surveyed had tried smoking with a hookah and 10.9 percent reported that they had used a hookah in the past 30 days.

More than a quarter of the students (38 percent) said that they had tried smoking cigarettes and 11 percent reported having smoked cigarettes in the past month. Those who used hookah were significantly more likely to have tried cigarettes or to be smokers than those who had never used a hookah.

Nearly 60 percent of the students surveyed believed that hookah was more socially acceptable than other types of tobacco use, including cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco. Nearly half of the students thought that hookah was a safer choice than other forms of tobacco.

The authors report that there are limitations on the results, such as the use of self-report and a cross-sectional design. In addition, the study focuses on a limited geographical area and the results may not be generalizable for the general population.

The results of the study indicate that high school students are generally aware of hookah use and many have tried it. The popular belief that hookah is a safer form of tobacco use is troubling, because previous research has shown it to be a more dangerous form of tobacco use, delivering more smoke into the lungs than some other forms. The study’s findings may act as a springboard for more education in high schools about the dangers of hookah use.

They analyzed the occurrence of depictions of tobacco use, including brand appearances and smoking paraphernalia, for periods of at least five minutes (tobacco intervals) in the 15 most commercially successful films screened in the UK between 1989 and 2008.

Commercial success was defined as accounting for around 50% or more of each year’s gross box office takings, while smoking paraphernalia included ashtrays, lighters, etc.

Between 1989 and 2008, the average occurrence of five minute tobacco intervals plummeted from 3.5 per hour to 0.6 for all films, a fall of 80%.

But imagery persisted in all age categories of films given a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. This included those deemed suitable for children and young teens.

Two thirds of films classified for under 18s and over half (61%) classified for under 15s featured tobacco intervals. Between 2004 and 2008, of the films containing tobacco intervals, 92% were rated as suitable for those under 18.

Among the 15 most popular films, tobacco intervals occurred in seven out of 10 films, over half of which (56%) were classified as suitable for those under 15 and 92% for those under 18.

The film with the highest number of brand appearances was Pulp Fiction, which was classified for adults (18).

But brand appearances were nearly twice as likely to occur in films with UK involvement. UK producers were involved in one out of five films and were solely responsible for 3% between 1989 and 2008.

Twelve different brands appeared in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (certificate 15) — the highest for any film. In “About a Boy” (certificate 12), the main character smoked Silk Cut regularly throughout the film, yet in the book on which the film was based, the lead character smoked infrequently and no particular brand was mentioned.

Marlboro and Silk Cut were the two brands most likely to be featured. While Marlboro has more than 42% of market share in the US, Silk Cut has just 5% of UK market share, prompting the authors to suggest that its appearance was "disproportionate."

"The specific repeated occurrence of some brands of cigarette in some films raises the possibility that product placement by tobacco companies is still occurring," they suggest.

Smoking in films is a potent driver of youth and adult smoking, say the authors, who suggest that film certification should take smoking into account for films targeted to young people.

." ..it is apparent that children and young people watching films in the UK are still exposed to frequent and at times specifically branded tobacco imagery, particularly in films originating from the UK," they conclude.

Science Daily reports that this population-based research is the first to examine the association of childhood ETS with early emphysema by CT scan in nonsmokers. Approximately half of the participants in this large multiethnic cohort had at least one regular cigarette smoker in their childhood home. Participants with more childhood ETS exposure had more emphysema-like lung pixels; an average of 20% of scan pixels were emphysema-like for those who lived with two or more smokers as a child, compared with 18% for those who lived with one regular smoker, or 17% for those who said that they did not live with a regular inside smoker as a child.

The researchers studied CT scans of 1,781 non-smokers without clinical cardiovascular disease recruited from six communities in the United States, including northern Manhattan and the Bronx, New York. Those reporting childhood ETS exposure were somewhat younger with an average age of 61, were more likely to be non- Hispanic white, and were less likely to have been born outside the United States. These differences were statistically controlled in the analyses.

"We were able to detect a difference on CT scans between the lungs of participants who lived with a smoker as a child and those who did not," observed Gina Lovasi, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. "Some known harmful effects of tobacco smoke are short term, and this new research suggests that effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs may also persist for decades."

Previous studies have found evidence that childhood ETS exposure affects perinatal and childhood health outcomes, and that adult exposure may affect adult respiratory health outcomes, including lung function and respiratory symptoms.

Although childhood ETS was not associated with adult lung function in this healthy population, this does not contradict the results for early emphysema, since airflow obstruction and anatomic damage are theoretically and clinically distinguishable. "However, emphysema may be a more sensitive measure of damage compared with lung function in this relatively healthy cohort," Dr. Lovasi notes.

Combined emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are projected to become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020.

The exposure information in this study does not provide information on the timing of ETS exposure during childhood, making it difficult to distinguish as exposure in utero. "The association between childhood ETS and early emphysema among participants whose mothers did not smoke, suggests that the effect we are detecting is for smoke exposure in the home during childhood rather than in utero exposure alone," observed Dr. Lovasi.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program and the National Institutes of Health.

"We were able to show that children who are exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally and during the first years of life have a higher risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms when they are of school age," said Dr. Joachim Heinrich of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Zentrum München. "Moreover, it makes a difference whether the child was exposed to tobacco smoke first after birth or was already confronted with it during prenatal development."

According to the study, children who were only exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally have a 1.9 times higher risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms in comparison to children without any exposure (change this if it is the wrong comparison). The risk for children first exposed to tobacco smoke after birth is 1.3 times higher. Furthermore, children who were exposed to tobacco smoke both while in the womb and while growing up doubled the risk of developing abnormal behavioral symptoms. Such symptoms include hyperactivity, attention deficits or problems in their relationships with peers. The results of the study were independent of affects from the social environment in which the children were growing up.

In the framework of the GINI-plus study, data of a large birth cohort comprising 5,991 children and their parents was analyzed. Extensive studies will follow up on this study.

"The value of our study is based not only on our prospective, investigative approach, but also on the comprehensiveness of our survey as to possible pollution levels for the unborn, infants and children at different times," Joachim Heinrich explained. "This makes it possible to determine the effects of prenatal and postnatal tobacco smoke exposure and to differentiate between them."

To ensure the validity of their results from the questionnaires, the scientists carried out carefully controlled tests to exclude possible bias due to social factors. Simon Rückinger, lead author of the study, stated: "The relationship we found between tobacco exposure during fetal development and early childhood and behavioral problems at school age was not biased by other factors of the social environment."

The findings make clear that tobacco smoke exposure has a significant impact on the behavioral development of children. The negative influence is greater on the unborn child during the pregnancy of the mother than it is after this sensitive developmental phase.

"If parents really don’t want their children to smoke, they need to communicate that by establishing clear guidelines in their families about not smoking and discuss them with their school-age children." said Min Jung Kim, a research scientist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group and lead author of the study.

At the same time, parents can increase their children’s chances of smoking by their own use of tobacco. “If parents smoke, teens have more access to cigarettes than teens with non-smoking parents. A second preventive measure for smoking parents is to quit smoking themselves," said Kim.

Science Daily reports that the study included 270 adolescents who had begun smoking by the eighth grade but had not advanced to daily smoking at that time. Daily smoking was defined as smoking one cigarette a day for the past 30 days prior to annual interviews. By the time the students were in the 12th grade, 156, or 58 percent, had become daily smokers.

The children in the study were 51 percent male and 85 percent white. They were drawn from a larger study looking at the development of healthy and problem behaviors among children at 10 suburban schools in the Pacific Northwest. Information about their smoking habits was collected during annual interviews from 7th through 12th grades.

Aside from parenting and parental tobacco use, other factors that predicted teen smoking were having friends who smoked and involvement in other problems behaviors such as skipping school, getting into fights, and engaging in vandalism.

Kim said most smoking prevention programs to not directly address the role of parental smoking or the link between anti-social behavior and smoking, which commonly occur together.

"Parents need to know that they are still important and can make their children feel good when they do something right and also know that there are consequences when they do something wrong. Many parents think adolescence is the time for children to have their independence. But it is important to maintain good supervision of your teen. Parents who smoke also need to understand that they are modeling behavior and if they quit smoking they send a strong message to their teenager," said Kim.

She recommends that parents "should not ignore childrens’ experimental smoking at any age because it put them at great risk of progressing to daily smoking." To do that, parents should:

• Set and enforce clear guideline about tobacco.
• Monitor to ensure that their children are following your guidelines.
• Know and monitor their children’s friends.
• Provide clear, consistent, and positive consequences for following those guidelines and appropriate, consistent negative consequences for violating them.
 

Previous studies have found that since the 1964 US Surgeon General’s report, the number of people who smoke cigarettes has declined. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health take this research a step further by distinguishing occasional smokers from heavy smokers.

“Regular, heavy cigarette use frequently characterizes nicotine dependence and is the pattern of use thought to be most detrimental to health and longevity, but it has not been addressed in previous estimates of the decline of smoking prevalence,” said Renee Goodwin, Ph.D., associate professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and principle investigator of the study.

“Rather, earlier research mainly addressed tobacco use or cigarette smoking per se rather than examining the frequency and duration of cigarette use in detail,” she explained.

The new study finds not only that the number of American who are dependent on nicotine has remained steady over the past several decades, but also that the proportion of smokers who are currently addicted to nicotine is greater than in previous generations. Dr. Goodwin suggests that this could be because of anti-cigarette campaigns.

Smoking has been far more common among men than women for most of the past 40 years, but recent evidence shows that the gender gap has narrowed, and the current study finds increases in smoking women in several recent generations.

Socioeconomic status is thought to be another factor in cigarette use. The current study finds that younger women living in poverty had the highest rates of nicotine dependency compared with older generations and those not living in poverty. This suggests that despite increases in taxes and cigarette costs, those who are most vulnerable are still affected.

“Passage of this month’s law governing the regulation of tobacco products and its focus on preventing smoking initiation among children is important and timely as our findings suggest that the number of people who still smoke is considerable,” said Dr. Goodwin. “Hopefully this legislation will help reduce the number addicted to nicotine in future generations since never smoking is the only sure way to prevent the development of nicotine dependence.”

She continued, “Given the mounting evidence that nicotine dependence plays a crucial role in smoking patterns, there is no question that future studies on curbing cigarette use need to take nicotine dependence into account.”

The compound, called NNK, is a chemical substance that becomes carcinogenic when it is altered by the metabolic processes of the body. NNK does not appear to harm brain cells directly, but it may cause neuroinflammation, a condition that leads to disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis.

“Considering the extreme economical and disease burden of neuroinflammation-related disorders, it is extremely important from a medical, social, and economic point of view to discover if NNK in tobacco causes neuroinflammation” said Ghosh.

The team conducted two types of tests—one outside of a living host in glass and one in laboratory mice. They used blot analysis techniques that showed that the introduction of NNK resulted in a clear increase in proinflammatory signaling proteins, proinflammatory effector proteins, and other stress-related proteins. They also found increased levels of proinflammatory cytokines, which act as molecular messengers between cells.

This shows that NNK provokes an exaggerated response from the brain’s immune cells, known as microglia. These cells act as destroyers for the brain by attacking damaged or unhealthy cells. But when provoked by NNK, these cells start to attack healthy brain cells rather than the unhealthy ones they are supposed to attack.

NNK is present in all forms of tobacco, so it can also enter the body through chewing. In addition, second-hand smoking may lead to the same neuroinflammation conditions because NNK is also present in the smoke itself. Smoke-filled air indoors may contain up to 26 nanograms of NNK, and concentrations of NNK in tobacco can vary from 20-310 nanograms. This means that both direct and second-hand smoking can lead to substantial measures of NNK intake.

“This research sheds light on the processes that lead to nerve cell damage in those who smoke cigarettes or consume tobacco products on regular basis,” said Ghosh.