Can Smoking Relieve Stress?

Numerous studies have shown that smoking and secondhand smoke are linked to many medical disorders including cancer, heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), and stroke. So quitting smoking would certainly be beneficial to both smokers and people around them.

Interestingly, many smokers have claimed that lighting up a cigarette can actually help them reduce the stress they have. This is probably a fairly good reason for millions of smokers to light up their cigarettes again even after quitting.

But studies have found otherwise. In reality, smoking has the entirely different effect. Instead of reduced, the long-term stress levels will be raised among smokers. In fact, smokers can have their stress relieved only when they quit smoking.

In a paper published on June 7, 2010 in the journal “Addiction”, researchers from the London School of Medicine and Dentistry found that smokers who stopped lighting up cigarettes had a significant larger reduction in perceived stress.

A total of 469 people, who attempted to quit smoking after being hospitalized for heart disease, were examined. At the outset, the participants had similar stress levels and about 85 percent of these people generally believed that smoking helped them cope with the stress they had.

After a year, 41 percent of the participants managed to quit smoking completely and their perceived stress levels were reduced by about 20 percent, whereas patients who continue smoking showed little change in their perceived stress levels.

Obviously, the findings supported the theory that smoking can actually contribute to stress among some people. But why do smokers still think that lighting up a cigarette could help them relieve stress?

According to researchers, when smokers are refrained from smoking, they tend to feel more and more edgy, irritable and uncomfortable as the period lengthens. A cigarette would more or less help them get through the stressful state. This is probably the main reason smokers think that smoking help them reduce stress.

Therefore, smoking can relieve stress is actually a myth, at least in the long term.

Nicotine-Free Cigarettes On The Way, Are You Sure?

Smoking is bad for the health of smokers as well as non-smokers through second-hand smoke. Besides cancers, nicotine contained in cigarettes can cause heart disease, stroke and many other diseases.

Recently, Japanese researchers had identified a gene that transports nicotine through tobacco plants, which could help manufacture cigarettes free of carcinogen. Carcinogen is a substance or agent that can cause cancer or increase its propagation.

In a joint study by Kyoto University's Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere and Ghent University of Belgium, the experts found the gene Nt-JAT1 transports nicotine to vacuoles, or bags accumulating water and other substances in the cells of tobacco leaves. In their experiments, they confirmed that yeast with Nt-JAT1 carry nicotine. They published the results in the online version of the Proceedings of National Academy of Science in January 2009.

Tobacco plants were already known to produce nicotine in their roots and carry it to their leaves. The new finding makes it possible for the cigarette manufacturers to produce tobacco free from nicotine in the leaves.

This would not only help smokers stem nicotine addiction without the use of anti-smoking goods, but also benefit non-smokers as tobacco smoke is free from nicotine. Besides tobacco industry, such discovery could also be used for medical and agricultural purposes.

No one can actually predict whether cigarettes with little or no nicotine would well be accepted by the smokers, but the researchers argued that the gene could also transport compounds, which can be used as medicine.

It has been known that nicotine is part of a group of compounds known as alkaloids. In fact, some alkaloids extracted from plants are employed for fighting cancer. This new discovery could be used to make plants build up higher levels of useful alkaloids.

It is believed that other genes could be involved in carrying nicotine through tobacco plants, but the research on these genes has yet to be completed.

Quit Smoking Brings Health Benefits To Women!

Smoking is bad for health! This is a fact that is recognized by most people, but it just could not convince those die-hard smokers. In 2000, about 5 million premature deaths were attributed to smoking. World Health Organization has projected that by 2030, each year, tobacco-related deaths will account for 3 million deaths in industrialized countries and 7 million in developing countries.

That is why the governments in many countries such as Germany, France, etc. are forced to pass legislation to ban smoking in public areas since the beginning of 2008. Health experts believe smoking will bring health hazards not only to the smokers themselves but also to the surrounding people in the form of secondhand smoke.

A group of researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 6, 2008 that women smokers who quit could enjoy major health benefits within 5 years, though it could take decades to correct respiratory damage and lower their risk of lung cancer.

The researchers studied more than 121,000 United States female nurses whose health histories were recorded in 1976 and followed during the ensuing years.

The study found that those who stopped smoking had reduced their risk of death from all causes including heart disease and vascular problems within the first 5 years by 13 percent. After 20 years, the risk of death from any cause was actually the same for those who quit and those who had never smoked.

For deaths due specifically to respiratory diseases, there was an 18 percent reduction within 5 to 10 years of quitting, but it would need 20 years to reach the level found in nonsmokers. While there was a 21 percent reduction in the risk of lung cancer death within 5 years, it took 30 years for that excess risk to diminish.

The findings also indicated that 64 percent of deaths in current smokers and 28 percent of deaths in past smokers are attributable to smoking.

In the light of youngsters are taking up cigarettes at early age, the researchers also suggested that women who start smoking later in life would have a lower risk of many lung and heart diseases.

In fact, a survey implemented in 2003 has indicated that 13 percent of smokers started their first cigarette at the age of 13 or 14, and 22 percent of all the United States high school students were smoking at that time.

Although the current study involved only women, other research has already found benefits for men who stop smoking.

How Can Smoking Be Addicted?

Smoking is closely linked to diseases such as cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke. Each year, smoking kills about 5 million people and among them, female smokers and smokers in developing countries are the most vulnerable group.

When you ask smokers this question: "How did you addicted to smoking?" Most likely, he or she just cannot give you a definite answer because he or she simply could not remember how the habit was formed. However, a recent New Zealand study showed that smoking just one cigarette could simply cause tobacco addiction in some people.

The medical researchers asked 96,000 youngsters aged between 14 and 15 to fill in questionnaires, issued via schools between 2002 and 2004, about whether they smoked and whether they felt the need to continue smoking. They published their findings on February 20, 2008 in the Elsevier Journal of Addictive Behaviours.

Questions such as 'Do you ever have strong cravings to smoke?", 'Do you smoke now because it is hard to quit?', and 'Did you find it hard to concentrate because you couldn't smoke?' were included in the questionnaires to calibrate any dependence on tobacco.

As expected, youngsters who smoked frequently replied that they felt the urge to continue smoking. What the researchers found surprising was that those infrequent smokers also reported a carving. It was found that 46 percent of those smoked less than one cigarette a month had diminished control over the urge to smoke. Among teenagers who found difficulty to repress an urge to smoke, 10 percent and 25 percent had the impulse within 2 days and one month of smoking their first cigarette respectively.

The responses from the study confirmed previous research showing addiction rises as more cigarettes are smoked, and it starts after the first cigarette. Smoking one cigarette can simply prompt a loss of autonomy, as suggested by the researchers.

A Child's Cardiovascular System May Be At Risk By Secondhand Smoke!

Parents may want to consider giving up their smoking habit as this will harm not only their own bodies but also their children's arteries.

A study, conducted by the Research Centre of Applied and Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Turku in Finland, measured levels of continine in blood of 400 children between the ages of 8 and 11. Continine is a substance that the body produces when it breaks down nicotine in tobacco smoke. The participants were divided into 3 groups: low, high and non-detectable continine groups.

The researchers reported that exposure, even a little, to secondhand smoke at home or in public can actually harm the function of the cardiovascular system of the healthy children. This is because children who were in the high continine group were found to have a significantly lowered endothelial function. As a measure of arterial health, endothelial function is the blood coagulation and platelet adhesion in the blood vessels.

Parental smoking is also associated with an increased occurrence of asthma and respiratory illness in children. Statistics showed that asthmatic children who are exposed to cigarette smoke at home have a 4.5 times greater risk of respiratory-related absence from school, thus affecting their learning.

Besides cardiovascular disease and asthma, cancer, especially of the lung, is another disease that is strongly associated with secondhand smoke.

Smoking Mothers Could Risk Their Babies Of Heart Disease!

Smoking has long been regarded as a risk factor of heart disease. But now, women who smoke and want to have baby may need to think twice because cigarettes may cause heart defects to their babies.

A report presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago revealed that pregnant women who smoke just before pregnant and shortly thereafter may increase the risk of their babies of getting a congenital heart disease by 60 to 80 percent. Exposing to second-hand smoke in the workplace or at home may also raise the women's risk of bearing infants with such defects by 30 percent.

This is the finding provided by a study conducted by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Congenital actually means existing at or dating from birth. Congenital heart disease refers to a kind of problem with the heart's structure and function due to abnormal heart development before birth. Congenital heart disease can cause more deaths in the first year of life than any other birth defects. Some of these defects may heal over time, others will need treatment. For more information on congenital heart disease, you can want to check out at MedlinePlus.

The actual causes of most of defects are not known, but scientists believe that genetic susceptibilities and exposure to environmental toxins, such as alcohol, infections, various chemicals and some medications, may be the culprits.

Cigarette smoke contains about 3,000 chemicals and sad to say, their potential to cause heart defects is still unclear till now.

The heart's basic structure develops early in pregnancy. During this period, chemicals or infections may easily interfere with the genetic blueprint resulting in abnormalities. Even if pregnant women stop smoking 6 weeks after conception, the foetus can still be exposed to the chemicals in cigarette smoke. The most common problem caused is ventricular septal defect, which is a hole between 2 chambers of the heart.

It is estimated that some 2,000 congenital heart defects could be prevented every year if women stopped smoking before they try to become pregnant. Or better still, do not start smoking at all and this could be good not only for you but also to the people around you!