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Quentin Crisp - Wikipedia
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Naloxone - The Drug Overdose life saver
“Public health moves slow,” Dr. Stancliff said. “This is really an extremely safe, safe medication.”
Naloxone is a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, for example heroin or morphine overdose
It is specifically used to counteract life-threatening depression of the central nervous system & respiratory system
Click: Naloxone - Wikipedia
An Effort to Expand Access to a Drug That Could Save Victims of Overdoses: heroin & meth & any other drug
Click Methamphetamine - Meth - Wikipedia
Click Heroin - Wikipedia
Samantha Dittmeier was the youngest of Karen Allar’s four children. “She was very loving, very compassionate,” said Ms. Allar, 51, an employment counselor who lives on Long Island. “Unfortunately, the addiction got to her.”
Ms. Dittmeier, 23, died of a heroin overdose in January, leaving behind her 3-year-old son, Aiden. Ms. Allar is haunted, she said, not just by her daughter’s tumble into addiction, but also by the circumstances of her death. She wonders if her life might have been saved if the emergency workers who treated her had been armed with naloxone, a powerful drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose.
“You start to get that sick feeling again,” Ms. Allar said, recounting a frantic race to the hospital just before Ms. Dittmeier’s death. “I’m back at work. I’m trying to think positive about such a horrible situation.”
On Long Island and across New York State, drug overdoses are taking an increasing toll. The most common killers are opioids, a class of painkillers that includes prescription drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet, as well as illegal narcotics like heroin.
In Suffolk and Nassau Counties, the two that make up Long Island, 338 people died of opioid overdoses in 2012, up from 275 in 2008, according to county records. Statewide, opioid overdoses killed 2,051 people in 2011, more than twice the number that they killed in 2004.
The spate of deaths is spurred, in part, by the easy access to prescription drugs. As a result, the state has begun several efforts to stem access to prescription drugs. A new law aims to stop addicts from gaining access to multiple rounds of medication by requiring doctors to consult an Internet database that tracks prescriptions.
Law enforcement authorities have also cracked down on physicians who dispense painkillers illegally. New York City early this year took the unusual step of limiting access to pain medication in emergency rooms.
Some public health experts and antidrug advocates, however, are offering another way to prevent overdose deaths: naloxone, an easy-to-administer, inexpensive drug that is sprayed into the nose or injected into the body. The more people who carry it, they say, the better.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug to treat overdoses in 1971, and since then it has been widely used in hospitals. Now, it is slowly getting into the hands of nonmedical personnel across New York State.
“I wish I’d known about this beforehand,” said Kelly O’Neill, 46, of Nassau County, whose son Billy died of a heroin overdose in 2011 at age 25. “It’s kind of like, ‘Thank God it’s here,’ but it’s taken so long for them to get it here.”
Opioids function in the body by attaching to specific proteins, called opioid receptors. When opioids attach, the body relaxes and breathing slows. But too much of an opioid can cause respiration to slow to a lethal level.
Naloxone acts by competing with opioids for the receptor sites, essentially pushing the opioids out of the way and reversing the effects of the drugs.
The timing is critical. Depending on the dosage taken and the conditions of a user, a person can die within minutes of taking an opioid, so naloxone must be administered quickly. The drug is used not just to save substance users, but also children who accidentally wander into a parent’s medicine cabinet.
Until recently, though, the only emergency personnel in New York trained to use naloxone were the state’s 7,500 paramedics, who have advanced training but are often not the first to arrive at the scene of an overdose.
Now, a pilot program in Suffolk, Nassau and four other New York regions is training emergency medical technicians — who have less training but are more likely to be the first to reach an overdose victim — how to use naloxone. There are 42,000 E.M.T.’s in New York, many of them also police officers and firefighters. The two-year pilot program is scheduled to end in 2014, when the State Department of Health will decide if all state E.M.T.’s should be trained. Since spring 2012, newly trained E.M.T.’s have administered naloxone to 197 people who overdosed.
A second statewide effort is aimed at getting naloxone into the hands of people without medical training, an effort spurred by a 2006 New York law that made it legal for community organizations and health departments to deliver naloxone training. Similar laws exist in at least a dozen cities and states, including New Jersey and Connecticut. People who might seek training could include parents of addicts or a volunteer who works with substance abusers.
A list of organizations that provide naloxone training is available on the State Health Department’s Web site. The training takes 10 minutes to one hour, and graduates are given small blue bags containing two doses of the drug.
The recent addition of a nasal version of naloxone has made it easier for people without medical backgrounds to administer the drug. Still, some people caution against its widespread distribution.
Paul A. Werfel, who oversees the E.M.T. and paramedic training program at Stony Brook University on Long Island, said drug users can become combative after they are given naloxone. “The average E.M.T. in Suffolk may not necessarily have the tools to handle that,” he said.
Others, however, say that the drug’s lifesaving potential outweighs such concerns. A growing body of research about the drug’s effectiveness has turned many skeptics into advocates, said Dr. Sharon Stancliff, the medical director at the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national nonprofit group.
A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2012 found that one life could be saved for every
227 naloxone kits distributed to heroin users and those close to them.
“Public health moves slow,” Dr. Stancliff said. “This is really an extremely safe, safe medication.”
Source: NYT
________________________________________
Click:
Buprenorphine Sublingual: MedlinePlus Drug Informationwww.nlm.nih.gov/.../a605002...
United States National Library of Medicine
Buprenorphine (Subutex) and buprenorphine and naloxone (Suboxone) are used to treat opioid dependence (addiction to opioid drugs, including heroin and ...
________________________________________
Important info
Go Cold Turkey?
Science Seeks Better Way to Beat Addiction
New research is identifying the molecular reasons why alcohol and drug habits are so difficult to break, which could point the way to new medicines to help addicts go cold turkey.
Scientists have known for years how heavy use of alcohol and drugs works on reward centers in the brain to drive dependence. The new research, including a study published in November in JAMA Internal Medicine and early-stage drug testing at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is revealing another, darker side to how such substances impact the brain. By transforming its chemical architecture, drinking and drug use trigger feelings of anxiety and tension that can only be eased by more consumption.
"There's been a huge amount of progress understanding what drives alcoholism and makes it difficult to stop," says Barbara Mason, co-director of the Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
While this dark side has been documented in laboratory animals and in some human testing, its validity in people was significantly bolstered by the recent JAMA-published study, led by Dr. Mason, indicating that a drug that targets dependency's stressful effects helped quitters. Its findings: About 45% of the 150 alcoholics who took the highest dose of the drug, known generically as gabapentin, either stopped drinking altogether or did so only occasionally.
In 2011, more than 21 million Americans needed treatment for a problem related to alcohol or drugs, according to the federal government's most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Many try to quit, but studies show 60% or more of alcoholics and drug addicts relapse within a year of trying to kick their habit, addiction specialists say.
Support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous only work in a fraction of alcoholics and addicts, according to Michael Fingerhood, who heads Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's division of chemical dependency. The few pharmaceuticals taking aim at alcoholism often don't work or are dropped by addicts before they achieve recovery. And while chemical-replacement therapies like methadone have proved effective at reducing pleasure and blocking cravings for certain opiates, there is no known effective prescription medicine available for treating cocaine addiction, he says.
Until now, most research has focused on the pleasure provided by drinking or drug use, studying how neurotransmitters like dopamine help give rise to rewarding feelings—a buzz or high—that encourage further consumption. But heavy substance abuse can compromise this reward system, researchers say, requiring the production of ever-increasing amounts of dopamine to realize the same high. Addiction can follow.
More recent research is showing that the brain's stress response also contributes to dependence. Years of heavy drinking or drug use remodels the circuitry in and around a part of the brain known as the amygdala where these feelings of anxiety are triggered, says George Koob, who pioneered study of this dark side of addiction. The brain's stress system is sent into overdrive.
The result: constant feelings of tension that alcohol or drugs temporarily lighten, but which worsen over the longer term. "You're kind of digging a hole every time you fix the hole," says Dr. Koob, a Scripps scientist who is the incoming director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
One chemical found to play a role in the brain's stress response is known by the initials CRF (corticotropin-releasing factor). It springs into action when there is a bang in the night or a tight deadline approaching. It is also triggered by alcohol or drug use because it helps the brain return to a normal state after the heightened sensation of pleasure. But years of heavy drinking or drug taking makes the brain more sensitive to CRF.
In effect, the brain remembers that the substances relieve stress, says Paul Kenny, who studies the molecular underpinnings of addiction at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The brain's stress response gets stuck in high gear.
CRF is sometimes referred to as a "misery neurotransmitter" because it is thought to cause the anxiousness felt by addicts until they receive temporary relief by drinking again or taking drugs. The chemical is also thought to be a driver behind the difficulties that alcoholics or addicts have trying to quit, especially during stressful episodes that add to the feelings of tension.
The NIAAA National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)www.niaaa.nih.gov/, a part of the National Institutes of Health National Institutes of Health (NIH)www.nih.gov/, is conducting early-stage testing in alcoholics of two experimental drugs that aim to stop CRF from revving up the brain's stress centers, says Markus Heilig, the agency's clinical director. NIAAA is also testing in alcoholics and heroin addicts a third drug that stymies another neurotransmitter involved in stress response, called neurokinin 1.
Kathy Selman says she failed several times to wean herself from alcohol because struggles to stay afloat amid the recent economic downturn propelled her to drink again.
Ms. Selman, a 57-year-old sales and marketing professional from San Diego, says she slipped into alcoholism around 2007, after her husband lost his job and the couple lost three parents, their savings and then their rental properties and home.
Afraid her two sons would only know her as an alcoholic, she enrolled in the Pearson Center's trial testing gabapentin in 2011. The drug, which is also sold under the brand name Neurontin, is approved for the treatment of epileptic seizures. It also calms the brain's stress system, addiction researchers say.
Ms. Selman doesn't know for certain whether she received gabapentin or a placebo as part of the study. She believes she got the medicine because her mood lightened during the 12 weeks she was taking the capsules and she felt depressed for a period afterward. And quickly, she quit drinking entirely, Ms. Selman says
She says she remains sober, but admits that as she tries to launch new ventures in business networking and addiction coaching, the daily stresses can be trying. As part of the study, Ms. Selman also received counseling, and through it, she says she learned how stress triggered her desire to drink and ways to cope with the related wave of anxiety. One of her strategies: She carries index cards that remind her how she felt while drinking and how she feels since going sober.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse click: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) , says successfully treating addiction will probably require a combination of behavioral and cognitive counseling with the prescription of multiple medicines tailored to the phase of recovery and targeting both the light and dark sides of dependence.
"These two systems interact very, very clearly with one another," Dr. Volkow says.
Click green for further info
Source:
American Medical Associationama-assn.org/
JAMA (journal)
____________________________________________________________
Naloxone - The Drug Overdose life saver
“Public health moves slow,” Dr. Stancliff said. “This is really an extremely safe, safe medication.”
Naloxone is a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, for example heroin or morphine overdose
It is specifically used to counteract life-threatening depression of the central nervous system & respiratory system
Click: Naloxone - Wikipedia
An Effort to Expand Access to a Drug That Could Save Victims of Overdoses: heroin & meth & any other drug
Click Methamphetamine - Meth - Wikipedia
Click Heroin - Wikipedia
Samantha Dittmeier was the youngest of Karen Allar’s four children. “She was very loving, very compassionate,” said Ms. Allar, 51, an employment counselor who lives on Long Island. “Unfortunately, the addiction got to her.”
Ms. Dittmeier, 23, died of a heroin overdose in January, leaving behind her 3-year-old son, Aiden. Ms. Allar is haunted, she said, not just by her daughter’s tumble into addiction, but also by the circumstances of her death. She wonders if her life might have been saved if the emergency workers who treated her had been armed with naloxone, a powerful drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose.
“You start to get that sick feeling again,” Ms. Allar said, recounting a frantic race to the hospital just before Ms. Dittmeier’s death. “I’m back at work. I’m trying to think positive about such a horrible situation.”
On Long Island and across New York State, drug overdoses are taking an increasing toll. The most common killers are opioids, a class of painkillers that includes prescription drugs like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet, as well as illegal narcotics like heroin.
In Suffolk and Nassau Counties, the two that make up Long Island, 338 people died of opioid overdoses in 2012, up from 275 in 2008, according to county records. Statewide, opioid overdoses killed 2,051 people in 2011, more than twice the number that they killed in 2004.
The spate of deaths is spurred, in part, by the easy access to prescription drugs. As a result, the state has begun several efforts to stem access to prescription drugs. A new law aims to stop addicts from gaining access to multiple rounds of medication by requiring doctors to consult an Internet database that tracks prescriptions.
Law enforcement authorities have also cracked down on physicians who dispense painkillers illegally. New York City early this year took the unusual step of limiting access to pain medication in emergency rooms.
Some public health experts and antidrug advocates, however, are offering another way to prevent overdose deaths: naloxone, an easy-to-administer, inexpensive drug that is sprayed into the nose or injected into the body. The more people who carry it, they say, the better.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug to treat overdoses in 1971, and since then it has been widely used in hospitals. Now, it is slowly getting into the hands of nonmedical personnel across New York State.
“I wish I’d known about this beforehand,” said Kelly O’Neill, 46, of Nassau County, whose son Billy died of a heroin overdose in 2011 at age 25. “It’s kind of like, ‘Thank God it’s here,’ but it’s taken so long for them to get it here.”
Opioids function in the body by attaching to specific proteins, called opioid receptors. When opioids attach, the body relaxes and breathing slows. But too much of an opioid can cause respiration to slow to a lethal level.
Naloxone acts by competing with opioids for the receptor sites, essentially pushing the opioids out of the way and reversing the effects of the drugs.
The timing is critical. Depending on the dosage taken and the conditions of a user, a person can die within minutes of taking an opioid, so naloxone must be administered quickly. The drug is used not just to save substance users, but also children who accidentally wander into a parent’s medicine cabinet.
Until recently, though, the only emergency personnel in New York trained to use naloxone were the state’s 7,500 paramedics, who have advanced training but are often not the first to arrive at the scene of an overdose.
Now, a pilot program in Suffolk, Nassau and four other New York regions is training emergency medical technicians — who have less training but are more likely to be the first to reach an overdose victim — how to use naloxone. There are 42,000 E.M.T.’s in New York, many of them also police officers and firefighters. The two-year pilot program is scheduled to end in 2014, when the State Department of Health will decide if all state E.M.T.’s should be trained. Since spring 2012, newly trained E.M.T.’s have administered naloxone to 197 people who overdosed.
A second statewide effort is aimed at getting naloxone into the hands of people without medical training, an effort spurred by a 2006 New York law that made it legal for community organizations and health departments to deliver naloxone training. Similar laws exist in at least a dozen cities and states, including New Jersey and Connecticut. People who might seek training could include parents of addicts or a volunteer who works with substance abusers.
A list of organizations that provide naloxone training is available on the State Health Department’s Web site. The training takes 10 minutes to one hour, and graduates are given small blue bags containing two doses of the drug.
The recent addition of a nasal version of naloxone has made it easier for people without medical backgrounds to administer the drug. Still, some people caution against its widespread distribution.
Paul A. Werfel, who oversees the E.M.T. and paramedic training program at Stony Brook University on Long Island, said drug users can become combative after they are given naloxone. “The average E.M.T. in Suffolk may not necessarily have the tools to handle that,” he said.
Others, however, say that the drug’s lifesaving potential outweighs such concerns. A growing body of research about the drug’s effectiveness has turned many skeptics into advocates, said Dr. Sharon Stancliff, the medical director at the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national nonprofit group.
A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2012 found that one life could be saved for every
227 naloxone kits distributed to heroin users and those close to them.
“Public health moves slow,” Dr. Stancliff said. “This is really an extremely safe, safe medication.”
Source: NYT
________________________________________
Click:
Buprenorphine Sublingual: MedlinePlus Drug Informationwww.nlm.nih.gov/.../a605002...
United States National Library of Medicine
Buprenorphine (Subutex) and buprenorphine and naloxone (Suboxone) are used to treat opioid dependence (addiction to opioid drugs, including heroin and ...
________________________________________
Important info
Go Cold Turkey?
Science Seeks Better Way to Beat Addiction
New research is identifying the molecular reasons why alcohol and drug habits are so difficult to break, which could point the way to new medicines to help addicts go cold turkey.
Scientists have known for years how heavy use of alcohol and drugs works on reward centers in the brain to drive dependence. The new research, including a study published in November in JAMA Internal Medicine and early-stage drug testing at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is revealing another, darker side to how such substances impact the brain. By transforming its chemical architecture, drinking and drug use trigger feelings of anxiety and tension that can only be eased by more consumption.
"There's been a huge amount of progress understanding what drives alcoholism and makes it difficult to stop," says Barbara Mason, co-director of the Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
While this dark side has been documented in laboratory animals and in some human testing, its validity in people was significantly bolstered by the recent JAMA-published study, led by Dr. Mason, indicating that a drug that targets dependency's stressful effects helped quitters. Its findings: About 45% of the 150 alcoholics who took the highest dose of the drug, known generically as gabapentin, either stopped drinking altogether or did so only occasionally.
In 2011, more than 21 million Americans needed treatment for a problem related to alcohol or drugs, according to the federal government's most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Many try to quit, but studies show 60% or more of alcoholics and drug addicts relapse within a year of trying to kick their habit, addiction specialists say.
Support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous only work in a fraction of alcoholics and addicts, according to Michael Fingerhood, who heads Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's division of chemical dependency. The few pharmaceuticals taking aim at alcoholism often don't work or are dropped by addicts before they achieve recovery. And while chemical-replacement therapies like methadone have proved effective at reducing pleasure and blocking cravings for certain opiates, there is no known effective prescription medicine available for treating cocaine addiction, he says.
Until now, most research has focused on the pleasure provided by drinking or drug use, studying how neurotransmitters like dopamine help give rise to rewarding feelings—a buzz or high—that encourage further consumption. But heavy substance abuse can compromise this reward system, researchers say, requiring the production of ever-increasing amounts of dopamine to realize the same high. Addiction can follow.
More recent research is showing that the brain's stress response also contributes to dependence. Years of heavy drinking or drug use remodels the circuitry in and around a part of the brain known as the amygdala where these feelings of anxiety are triggered, says George Koob, who pioneered study of this dark side of addiction. The brain's stress system is sent into overdrive.
The result: constant feelings of tension that alcohol or drugs temporarily lighten, but which worsen over the longer term. "You're kind of digging a hole every time you fix the hole," says Dr. Koob, a Scripps scientist who is the incoming director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
One chemical found to play a role in the brain's stress response is known by the initials CRF (corticotropin-releasing factor). It springs into action when there is a bang in the night or a tight deadline approaching. It is also triggered by alcohol or drug use because it helps the brain return to a normal state after the heightened sensation of pleasure. But years of heavy drinking or drug taking makes the brain more sensitive to CRF.
In effect, the brain remembers that the substances relieve stress, says Paul Kenny, who studies the molecular underpinnings of addiction at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The brain's stress response gets stuck in high gear.
CRF is sometimes referred to as a "misery neurotransmitter" because it is thought to cause the anxiousness felt by addicts until they receive temporary relief by drinking again or taking drugs. The chemical is also thought to be a driver behind the difficulties that alcoholics or addicts have trying to quit, especially during stressful episodes that add to the feelings of tension.
The NIAAA National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)www.niaaa.nih.gov/, a part of the National Institutes of Health National Institutes of Health (NIH)www.nih.gov/, is conducting early-stage testing in alcoholics of two experimental drugs that aim to stop CRF from revving up the brain's stress centers, says Markus Heilig, the agency's clinical director. NIAAA is also testing in alcoholics and heroin addicts a third drug that stymies another neurotransmitter involved in stress response, called neurokinin 1.
Kathy Selman says she failed several times to wean herself from alcohol because struggles to stay afloat amid the recent economic downturn propelled her to drink again.
Ms. Selman, a 57-year-old sales and marketing professional from San Diego, says she slipped into alcoholism around 2007, after her husband lost his job and the couple lost three parents, their savings and then their rental properties and home.
Afraid her two sons would only know her as an alcoholic, she enrolled in the Pearson Center's trial testing gabapentin in 2011. The drug, which is also sold under the brand name Neurontin, is approved for the treatment of epileptic seizures. It also calms the brain's stress system, addiction researchers say.
Ms. Selman doesn't know for certain whether she received gabapentin or a placebo as part of the study. She believes she got the medicine because her mood lightened during the 12 weeks she was taking the capsules and she felt depressed for a period afterward. And quickly, she quit drinking entirely, Ms. Selman says
She says she remains sober, but admits that as she tries to launch new ventures in business networking and addiction coaching, the daily stresses can be trying. As part of the study, Ms. Selman also received counseling, and through it, she says she learned how stress triggered her desire to drink and ways to cope with the related wave of anxiety. One of her strategies: She carries index cards that remind her how she felt while drinking and how she feels since going sober.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse click: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) , says successfully treating addiction will probably require a combination of behavioral and cognitive counseling with the prescription of multiple medicines tailored to the phase of recovery and targeting both the light and dark sides of dependence.
"These two systems interact very, very clearly with one another," Dr. Volkow says.
Click green for further info
Source:
American Medical Associationama-assn.org/
JAMA (journal)
____________________________________________________________
'E-Cig' Killing Dangers
Nicotine Poisoning of Infant Highlights 'E-Cig' Dangers, Docs Report 10-month-old boy was sickened but survived toxic ingestion of liquid used for 'vaping'
WEDNESDAY, May 7, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The story of a 10-month-old boy rushed to a hospital after ingesting the refill liquid used in e-cigarettes spotlights an emerging safety issue, the doctors who treated him say.
The child recovered. But the consequences of children accidently consuming the nicotine in these refill vials can easily become tragic, Dr. Robert Bassett, of Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, and two colleagues report in the May 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Click: Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia - Einstein Healthcare ...www.einstein.edu/locations/einstein-medical-center-philadelphia/
Just "one teaspoon of a 1.8 percent nicotine solution could be lethal" to a 200-pound person, the doctors pointed out.
The recent rise in such poisonings among children, tied to the surging popularity of e-cigarettes, highlights "the need to educate patients and parents about this danger and advocate for measures that will help prevent potentially fatal liquid nicotine poisoning of infants and young children," the physicians said.
The Philadelphia case report is hardly an isolated one, experts note. In April 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*) warned that the number of calls to poison control centers for nicotine poisoning from e-cigarettes has risen dramatically in recent years. Calls related to poisoning from the liquid nicotine used in e-cigarettes ran at a rate of roughly one a month in 2010, but jumped to 215 in February of this year alone.
*) Click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Even more troubling, more than half (51 percent) of the poison calls involved children aged 5 and younger, while 42 percent involved people aged 20 and older, the CDC said.
"We have not had an unintentional poisoning death from e-cigarettes yet in the United States that we know of, but the potential is there given the amount of concentrated nicotine in these solutions -- it would not take a lot for a child death to occur," Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said at the time.
In the Philadelphia case, Bassett and his colleagues said the boy was taken to the hospital after ingesting a "small" amount of e-liquid nicotine bought at a commercial vaping (or "vape") shop. The liquid contained 1.8 percent nicotine as well as "unknown concentrations" of other chemicals. After drinking the toxic liquid, the boy began vomiting, his heart rate sped up, and he exhibited loss of muscle control, the doctors reported.
The 10-month-old was lucky, however, because he never lost consciousness and his symptoms gradually subsided about six hours after first being admitted to the hospital.
But the physicians who treated him said the case raises troubling issues.
"The [U.S.] Food and Drug Administration does not currently regulate nontherapeutic nicotine; this raises concerns that in the ballooning unregulated liquid nicotine market there may be variability in nicotine dosing and introduction of unintended toxic ingredients," they wrote.
There's also a lack of consistent package labeling or child-protective packaging, the doctors noted. Many of the refill vials carry colorful labeling, "suggestions of edible ingredients ['lemonade']," and even "visually appealing cartoons" that might attract a child's curiosity, Bassett's team said.
Speaking at the time of the CDC's warning, experts agreed that the danger to children from e-cigarette refills is real.
Dr. Vincenzo Maniaci, click: Dr. Vincenzo Maniaci an emergency medicine specialist at Miami Children's Hospital click: Miami Children's Hospital, said that "the concentration of nicotine in these solutions is significant and they need to be made childproof and regulated. Especially for kids under the age of 5, this amount of nicotine can be fatal."
The CDC's McAfee noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to propose regulations for e-cigarettes. He added that he hopes these regulations will include how the product is packaged, including childproof caps and warning labels.
"These things can be hardwired into these products, rather than being left to the whim of the manufacturer," he said.
Poisoning from the liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes can happen in one of three ways: by swallowing it; inhaling it, or absorbing it through the skin or membranes in the mouth and lips or eyes, McAfee said. Once it is in a person's system, nicotine can cause nausea, vomiting or seizures.
If those symptoms occur, the patient will typically be told to go straight to the emergency room, said Amy Hanoian-Fontana, from the Connecticut Poison Control Center.
If there are no symptoms, then the patient will be told to stay home and the center will call again in a few hours to see how the patient is doing. If liquid nicotine was spilled on the skin, the person should wash his or her skin in lukewarm water for about 20 minutes, Hanoian-Fontana added.
"We want to know what happened, when it happened and if the person is having any effects from the liquid nicotine," she explained. "Then we are going to make a determination whether this is something we can keep at home, or if they are having severe symptoms we may recommend that they go into the emergency department. It's very case-based, depending on the situation."
SOURCES: May 7, 2013, New England Journal of Medicine; Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director, Office on Smoking and Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Vincenzo Maniaci, M.D., emergency medicine specialist, Miami Children's Hospital; Amy Hanoian-Fontana, Connecticut Poison Control Center; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, news release, April 3, 2014; April 4, 2014, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
HealthDay
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More Health News on:PoisoningSmokingRecent Health News
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Nicotine Poisoning of Infant Highlights 'E-Cig' Dangers, Docs Report 10-month-old boy was sickened but survived toxic ingestion of liquid used for 'vaping'
WEDNESDAY, May 7, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The story of a 10-month-old boy rushed to a hospital after ingesting the refill liquid used in e-cigarettes spotlights an emerging safety issue, the doctors who treated him say.
The child recovered. But the consequences of children accidently consuming the nicotine in these refill vials can easily become tragic, Dr. Robert Bassett, of Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, and two colleagues report in the May 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Click: Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia - Einstein Healthcare ...www.einstein.edu/locations/einstein-medical-center-philadelphia/
Just "one teaspoon of a 1.8 percent nicotine solution could be lethal" to a 200-pound person, the doctors pointed out.
The recent rise in such poisonings among children, tied to the surging popularity of e-cigarettes, highlights "the need to educate patients and parents about this danger and advocate for measures that will help prevent potentially fatal liquid nicotine poisoning of infants and young children," the physicians said.
The Philadelphia case report is hardly an isolated one, experts note. In April 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*) warned that the number of calls to poison control centers for nicotine poisoning from e-cigarettes has risen dramatically in recent years. Calls related to poisoning from the liquid nicotine used in e-cigarettes ran at a rate of roughly one a month in 2010, but jumped to 215 in February of this year alone.
*) Click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Even more troubling, more than half (51 percent) of the poison calls involved children aged 5 and younger, while 42 percent involved people aged 20 and older, the CDC said.
"We have not had an unintentional poisoning death from e-cigarettes yet in the United States that we know of, but the potential is there given the amount of concentrated nicotine in these solutions -- it would not take a lot for a child death to occur," Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said at the time.
In the Philadelphia case, Bassett and his colleagues said the boy was taken to the hospital after ingesting a "small" amount of e-liquid nicotine bought at a commercial vaping (or "vape") shop. The liquid contained 1.8 percent nicotine as well as "unknown concentrations" of other chemicals. After drinking the toxic liquid, the boy began vomiting, his heart rate sped up, and he exhibited loss of muscle control, the doctors reported.
The 10-month-old was lucky, however, because he never lost consciousness and his symptoms gradually subsided about six hours after first being admitted to the hospital.
But the physicians who treated him said the case raises troubling issues.
"The [U.S.] Food and Drug Administration does not currently regulate nontherapeutic nicotine; this raises concerns that in the ballooning unregulated liquid nicotine market there may be variability in nicotine dosing and introduction of unintended toxic ingredients," they wrote.
There's also a lack of consistent package labeling or child-protective packaging, the doctors noted. Many of the refill vials carry colorful labeling, "suggestions of edible ingredients ['lemonade']," and even "visually appealing cartoons" that might attract a child's curiosity, Bassett's team said.
Speaking at the time of the CDC's warning, experts agreed that the danger to children from e-cigarette refills is real.
Dr. Vincenzo Maniaci, click: Dr. Vincenzo Maniaci an emergency medicine specialist at Miami Children's Hospital click: Miami Children's Hospital, said that "the concentration of nicotine in these solutions is significant and they need to be made childproof and regulated. Especially for kids under the age of 5, this amount of nicotine can be fatal."
The CDC's McAfee noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to propose regulations for e-cigarettes. He added that he hopes these regulations will include how the product is packaged, including childproof caps and warning labels.
"These things can be hardwired into these products, rather than being left to the whim of the manufacturer," he said.
Poisoning from the liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes can happen in one of three ways: by swallowing it; inhaling it, or absorbing it through the skin or membranes in the mouth and lips or eyes, McAfee said. Once it is in a person's system, nicotine can cause nausea, vomiting or seizures.
If those symptoms occur, the patient will typically be told to go straight to the emergency room, said Amy Hanoian-Fontana, from the Connecticut Poison Control Center.
If there are no symptoms, then the patient will be told to stay home and the center will call again in a few hours to see how the patient is doing. If liquid nicotine was spilled on the skin, the person should wash his or her skin in lukewarm water for about 20 minutes, Hanoian-Fontana added.
"We want to know what happened, when it happened and if the person is having any effects from the liquid nicotine," she explained. "Then we are going to make a determination whether this is something we can keep at home, or if they are having severe symptoms we may recommend that they go into the emergency department. It's very case-based, depending on the situation."
SOURCES: May 7, 2013, New England Journal of Medicine; Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director, Office on Smoking and Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Vincenzo Maniaci, M.D., emergency medicine specialist, Miami Children's Hospital; Amy Hanoian-Fontana, Connecticut Poison Control Center; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, news release, April 3, 2014; April 4, 2014, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:PoisoningSmokingRecent Health News
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- Smoking is worse than you Imagined
- Tobacco - Surgeon Generalwww.surgeongeneral.gov › Initiatives
- In the last 50 years, 31 Surgeon General's Reports have been released, increasing our understanding of the devastating health and financial burdens caused by ...
- Reports of the Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service ...www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/
The Surgeon General of the Public Health Service has focused the Nation's attention on important public health issues. Reports of the Surgeon General on the ... - Preventing Tobacco Use - Public Health Reports - Secondhand Smoke
Click green for further info
Smoking is worse than you Imagined
The web links above and after the article add to this basic article
The latest surgeon general’s report
(= is at the end of the article) on the health effects of smoking — issued at the 50th anniversary of the pathbreaking 1964 report — offers astonishing new evidence of just how much harm tobacco is causing. Despite the many gains in reducing risks over the past half-century, researchers keep finding new and insidious ways in which smoking is harming the smokers themselves and nonsmokers who breathe in toxic fumes.
The report, issued January 17, 2014, finds that cigarette smoking kills even more Americans than previously estimated (about 480,000 a year, up from 443,000), and is a cause, though not necessarily the major cause, of even more diseases than previously recognized, including liver and colorectal cancers. These add to the long list of other cancers caused by smoking, as well as rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments. The report newly identifies exposure to secondhand smoke as a cause of strokes.
The report estimates that smoking costs the United States between $289 billion and $333 billion a year for medical care and lost productivity, well above the previous estimate of $193 billion.
Most shocking, the report finds that today’s smokers have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes.
It reports that the risk of developing adenocarcinoma of the lung, the most common type of lung cancer, has increased substantially over the past several decades because of changes in the design and composition of cigarettes. These include ventilated filters that lead to more puffing of noxious materials and blended tobaccos that contain carcinogenic nitrosamines.
There is no doubt who is to blame for this mess, the report says. It is the tobacco industry, which “aggressively markets and promotes lethal and addictive products,” continues to recruit youth and young adults as new customers, and has “deliberately misled the public on the risks of smoking cigarettes.”
The new report rightly calls for more vigorous tobacco-control efforts, including an increase in cigarette taxes to drive up the average price of cigarettes to at least $10 a pack to prevent young people from starting to smoke; an antismoking mass media campaign by government agencies that would run year-round; and new rules extending smoke-free indoor protection to the entire population, double the current level. The goal is to reduce the smoking rate from the current 18 percent to less than 10 percent in 10 years.
There is an additional weapon that can be brought to bear. In mid-2009, Congress passed a law that gave the Food and Drug Administration authority for the first time to regulate tobacco products. It should use those powers to reduce the addictiveness and harmfulness of smoking and reverse the design changes that have made cigarettes even more dangerous than they were in previous decades.
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Source: Click: Surgeon general’s report
The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2014
- Executive Summary
- Full Report
- Consumer Booklet
- Order Documents
- Fact Sheets
- Video and Podcast Series
- Partner Resources
This Executive Summary provides an overview of the full report of the Surgeon General and highlights the conclusions and findings.
- Executive Summary [PDF - 2 MB]
- Download the full report as a single file [PDF – 27 MB]
- Supplemental evidence tables [PDF – 3 MB]
Consumer Booklet
This easy-to-read, illustrated booklet summarizes the Surgeon General’s Report released in January, 2014. It is designed to give concerned adults information to help them make choices that will improve their own health and the health of their children, their families, and their communities.
- Let's Make the Next Generation Tobacco-Free: Your Guide to the 50th Anniversary Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health [PDF – 796 KB]
To order 2014 Surgeon General's Report documents, go to CDC’s Smoking & Tobacco Use Publications Catalog. In the Publications Catalog, type in 2014 SGRin the search box, choose all of these words, and hit the search button.
Fact Sheets
- Overview of Key Findings from The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress Report
- Las consecuencias del tabaquismo en la salud:50 años de progreso, un informe del director general de Servicios de Salud
Public Service Announcement - 5.6 Milllion Children
A public service announcement (PSA) designed to educate adults about the long-term impact of tobacco use on this nation’s future – its youth. The PSA points out that 5.6 million children alive today will ultimately die early from smoking if we do not do more to reduce current smoking rates.
_________________________________
Article 2 of 2
- List of Smoking-Related Illnesses Grows Significantly in US Report
New York Times - by Sabrina Tavernise - 4 days ago
Long known to cause lung cancer and heart disease, smoking also causes diabetes, colorectal and liver cancers and erectile dysfunction, ...
List of Smoking-Related Illnesses Grows Significantly in U.S. Report
WASHINGTON — In a broad review of scientific literature, the nation’s top doctor has concluded that cigarette smoking — long known to cause lung cancer and heart disease — also causes diabetes, colorectal and liver cancers, erectile dysfunction andectopic pregnancy.
In a report to the nation to be released on Friday, the acting surgeon general, Dr. Boris D. Lushniak, significantly expanded the list of illnesses that cigarette smoking has been scientifically proved to cause.
The other health problems the report names are vision loss, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, impaired immune function and cleft palates in children of women who smoke.
Smoking has been known to be associated with these illnesses, but the report was the first time the federal government concluded that smoking causes them.
The finding does not mean that smoking causes all cases of the health problems and diseases listed in the report, but that some of the cases would not have happened without smoking. The surgeon general has added to the list of smoking-related diseases before. Bladder cancerwas added in 1990 and cervical cancer in 2004.
The War on Cancer: From Nixon Until Now When President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act many expected quick results, comparing the effort to the one that put man on the moon. After 42 years, what progress have we made?
The report is not legally binding, but is broadly held as a standard for scientific evidence among researchers and policy makers.
Experts not involved in writing the report said the findings were a comprehensive summary of the most current scientific evidence, and while they might not be surprising to researchers, they were intended to inform the public as well as doctors and other medical professionals about the newest proven risks of smoking.
“I thought the science was very well done and up to date,” said Dr. Robert Wallace, a professor of epidemiology and internal medicine at the University of Iowa, who helped review the report.
The report comes 50 years after the pivotal 1964 surgeon general’s report in which the government concluded for the first time that smoking caused lung cancer. That report was credited with starting to change public attitudes toward smoking, which has declined sharply. In 1965, about 43 percent of adults were smokers; in 2012, about 18 percent were.
But that decline has slowed in recent years, and the new report calls for stronger action in combating smoking. Smoking is the largest cause of premature death in the country, killing more than 400,000 people a year. The report notes that far more Americans have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than in all the wars ever fought by the United States.
The report concluded that the evidence was insufficient to say that smoking caused prostate cancer. The evidence was suggestive, but not definite, that smoking causes breast cancer.
The document also celebrates the public health success of smoking’s decline since Dr. Luther Terry, the surgeon general in 1964, released his landmark finding. Smoking was deeply embedded in American culture at the time. Half of adult men were smokers, and a third of women. Even doctors smoked.
That report was so controversial that it was released on a Saturday when Congress was on recess to minimize the political repercussions, said Dr. Richard D. Hurt, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Judith Fradkin, a diabetes scientist at the National Institutes of Health, who was not involved in the report, said the evidence that smoking increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes had been gathering for about 20 years.
While smoking causes most cases of lung cancer, it causes only a small fraction of liver and colorectal cancers. A current smoker is 25 times as likely to develop lung cancer as someone who has never smoked, but only about 1.5 times as likely to develop liver cancer.
“It’s a fairly modest association, but because so many people smoke, it’s still an important cause of these cancers,” said Neal Freedman, an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute.
He pointed out that the surgeon general last looked at the effect of smoking on liver cancer in 2004, and found the evidence only suggestive. Since then, 90 new studies have been published allowing the surgeon general to conclude smoking is a cause.
The report also finds that the risks of lung cancer are far higher today than in past decades, even though smokers today consume fewer cigarettes. In 1959, women who smoked were 2.7 times as likely as women who never smoked to develop lung cancer, and by 2010, the additional risk had jumped nearly tenfold. For men, the risk doubled over the same period. The report said changes in cigarettes’ design, namely to the filter, contributed to the increased deadliness.
“It is stunning that the risk of a premature death from smoking is greater than it was 50 years ago,” said Matthew Myers, head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group.
____________________________
Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse
Than Previously Thought,
a Study Finds
Researchers have found that smoking is linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease,
intestinal disease, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.
Date February. 11, 2015
Click colored links for further info
About 42 million Americans smoke -- 15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their early death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.
Click colored links for further info
However bad you thought smoking was, it’s even worse.
A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States.
Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer.
The new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who were followed for 10 years. In addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, the researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.
Even though people are already barraged with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news.
“The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.”
In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new findings showed that officials in the United States had substantially underestimated the effect smoking has on public health. He said smokers, particularly those who depend on Medicaid, had not been receiving enough help to quit.
About 42 million Americans smoke -- 15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their early death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.
Mr. Carter said he had been inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health surveys being conducted by other researchers. The participants were 421,378 men and 532,651 women 55 and older, including nearly 89,000 current smokers.
As expected, death rates were higher among the smokers. But diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only 83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really low,’ ” Mr. Carter said. “We have this huge cohort. Let’s get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing smokers that we don’t already know.”
The research was paid for by the American Cancer Society, and Mr. Carter worked with scientists from four universities and the National Cancer Institute.
The study was observational, meaning that it looked at people’s habits, like smoking, and noted statistical correlations between their behavior and their health. Correlation does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, so this kind of research is not considered as strong as experiments in which participants are assigned at random to treatments or placebos and then compared. But people cannot ethically be instructed to smoke for a study, so a lot of the data on smoking’s effects on people comes from observational studies.
Analyzing deaths among the participants from 2000 to 2011, the researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. Smokers were also six times more likely to die from a rare illness caused by insufficient blood flow to the intestines.
Mr. Carter said he had confidence in the findings because, biologically, it made sense that those conditions were related to tobacco. Smoking can weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of infection, he said. It is also known to cause diabetes, high blood pressure and artery disease, all of which can lead to kidney problems. Artery disease can also choke off the blood supply to the intestines. Lung damage from smoke, combined with increased vulnerability to infection, can lead to multiple respiratory illnesses.
Two other observations supported the findings, he said. One was that the more heavily a person smoked, the greater the added risks. The second was that among former smokers, the risks diminished over time. In general, such effects, known as a dose response, suggest that an observed correlation is more than a coincidence.
The study also found small increases in the risks of breast and prostate cancer among smokers. Mr. Carter said those findings were not as strong as the others, adding that additional research could help determine whether there were biological mechanisms that would support a connection.
A 2014 report by the surgeon general’s office said the evidence for a causal connection between smoking and breast cancer was “suggestive but not sufficient.” The same report found no evidence that smoking caused prostate cancer, but it noted that in men who did have prostate cancer, smoking seemed to worsen the outcome.
The diseases that had previously been established by the surgeon general as caused by smoking were cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, larynx, lung, bladder, kidney, cervix, lip and oral cavity; acute myeloid leukemia; diabetes; heart disease; stroke; atherosclerosis; aortic aneurysm; other artery diseases; chronic lung disease; pneumonia; influenza; and tuberculosis.
Click: Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment (PDQ®) - .www.cancer.gov/National Cancer Institute - Adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal myeloblasts (a type of white blood cell), red ...
Click: Bone marrow - Wikipedia
Click: Bone Marrow Diseases: MedlinePluswww.nlm.nih.gov
Click: Myeloblast - Wikipedia
Sources:
(1) The New England Journal of Medicine
(2) STAF, Inc. Research
_____________________
Than Previously Thought,
a Study Finds
Researchers have found that smoking is linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease,
intestinal disease, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.
Date February. 11, 2015
Click colored links for further info
About 42 million Americans smoke -- 15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their early death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.
Click colored links for further info
However bad you thought smoking was, it’s even worse.
A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States.
Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer.
The new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who were followed for 10 years. In addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, the researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco.
Even though people are already barraged with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news.
“The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.”
In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new findings showed that officials in the United States had substantially underestimated the effect smoking has on public health. He said smokers, particularly those who depend on Medicaid, had not been receiving enough help to quit.
About 42 million Americans smoke -- 15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their early death rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.
Mr. Carter said he had been inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health surveys being conducted by other researchers. The participants were 421,378 men and 532,651 women 55 and older, including nearly 89,000 current smokers.
As expected, death rates were higher among the smokers. But diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only 83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked.
“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really low,’ ” Mr. Carter said. “We have this huge cohort. Let’s get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing smokers that we don’t already know.”
The research was paid for by the American Cancer Society, and Mr. Carter worked with scientists from four universities and the National Cancer Institute.
The study was observational, meaning that it looked at people’s habits, like smoking, and noted statistical correlations between their behavior and their health. Correlation does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, so this kind of research is not considered as strong as experiments in which participants are assigned at random to treatments or placebos and then compared. But people cannot ethically be instructed to smoke for a study, so a lot of the data on smoking’s effects on people comes from observational studies.
Analyzing deaths among the participants from 2000 to 2011, the researchers found that, compared with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure. Smokers were also six times more likely to die from a rare illness caused by insufficient blood flow to the intestines.
Mr. Carter said he had confidence in the findings because, biologically, it made sense that those conditions were related to tobacco. Smoking can weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of infection, he said. It is also known to cause diabetes, high blood pressure and artery disease, all of which can lead to kidney problems. Artery disease can also choke off the blood supply to the intestines. Lung damage from smoke, combined with increased vulnerability to infection, can lead to multiple respiratory illnesses.
Two other observations supported the findings, he said. One was that the more heavily a person smoked, the greater the added risks. The second was that among former smokers, the risks diminished over time. In general, such effects, known as a dose response, suggest that an observed correlation is more than a coincidence.
The study also found small increases in the risks of breast and prostate cancer among smokers. Mr. Carter said those findings were not as strong as the others, adding that additional research could help determine whether there were biological mechanisms that would support a connection.
A 2014 report by the surgeon general’s office said the evidence for a causal connection between smoking and breast cancer was “suggestive but not sufficient.” The same report found no evidence that smoking caused prostate cancer, but it noted that in men who did have prostate cancer, smoking seemed to worsen the outcome.
The diseases that had previously been established by the surgeon general as caused by smoking were cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, liver, pancreas, larynx, lung, bladder, kidney, cervix, lip and oral cavity; acute myeloid leukemia; diabetes; heart disease; stroke; atherosclerosis; aortic aneurysm; other artery diseases; chronic lung disease; pneumonia; influenza; and tuberculosis.
Click: Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment (PDQ®) - .www.cancer.gov/National Cancer Institute - Adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal myeloblasts (a type of white blood cell), red ...
Click: Bone marrow - Wikipedia
Click: Bone Marrow Diseases: MedlinePluswww.nlm.nih.gov
Click: Myeloblast - Wikipedia
Sources:
(1) The New England Journal of Medicine
(2) STAF, Inc. Research
_____________________
Smoking Thins Brain's Cortex,
Causing Long-Term Damage To Memory And Language
Heavy smoking causes long-term cortical thinning, a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer's disease and other brain damage
Causing Long-Term Damage To Memory And Language
Heavy smoking causes long-term cortical thinning, a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer's disease and other brain damage
IT IS THE 11th HOUR...
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.
Dying from smoking is rarely quick ... and never painless.
When smoking leads to cancer, you and your family can suffer every minute of the day.
Quit smoking today - every day counts. Your body may still be capable of healing itself - if you are lucky.
To quit smoking is always a good idea. Give your life a chance.
Quit today - now
Do it on your own - just quit and stop. In case you do not quit alone,
STAF, Inc.'s leading specialists will help you
Stop smoking is one of our private services given a lifetime result-guarantee with a one-time fee,
STAF, Inc. is the first one and still the only one to give such a guarantee
We give the same guarantee to totally 10 different private services
Stop smoking & weight loss are two of them
The list of the 10 private services provided by STAF ,Inc. with a lifetime result-guarantee and with only a one-time fee, is in tab: Services (close to the top)
_____________________
STAF, Inc. applies different methods to help you and anyone
(1) stop smoking or (2) lose weight. Based on the initial, preparatory interview, the method or a combination of methods will be chosen and applied for each case.
Around 400,000 people die each year from smoking which cuts lives short on average about 13 years. That does not include the about 50,000 who die from exposure to second-hand smoke or the 8,6 million whose illnesses are caused by smoking. Then there is the third-hand smoke causing sicknesses - the residue particles of the tobacco smoke in all surfaces and on clothing.
(1) (click the green for added info) 400,000 people die each year from smoking,
(2) (click the green for added info) the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009,
(3) (click the green for added info) ruling
Further below you'll find an article: Loopholes in Tobacco Regulation,
September 1, 2012
_______________________
This is your heart on cigarettes
The myth that the effects of cigarette smoking take decades to cause organ damage is far from the truth.
"We often see acute plaque ruptures in people in their 30s who have no other risk factor," says Dr. Sameer Sayeed, a cardiologist with ColumbiaDoctors, the physicians and surgeons of Columbia University. "They even go into cardiac arrest. Sometimes we can resuscitate, sometimes we can't."
"From a cardiology perspective, we see the worst effects of smoking," he continues. "The toxins in cigarette smoke erode the artery walls and cause ruptures. If they survive, we can use stents.
But if they don't stop smoking, those stents get blocked quickly."
Such is the addictive quality of nicotine that many smokers don't quit until their health has deteriorated to the point of permanent organ damage -- and some continue even after surgery.
"Smokers who make it to their 50s and 60s, that's when we see all the heart's blood vessels damaged -- and it's not fixable by stents," says Dr. Sayeed. "That's when we have to do bypass surgery. Some older smokers who get lung cancer that heals still don't stop smoking. They think, 'I beat it once, I can beat it again."
_________________________
Below, little further down, A worry-causing article
Study: Children's use of e-cigarettes increasing
Health officials worry it will lead to regular smoking
CDC study report published September 5, 2013
Click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Your Online Source for Credible Health Information
__________________________________
IMPORTANT INFO FOR A SMOKER
Free assessment link at the end of this article
Yearly CT Scans advised for longtime smokers Stop Smoking - NOW - Today
STAF, Inc. helps you to stop smoking
STAF, Inc. gives you a lifetime result guarantee - only a one-time fee
No one else anywhere gives a similar guarantee
________
Influential Federal Panel
Backs CT Scans for Lung Cancer
A U.S. medical panel for the first time endorsed annual CT scans to detect lung cancer in
current and former smokers, an effort to tackle the nation's biggest cancer killer, smoking.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose recommendations determine which therapies and tests must be provided by insurers under the Obama administration's new health law, concluded that about 20% of lung-cancer deaths might be avoided through early detection and treatment.
The recommendations drew support even from some doctors who are often skeptical of broad cancer screening. But a separate panel of doctors advising the National Cancer Institute voiced concerns that in cancer care generally, too much screening and too much early treatment can sometimes be harmful to patients.
Writing in JAMA - the Journal of the American Medical Association, authors Laura J. Esserman, Ian M. Thompson Jr. and Brian Reid said, "An ideal screening intervention focuses on detection of disease that will ultimately cause harm" and for which treatments "are more effective in early-stage disease."
The JAMA authors also said the word "cancer" itself is overused, can frighten patients and ought to be reserved for disease that has a "reasonable likelihood" of being lethal.
The authors didn't specifically discuss the federal task-force recommendations about lung-cancer screening, but their conclusions could affect how the recommendations are carried out.
"Physicians, patients and the general public must recognize that overdiagnosis is common and occurs more frequently with cancer screening. Overdiagnosis, or identification of indolent cancer, is common in breast, lung, prostate and thyroid cancer," click: the authors wrote.
The federal preventive-services task force, which consists of private physicians appointed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledged risks but concluded that low-dose computed tomography, or CT, imaging "reduced lung cancer mortality by 20% and all-cause mortality by nearly 7%." Its findings are being published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
"We believe the benefits do outweigh the harms," said Michael LeFevre, co-vice chairman of the task force. He said the decision was largely based on a 2011 study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.
The task force recommended that people consider screening for lung cancer if they are
current or former smokers between the ages of 55 and 79, and have smoked the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years and have smoked within the past 15 years. Lung screening is already available at some hospitals and often costs in the range of $100 to $300 a test.
Dr. LeFevre made the conservative estimate that "we might be able to prevent 20,000 deaths" yearly.
It is estimated that about 37% of American adults are current or former smokers, and lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S.
"I think that in the main, this does make sense," said H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth medical professor and author of "Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health." He cited three factors that make CT scans for lung cancer compelling: lung cancer's high death rate; a clearly identifiable high-risk patient group; and the fact that treatments for advanced lung cancer are mostly unsuccessful.
Another doctor who has expressed caution about screening concurred. "Although I am a skeptic, the level of evidence is pretty high," said Barnett Kramer, director of the division of cancer prevention at the NIH's National Cancer Institute. Dr. Kramer helped create the study, called the National Lung Screening Trial, that led to the new recommendation.
But he stressed that "the benefit of stopping smoking is much, much larger than the benefit of CT screening." People who kick the habit can also reduce their risk of death from other cancers, heart disease and stroke, he said.
Other doctors recommended that patients find their own personal risk of lung cancer before deciding on screening.
One site that enables such assessment,
from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is click: http://www.mskcc.org/lung-screening-tool.
If the above link has expired
search the assessment info in the provider's website (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York)
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centerwww.mskcc.org/As the world's oldest and largest cancer center
Click green for further info
Source:
(1) The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
- U.S. Preventive Services Task Forcewww.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/
Panel of health care experts that evaluates the latest scientific evidence on clinicalpreventive services. The Task Force will release new recommendations as ...Recommendations - Tools for Primary Care Practice - About the USPSTF - (2) JAMA
- American Medical Associationhttps://ama-assn.org/
- JAMA (journal) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAMA_(journal) _____________________
E-Cigarettes Harm The Smoker, But Not Secondhand Breather -
Q: I work in a small office with two former heavy smokers who have now transitioned to vapor/e-cigarettes. My concern is that they "smoke" their e-cigarettes in the office constantly, and I don't know what chemicals I am now breathing secondhand. Both of them are senior to me in rank and age, and they pooh-pooh the notion that anything but water vapor is being exhaled. Am I making something out of nothing, or should I be worried about this?
A: You don't have anything to worry about, but your co-workers may. In 2009, the FDA announced the findings from a laboratory analysis that indicated that electronic cigarettes expose users to harmful chemical ingredients, including carcinogens. However, those elements were not detected in exhaled vapor. Smoking traditional cigarettes harms the smokers and, based on research, possible even more the non-smokers inhaling the second-hand smoke.
Further down there is a longer article handling the e-cigarettes
______________________________
Smoking kills
One side of a pack of cigarettes states
"Smoking kills",
the other side states
"Smoking can cause a slow and painful death"
These statements are based on science, not on fiction
For your own best stop smoking today
Smoking can/will kill you, your children, your whole family - even your pets (also the 2nd-hand smoke kills).
Smoking adds to the nation's sickness care costs. Smoking is your own personal choice. When you get sick you ask the nation to pay for your sickness care - yet, you had your own personal choice not-to-smoke. Is it then reasonable that you ask us all to pay for your sickness expenses? Your own personal choice has caused your sickness due to your smoking. It is YOUR own responsibility to pay in full for your own sickness care. No one else forced you to smoke. As a smoker, how is that you expect that the nation has to pay for your own wrong choice.
Your choice - you pay the consequences. Pay yourself in full for all your sickness care as you have caused yourself your own sicknesses due to your own choice to smoke all against clear warnings and facts not to smoke.
What rights does any of us have to go to my or someone else's wallet to pay for expenses for the wrongdoer's sickness care? YOU have yourself created your fatal sickness with your knowingly harmful choices.
With your smoking you are causing wrongful deaths (see below) to the sufferers of second-hand smoke.
This also applies to workplaces & other places when non-smokers get sick as the victims of the 2nd-hand smoke.
If you are a victim of a 2nd-hand smoke, contact your lawyer.
Definition of wrongful death here:
The taking of the life of an individual resulting from the willful or negligent act of another person or persons.
If a person is killed because of the wrongful conduct of a person or persons, the decedent's heirs and other beneficiaries may file a wrongful death action against those responsible for the decedent's death. This area of (click green) Tort Law is governed by statute. Wrongful death statutes vary from state to state, but in general they define who may sue for wrongful death and what, if any, limits may be applied to an award of damages.
For additional information relating to "Wrongful Death" click the 2 below green web links.
Wrongful Death - Legal Dictionary - The Free Dictionary
Wrongful death claim - Wrongful death statute - Wrongful Deaths
____________________ Smoking kills in other ways also - see the article below - STAF, Inc. is not aiming to be satirical by placing the article here
- perhaps this talented lady would still be alive if she had stopped smoking - smoking kills anyway - no matter how - stop smoking today - SMOKING KILLS - sooner or later - perhaps in different ways
If this link has expired, search the web with the title Sorry, if you feel it is too cruel to place this article link (the link below) - STAF, Inc.'s editors believe it is also cruel when the industries that produce killing products: tobacco, sugary or non-sugary sodas -fast-f00d (= bad-food), and processed foods (they are not foods for anyone) full of life-destroying chemicals, e.g. breakfast cerials fed to our children polluting our children's bodies & brains - 3 -4 -year children eat high-blood-pressure pills, get arthritis & other sicknesses.
Is that cruel or not? Start eating and start feeding your children FOOD = natural, made by the nature, not by the industry. Quote: "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't - it kills" _________________________ To connect to the article in the New York Times, click below the green The New York Times
Woman Fatally Slips Off 17th-Floor Balcony Railing 2013-08-01The New York Times A 35-year-old woman fell to her death from a balcony in Midtown Manhattan early Thursday morning after the railing apparently gave way, the authorities said. The woman, identified by the police as Jennifer Rosoff, was found on top of construction scaffolding at the base of the...
_______________________
STOP SMOKING NOW - EVERYONE IN YOUR FAMILY - SAVE YOUR
CHILDREN'S FUTURE - CALL FOR STOP-SMOKING-HELP 401-427-2227
STAF, Inc. will help to quit smoking
Our stop-smoking is a result-guaranteed program
A lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time-fee
No one anywhere gives a similar double-guarantee
_________________
Easy Stop Smoking™ - Natural Weight Loss™
President Obama and his whole family
to finally get results in their health & life style challenges
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., STAF, Inc. President, as an internationally leading health & lifestyle scientist is capable of helping and guiding to finally get results & solutions in the Obama family's health & lifestyle challenges.
___________________________________________________
President Barack Obama still addicted to nicotine - states the health report
See the 'home' page tab for added information relating to Mr. Obama's nicotine addiction - close to the beginning of the home page in the article titled "Today's top Topics of Interest"
- for a leading public figure smoking is not proper. That is a real shame.
Especially when his wife, the First Lady, desires to help the American children & adults to restore and keep their health.
See related details in this website in the tab:
University & College - and there:
Staf, Inc.'s Letter to President Obama, to the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., the internationally leading specialty organization, not-for-profit,
can and will be capable of guiding President Obama to quit his nicotine addiction. Guaranteed.
President Teddy Roosevelt stated in 1902 about then the brand-new Justice (who had crossed Teddy Roosevelt):
Justice Holmes has NO MORE BACKBONE THAN A BANANA
Obviously our President, Mr. Obama, when it comes to nicotine,
has NO MORE BACKBONE THAN A BANANA
However:
STAF, Inc. President, Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D,
will guide the U.S. President to stop smoking AND give our President
a strong BACKBONE lasting his lifetime.
President Obama's healthy behavior can beneficially affect the people in our nation and round the world. Our President Obama is popular and is highly admired round the world.
In any country he visits the people treat him as a big star. So do most country leaders.
When President Obama gets rid of his harmful nicotine addiction, completely, multitudes of smokers in the USA and worldwide will be inspired to stop smoking. President Obama's behavior is copied as he is regarded as a admired celebrity.
It saves millions of lives and it will save billions of dollars in sickness care in the USA and trillions of dollars worldwide. Many people will avoid the terrible suffering coming from smoking and overweight/obesity related sicknesses.
STAF, Inc. President, Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D, will guide the U.S. President to stop smoking and give Mr. Obama also a full lifetime result double-guarantee: (1) with a one-time fee (2) a lifetime rsult-guarantee.
The White House also needs STAF, Inc.'s, and especially Dr. Christian's expertise, to function as their adviser and health & life style consultant.
President Obama's 2 children need to lose their overweight, maintain a healthy weight for the rest of their lives, get rid of asthma & allergies, and conquer other health challenges. Dr. Christian is available to get the results for them.
The long-term health solutions to restore and maintain good health are in the natural methods.
STAF, Inc. President, Dr. Christian, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., is a leading specialist in the long-term, natural solutions (no negative side effects).
STAF, Inc.'s specialists, Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., as STAF, Inc. lead scientist, will help President Obama, his children, and his family.
Of course, STAF, Inc. will also help YOU to quit smoking, to maintain healthy weight, avoid sicknesses, and restore and keep your health.
Call (nationwide/worldwide) (first) 401-427-2227 (or 212-946-1234) and make an appointment.
With the modern technology you, as a client, can be located anywhere in the world. It is not a must to visit STAF, Inc.'s health & life style office. If you are close to any STAF, Inc. office location, make your appointment to happen in the office. Email: staf1helps.org.live.com
________________________________
Panel of health care experts that evaluates the latest scientific evidence on clinicalpreventive services. The Task Force will release new recommendations as ...Recommendations - Tools for Primary Care Practice - About the USPSTF
IT IS THE 11th HOUR...
Leading Specialist in These Two Separate Health Services
S T O P S M O K I N G
L O S E W E I G H T
Expel deadly diseases – Save your life
STOP KILLING
YOURSELF
New York City, Manhattan Main Health & Lifestyle Office
Additional offices: see below
Domestic & International (401) 427-2227 - (212) 946-1234
1-(888) DIAL-DR-1 1-(888) DO-IT-123
Additional offices:
New York City - Beverly Hills - Atlantic City - Las Vegas - London
______________________________
STAF, Inc. can help you also
to quit smoking & lose weight
______________________
L O S E W E I G H T
Related article to study (of common interest) - weight management -
click:
(1) Commute helps Queens man shed pounds
Marcus Woollen made over the way he looks by shifting the way he gets to work. What inspired him
Related links: * Do what he did in NYC * Safety with toddlers * Brooklyn leader croons
(2) Want to Lose Weight? Use Cash
__________________________________________
Save Your Brain By Not Lighting Up
Smoking is so over. But if you're still promising yourself and your kids, spouse, doc that you'll quit next week, month, year, maybe this new finding will help motivate you to join today's Great American Smokeout: Heavy smoking from middle age on more than doubles your risk of dementia down the road.
Yup, more than doubles it. And all smoking in middle age -- including secondhand -- increases your risk of brain dysfunction as you age. That's because smoking affects the blood vessels in your brain as well as your body. If you're a smoker who's lucky enough to reach your 60s or up minus lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema or chronic bronchitis, you still won't get much further with your mental faculties intact. Even if you're a "lite" smoker (the half- to pack-a-day kind), you still have a 37 percent increased risk of dementia. The thirdhand smoking is the fact that harmful chemicals from smoking attach the walls, the clothes, the furniture - and continue harming everyone around. The pets lick the surfaces, so do the babies - and get health hazards from the smoker's life-threatening habits.
You wouldn't think there's really good news here, but there is. The 50- to 60-year-olds who quit smoking when this recent study began had NO increased risk of dementia in the following decades. So save your brain and don't light up today. Just don't go it alone, either. The minute you finish this article, contact STAF, Inc. - STAF, Inc. has the most effective program - and the only private program anywhere guaranteed with a life- time result guarantee with only ONE-TIME fee.
Save your life, save your family's life, save your cildren's lives, save your pet's life - call STAF, Inc. now.
____ STAF, Inc. 's internationally known professionals will guide you to stop smoking - contact STAF, Inc. ______
CALL - 401-427-2227 - and: your new life begins
Save your life - Save your children's health - Save your family
Save your money
Have freedom of nicotine and any other addiction and live free
_____
then you'll know what "happiness" is
STAF, Inc. internationally leading specialists
will help you and your family to get rid of your addiction(s).
Listen to our Radio Shows and watch our TV Shows - see the related tab in this site for further show info - you'll get free CEU, College & University credits (they never expire) just by listening and watching the shows. Registration as the achiever of these credits necessary - instructions in the TV/Radio Shows tab.
______________________________________________
Next below “History of Medicine” is put in a
humorous manner.
There might be much truth in that anyway.
A Humorous Short History of Medicine
"Doctor, I have an ear ache”
2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 B.C. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2004 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root!"
B.C. = before Christ (birth) A.D. after Christ (birth)
A.D. - The term Anno Domini is Medieval Latin, translated as In the year of (the/Our) Lord. It is sometimes specified more fully as Anno Domini Nostri Iesu (Jesu) Christi ("In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ").
_____________________________________
"We’ll Give you a NEW life"
_________________________
__________
A seri0us, important topic
Learn & apply the facts for a safer alcohol use
Young women who drink face higher breast cancer risk whether beer, wine or hard liquor
Young women who drink alcohol every day
may be raising significantly their risk of breast cancer, according to US research
Click green for further info
Each alcoholic drink a woman takes daily from when her menstrual periods start until her first full-term pregnancy ups her lifetime risk of breast cancer by 13 percent, said the study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (click green below)
(1) Journal of the National Cancer Institute, (2) National Cancer Institute: Comprehensive Cancer Informationwww.cancer.gov.
The findings were based on a survey of 91,005 mothers in a major US health study from 1989 to 2009.
The researchers also found that each additional daily drink -- whether beer, wine or hard liquor -- raised the risk of proliferative benign breast disease by 15 percent.
The presence of these noncancerous lesions also contributes to raising breast cancer risk, according to experts at the Washington University School of Medicine.
Breast tissue cells are particularly susceptible to cancer-causing changes in youth because they grow rapidly and proliferate*) during adolescence and beyond, researchers said. *) proliferate = increase rapidly in numbers; multiply
Another factor is the lengthening time period between the first menstrual period and the first childbirth, a trend which is likely to continue.
"Reducing drinking to less than one drink per day, especially during this time period, is a key strategy to reducing lifetime risk of breast cancer," said study author Graham Colditz, associate director for cancer prevention at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.
Previous research has found a link between drinking alcohol in adulthood and higher breast cancer risk.
"More and more heavy drinking is occurring on college campuses and during adolescence, and not enough people are considering future risk," said Colditz.
Health authorities say about one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
Ten Risk factors include (1) advancing age, (2) family history of breast cancer,
(3) having dense (= thick, heavy) breasts, (4) early menstruation, (5) late onset menopause,
(6) having a first child after age 30 or (7) never having children, (8) obesity, (9) smoking, (10) alcohol use.
Click green for further info
Source: click Journal of the National Cancer Institute
_____________________________
The Morality of Meditation
By DAVID DeSTENO
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group.
He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”
MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.
This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren’t of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.
But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect — the reduction of suffering — empirically demonstrable?
To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining 19 were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.
After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.
WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?
The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.
Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us.
Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.
So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.
Click green for further info
Source:
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group.
He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”
_______________________________________________________________________
In First, F.D.A. Rejects Tobacco Products
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday, June 25, 2013, that for the first time it had begun exercising its power to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products, an authority it was given (click: under a 2009 law supported by President Obama.
Agency officials said they had authorized the sale of two new products — both of them Newport cigarettes made by the Lorillard Tobacco Company — and rejected four others. The law forbade them to name the rejected products, they said.
Before the law, cigarettes were manufactured without any federal regulation. Instead, states decided where and how tobacco products would be sold, but had no authority over the ingredients they contained. Now, the F.D.A. is deciding which new products can be sold. In addition to cigarettes, the agency’s authority covers loose rolling tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff.
The agency can reject cigarettes and other tobacco products that its scientists believe pose public health risks above and beyond comparable products already on the market, a sharp departure from past practice, when tobacco companies could change existing products and introduce new ones at will.
Advocates said the F.D.A.’s use of this authority was a milestone.
“This is the first time in history that a federal agency has told tobacco companies that they could not market a new or modified cigarette because of the public health problems they pose,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group.
Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, called the development “historic,” and said that the F.D.A. was the only agency in the world that possessed such powers. Under the law, the agency can also limit ingredients in tobacco products like nicotine. Federal officials say they are currently studying how to exercise this authority.
Still, the tobacco industry has scored some recent successes against federal regulators. An attempt to require companies to put graphic images on their labels, another power granted by the 2009 law, has been challenged in court, so far successfully. Regulators in other countries including Australia and Uruguay have so far prevailed against the industry in requiring such images.
Mitchell Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the agency, said some of the rejected products presented new public health risks by including, for example, more added chemicals than a similar product currently being sold. Some products were rejected because their makers had not provided enough information.
Researchers said that it remained to be seen just how effective the agency would be over time in the face of the industry’s formidable legal firepower. Mr. Myers cautioned that the announcement left out some important details.
“There’s a lot they don’t say about how they did the evaluation,” Mr. Myers said, including information that is critical to knowing what level of risk officials consider unacceptable.
Kenneth E. Warner, a public health professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the ruling might be an indication of the agency’s thinking on menthol. Newport cigarettes are traditionally menthol flavored, but the two types the agency approved did not contain the menthol additive. The agency is expected to rule on whether to ban menthol, but the timing is not known.
Source:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
______________________________________________________
By DAVID DeSTENO
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group.
He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”
MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.
This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren’t of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.
But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect — the reduction of suffering — empirically demonstrable?
To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining 19 were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.
After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.
WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?
The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.
Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us.
Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.
So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.
Click green for further info
Source:
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group.
He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”
_______________________________________________________________________
In First, F.D.A. Rejects Tobacco Products
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday, June 25, 2013, that for the first time it had begun exercising its power to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products, an authority it was given (click: under a 2009 law supported by President Obama.
Agency officials said they had authorized the sale of two new products — both of them Newport cigarettes made by the Lorillard Tobacco Company — and rejected four others. The law forbade them to name the rejected products, they said.
Before the law, cigarettes were manufactured without any federal regulation. Instead, states decided where and how tobacco products would be sold, but had no authority over the ingredients they contained. Now, the F.D.A. is deciding which new products can be sold. In addition to cigarettes, the agency’s authority covers loose rolling tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff.
The agency can reject cigarettes and other tobacco products that its scientists believe pose public health risks above and beyond comparable products already on the market, a sharp departure from past practice, when tobacco companies could change existing products and introduce new ones at will.
Advocates said the F.D.A.’s use of this authority was a milestone.
“This is the first time in history that a federal agency has told tobacco companies that they could not market a new or modified cigarette because of the public health problems they pose,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group.
Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, called the development “historic,” and said that the F.D.A. was the only agency in the world that possessed such powers. Under the law, the agency can also limit ingredients in tobacco products like nicotine. Federal officials say they are currently studying how to exercise this authority.
Still, the tobacco industry has scored some recent successes against federal regulators. An attempt to require companies to put graphic images on their labels, another power granted by the 2009 law, has been challenged in court, so far successfully. Regulators in other countries including Australia and Uruguay have so far prevailed against the industry in requiring such images.
Mitchell Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the agency, said some of the rejected products presented new public health risks by including, for example, more added chemicals than a similar product currently being sold. Some products were rejected because their makers had not provided enough information.
Researchers said that it remained to be seen just how effective the agency would be over time in the face of the industry’s formidable legal firepower. Mr. Myers cautioned that the announcement left out some important details.
“There’s a lot they don’t say about how they did the evaluation,” Mr. Myers said, including information that is critical to knowing what level of risk officials consider unacceptable.
Kenneth E. Warner, a public health professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the ruling might be an indication of the agency’s thinking on menthol. Newport cigarettes are traditionally menthol flavored, but the two types the agency approved did not contain the menthol additive. The agency is expected to rule on whether to ban menthol, but the timing is not known.
Source:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
______________________________________________________
Tobacco retailers to sue Thai health ministry
over rule on extra-large cigarette pack warnings
The Thai Health Ministry announced:
"The existing warnings have not really yielded visible results
in decreasing the number of smokers, so we need to make them bigger"
We Americans need to do the same = bigger warnings
About 50,000 people die from smoking-related diseases each year
in the Southeast Asian nation of about 65 million people
BANGKOK (AP) -- Tobacco giant Philip Morris and more than 1,400 Thai retailers will sue Thailand's health ministry over a rule that would nearly cover cigarette packets with smoking warnings, a tobacco trade representative said Wednesday.
The regulation scheduled to take effect Oct. 2 requires that 85 percent of space on the packets' front and back be dedicated to warning messages and images, some containing graphic pictures of lung cancer patients.
Varaporn Namatra, executive director of the Thai Tobacco Trade Association, said the organization and Philip Morris (Thailand) will file a lawsuit to the Administrative Court to invalidate the decision.
"Given the fact that Thailand already has some of the biggest health warnings in the world, TTTA can't see why the new requirement is necessary, especially when it will just complicate the work and create additional problems for so many hard-working retailers," Varaporn said.
She said the higher costs could cause consumers to turn toward cheaper, lower-margin tobacco that is not subject to the new warnings.
Thailand and Australia are among the countries with the largest anti-smoking pictorial health warnings in the world. Australia also bans cigarette companies' logos and colors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had planned to require large and often graphic warning labels on cigarettes, but it is redesigning the labels after a court ruled against its plan.
Under the Thai Public Health Ministry's current regulations, warning messages take 55 percent of space on the front and the back sides of the packets.
Deputy Public Health Minister Cholnan Srikaew said the larger warnings will be more effective in deterring smoking.
"The existing warnings have not really yielded visible results in decreasing the number of smokers, so we need to make them bigger," Cholnan said.
The Public Health Ministry said about 50,000 people die from smoking-related diseases each year in the Southeast Asian nation of about 65 million people.
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========================================================================================================================================================== E-Cigarettes as Good as Nicotine Patches
LONDON, September 8, 2013
Electronic cigarettes worked just as well as nicotine patches to help smokers quit, according to the first study to compare them.
E-cigarettes are battery-operated products that look like real cigarettes and turn nicotine into a vapor inhaled by the user. Since the devices hit the market nearly a decade ago, sales have spiked so quickly some analysts predict they will outsell traditional cigarettes within a decade. E-cigarettes are often marketed as a less harmful alternative to traditional smokes and come in flavors including cinnamon, vanilla and cherry.
"This research provides an important benchmark for e-cigarettes," said Chris Bullen, director of the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the study's lead author. Until now, there has been little information about the effectiveness or safety of e-cigarettes. "We have now shown they are about as effective as a standard nicotine replacement product."
Bullen and colleagues recruited 657 adult smokers in Auckland who wanted to quit for the study. Nearly 300 got nicotine-containing e-cigarettes while roughly the same number got nicotine patches. Just over 70 people got placebo e-cigarettes without any nicotine. Each group used the e-cigarettes or patches for 13 weeks.
After six months, similar rates of smokers — 6 to 7 percent — managed to quit after using either the nicotine-containing e-cigarettes or patches. Only 4 percent of smokers using the placebo e-cigarettes successfully quit.
Among smokers who hadn't managed to quit, nearly 60 percent of those using e-cigarettes had cut down the number of cigarettes smoked by at least half versus 41 percent of those using nicotine patches. Smokers were also much bigger fans of the e-cigarettes; nearly 90 percent of users said they would recommend them to a friend compared to just over half of people who got patches.
Researchers also found similar rates of side effects in smokers that used the e-cigarettes and the patches. The most common side effect in all groups was breathing problems.
The study was published online in the journal Lancet and presented at a meeting of the European Respiratory Society in Barcelona, Spain. The e-cigarettes used in the study were provided free by the company and the study was paid for by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, a government funder.
Peter Hajek, an anti-smoking expert at Queen Mary University of London, called it a "pioneering" study and said health officials should seriously consider recommending e-cigarettes to smokers who want to quit or cut down.
"E-cigarettes also have the potential to replace cigarettes as a consumer product, so their value is not just as a treatment," he said. Hajek authored an accompanying commentary in the Lancet. "That could stop the tobacco-related disease and death epidemic if everyone switches to a safer way of nicotine delivery," he said.
Hajek said that even though more studies were needed on the long-term safety of e-cigarettes, there weren't any imminent warning signs.
"E-cigarettes may not be perfectly safe, but even if some currently unknown risk materializes, they are likely to be orders of magnitude safer than normal cigarettes," he said.
The European Union and Britain are planning to regulate e-cigarettes as medical devices, a decision that has provoked criticism from some scientists who argue that would limit their availability to help smokers while cigarettes are not as tightly regulated. It is the tar and other toxins in cigarettes which are deadly, not the nicotine.
In the U.S., the FDA plans to assert regulatory authority over the fast-growing category in the near future. E-cigarettes could also still be regulated as drugs or drug-delivery devices, if they are "marketed for therapeutic purposes" — for example, as a stop-smoking aid.
Bullen suggested e-cigarettes could be monitored like lifestyle or consumer products to avoid restricting their access.
"There needs to be a middle ground where regulation is commensurate with the risk," he said. "For people who are dependent on nicotine, we've got to provide them with a safer alternative ... crushing their availability completely will be bad for public health."
Source: Lancet
Online: http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/PIIS0140-6736(13)61842-5.pdf
Click: The Lancetwww.thelancet.com/
The Lancet is the world's leading general medical journal and specialty journals in Oncology*), Neurology and Infectious Diseases. Available online first.
Oncology - Wikipedia - Oncology (from the Ancient Greek onkos (ὄγκος), meaning bulk, mass, or tumor, and the suffix -logy (-λογία), meaning "study of") is a branch of medicine that deals with cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist - Category:Oncology - Surgical oncology - Radiation therapy - Eye neoplasm
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Article 1 of 4 Articles 2 - 4/4 next below
FDA and e-cigarettes:
Nicotine addiction must not be the norm
U S Food and Drug Administration Home Pagewww.fda.gov/
Click green for further info
Since 2010, the Food and Drug Administration has been debating how to regulate the sale of e-cigarettes. The FDA should hurry up. These battery-powered devices, which heat a nicotine solution and create an inhalable vapor, are exploding in popularity – driven mostly by a tobacco industry in search of new addicts.
Addiction itself does lie at the heart of the FDA’s dilemma about regulating e-cigarettes. Should the agency assume that millions of Americans choose to be nicotine addicts, with the federal role simply to make the use of electronic cigarettes as safe as possible? Or should the FDA see this powerful addiction as inherently wrong, both for individuals and society, with the government helping people avoid or overcome it?
Several countries already ban the sale of e-cigarettes, a wise course for the FDA. They see the electronic devices as delivering a drug with no use, even if it does not have all the effects of regular smoking. Indeed, the tobacco industry does not claim e-cigarettes are a temporary tool for ending tobacco addiction. Most likely, e-cigarettes are being heavily promoted to attract people to take up smoking. Yearly sales of e-cigarettes are already approaching $1 billion.
Click: Help kids avoid legal marijuana
Any benefit of e-cigarettes remains unproven while a few toxins have been found in the device’s vapors. At least three American cities ban their use indoors. And, according to one study, quitting e-cigarettes may be as difficult as for tobacco smoking.
In taking any action, the FDA must assume people do not want to become addicts to nicotine. Government already takes that approach inherently with increasing restrictions on the sale and use of tobacco products. The result has been a welcome decline in public smoking and smoking in general. People tempted to take up smoking now face difficult choices – in costs, inconvenience, and social stigma.
The opposite approach of tolerance toward e-cigarettes would be similar to the way states, once faced with criminal activities associated with illegal gambling, decided that people everywhere want to gamble and government might as well join in by offering lotteries. Now millions of mainly poor people can’t get enough of this daily gambling fix. And states are addicted to the revenues.
Simply curbing the sale of e-cigarettes to minors should not be the FDA’s final decision. The agency, and indeed much of government, can help persuade people that nicotine addiction is not “cool” and can be easily avoidable. The agency should do more than prevent harm. It can also assert that each individual has a right to be free of addiction.
- The Monitor's View Obama helps nip pot legalization in Latin America. How about in US?
- Opinion Put our kids first, Mr. Holder, and enforce federal law against marijuana
- Electronic cigarettes: In need of FDA regulation?
Source: Christian Science Monitor (Articles 2 -4/4 next below)
_______________________________________________
Article 2 of 4 (Article 1/4 next above)
Do Electronic Cigarettes
Really Help Smokers Quit?
Click green for further info
Everyone knows that cigarettes are bad for you. Yet 45 million Americans smoke, a habit that shaves a decade off life expectancy and causes cancer as well as heart and lung diseases. Nearly 70 percent of smokers want to quit, but despite the deadly consequences, the vast majority of them fail.
Going cold turkey works for fewer than 10 percent of smokers. Even with counseling and the use of aids approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, such as the nicotine patch and non-nicotine medicines, 75 percent of smokers light up again within a year. “We need better treatments because the current ones just aren’t working all that well,” says Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Smoking Cessation.
To create treatments that are more up to snuff, researchers are tinkering with combinations of existing drugs, looking at the role genetics plays in who gets hooked and turning to social media as a counseling platform. What’s more, a new smoking cessation medicine could be approved this year:electronic cigarettes, which have existed for a decade but only recently become the focus of efficacy trials.
The grip of addiction
Smoking at once relaxes and stimulates the body. Seconds after inhalation nicotine reaches the brain and binds to receptor molecules on nerve cells, triggering the cells to release a flood of dopamine and other neurotransmitters that washes over pleasure centers. A few more puffs increase heart rate, raising alertness. The effect does not last long, however, spurring smokers to light up again. Over time the number of nicotinic receptors increases—and the need to smoke again to reduce withdrawal symptoms such as irritability. On top of that, smoking becomes linked with everyday behavior or moods: drinking coffee or a bout of boredom, for instance, might also trigger the desire to reach for a cigarette-- all making it difficult to kick the habit.
Smoking treatments help users gradually wean themselves off cigarettes or put an end to their cravings—most commonly via delivery of nicotine in patches or chewing gum. In addition, two non-nicotine drugs are available: a sustained-release form of the antidepressant bupropion reduces cravings; varenicline blocks nicotine receptors in the brain, reducing the flood of dopamine.
New research is teasing out why the seven FDA-approved medications have seen only limited success. For instance, researchers recently showed that some people are genetically predisposed to have difficulty quitting: Particular variations in a cluster of nicotinic receptor genes (CHRNA5–CHRNA3–CHRNB4) contribute to nicotine dependence and a pattern of heavy smoking. Moreover, a study of more than 1,000 smokers reported in a 2012 The American Journal of Psychiatry paper found that people with the risk genes don’t quit easily on their own whereas those lacking the risk genes are more likely to kick the habit without medications.
New research also suggests that the sexes respond differently to the drugs. Rose and colleagues have found that giving a combination of bupropion and varenicline to people who have worn a nicotine patch for a week raised the quit rate of patch users to 50.9 percent up from 19.6 percent—but only in men. “We don’t know why the effect seemed entirely confined to male smokers,” Rose says. “Bit by bit we’re starting to learn how to tailor treatment to sex, early response to nicotine patches, and genomic markers.”
New treatment hope
A reason for the limited success of nicotine treatments may be that they do not address a crucial aspect of cigarette use: the cues that prompt smoking. Electronic cigarettes have as a result become a popular alternative to lighting up for those seeking to quit. E-cig users inhale doses of vaporized nicotine from battery-powered devices that look like cigarettes. Carcinogen levels in e-cig vapor are about one thousandth that of cigarette smoke, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Public Health Policy.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that the devices, on the market for about a decade, help smokers quit. Yet there’s little hard science to back up the claim, and the gadgets are not regulated as medicines. (In 2010 a court overturned the FDA’s effort to treat e-cigs as “drug delivery devices.”) “We just don’t know if they are as good as existing nicotine-replacement therapies,” says David Abrams, executive director of the nonprofit Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies and former director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health.
That’s about to change. Two e-cig trials will report results this year. The first is a study of 300 smokers in Italy. It is a follow-up to a similar study in which 22 of 40 hard-core smokers had after six months either quit or cut cigarette consumption by more than half. Nine gave up cigarettes entirely, although six continued using e-cigs. The findings of the larger study, which is to be published this month in PLoS One, are “in line with those reported in our small pilot study,” says lead researcher Riccardo Polosa of the University of Catania in Italy.
Interestingly, he adds, a control group of smokers who used an e-cig without nicotine also showed a significant drop in tobacco cigarette consumption—although not as great as those using the nicotine e-cig. This decline, he says, “suggests that the dependence on the cigarette is not only a matter of nicotine but also of other factors involved,” like the need to relieve stress or activities that trigger smokers to reach for a cigarette.
An ongoing trial of 657 smokers in New Zealand is pitting e-cigs against nicotine patches. The first large randomized controlled trial to compare the products, it will also provide some of the first information about e-cigs’ side effects, says Chris Bullen, who’s heading up the trial at the country’s National Institute for Health Innovation. He expects to report findings by September.
Meanwhile, England-based firm CN Creative is leading the charge to sell e-cigs as a lifesaving medicine. It is preparing to submit its next-generation e-cig, Nicadex, to U.K. regulatory authorities for approval. If it passes muster, it would be the first e-cig available as a prescription nicotine replacement therapy. The company would then submit Nicadex to the FDA for approval.
Despite the optimism surrounding e-cigarette results, for many successfully kicking the habit by any means will likely require what is common in other addiction treatments: counseling. In today’s digital world, “Facebook, Twitter, texting and the Internet are going to be very good ways to give support,” Abrams says. His organization’s free online support forum, BecomeAnEX.org, has 270,000 members who have access to a community forum, Facebook page and other social media tools that help them learn to live without cigarettes. “This use of social media is in its infancy,” he says, “researchers are just starting to take it seriously.”
“There’s no one way to quit,” Abrams says. “Improving the treatments that we have will go a long way toward beating this very severe addiction and saving millions of lives.”
NOTICE: Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has, in its private service, an Easy to Stop Smoking Program - the program is guaranteed for a lifetime with only a one-time fee. No one anywhere gives a similar guarantee. With the modern technology you can be anywhere in the world to get this result-bringing service. Locally you can come to STAF, Inc.'s office. Contact STAF, Inc. - contact info in our home page.
(Article 3 of 4 next below)
_____________________________________
Do Electronic Cigarettes
Really Help Smokers Quit?
Click green for further info
Everyone knows that cigarettes are bad for you. Yet 45 million Americans smoke, a habit that shaves a decade off life expectancy and causes cancer as well as heart and lung diseases. Nearly 70 percent of smokers want to quit, but despite the deadly consequences, the vast majority of them fail.
Going cold turkey works for fewer than 10 percent of smokers. Even with counseling and the use of aids approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, such as the nicotine patch and non-nicotine medicines, 75 percent of smokers light up again within a year. “We need better treatments because the current ones just aren’t working all that well,” says Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Smoking Cessation.
To create treatments that are more up to snuff, researchers are tinkering with combinations of existing drugs, looking at the role genetics plays in who gets hooked and turning to social media as a counseling platform. What’s more, a new smoking cessation medicine could be approved this year:electronic cigarettes, which have existed for a decade but only recently become the focus of efficacy trials.
The grip of addiction
Smoking at once relaxes and stimulates the body. Seconds after inhalation nicotine reaches the brain and binds to receptor molecules on nerve cells, triggering the cells to release a flood of dopamine and other neurotransmitters that washes over pleasure centers. A few more puffs increase heart rate, raising alertness. The effect does not last long, however, spurring smokers to light up again. Over time the number of nicotinic receptors increases—and the need to smoke again to reduce withdrawal symptoms such as irritability. On top of that, smoking becomes linked with everyday behavior or moods: drinking coffee or a bout of boredom, for instance, might also trigger the desire to reach for a cigarette-- all making it difficult to kick the habit.
Smoking treatments help users gradually wean themselves off cigarettes or put an end to their cravings—most commonly via delivery of nicotine in patches or chewing gum. In addition, two non-nicotine drugs are available: a sustained-release form of the antidepressant bupropion reduces cravings; varenicline blocks nicotine receptors in the brain, reducing the flood of dopamine.
New research is teasing out why the seven FDA-approved medications have seen only limited success. For instance, researchers recently showed that some people are genetically predisposed to have difficulty quitting: Particular variations in a cluster of nicotinic receptor genes (CHRNA5–CHRNA3–CHRNB4) contribute to nicotine dependence and a pattern of heavy smoking. Moreover, a study of more than 1,000 smokers reported in a 2012 The American Journal of Psychiatry paper found that people with the risk genes don’t quit easily on their own whereas those lacking the risk genes are more likely to kick the habit without medications.
New research also suggests that the sexes respond differently to the drugs. Rose and colleagues have found that giving a combination of bupropion and varenicline to people who have worn a nicotine patch for a week raised the quit rate of patch users to 50.9 percent up from 19.6 percent—but only in men. “We don’t know why the effect seemed entirely confined to male smokers,” Rose says. “Bit by bit we’re starting to learn how to tailor treatment to sex, early response to nicotine patches, and genomic markers.”
New treatment hope
A reason for the limited success of nicotine treatments may be that they do not address a crucial aspect of cigarette use: the cues that prompt smoking. Electronic cigarettes have as a result become a popular alternative to lighting up for those seeking to quit. E-cig users inhale doses of vaporized nicotine from battery-powered devices that look like cigarettes. Carcinogen levels in e-cig vapor are about one thousandth that of cigarette smoke, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Public Health Policy.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that the devices, on the market for about a decade, help smokers quit. Yet there’s little hard science to back up the claim, and the gadgets are not regulated as medicines. (In 2010 a court overturned the FDA’s effort to treat e-cigs as “drug delivery devices.”) “We just don’t know if they are as good as existing nicotine-replacement therapies,” says David Abrams, executive director of the nonprofit Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies and former director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health.
That’s about to change. Two e-cig trials will report results this year. The first is a study of 300 smokers in Italy. It is a follow-up to a similar study in which 22 of 40 hard-core smokers had after six months either quit or cut cigarette consumption by more than half. Nine gave up cigarettes entirely, although six continued using e-cigs. The findings of the larger study, which is to be published this month in PLoS One, are “in line with those reported in our small pilot study,” says lead researcher Riccardo Polosa of the University of Catania in Italy.
Interestingly, he adds, a control group of smokers who used an e-cig without nicotine also showed a significant drop in tobacco cigarette consumption—although not as great as those using the nicotine e-cig. This decline, he says, “suggests that the dependence on the cigarette is not only a matter of nicotine but also of other factors involved,” like the need to relieve stress or activities that trigger smokers to reach for a cigarette.
An ongoing trial of 657 smokers in New Zealand is pitting e-cigs against nicotine patches. The first large randomized controlled trial to compare the products, it will also provide some of the first information about e-cigs’ side effects, says Chris Bullen, who’s heading up the trial at the country’s National Institute for Health Innovation. He expects to report findings by September.
Meanwhile, England-based firm CN Creative is leading the charge to sell e-cigs as a lifesaving medicine. It is preparing to submit its next-generation e-cig, Nicadex, to U.K. regulatory authorities for approval. If it passes muster, it would be the first e-cig available as a prescription nicotine replacement therapy. The company would then submit Nicadex to the FDA for approval.
Despite the optimism surrounding e-cigarette results, for many successfully kicking the habit by any means will likely require what is common in other addiction treatments: counseling. In today’s digital world, “Facebook, Twitter, texting and the Internet are going to be very good ways to give support,” Abrams says. His organization’s free online support forum, BecomeAnEX.org, has 270,000 members who have access to a community forum, Facebook page and other social media tools that help them learn to live without cigarettes. “This use of social media is in its infancy,” he says, “researchers are just starting to take it seriously.”
“There’s no one way to quit,” Abrams says. “Improving the treatments that we have will go a long way toward beating this very severe addiction and saving millions of lives.”
NOTICE: Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has, in its private service, an Easy to Stop Smoking Program - the program is guaranteed for a lifetime with only a one-time fee. No one anywhere gives a similar guarantee. With the modern technology you can be anywhere in the world to get this result-bringing service. Locally you can come to STAF, Inc.'s office. Contact STAF, Inc. - contact info in our home page.
(Article 3 of 4 next below)
_____________________________________
Article 3 of 4 (Articles 1-2/4 next above)
E-Cigarettes Are in Vogue and at a Crossroads
June 12, 2013
By LIZ ALDERMAN - PARIS — On a recent day in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, a line of 20 people spilled onto the sidewalk of a trendy new boutique, eager to get a taste of its latest gourmet offerings.
A sign in the window promoted piña colada as the store’s flavor of the month. A woman wearing a Chanel jacket said she wanted to try peach.
But this was no temple of gastronomy. It was one of scores of electronic cigarette shops that have been springing up by the week in Paris as well as in numerous cities across Europe and the United States. Inside the ClopiNette boutique, shoppers can choose from among more than 60 flavors of nicotine liquid — including Marlboro and Lucky Strike flavors — all in varying strengths and arranged in color-coded rows. (ClopiNette is a play on “clope,” French slang for a cigarette.)
“It’s like visiting a Nespresso store,” said Anne Stephan, a lawyer specializing in health issues at a nearby law firm.
What’s driving her into the store is a desire shared by many: they want to give up smoking tobacco but don’t want to kick the smoking habit. After smoking 20 cigarettes daily for 25 years and failing to quit, Ms. Stephan said she had cut down to one a day in the three months since she began puffing on a so-called e-cig. Using technology that turns nicotine-infused propylene glycol into an inhalable vapor, e-cigarettes smoke almost like the real thing, without the ashtray odor.
While e-cigarettes are still a fraction of the $80 billion-a-year market for smoking products in the United States, the growing popularity of vaping, as the practice is known, has touched off a clash in Europe between retailers and regulators. On Wednesday, the British government announced it would begin treating e-cigarettes as medicines, “so that people using these products have the confidence they are safe, are of the right quality and work.”
E-cigarettes and other nicotine products will be licensed in Britain starting in 2016, giving manufacturers time to ensure that their products comply with all standards for medicines. The British regulator says e-cigarettes aren’t recommended for use until then, but it won’t ban them entirely. Government officials in France this month announced they might ban the e-cigarettes in public spaces. Italy is considering banning them from schools.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration tried to block the sale of e-cigarettes, claiming that they were unapproved “drug/device combinations.” Manufacturers successfully challenged the agency’s position, but in a 2010 ruling, a federal appeals court held that e-cigarettes could be regulated by the agency as tobacco products.
An agency spokeswoman, Stephanie Yao, said the agency was preparing to release for public comment a proposed rule to regulate additional categories of tobacco products.
Currently, the F.D.A.’s tobacco regulations apply to cigarettes, tobacco and smokeless tobacco.
“Further research is needed to assess the potential public health benefits and risks of electronic cigarettes and other novel tobacco products,” Ms. Yao said in a statement.
Health officials say their safety has not been medically proved and the devices could encourage children to take up smoking. Some antismoking advocates, who are simply annoyed to see the gadgets glowing in restaurants and bars, call for a ban on their use in public places, the same ban in force for tobacco products.
The allure is unmistakable. The actor Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted puffing on an e-cig at Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood earlier this year, while the French actress Catherine Deneuve, a longtime heavy smoker, now puffs the electronic version in Parisian restaurants and even during news conferences.
Global sales jumped 30 percent in each of the previous three years to around $2 billion in 2011, with the European market around $650 million, according to a recent analysis by Euromonitor International. Retail sales of e-cigs in the United States reached $500 million last year. Although that is only about 0.5 percent of the overall tobacco market, analysts expect those figures to double this year and continue climbing.
“E-cigarette consumption could surpass traditional cigarettes in the next decade,” said Katherine Devlin, president of the London-based Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association. “Growth is exponential and there are no signs it’s slowing down. So there is a huge amount at stake.”
Currently, e-cigs are distributed by more than 100 small and medium-size firms like NJOY and White Cloud. Most are manufactured by a Chinese company, Ruyan, which invented the gadget that heats the nicotine solution into a smokelike vapor. The device, which also can have an LED light to mimic the glow of a burning ash, has been registered for patents in more than 50 countries.
But now, the makers of Marlboro and other big tobacco brands are rushing to get a piece of the action — especially to make up for lost sales as tobacco smoking declines in Western countries. Last year, Lorillard bought the e-cigarette maker Blu for $135 million. British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Japan Tobacco International have also taken stakes in the new industry. In April, as cigarette sales fell 5.2 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, Altria announced it would soon unveil its own electronic cigarette. Earlier this month, Reynolds American said it would introduce a revamped e-cig with an ad campaign including television commercials, which are off-limits for tobacco cigarettes.
Certainly signs of growth are there. In 2011, the latest year for which data were available, more than 20 percent of adult smokers said they had tried e-cigarettes, double the rate in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Electronic cigarettes could account for nearly 5 percent of the value of all tobacco products in the next two decades, according to Euromonitor International. Analysts say such trends would also challenge the pharmaceutical industry, where stop-smoking products like nicotine patches and gums pulled in about $2.4 billion in 2011, not including prescription treatments.
“It’s tres à la mode,” said Olivia Foiret, the manager of the ClopiNette store on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, as customers crowded around the counter. “People want to stop smoking; they try one of these and they’re hooked.”
As an alternative to smoking tobacco, the devices have become such an attractive investment option that Sean Parker, co-founder of the now defunct music-sharing site Napster, is buying a stake in NJOY, one of the companies that makes e-cigarettes.
Mr. Parker has long donated to cancer research but is said to view the electronic devices as a safe alternative.
In December, European Union officials proposed regulating e-cigarettes and most nicotine liquids across the European Union as medical products. That would limit the nicotine content sold over the counter to 4 milligrams per milliliter — lighter than the lightest cigarette — or force manufacturers to put them through clinical trials.
The new rules could also radically affect how much money governments could take in through new taxes, a not insignificant consideration when declining tobacco sales are leaving sizable holes in national treasuries. In the first two months of 2013 alone, the Italian government, for example, reported a 132 million euro revenue shortfall from sliding cigarette sales. Nicotine liquid refills are not taxed in most European Union countries, and legislators think they could help make up some of the difference.
E-cigarette supporters say European officials are having a knee-jerk reaction that fails to recognize the devices as a “safer” alternative to smoking. They point to declarations from authorities like the Royal College of Physicians in Britain, which has said the devices can lure people away from traditional cigarettes and urged that they be made widely available. A separate 2011 study in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine said e-cigarettes “may hold promise as a smoking-cessation method.”
Retailers also protest that because they don’t market e-cigarettes to help smokers quit, e-cigarettes should not be treated as a pharmaceutical. “No one is claiming it’s medicine,” Ms. Devlin said. “It allows you to keep smoking.” They added that clinical trial requirements would make liquid nicotine commercially unviable, and are pressing for the European Union not to adopt new regulations.
European regulators cite a paucity of studies on the safety of routinely inhaling propylene glycol, a viscous chemical found in everything from asthma inhalers to antifreeze. It is deemed harmless by the Food and Drug Administration, but critics say it has not been adequately tested for chain smokers who might use the e-cigarettes during most of their waking hours.
Tonio Borg, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, has expressed concerns that e-cigarettes, with their tasty flavors and colorful tips, could be a gateway to smoking for the young. In France, where tobacco sales fell last year to their lowest levels in a decade, a recent survey among Paris school children between the ages of 12 and 17 found that 8.1 percent of more than 3,400 surveyed had experimented with e-cigarettes.
Pascal Somosierra, 50, a dapper floral artist who decorates Parisian gems like Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, said that since he bought a sleek black “Ego-C” model last month, he had been using it in his office, inside cafes and even on the Metro. “Some people look at me strangely,” said Mr. Somosierra, who said he instantly stopped his 30-year-old two-pack-a-day habit. “But I’m seen more favorably with this than when I’m smoking a regular cigarette.”
But he admits, “For a young person who doesn’t smoke, it can be tempting; there are all the flavors, and it looks cool.” He keeps his e-cigs out of reach of his children. “Think about it,” he said. “If even the company that makes Marlboro is jumping into the game, it’s a way for them to get nicotine into new smokers.”
Barry Meier contributed reporting
Source: NYT
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E-Cigarettes Are in Vogue and at a Crossroads
June 12, 2013
By LIZ ALDERMAN - PARIS — On a recent day in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, a line of 20 people spilled onto the sidewalk of a trendy new boutique, eager to get a taste of its latest gourmet offerings.
A sign in the window promoted piña colada as the store’s flavor of the month. A woman wearing a Chanel jacket said she wanted to try peach.
But this was no temple of gastronomy. It was one of scores of electronic cigarette shops that have been springing up by the week in Paris as well as in numerous cities across Europe and the United States. Inside the ClopiNette boutique, shoppers can choose from among more than 60 flavors of nicotine liquid — including Marlboro and Lucky Strike flavors — all in varying strengths and arranged in color-coded rows. (ClopiNette is a play on “clope,” French slang for a cigarette.)
“It’s like visiting a Nespresso store,” said Anne Stephan, a lawyer specializing in health issues at a nearby law firm.
What’s driving her into the store is a desire shared by many: they want to give up smoking tobacco but don’t want to kick the smoking habit. After smoking 20 cigarettes daily for 25 years and failing to quit, Ms. Stephan said she had cut down to one a day in the three months since she began puffing on a so-called e-cig. Using technology that turns nicotine-infused propylene glycol into an inhalable vapor, e-cigarettes smoke almost like the real thing, without the ashtray odor.
While e-cigarettes are still a fraction of the $80 billion-a-year market for smoking products in the United States, the growing popularity of vaping, as the practice is known, has touched off a clash in Europe between retailers and regulators. On Wednesday, the British government announced it would begin treating e-cigarettes as medicines, “so that people using these products have the confidence they are safe, are of the right quality and work.”
E-cigarettes and other nicotine products will be licensed in Britain starting in 2016, giving manufacturers time to ensure that their products comply with all standards for medicines. The British regulator says e-cigarettes aren’t recommended for use until then, but it won’t ban them entirely. Government officials in France this month announced they might ban the e-cigarettes in public spaces. Italy is considering banning them from schools.
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration tried to block the sale of e-cigarettes, claiming that they were unapproved “drug/device combinations.” Manufacturers successfully challenged the agency’s position, but in a 2010 ruling, a federal appeals court held that e-cigarettes could be regulated by the agency as tobacco products.
An agency spokeswoman, Stephanie Yao, said the agency was preparing to release for public comment a proposed rule to regulate additional categories of tobacco products.
Currently, the F.D.A.’s tobacco regulations apply to cigarettes, tobacco and smokeless tobacco.
“Further research is needed to assess the potential public health benefits and risks of electronic cigarettes and other novel tobacco products,” Ms. Yao said in a statement.
Health officials say their safety has not been medically proved and the devices could encourage children to take up smoking. Some antismoking advocates, who are simply annoyed to see the gadgets glowing in restaurants and bars, call for a ban on their use in public places, the same ban in force for tobacco products.
The allure is unmistakable. The actor Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted puffing on an e-cig at Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood earlier this year, while the French actress Catherine Deneuve, a longtime heavy smoker, now puffs the electronic version in Parisian restaurants and even during news conferences.
Global sales jumped 30 percent in each of the previous three years to around $2 billion in 2011, with the European market around $650 million, according to a recent analysis by Euromonitor International. Retail sales of e-cigs in the United States reached $500 million last year. Although that is only about 0.5 percent of the overall tobacco market, analysts expect those figures to double this year and continue climbing.
“E-cigarette consumption could surpass traditional cigarettes in the next decade,” said Katherine Devlin, president of the London-based Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association. “Growth is exponential and there are no signs it’s slowing down. So there is a huge amount at stake.”
Currently, e-cigs are distributed by more than 100 small and medium-size firms like NJOY and White Cloud. Most are manufactured by a Chinese company, Ruyan, which invented the gadget that heats the nicotine solution into a smokelike vapor. The device, which also can have an LED light to mimic the glow of a burning ash, has been registered for patents in more than 50 countries.
But now, the makers of Marlboro and other big tobacco brands are rushing to get a piece of the action — especially to make up for lost sales as tobacco smoking declines in Western countries. Last year, Lorillard bought the e-cigarette maker Blu for $135 million. British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Japan Tobacco International have also taken stakes in the new industry. In April, as cigarette sales fell 5.2 percent in the first quarter from a year ago, Altria announced it would soon unveil its own electronic cigarette. Earlier this month, Reynolds American said it would introduce a revamped e-cig with an ad campaign including television commercials, which are off-limits for tobacco cigarettes.
Certainly signs of growth are there. In 2011, the latest year for which data were available, more than 20 percent of adult smokers said they had tried e-cigarettes, double the rate in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Electronic cigarettes could account for nearly 5 percent of the value of all tobacco products in the next two decades, according to Euromonitor International. Analysts say such trends would also challenge the pharmaceutical industry, where stop-smoking products like nicotine patches and gums pulled in about $2.4 billion in 2011, not including prescription treatments.
“It’s tres à la mode,” said Olivia Foiret, the manager of the ClopiNette store on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, as customers crowded around the counter. “People want to stop smoking; they try one of these and they’re hooked.”
As an alternative to smoking tobacco, the devices have become such an attractive investment option that Sean Parker, co-founder of the now defunct music-sharing site Napster, is buying a stake in NJOY, one of the companies that makes e-cigarettes.
Mr. Parker has long donated to cancer research but is said to view the electronic devices as a safe alternative.
In December, European Union officials proposed regulating e-cigarettes and most nicotine liquids across the European Union as medical products. That would limit the nicotine content sold over the counter to 4 milligrams per milliliter — lighter than the lightest cigarette — or force manufacturers to put them through clinical trials.
The new rules could also radically affect how much money governments could take in through new taxes, a not insignificant consideration when declining tobacco sales are leaving sizable holes in national treasuries. In the first two months of 2013 alone, the Italian government, for example, reported a 132 million euro revenue shortfall from sliding cigarette sales. Nicotine liquid refills are not taxed in most European Union countries, and legislators think they could help make up some of the difference.
E-cigarette supporters say European officials are having a knee-jerk reaction that fails to recognize the devices as a “safer” alternative to smoking. They point to declarations from authorities like the Royal College of Physicians in Britain, which has said the devices can lure people away from traditional cigarettes and urged that they be made widely available. A separate 2011 study in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine said e-cigarettes “may hold promise as a smoking-cessation method.”
Retailers also protest that because they don’t market e-cigarettes to help smokers quit, e-cigarettes should not be treated as a pharmaceutical. “No one is claiming it’s medicine,” Ms. Devlin said. “It allows you to keep smoking.” They added that clinical trial requirements would make liquid nicotine commercially unviable, and are pressing for the European Union not to adopt new regulations.
European regulators cite a paucity of studies on the safety of routinely inhaling propylene glycol, a viscous chemical found in everything from asthma inhalers to antifreeze. It is deemed harmless by the Food and Drug Administration, but critics say it has not been adequately tested for chain smokers who might use the e-cigarettes during most of their waking hours.
Tonio Borg, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, has expressed concerns that e-cigarettes, with their tasty flavors and colorful tips, could be a gateway to smoking for the young. In France, where tobacco sales fell last year to their lowest levels in a decade, a recent survey among Paris school children between the ages of 12 and 17 found that 8.1 percent of more than 3,400 surveyed had experimented with e-cigarettes.
Pascal Somosierra, 50, a dapper floral artist who decorates Parisian gems like Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, said that since he bought a sleek black “Ego-C” model last month, he had been using it in his office, inside cafes and even on the Metro. “Some people look at me strangely,” said Mr. Somosierra, who said he instantly stopped his 30-year-old two-pack-a-day habit. “But I’m seen more favorably with this than when I’m smoking a regular cigarette.”
But he admits, “For a young person who doesn’t smoke, it can be tempting; there are all the flavors, and it looks cool.” He keeps his e-cigs out of reach of his children. “Think about it,” he said. “If even the company that makes Marlboro is jumping into the game, it’s a way for them to get nicotine into new smokers.”
Barry Meier contributed reporting
Source: NYT
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Article 4 of 4 (Articles 1-3/4 next above)
Study: Children's use of e-cigarettes increasing
Health officials worry it will lead to regular smoking
Date: September 2013
ATLANTA (AP) -- Children — like adults — are increasingly trying electronic cigarettes, according to the first large national study to gauge use by middle and high school students.
About 2 percent of the students said they'd used an e-cigarette in the previous month, according to a survey done last year. That was up from 1 percent in 2011.
More kids still smoke traditional cigarettes than the new electronic ones, and it's not clear how dangerous e-cigarettes are. It's also not clear from the report how many are using them on a daily or weekly basis.
But health officials are worried. The new study suggests many kids are now getting a first taste of nicotine through
e-cigarettes and then moving on to regular tobacco products, they say.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices that provide users with aerosol puffs that typically contain nicotine, and sometimes flavorings like fruit, mint or chocolate. They've often been described as a less dangerous alternative to regular cigarettes.
Unlike conventional smokes, the federal government does not regulate e-cigarettes, although about 20 states have banned store sales to minors. The devices began to appear in the United States in late 2006, but marketing has exploded in the last couple of years.
The new study — released on September 5, 2013 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is based on a questionnaire filled out by nearly 19,000 students in grades 6 through 12 in 2011 and another 25,000 in 2012.
In 2011, about 3 percent said they'd tried an e-cigarette at least once. That rose to 7 percent last year and translates to nearly 1.8 million students.
In contrast, 6 percent of adults have tried e-cigarettes, according to a different CDC survey done in 2011.
Children still are more likely to light up regular cigarettes, though teen smoking rates have dropped in the past decade. More teens now smoke marijuana than tobacco, surveys have found.
But health officials worry e-cigarettes could re-ignite teen cigarette use. They point to a finding in the study that 20 percent of middle school e-cigarette users had never tried conventional cigarettes. When the same question was asked of high school students, only 7 percent had never tried regular smokes.
That suggests many kids experiment with the electronic devices and move on to cigarettes by high school, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
"In effect, this is condemning many kids to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine," he said.
Kurt Ribisl, a University of North Carolina tobacco policy expert, was a bit more restrained, saying the results "don't prove that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking cigarettes". Another study would be needed to more clearly establish the link, he added.
Click green for further info
Source:
Online: CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Your Online Source for Credible Health Information.
_____________________________________________
Study: Children's use of e-cigarettes increasing
Health officials worry it will lead to regular smoking
Date: September 2013
ATLANTA (AP) -- Children — like adults — are increasingly trying electronic cigarettes, according to the first large national study to gauge use by middle and high school students.
About 2 percent of the students said they'd used an e-cigarette in the previous month, according to a survey done last year. That was up from 1 percent in 2011.
More kids still smoke traditional cigarettes than the new electronic ones, and it's not clear how dangerous e-cigarettes are. It's also not clear from the report how many are using them on a daily or weekly basis.
But health officials are worried. The new study suggests many kids are now getting a first taste of nicotine through
e-cigarettes and then moving on to regular tobacco products, they say.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices that provide users with aerosol puffs that typically contain nicotine, and sometimes flavorings like fruit, mint or chocolate. They've often been described as a less dangerous alternative to regular cigarettes.
Unlike conventional smokes, the federal government does not regulate e-cigarettes, although about 20 states have banned store sales to minors. The devices began to appear in the United States in late 2006, but marketing has exploded in the last couple of years.
The new study — released on September 5, 2013 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is based on a questionnaire filled out by nearly 19,000 students in grades 6 through 12 in 2011 and another 25,000 in 2012.
In 2011, about 3 percent said they'd tried an e-cigarette at least once. That rose to 7 percent last year and translates to nearly 1.8 million students.
In contrast, 6 percent of adults have tried e-cigarettes, according to a different CDC survey done in 2011.
Children still are more likely to light up regular cigarettes, though teen smoking rates have dropped in the past decade. More teens now smoke marijuana than tobacco, surveys have found.
But health officials worry e-cigarettes could re-ignite teen cigarette use. They point to a finding in the study that 20 percent of middle school e-cigarette users had never tried conventional cigarettes. When the same question was asked of high school students, only 7 percent had never tried regular smokes.
That suggests many kids experiment with the electronic devices and move on to cigarettes by high school, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
"In effect, this is condemning many kids to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine," he said.
Kurt Ribisl, a University of North Carolina tobacco policy expert, was a bit more restrained, saying the results "don't prove that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking cigarettes". Another study would be needed to more clearly establish the link, he added.
Click green for further info
Source:
Online: CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Your Online Source for Credible Health Information.
_____________________________________________
Quotation "Determination can be a battle or a thrill. Choose to be thrilled"
(Danielle LaPorte)
Danielle LaPorte (born May 25 1969) is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter @daniellelaporte
_______________________________________________
(Danielle LaPorte)
Danielle LaPorte (born May 25 1969) is the outspoken creator of The Desire Map, author of The Fire Starter Sessions (Random House/Crown), and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality”, and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter @daniellelaporte
_______________________________________________
The New York City Mayor Bloomberg's proposal
to keep cigarettes out of sight met with praise, criticism
Date: March, 2013
NEW YORK (AP) -- Anti-smoking advocates and health experts hailed proposals from Mayor Michael Bloomberg that would keep cigarettes out of sight in New York City stores, while tobacco companies and smokers called it an overreach.
The ban, which would be the first of its kind in the U.S., is aimed at discouraging young people from smoking.
Keeping cigarettes under wraps could help, anti-smoking advocates say, citing studies that link exposure to smoking with starting it. Shops from corner stores to supermarkets would have to keeptobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots. Officials also want to stop shops from taking cigarette coupons and honoring discounts, and are proposing a minimum price for cigarettes, though it's below what the going rate is in much of the city now.
While some of the research focuses on cigarette advertising, an English study of 11-to-15-year-olds published last month in the journal Tobacco Control found that simply noticing tobacco products on display every time a youth visited a shop raised the odds he or she would at least try smoking by threefold, compared to peers who never noticed the products.
"What's exciting about this (New York City proposal) is that this is the most comprehensive set of tobacco-control regulations that affect stores or the retail outlets," said Kurt Ribisl, a professor of public health and cancer prevention specialist at the University of North Carolina. Moreover, cigarettes' visibility can trigger impulse buys by smokers who are trying to quit, he and city officials say.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, other anti-smoking groups and several City Council members applauded Bloomberg's announcement, made at a Queens hospital on Monday. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who largely controls what goes to a vote, said through her office that she "supports the goal of these bills" but noted they would get a full review.
The ban on displaying cigarettes follows similar laws in Iceland, Canada, England and Ireland, but it would be the first such measure in the U.S. It's aimed at discouraging young people from smoking. According to the Rockland County Times, the Village of Haverstraw in Rockland County passed such a ban last April, but rescinded it four months later because it couldn't afford to fight a lawsuit brought by tobacco companies and convenience stores.
"Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity," Bloomberg said. "And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco."
But smokers and cigarette sellers said the measure was overreaching.
"I don't disagree that smoking itself is risky, but it's a legal product," said Audrey Silk, who's affiliated with a smokers-rights group that has sued the city over previous regulations. "Tobacco's been normal for centuries. ... It's what he's doing that's not normal."
Slated to be introduced to the City Council on Wednesday, the anti-smoking proposal was also a sign that a mayor who has built a reputation as a public health crusader isn't backing off after a high-profile setback last week, when a judge struck down the city's novel effort to ban supersized, sugary drinks. The city is appealing that decision.
"We're doing these health things to save lives," he said Monday.
Bloomberg, a billionaire who also has given $600 million of his own money to anti-smoking efforts around the world, began taking on tobacco use shortly after he became mayor in 2002. Adult smoking rates have since fallen by nearly a third — from 21.5 percent in 2002 to 14.8 percent in 2011, Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said.
But the youth rate has remained flat, at 8.5 percent, since 2007. Some 28,000 city public high school students tried smoking for the first time in 2011, city officials say.
Measures in other countries have been coupled with bars on in-store advertising, but those nations have different legal standards around advertising and free speech. The New York proposal would still allow shops to display cigarette advertising and signs saying tobacco products were sold, raising the question of how effective it will be just to put the products under wraps.
But convenience store owners fear it could affect their business, by potentially leaving customers uncertain whether the shop carries their favorite brand and making them wait while a proprietor digs out a pack, said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience stores.
"It slows down the transaction, and our name is convenience stores," he said.
Jay Kim, who owns a Manhattan deli on 34th Street, saw the proposal as a bid to net fines.
"I know the city wants to collect money," he said at his store, where packs of cigarettes can be seen behind the counter, along with numerous signs warning of the dangers of smoking and prohibiting sales to minors.
Bloomberg, for his part, emphasized that collecting money was "not the reason."
The displays would be checked as part of the shops' normal city inspections; information on the potential penalties wasn't immediately available Monday night. Repeated violations of some of the other provisions, including the minimum-price and coupon ban, could get a store shuttered.
Stores that make more than half their revenue from tobacco products would be exempt from the display ban. Customers under 18, the legal age for buying cigarettes in New York, are barred from such stores without parents.
While the federal government regulates tobacco, states have some say in rules surrounding how it's sold.
Several of New York City's smoking regulations have survived court challenges. But a federal appeals court said last year that the city couldn't force tobacco retailers to display gruesome images of diseased lungs and decaying teeth. In that case, the court ruled that the federal government gets to decide how to warn people about the dangers of smoking.
The nation's largest tobacco company said the latest proposal also was too much.
"To the extent that this proposed law would ban the display of products to adult tobacco consumers, we believe it goes too far," said David Sutton, a spokesman for Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of Philip Morris USA, which makes the top-selling Marlboro brand. The company supported federal legislation that in 2009 gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products, which includes various retail restrictions, Sutton noted.
New York City smokers already face some of the highest cigarette prices in the country. With city and state taxes totaling $5.85 a pack, it's not uncommon for a pack to cost $13 or more in Manhattan. The proposed minimum price is $10.50, including taxes; city officials said it was aimed largely at clamping down on sales of smuggled and untaxed cigarettes.
Other public health measures Bloomberg has championed include pressuring restaurants to use less salt and add calorie counts to menus, and banning artificial trans fats from restaurant meals.
Jennifer Bailey, smoking as she waited for a bus on 34th Street, was no fan of the proposed tobacco restrictions or Bloomberg's other public health initiatives.
"It's like New York has become a ... dictatorship," she said.
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Second-hand Smoke
Second-hand smoke (SHS) is also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)
Source: American Cancer Society
SHS is a mixture of 2 forms of smoke that come from burning tobacco:
When non-smokers are exposed to SHS it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking. Non-smokers who breathe in SHS take in nicotine and toxic chemicals by the same route smokers do. The more SHS you breathe, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in your body.
Why is secondhand smoke a problem?
Secondhand smoke causes cancer
Secondhand smoke is classified as a “known human carcinogen” (cancer-causing agent) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US National Toxicology Program, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemical compounds. More than 250 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, and at least 69 are known to cause cancer.
SHS has been linked to lung cancer. There is also some evidence suggesting it may be linked with childhood leukemia and cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast.
IARC reported in 2009 that parents who smoked before and during pregnancy were more likely to have a child with hepatoblastoma. This rare cancer is thought to start while the child is still in the uterus. Compared with non-smoking parents, the risk was about twice as high if only one parent smoked, but nearly 5 times higher when both parents smoked.
Secondhand smoke and breast cancer
Whether SHS increases the risk of breast cancer is an issue that’s still being studied. Both mainstream and SHS have about 20 chemicals that, in high concentrations, cause breast cancer in rodents. And we know that in humans, chemicals from tobacco smoke reach breast tissue and are found in breast milk.
One reason the link between SHS and breast cancer risk in human studies is uncertain is because breast cancer risk has not been shown to be increased in active smokers. One possible explanation for this is that tobacco smoke might have different effects on breast cancer risk in smokers and in those who are exposed to SHS.
A report from the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 concluded that the evidence regarding SHS and breast cancer is “consistent with a causal association” in younger women. This means the SHS acts as if it could be a cause of breast cancer in these women. The 2006 US Surgeon General’s report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, sums it up by saying that there is “suggestive but not sufficient” evidence of a link.
Research is still being done, but women should be told that this possible link to breast cancer is yet another reason to avoid being around SHS.
Secondhand smoke causes other kinds of diseases and death
Secondhand smoke can cause harm in many ways. Each year in the United States alone, it is responsible for:
At work
The workplace is a major source of SHS exposure for many adults.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety in the workplace, is concerned about SHS as a possible carcinogen at work. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and OSHA recognize there are no known safe levels of SHS, and recommend that exposures be reduced to the lowest possible levels.
SHS in the workplace has been linked to an increased risk for heart disease and lung cancer among adult non-smokers. The Surgeon General has said that smoke-free workplace policies are the only way to do away with SHS exposure at work. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating the building cannot prevent exposure if people still smoke inside the building. An extra bonus other than protecting non-smokers is that workplace smoking restrictions may also encourage smokers to smoke less, or even quit.
In public places
Everyone can be exposed to SHS in public places, such as restaurants, shopping centers, public transportation, schools, and daycare centers. The Surgeon General has suggested people choose restaurants and other businesses that are smoke-free, and let owners of businesses that are not smoke-free know that SHS is harmful to your family’s health.
Some businesses seem to be afraid to ban smoking, but there’s no proof that going smoke-free is bad for business. Public places where children go are a special area of concern. Make sure that your children’s day care center or school is smoke-free.
At home
Making your home smoke-free may be one of the most important things you can do for the health of your family. Any family member can develop health problems related to SHS.
Children’s growing bodies are especially sensitive to the poisons in SHS. Asthma, lung infections, and ear infections are more common in children who are around smokers. Some of these problems can be serious and even life-threatening. Others may seem like small problems, but they add up quickly — the expenses, time for doctor visits, medicines, lost school time, and often lost work time for the parent who must stay home with a sick child.
Think about it: we spend more time at home than anywhere else. A smoke-free home protects your family, your guests, and even your pets.
Multi-unit housing where smoking is allowed is a special concern and a subject of research. Tobacco smoke can move through air ducts, wall and floor cracks, elevator shafts, and along crawl spaces to contaminate apartments on other floors, even those that are far from the smoke. SHS cannot be controlled with ventilation, air cleaning, or by separating smokers from non-smokers.
In the car
Americans spend a great deal of time in cars, and if someone smokes there, the poisons can build up quickly. Again, this can be especially harmful to children.
In response to this fact, the US Environmental Protection Agency has been working to encourage people to make their cars, as well as their homes, smoke-free. Some states and cities even have laws that ban smoking in the car if carrying passengers under a certain age or weight. And many facilities such as city buildings, malls, schools, colleges, and hospitals ban smoking on their grounds, including their parking lots.
What about smoking odors?
There is no research in the medical literature as yet that shows cigarette odors cause cancer in people. Research does show that particles from secondhand tobacco smoke can settle into dust and onto surfaces and remain there long after the smoke is gone — some studies suggest the particles can last for months. Researchers call this third-hand smoke or residual tobacco smoke. Studies have shown that the particles that settle out from tobacco smoke can form more cancer-causing compounds.
Though unknown, the cancer-causing effects would likely be small compared with direct exposure to SHS. The compounds may be stirred up and inhaled with other house dust, but may also be absorbed through the skin or accidentally taken in through the mouth. This is why any risk the compounds pose may be larger for babies and children who play on the floor and often put things in their mouths. No actual cancer risk has been measured, but the health risks of thirdhand smoke are an active area of research.
What can be done about secondhand smoke?Local, state, and federal authorities can enact public policies to protect people from SHS and protect children from tobacco-caused diseases and addiction. Because there are no safe levels of SHS, it’s important that any such policies be as strong as possible, and that they do not prevent action at other levels of government.
Many US local and state governments, and even federal governments in some other countries, have decided that protecting the health of employees and others in public places is of the utmost importance. Many have passed clean indoor air laws. Although the laws vary from place to place, they are becoming more common. Detailed information on smoking restrictions in each state is available from the American Lung Association at www.lungusa2.org/slati/.
To learn moreMore from your American Cancer SocietyHere is more information you might find helpful. You also can order free copies of our documents from our toll-free number, 1-800-227-2345, or read them on our Web site, www.cancer.org.
Click: Questions About Smoking, Tobacco, and Health (also in Spanish)
Click: Smoking in the Workplace
Click: Guide to Quitting Smoking (also in Spanish)
Other organizations*Along with the American Cancer Society, other sources of information and support include:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Telephone: 202-272-0167
Toll-free number for smoke-free info: 1-866-766-5337 (1-866-SMOKE-FREE)
Web site: www.epa.gov
Telephone: 1-800-586-4872
Web site: www.lungusa.org
Office on Smoking and Health
Toll-free number: 1-800-232-4636 (1-800-CDC-INFO)
Web site: www.cdc.gov/tobacco
Toll-free number: 1-800-422-6237 (1-800-4-CANCER)
Web site: www.cancer.gov
Direct tobacco Web site: www.smokefree.gov
No matter who you are, we can help. Contact us anytime, day or night, for information and support. Call us at 1-800-227-2345 or visit www.cancer.org.
STAF, Inc. has a Stop Smoking Program
guaranteed for a lifetime with only a one-time fee
No one else anywhere gives a similar guarantee
Service available nationwide / worldwide with the modern technology
See above - contact STAF, Inc. via an email
____________________________________________________________
Second-hand smoke (SHS) is also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)
Source: American Cancer Society
SHS is a mixture of 2 forms of smoke that come from burning tobacco:
- Sidestream smoke – smoke from the lighted end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar
- Mainstream smoke – the smoke exhaled by a smoker
When non-smokers are exposed to SHS it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking. Non-smokers who breathe in SHS take in nicotine and toxic chemicals by the same route smokers do. The more SHS you breathe, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in your body.
Why is secondhand smoke a problem?
Secondhand smoke causes cancer
Secondhand smoke is classified as a “known human carcinogen” (cancer-causing agent) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US National Toxicology Program, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemical compounds. More than 250 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, and at least 69 are known to cause cancer.
SHS has been linked to lung cancer. There is also some evidence suggesting it may be linked with childhood leukemia and cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast.
IARC reported in 2009 that parents who smoked before and during pregnancy were more likely to have a child with hepatoblastoma. This rare cancer is thought to start while the child is still in the uterus. Compared with non-smoking parents, the risk was about twice as high if only one parent smoked, but nearly 5 times higher when both parents smoked.
Secondhand smoke and breast cancer
Whether SHS increases the risk of breast cancer is an issue that’s still being studied. Both mainstream and SHS have about 20 chemicals that, in high concentrations, cause breast cancer in rodents. And we know that in humans, chemicals from tobacco smoke reach breast tissue and are found in breast milk.
One reason the link between SHS and breast cancer risk in human studies is uncertain is because breast cancer risk has not been shown to be increased in active smokers. One possible explanation for this is that tobacco smoke might have different effects on breast cancer risk in smokers and in those who are exposed to SHS.
A report from the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 concluded that the evidence regarding SHS and breast cancer is “consistent with a causal association” in younger women. This means the SHS acts as if it could be a cause of breast cancer in these women. The 2006 US Surgeon General’s report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, sums it up by saying that there is “suggestive but not sufficient” evidence of a link.
Research is still being done, but women should be told that this possible link to breast cancer is yet another reason to avoid being around SHS.
Secondhand smoke causes other kinds of diseases and death
Secondhand smoke can cause harm in many ways. Each year in the United States alone, it is responsible for:
- An estimated 46,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are current non-smokers
- About 3,400 lung cancer deaths in non-smoking adults
- Worse asthma and asthma-related problems in up to 1 million asthmatic children
- Between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (lung and bronchus) in children under 18 months of age, with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year
- Children exposed to secondhand smoke are much more likely to be put into intensive care when they have the flu, they are in the hospital longer, and are more likely to need breathing tubes than kids who aren’t exposed to SHS
- In the United States, the costs of extra medical care, illness, and death caused by SHS are over $10 billion per year
- SHS kills children and adults who don’t smoke.
- SHS causes disease in children and in adults who don’t smoke.
- Exposure to SHS while pregnant increases the chance that a woman will have a spontaneous abortion, stillborn birth, low birth-weight baby, and other pregnancy and delivery problems.
- Babies and children exposed to SHS are at an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear infections, and more severe and frequent asthma attacks.
- Smoking by parents can cause wheezing, coughing, bronchitis, and pneumonia, and slow lung growth in their children.
- SHS immediately affects the heart, blood vessels, and blood circulation in a harmful way. Over time it can cause heart disease, strokes, and heart attacks.
- SHS causes lung cancer in people who have never smoked. Even brief exposure can damage cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion.
- Chemicals in tobacco smoke damage sperm which might reduce fertility and harm fetal development. SHS is known to damage sperm in animals, but more studies are needed to find out its effects in humans.
- There is no safe level of exposure to SHS. Any exposure is harmful.
- Many millions of Americans, both children and adults, are still exposed to SHS in their homes and workplaces despite a great deal of progress in tobacco control.
- On average, children are exposed to more SHS than non-smoking adults.
- The only way to fully protect non-smokers from exposure to SHS indoors is to prevent all smoking in that indoor space or building. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings cannot keep non-smokers from being exposed to SHS.
At work
The workplace is a major source of SHS exposure for many adults.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety in the workplace, is concerned about SHS as a possible carcinogen at work. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and OSHA recognize there are no known safe levels of SHS, and recommend that exposures be reduced to the lowest possible levels.
SHS in the workplace has been linked to an increased risk for heart disease and lung cancer among adult non-smokers. The Surgeon General has said that smoke-free workplace policies are the only way to do away with SHS exposure at work. Separating smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating the building cannot prevent exposure if people still smoke inside the building. An extra bonus other than protecting non-smokers is that workplace smoking restrictions may also encourage smokers to smoke less, or even quit.
In public places
Everyone can be exposed to SHS in public places, such as restaurants, shopping centers, public transportation, schools, and daycare centers. The Surgeon General has suggested people choose restaurants and other businesses that are smoke-free, and let owners of businesses that are not smoke-free know that SHS is harmful to your family’s health.
Some businesses seem to be afraid to ban smoking, but there’s no proof that going smoke-free is bad for business. Public places where children go are a special area of concern. Make sure that your children’s day care center or school is smoke-free.
At home
Making your home smoke-free may be one of the most important things you can do for the health of your family. Any family member can develop health problems related to SHS.
Children’s growing bodies are especially sensitive to the poisons in SHS. Asthma, lung infections, and ear infections are more common in children who are around smokers. Some of these problems can be serious and even life-threatening. Others may seem like small problems, but they add up quickly — the expenses, time for doctor visits, medicines, lost school time, and often lost work time for the parent who must stay home with a sick child.
Think about it: we spend more time at home than anywhere else. A smoke-free home protects your family, your guests, and even your pets.
Multi-unit housing where smoking is allowed is a special concern and a subject of research. Tobacco smoke can move through air ducts, wall and floor cracks, elevator shafts, and along crawl spaces to contaminate apartments on other floors, even those that are far from the smoke. SHS cannot be controlled with ventilation, air cleaning, or by separating smokers from non-smokers.
In the car
Americans spend a great deal of time in cars, and if someone smokes there, the poisons can build up quickly. Again, this can be especially harmful to children.
In response to this fact, the US Environmental Protection Agency has been working to encourage people to make their cars, as well as their homes, smoke-free. Some states and cities even have laws that ban smoking in the car if carrying passengers under a certain age or weight. And many facilities such as city buildings, malls, schools, colleges, and hospitals ban smoking on their grounds, including their parking lots.
What about smoking odors?
There is no research in the medical literature as yet that shows cigarette odors cause cancer in people. Research does show that particles from secondhand tobacco smoke can settle into dust and onto surfaces and remain there long after the smoke is gone — some studies suggest the particles can last for months. Researchers call this third-hand smoke or residual tobacco smoke. Studies have shown that the particles that settle out from tobacco smoke can form more cancer-causing compounds.
Though unknown, the cancer-causing effects would likely be small compared with direct exposure to SHS. The compounds may be stirred up and inhaled with other house dust, but may also be absorbed through the skin or accidentally taken in through the mouth. This is why any risk the compounds pose may be larger for babies and children who play on the floor and often put things in their mouths. No actual cancer risk has been measured, but the health risks of thirdhand smoke are an active area of research.
What can be done about secondhand smoke?Local, state, and federal authorities can enact public policies to protect people from SHS and protect children from tobacco-caused diseases and addiction. Because there are no safe levels of SHS, it’s important that any such policies be as strong as possible, and that they do not prevent action at other levels of government.
Many US local and state governments, and even federal governments in some other countries, have decided that protecting the health of employees and others in public places is of the utmost importance. Many have passed clean indoor air laws. Although the laws vary from place to place, they are becoming more common. Detailed information on smoking restrictions in each state is available from the American Lung Association at www.lungusa2.org/slati/.
To learn moreMore from your American Cancer SocietyHere is more information you might find helpful. You also can order free copies of our documents from our toll-free number, 1-800-227-2345, or read them on our Web site, www.cancer.org.
Click: Questions About Smoking, Tobacco, and Health (also in Spanish)
Click: Smoking in the Workplace
Click: Guide to Quitting Smoking (also in Spanish)
Other organizations*Along with the American Cancer Society, other sources of information and support include:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Telephone: 202-272-0167
Toll-free number for smoke-free info: 1-866-766-5337 (1-866-SMOKE-FREE)
Web site: www.epa.gov
- Has advice on how to protect children from SHS, a Smoke-free Homes Pledge, and other tobacco-related materials on the direct Web site, www.epa.gov/smokefree.
Also has specific information on dealing with SHS in apartment buildings athttp://iaq.supportportal.com/link/portal/23002/23007/Article/21526/What-can-I-do-about-secondhand-smoke-coming-from-my-neighbor-s-apartment
Telephone: 1-800-586-4872
Web site: www.lungusa.org
- Printed quit materials are available, some in Spanish; also has details on state-specific tobacco/smoking control laws and policies at www.lungusa2.org/slati/.
Office on Smoking and Health
Toll-free number: 1-800-232-4636 (1-800-CDC-INFO)
Web site: www.cdc.gov/tobacco
- Offers answers to tobacco-related health questions, a lot of information on tobacco and smoking, and tools and resources for taking action against SHS
Toll-free number: 1-800-422-6237 (1-800-4-CANCER)
Web site: www.cancer.gov
Direct tobacco Web site: www.smokefree.gov
- Quitting information is offered, as well as information on smoking by state and information about SHS
No matter who you are, we can help. Contact us anytime, day or night, for information and support. Call us at 1-800-227-2345 or visit www.cancer.org.
STAF, Inc. has a Stop Smoking Program
guaranteed for a lifetime with only a one-time fee
No one else anywhere gives a similar guarantee
Service available nationwide / worldwide with the modern technology
See above - contact STAF, Inc. via an email
____________________________________________________________
Jolie’s Disclosure of Preventive
Mastectomy Highlights Dilemma
Dilemma =A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive
Mastectomy is surgery to remove all breast tissue from a breast as a way to treat or prevent breast cancer
Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has been a vocal critic of the trend toward double mastectomy among women who are not at high genetic risk
However, she hopes the decision by Ms. Jolie will focus women on the value of genetic counseling
and making informed decisions
Click green for further info
One of the defining moments in the history of breast cancer occurred in 1974 when the first lady, Betty Ford, spoke openly about her mastectomy, lifting a veil of secrecy from the disease and ushering in a new era of breast cancer awareness.
Now four decades later, another leading lady — the actress Angelina Jolie — has focused public attention on breast cancer again, but this time with an even bolder message: A woman at genetic risk should feel empowered to remove both breasts as a way to prevent the disease. Ms. Jolie revealed that because she carries a cancer-causing mutation, she has had a double mastectomy.
“She’s the biggest name of all, and I think given her prominence and her visibility not only as a famous person but also a beautiful actress, it’s going to carry a lot of weight for women,” said Barron H. Lerner, a medical historian and the author of “The Breast Cancer Wars.”
Breast cancer experts and advocates applauded the manner in which Ms. Jolie explored her options and made informed decisions, saying it might influence some women with strong family histories of breast cancer to get genetic tests.
But some doctors also expressed worry that her disclosure could be misinterpreted by other women, fueling the trend toward mastectomies that are not medically necessary for many early-stage breast cancers. In recent years, doctors have reported a virtual epidemic of preventive mastectomies among women who have cancer in one breast and decide to remove the healthy one as well, even though they do not have genetic mutations that increase their risk and their odds of a second breast cancer are very low.
Ms. Jolie wrote on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that she had tested positive for a genetic mutation known as BRCA1, which left her with an exceedingly high risk for developing breast and ovarian cancer. Her mother died at 56 after nearly a decade with cancer, though Ms. Jolie did not specify which type. After genetic counseling, Ms. Jolie opted to have both breasts removed and to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Ms. Jolie, 37, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was treated at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., a clinic opened in 2009 by Dr. Kristi Funk, identified on its Web site as a former director of patient education at the breast center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Her condition is rare. Mutations in BRCA1 and another gene called BRCA2 are estimated to cause only 5 percent to 10 percent of breast cancers and 10 percent to 15 percent of ovarian cancers among white women in the United States. The mutations are found in other racial and ethnic groups as well, but it is not known how common they are.
About 30 percent of women who are found to have BRCA mutations choose preventive mastectomies, said Dr. Kenneth Offit, chief of clinical genetics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Those who have seen family members die young from the disease are most likely to opt for the surgery.
“It’s important to make it clear that a BRCA mutation is a special, high-risk situation,” said Dr. Monica Morrow, chief of the breast service at Sloan-Kettering. For women at very high risk, preventive mastectomy makes sense, but few women fall into that category, she said.
For women’s health advocates, the trend toward double mastectomies in women who do not have mutations is frustrating. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s proved that for many patients, lumpectomy was as safe as mastectomy, and the findings were seen as a victory for women.
Even so, there is increasing demand for mastectomy. Dr. Morrow says that she has often tried to talk patients out of it without success. Some imagine their risk of new or recurring cancer to be far higher than it really is. Others think that their breasts will match up better if both are removed and reconstructed.
Ms. Jolie’s decision highlights the painful dilemma facing women with BRCA mutations.
“She is a special case, and you can completely understand why she did it,” said Dr. Susan Love, the author of a best-seller, “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book,” and a breast surgeon. “But what I hope that people realize is that we really don’t have good prevention for breast cancer. When you have to cut off normal body parts to prevent a disease, that’s really pretty barbaric when you think about it.”
Women who carry BRCA mutations have, on average, about a 65 percent risk of eventually developing breast cancer, as opposed to a risk of about 12 percent for most women. For some mutation carriers, the risk may be higher; Ms. Jolie wrote that the estimate for her was 87 percent.
Because the BRCA mutations are rare and the test expensive — about $3,000 — it is not recommended for most women.
But for women with breast cancer who do have mutations, knowing their status can help them make further treatment decisions, like whether to have an unaffected breast or their ovaries removed.
Women who should consider testing are those who have breast cancer before age 50, a family history of both breast and ovarian cancer, or many close relatives with breast cancer, especially if it developed before age 50. Any woman with ovarian cancer should consider being tested, as should Ashkenazi Jewish women with breast or ovarian cancer. Men with breast cancer and their families should also ask about the possibility of a genetic predisposition to the disease.
Because the cancer risks for carriers are so high, women with the mutations are often advised to have their breasts and ovaries removed as a preventive measure. It is generally considered safe to wait long enough to have children before having the ovaries removed, but the operation should be done by age 40, said Dr. Susan M. Domchek, an expert on cancer genetics at the University of Pennsylvania and the executive director of its Basser Research Center, which specializes in BRCA mutations. There is no reliable way to screen for ovarian cancer, and most cases are detected at a relatively late stage, when the disease is harder to treat and more likely to be fatal.
Ms. Jolie said that she herself had a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. “I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex,” she wrote.
Removing the breasts is not the only option, Dr. Domchek said. Some women with BRCA mutations choose close monitoring with mammograms and M.R.I. scans once a year, staggered so that they have one scan or the other every six months. Those tests offer a chance to find cancer early.
For some women, certain drugs can lower the risk of breast cancer, but not as much as preventive mastectomy.
It is also possible for women who are mutation carriers to avoid passing the gene to their children, by undergoing in vitro fertilization and having embryos screened for BRCA genes. Then, only embryos free of mutations can be implanted.
Ms. Jolie’s celebrity and her roles as a mother of six and a movie star who plays strong women, including the swashbuckling archaeologist Lara Croft, may give her decision far-reaching impact.
Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has been a vocal critic of the trend toward double mastectomy among women who are not at high genetic risk. However, she hopes the decision by Ms. Jolie will focus women on the value of genetic counseling and making informed decisions.
“I think there is an important upside to the story, and that is that women will hopefully be more curious about their family history,” Dr. Bedrosian said. “We need to be careful that one message does not apply to all. Angelina’s situation is very unique. People should not be quick to say ‘I should do like she did,’ because you may not be like her.”
Click green for further info
Source: NYT
________________________________________________
Mastectomy Highlights Dilemma
Dilemma =A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive
Mastectomy is surgery to remove all breast tissue from a breast as a way to treat or prevent breast cancer
Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has been a vocal critic of the trend toward double mastectomy among women who are not at high genetic risk
However, she hopes the decision by Ms. Jolie will focus women on the value of genetic counseling
and making informed decisions
Click green for further info
One of the defining moments in the history of breast cancer occurred in 1974 when the first lady, Betty Ford, spoke openly about her mastectomy, lifting a veil of secrecy from the disease and ushering in a new era of breast cancer awareness.
Now four decades later, another leading lady — the actress Angelina Jolie — has focused public attention on breast cancer again, but this time with an even bolder message: A woman at genetic risk should feel empowered to remove both breasts as a way to prevent the disease. Ms. Jolie revealed that because she carries a cancer-causing mutation, she has had a double mastectomy.
“She’s the biggest name of all, and I think given her prominence and her visibility not only as a famous person but also a beautiful actress, it’s going to carry a lot of weight for women,” said Barron H. Lerner, a medical historian and the author of “The Breast Cancer Wars.”
Breast cancer experts and advocates applauded the manner in which Ms. Jolie explored her options and made informed decisions, saying it might influence some women with strong family histories of breast cancer to get genetic tests.
But some doctors also expressed worry that her disclosure could be misinterpreted by other women, fueling the trend toward mastectomies that are not medically necessary for many early-stage breast cancers. In recent years, doctors have reported a virtual epidemic of preventive mastectomies among women who have cancer in one breast and decide to remove the healthy one as well, even though they do not have genetic mutations that increase their risk and their odds of a second breast cancer are very low.
Ms. Jolie wrote on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that she had tested positive for a genetic mutation known as BRCA1, which left her with an exceedingly high risk for developing breast and ovarian cancer. Her mother died at 56 after nearly a decade with cancer, though Ms. Jolie did not specify which type. After genetic counseling, Ms. Jolie opted to have both breasts removed and to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Ms. Jolie, 37, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was treated at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., a clinic opened in 2009 by Dr. Kristi Funk, identified on its Web site as a former director of patient education at the breast center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Her condition is rare. Mutations in BRCA1 and another gene called BRCA2 are estimated to cause only 5 percent to 10 percent of breast cancers and 10 percent to 15 percent of ovarian cancers among white women in the United States. The mutations are found in other racial and ethnic groups as well, but it is not known how common they are.
About 30 percent of women who are found to have BRCA mutations choose preventive mastectomies, said Dr. Kenneth Offit, chief of clinical genetics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Those who have seen family members die young from the disease are most likely to opt for the surgery.
“It’s important to make it clear that a BRCA mutation is a special, high-risk situation,” said Dr. Monica Morrow, chief of the breast service at Sloan-Kettering. For women at very high risk, preventive mastectomy makes sense, but few women fall into that category, she said.
For women’s health advocates, the trend toward double mastectomies in women who do not have mutations is frustrating. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s proved that for many patients, lumpectomy was as safe as mastectomy, and the findings were seen as a victory for women.
Even so, there is increasing demand for mastectomy. Dr. Morrow says that she has often tried to talk patients out of it without success. Some imagine their risk of new or recurring cancer to be far higher than it really is. Others think that their breasts will match up better if both are removed and reconstructed.
Ms. Jolie’s decision highlights the painful dilemma facing women with BRCA mutations.
“She is a special case, and you can completely understand why she did it,” said Dr. Susan Love, the author of a best-seller, “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book,” and a breast surgeon. “But what I hope that people realize is that we really don’t have good prevention for breast cancer. When you have to cut off normal body parts to prevent a disease, that’s really pretty barbaric when you think about it.”
Women who carry BRCA mutations have, on average, about a 65 percent risk of eventually developing breast cancer, as opposed to a risk of about 12 percent for most women. For some mutation carriers, the risk may be higher; Ms. Jolie wrote that the estimate for her was 87 percent.
Because the BRCA mutations are rare and the test expensive — about $3,000 — it is not recommended for most women.
But for women with breast cancer who do have mutations, knowing their status can help them make further treatment decisions, like whether to have an unaffected breast or their ovaries removed.
Women who should consider testing are those who have breast cancer before age 50, a family history of both breast and ovarian cancer, or many close relatives with breast cancer, especially if it developed before age 50. Any woman with ovarian cancer should consider being tested, as should Ashkenazi Jewish women with breast or ovarian cancer. Men with breast cancer and their families should also ask about the possibility of a genetic predisposition to the disease.
Because the cancer risks for carriers are so high, women with the mutations are often advised to have their breasts and ovaries removed as a preventive measure. It is generally considered safe to wait long enough to have children before having the ovaries removed, but the operation should be done by age 40, said Dr. Susan M. Domchek, an expert on cancer genetics at the University of Pennsylvania and the executive director of its Basser Research Center, which specializes in BRCA mutations. There is no reliable way to screen for ovarian cancer, and most cases are detected at a relatively late stage, when the disease is harder to treat and more likely to be fatal.
Ms. Jolie said that she herself had a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. “I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex,” she wrote.
Removing the breasts is not the only option, Dr. Domchek said. Some women with BRCA mutations choose close monitoring with mammograms and M.R.I. scans once a year, staggered so that they have one scan or the other every six months. Those tests offer a chance to find cancer early.
For some women, certain drugs can lower the risk of breast cancer, but not as much as preventive mastectomy.
It is also possible for women who are mutation carriers to avoid passing the gene to their children, by undergoing in vitro fertilization and having embryos screened for BRCA genes. Then, only embryos free of mutations can be implanted.
Ms. Jolie’s celebrity and her roles as a mother of six and a movie star who plays strong women, including the swashbuckling archaeologist Lara Croft, may give her decision far-reaching impact.
Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has been a vocal critic of the trend toward double mastectomy among women who are not at high genetic risk. However, she hopes the decision by Ms. Jolie will focus women on the value of genetic counseling and making informed decisions.
“I think there is an important upside to the story, and that is that women will hopefully be more curious about their family history,” Dr. Bedrosian said. “We need to be careful that one message does not apply to all. Angelina’s situation is very unique. People should not be quick to say ‘I should do like she did,’ because you may not be like her.”
Click green for further info
Source: NYT
________________________________________________
7 Alcohol Myths Debunked
Myths about alcohol are as abundant as the substance itself,
with widely touted rumors on everything from ways to instantly sober up, craftily beat a Breathalyzer test or magically cure a hangover. It can be hard to separate fact from fiction.
While alcohol companies churn out often ads promising rebellion, excitement and sex appeal with your next swig, urban legends circulate on the other extreme, linking alcohol with everything from brain cell damage to beer bellies—even when liquor isn’t the culprit.
Here’s a look at seven common alcohol myths.
1. Myth: Taking an aspirin before drinking will prevent a hangover. Fact: In reality, the opposite is true. Research shows that aspirin actually increases the amount of alcohol that ends up in your system, which makes you get drunk quicker—and stay drunk longer. In addition, mixing aspirin and booze can lead to gastrointestinal bleeding
Drinking after taking acetaminophen, found in Tylenol, can be even worse and may even lead to liver damage—so it’s best to heed the warning labels on the bottles for over-the-counter medications for this one!
8 Superfoods that Help You Heal
2. Myth: Sucking on pennies will trick a Breathalyzer due to the copper in the coins.Fact: People who wish to put themselves and others in harm’s way by driving drunk should know that stuffing a handful of coins in their mouths once they get pulled over will not help them evade responsibility.
The theory is that copper from a penny will absorb ethanol. But even if that were the case, pennies these days have very little copper these days--only 2.5% since 1982, according to the U.S. Mint. And even if you found a stash of old coins, or a magical substance that absorbs alcohol, it still won’t do the trick.
Police officers actually wait fifteen minutes before they have you take the Breathalyzer test, and they’ll also check your mouth to make sure nothing could throw off the results. And the test measures air deep within your lungs—so even if any of these tricks actually had an effect on the air in your mouth, they still wouldn’t trick the Breathalyzer.
3. Myth: Drinking too much will give you a beer belly.Fact: This much is true—drinking beer excessively can certainly lead to weight gain. But the extra pounds won’t necessarily gravitate towards your belt line, according to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Although beer consumption did lead to increased waists circumference—which was closely related to overall weight gain—including bigger hips as well as a wider waistline. And a 2003 study indicated that a big gut has a lot to do with genetics, which can dictate where those extra pounds end up.
23 Diet Plans Reviewed: Do They Work?
4. Myth: Men and women who are the same height can drink the same amount—and get the same results.Fact: Women actually process alcohol much differently than men--even when controlling for size. Men are generally leaner than women, but both genders have roughly the same size liver. This means that women clear more alcohol per unit of lean body mass than men do, releasing it into the bloodstream quicker.
More alcohol in the blood means women get drunk faster, and it also leads to another problem. Women have way less of the enzymes that break down alcohol in their blood, making it nearly impossible to go shot for shot with even their smallest male drinking buddy without getting far more wasted.
5. Myth: Coffee will sober you up if you’re drunk.Fact: Animal research suggests that caffeine might make you more alert, but this alertness doesn’t make your drunken state instantly vanish. A simulated drinking and driving study showed that while caffeine did slightly improve reaction time in addition to increasing alertness, it didn’t completely counteract the effects of alcohol impairment in these caffeinated drunk drivers.
Bottom line, the only thing that can sober you up is time.
6. Myth: Alcohol kills brain cells.Fact: Surprisingly enough, the opposite is true. Alcohol, in moderation, seems to have some positive health effects, including brain benefits.
In fact, a 2005 study of 11,000 older women showed that alcohol can actually improve brain function and lower the risk of mental decline by up to 20 percent. Women who downed one drink a day scored as about 18 months “younger,” on average, on tests of mental skills than the non-drinkers.
However, the key is moderation: one drink a day for women and two for men and has a number of health benefits. Heavy drinking boosts the threat of liver damage, some cancers, and heart problems.
10 Simple Ways to Leave Stress Behind
7. Myth: The best remedy for a hangover is having another drink in the morning.Fact: The hair of the dog that bit you is one of the most pervasive drinking myths. Although having a drink in the morning after a night of partying might delay the symptoms of a hangover, once your blood alcohol content is back down to normal, your symptoms will return—possibly worse, due to the additional alcohol.
Water and time are the only legitimate hangover cures. Water will alleviate dehydration and time will ameliorates the symptoms. Additional alcohol won’t do either. To make things worse, the pattern of drinking in the AM can actually lead to alcohol dependency
______________________________
Prostate Cancer Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment and Analysis Genetic Testing
By
National Cancer Institute
Click green for further info
The purpose of this section is to describe current approaches to assessing and counseling patients about susceptibility to prostate cancer. Genetic counseling for men at increased risk of prostate cancer encompasses all of the elements of genetic counseling for other hereditary cancers. (Refer to the PDQ summary on Cancer Genetics Risk Assessment and Counseling for more information.) The components of genetic counseling include concepts of prostate cancer risk, reinforcing the importance of detailed family history, pedigree analysis to derive age-related risk, and offering participation in research studies to those individuals who have multiple affected family members.[1,2] Genetic testing for prostate cancer susceptibility is not available outside of the context of a research study. Families with prostate cancer can be referred to ongoing research studies; however, these studies will not provide individual genetic results to participants.
Prostate cancer will affect an estimated one in six American men during their lifetime.[3] Currently, evidence exists to support the hypothesis that approximately 5% to 10% of all prostate cancer is due to rare autosomal dominant prostate cancer susceptibility genes.[4,5] The proportion of prostate cancer associated with an inherited susceptibility may be even larger.[6-8] Men are generally considered to be candidates for genetic counseling regarding prostate cancer risk if they have a family history of prostate cancer. The Hopkins Criteria provide a working definition of hereditary prostate cancer families.[9] The three criteria include the following:
Risk Assessment and Analysis
Assessment of a man concerned about his inherited risk of prostate cancer should include taking a detailed family history; eliciting information regarding personal prostate cancer risk factors such as age, race, and dietary intake of fats and dairy products; documenting other medical problems; and evaluating genetics-related psychosocial issues.
Family history documentation is based on construction of a pedigree, and generally includes the following:
Analysis of the family history generally consists of four components:
The personal health and risk-factor history includes, but is not limited to, the following:
The psychosocial assessment in this context might include evaluation of the following:
Genetic Testing
At this time, with the exception of prostate cancer in a family with evidence of hereditary breast/ovarian cancer (HBOC) syndrome, clinical genetic testing to detect inherited prostate cancer predisposition is not available. (Refer to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 section of this summary and the PDQ summary on Genetics of Breast and Ovarian Cancer for more information about prostate cancer in HBOC.) None of the candidate susceptibility genes have been unequivocally associated with prostate cancer predisposition. For families suspected of having an inherited susceptibility to prostate cancer, participation in ongoing research studies investigating the genetic basis of inherited prostate cancer susceptibility can be considered.
Click green for further info
Source: National Cancer Institute
________________________________________________
.
with widely touted rumors on everything from ways to instantly sober up, craftily beat a Breathalyzer test or magically cure a hangover. It can be hard to separate fact from fiction.
While alcohol companies churn out often ads promising rebellion, excitement and sex appeal with your next swig, urban legends circulate on the other extreme, linking alcohol with everything from brain cell damage to beer bellies—even when liquor isn’t the culprit.
Here’s a look at seven common alcohol myths.
1. Myth: Taking an aspirin before drinking will prevent a hangover. Fact: In reality, the opposite is true. Research shows that aspirin actually increases the amount of alcohol that ends up in your system, which makes you get drunk quicker—and stay drunk longer. In addition, mixing aspirin and booze can lead to gastrointestinal bleeding
Drinking after taking acetaminophen, found in Tylenol, can be even worse and may even lead to liver damage—so it’s best to heed the warning labels on the bottles for over-the-counter medications for this one!
8 Superfoods that Help You Heal
2. Myth: Sucking on pennies will trick a Breathalyzer due to the copper in the coins.Fact: People who wish to put themselves and others in harm’s way by driving drunk should know that stuffing a handful of coins in their mouths once they get pulled over will not help them evade responsibility.
The theory is that copper from a penny will absorb ethanol. But even if that were the case, pennies these days have very little copper these days--only 2.5% since 1982, according to the U.S. Mint. And even if you found a stash of old coins, or a magical substance that absorbs alcohol, it still won’t do the trick.
Police officers actually wait fifteen minutes before they have you take the Breathalyzer test, and they’ll also check your mouth to make sure nothing could throw off the results. And the test measures air deep within your lungs—so even if any of these tricks actually had an effect on the air in your mouth, they still wouldn’t trick the Breathalyzer.
3. Myth: Drinking too much will give you a beer belly.Fact: This much is true—drinking beer excessively can certainly lead to weight gain. But the extra pounds won’t necessarily gravitate towards your belt line, according to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Although beer consumption did lead to increased waists circumference—which was closely related to overall weight gain—including bigger hips as well as a wider waistline. And a 2003 study indicated that a big gut has a lot to do with genetics, which can dictate where those extra pounds end up.
23 Diet Plans Reviewed: Do They Work?
4. Myth: Men and women who are the same height can drink the same amount—and get the same results.Fact: Women actually process alcohol much differently than men--even when controlling for size. Men are generally leaner than women, but both genders have roughly the same size liver. This means that women clear more alcohol per unit of lean body mass than men do, releasing it into the bloodstream quicker.
More alcohol in the blood means women get drunk faster, and it also leads to another problem. Women have way less of the enzymes that break down alcohol in their blood, making it nearly impossible to go shot for shot with even their smallest male drinking buddy without getting far more wasted.
5. Myth: Coffee will sober you up if you’re drunk.Fact: Animal research suggests that caffeine might make you more alert, but this alertness doesn’t make your drunken state instantly vanish. A simulated drinking and driving study showed that while caffeine did slightly improve reaction time in addition to increasing alertness, it didn’t completely counteract the effects of alcohol impairment in these caffeinated drunk drivers.
Bottom line, the only thing that can sober you up is time.
6. Myth: Alcohol kills brain cells.Fact: Surprisingly enough, the opposite is true. Alcohol, in moderation, seems to have some positive health effects, including brain benefits.
In fact, a 2005 study of 11,000 older women showed that alcohol can actually improve brain function and lower the risk of mental decline by up to 20 percent. Women who downed one drink a day scored as about 18 months “younger,” on average, on tests of mental skills than the non-drinkers.
However, the key is moderation: one drink a day for women and two for men and has a number of health benefits. Heavy drinking boosts the threat of liver damage, some cancers, and heart problems.
10 Simple Ways to Leave Stress Behind
7. Myth: The best remedy for a hangover is having another drink in the morning.Fact: The hair of the dog that bit you is one of the most pervasive drinking myths. Although having a drink in the morning after a night of partying might delay the symptoms of a hangover, once your blood alcohol content is back down to normal, your symptoms will return—possibly worse, due to the additional alcohol.
Water and time are the only legitimate hangover cures. Water will alleviate dehydration and time will ameliorates the symptoms. Additional alcohol won’t do either. To make things worse, the pattern of drinking in the AM can actually lead to alcohol dependency
______________________________
Prostate Cancer Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment and Analysis Genetic Testing
By
National Cancer Institute
Click green for further info
The purpose of this section is to describe current approaches to assessing and counseling patients about susceptibility to prostate cancer. Genetic counseling for men at increased risk of prostate cancer encompasses all of the elements of genetic counseling for other hereditary cancers. (Refer to the PDQ summary on Cancer Genetics Risk Assessment and Counseling for more information.) The components of genetic counseling include concepts of prostate cancer risk, reinforcing the importance of detailed family history, pedigree analysis to derive age-related risk, and offering participation in research studies to those individuals who have multiple affected family members.[1,2] Genetic testing for prostate cancer susceptibility is not available outside of the context of a research study. Families with prostate cancer can be referred to ongoing research studies; however, these studies will not provide individual genetic results to participants.
Prostate cancer will affect an estimated one in six American men during their lifetime.[3] Currently, evidence exists to support the hypothesis that approximately 5% to 10% of all prostate cancer is due to rare autosomal dominant prostate cancer susceptibility genes.[4,5] The proportion of prostate cancer associated with an inherited susceptibility may be even larger.[6-8] Men are generally considered to be candidates for genetic counseling regarding prostate cancer risk if they have a family history of prostate cancer. The Hopkins Criteria provide a working definition of hereditary prostate cancer families.[9] The three criteria include the following:
- Three or more first-degree relatives (father, brother, son), or
- Three successive generations of either the maternal or paternal lineages, or
- At least two relatives affected at or before age 55 years.
Risk Assessment and Analysis
Assessment of a man concerned about his inherited risk of prostate cancer should include taking a detailed family history; eliciting information regarding personal prostate cancer risk factors such as age, race, and dietary intake of fats and dairy products; documenting other medical problems; and evaluating genetics-related psychosocial issues.
Family history documentation is based on construction of a pedigree, and generally includes the following:
- The history of cancer in both maternal and paternal bloodlines.
- All primary cancer diagnoses (not just prostate cancer) and ages at diagnosis.
- Race and ethnicity.
- Other health problems including benign prostatic hypertrophy.[11]
Analysis of the family history generally consists of four components:
- Evaluation of the pattern of cancers in the family to identify cancer clusters, which might suggest a known inherited cancer syndrome. In addition to site-specific prostate cancer, other cancer susceptibility syndromes include prostate cancer as a component tumor (e.g., hereditary breast/ovarian cancer syndrome [associated with mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2] = breast cancer type 1/2 susceptibility protein) Assessment for genetic transmission. The pedigree should be assessed for evidence of both autosomal dominant and X-linked inheritance, which may be associated with a higher likelihood of an inherited susceptibility to prostate cancer. Autosomal dominant transmission is characterized by the presence of affected family members in sequential generations, with approximately 50% of males in each generation affected with prostate cancer. X-linked inheritance is suggested by apparent transmission of susceptibility from affected males in the maternal lineage. (Refer to the Analysis of the Family History section in the PDQ summary on Cancer Genetics Risk Assessment and Counseling for more information.)
- Age at diagnosis of prostate cancer in the family. An inherited susceptibility to prostate cancer may be likely in families with early-onset (inconsistently defined) prostate cancer.[12] However, genetic research is also underway in families with an older age of prostate cancer onset. In the aggregate, the data are inconsistent relative to whether hereditary prostate cancer is routinely characterized by a younger-than-usual age at diagnosis.
- Risk assessment based on family and epidemiological studies. Multiple studies have reported that first-degree relatives of men affected with prostate cancer are two to three times more likely to develop prostate cancer than are men in the general population. In some studies, the relative risk (RR) of prostate cancer is highest among families who develop prostate cancer at an earlier age, consistent with other cancer susceptibility syndromes in which early age at onset is a common feature. It has been estimated that male relatives of men diagnosed with prostate cancer younger than 53 years have a 40% lifetime cumulative risk of developing prostate cancer.[13] A population-based case-control study of more than 1,500 cases and 1,600 controls, in which Caucasians, African Americans, and Asian Americans were studied, reported an odds ratio of 2.5 for men with an affected first-degree relative after adjusting for age and ethnicity.[14] For men with a brother and father or son affected with prostate cancer, the RR was estimated to be 6.4.
- A number of studies have examined the accuracy of the family history of prostate cancer provided by men with prostate cancer. This has clinical importance when risk assessments are based on unverified family history information. In an Australian study of 154 unaffected men with a family history of prostate cancer, self-reported family history was verified from cancer registry data in 89.6% of cases.[15] Accuracy of age at diagnosis within a 3-year range was correct in 83% of the cases, and accuracy of age at diagnosis within a 5-year range was correct in 93% of the cases. Self-reported family history from men younger than 55 years and reports about first-degree relatives had the highest degree of accuracy.[15] Self-reported family history of prostate cancer, however, may not be reliably reported over time,[16] which underscores the need to verify objectively reported prostate cancer diagnoses when trying to determine whether a patient has a significant family history.
The personal health and risk-factor history includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Family history.
- Age.
- Race.
- Current and past diet history, including fat intake.
- Current and past use of drugs that can affect prostatic growth, such as steroids (e.g., finasteride [Proscar]). (Refer to the PDQ summary on Prostate Cancer Prevention for more information about finasteride and prostate cancer.)
- Current and past use of complementary and alternative medications (e.g., saw palmetto, PC-SPES).[17] (Refer to the PDQ complementary and alternative medicine summary on PC-SPES for more information.)
The psychosocial assessment in this context might include evaluation of the following:
- Level of psychological distress.
- Perceived risk of prostate cancer.
- Past history of depression, anxiety, or other mental illness.
Genetic Testing
At this time, with the exception of prostate cancer in a family with evidence of hereditary breast/ovarian cancer (HBOC) syndrome, clinical genetic testing to detect inherited prostate cancer predisposition is not available. (Refer to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 section of this summary and the PDQ summary on Genetics of Breast and Ovarian Cancer for more information about prostate cancer in HBOC.) None of the candidate susceptibility genes have been unequivocally associated with prostate cancer predisposition. For families suspected of having an inherited susceptibility to prostate cancer, participation in ongoing research studies investigating the genetic basis of inherited prostate cancer susceptibility can be considered.
Click green for further info
Source: National Cancer Institute
________________________________________________
.
Study well and believe the facts - save your health & life
This is your heart on cigarettes
The myth that the effects of cigarette smoking take decades to cause organ damage is far from the truth
"We often see acute plaque ruptures in people in their 30s who have no other risk factor," says Dr. Sameer Sayeed, a cardiologist with ColumbiaDoctors, the physicians and surgeons of Columbia University. "They even go into cardiac arrest. Sometimes we can resuscitate, sometimes we can't."
"From a cardiology perspective, we see the worst effects of smoking," he continues. "The toxins in cigarette smoke erode the artery walls and cause ruptures. If they survive, we can use stents. But if they don't stop smoking, those stents get blocked quickly."
Such is the addictive quality of nicotine that many smokers don't quit until their health has deteriorated to the point of permanent organ damage -- and some continue even after surgery.
"Smokers who make it to their 50s and 60s, that's when we see all the heart's blood vessels damaged -- and it's not fixable by stents," says Dr. Sayeed. "That's when we have to do bypass surgery. Some older smokers who get lung cancer that heals still don't stop smoking. They think, 'I beat it once, I can beat it again.'"
Many smokers often quote an elderly relative or neighbor in their 90s who smoked all their lives and evaded disease, but Dr. Sayeed says that they're a rarity.
"Lung and heart disease doesn't happen to all," he says. "Some people are resistant due to something in their genetics. They are lucky. But they are few."
This article is for your private use, only
______________________________________
Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk
Much important information
U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.
Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.
"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said.
About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.
The research is inThe New England Journal of Medicine, on 1/24/13. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.
The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women.
The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.
Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.
They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.
One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.
A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.
Among the findings:
— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.
—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.
—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.
—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.
—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time.
- Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking.
Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.
—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.
Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.
Scientists have made scant (= not much) progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.
The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.
Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.
Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.
"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.
It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack." *)
*) STAF, Inc. will help you and anyone to stop smoking - Our private services are double guaranteed:
(1) with one-time fee our client will get a lifetime result-guarante. No one anywhere dares giving a similar double guarantee
Online:
American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org
National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung
Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org
Much important information
U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.
Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.
"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said.
About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.
The research is inThe New England Journal of Medicine, on 1/24/13. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.
The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women.
The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.
Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.
They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.
One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.
A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.
Among the findings:
— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.
—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.
—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.
—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.
—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time.
- Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking.
Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.
—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.
Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.
Scientists have made scant (= not much) progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.
The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.
Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.
Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.
"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.
It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack." *)
*) STAF, Inc. will help you and anyone to stop smoking - Our private services are double guaranteed:
(1) with one-time fee our client will get a lifetime result-guarante. No one anywhere dares giving a similar double guarantee
Online:
American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org
National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung
Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org
Reasons to Quit Smoking
If you think no one smokes anymore, think again; 43.8 million Americans are still puffing away on
cigarettes. That’s nearly one in every five adults—but not all of them smoke every day.
In fact, up to about 30 % are “social smokers,” those who indulge in their tobacco cravings occasionally,
often in social situations. Social smokers are not necessarily addicted to nicotine but in smoking.
Click green for further info Up to 30 percent
But even social smokers need to quit, says the (click: American Cancer Society (ACS).
November 15 marks the 37th Great American Smokeout, a day spotlighting the benefits of snuffing out the cigarette habit—including lower blood pressure; better circulation; easier breathing; and reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, and several types of cancer.
Need even more motivation? Puffing even one cigarette a day boosts heart attack risk by 63 percent; smoking 20 cigarettes a day quadruples it. And smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the US. Every year, smoking and exposure to secondhand tobacco fumes kill 443,000 Americans, (click: according to the CDC
(= Center of Disease Control, a Federal Agency).
Click: 11 Top Blogs About Quitting Smoking
Weekend Smokers Beware
For years, weekend smokers may have believed their habit was far less dangerous than smoking “full-time,” but a 2008 University of Georgia (click: study) proved them wrong. Published in the journal Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, it showed that arteries of occasional smokers have impaired blood flow, even when participants hadn’t smoked a cigarette in several days.
More recently, (click: researchers) at Northumbria University, publishing in the 2011 Open Addiction Journal, asked regular smokers, occasional smokers, and nonsmokers to perform a series of memory-related tasks. Not only did the occasional smokers score significantly lower than nonsmokers, researchers also found no difference between the scores of social smokers and those who use tobacco regularly. The message was clear; people who want to stay mentally sharp have to put down their cigarettes for good.
Quit Now, Live Longer
A new Oxford University (click: study) of women and longevity offers solid evidence that quitting early can add years to your life. Researchers examined the lifestyles and smoking habits of 1.2 million women between the ages of 50 to 69. About half of the women had never smoked.
The findings overwhelmingly supported stopping tobacco use. Those who quit smoking before they turned 40 reduced their risk of dying prematurely by 90 percent—and those who quit before age 30 lowered their risk by a stunning 97 percent! A separate study, published in the journal Lancet and also released in the last month, affirmed the Oxford research, concluding that women who quit smoking can lengthen their lives by at least a decade.
Quit Puffing Without Packing On Pounds
One of the most often-cited reasons for continuing to smoke is the fear of gaining weight. A June, 2011 study by the Yale University School of Medicine showed that nicotine reduces eating—and, consequently, helps cut down on body fat—by binding with the brain switches that regulate our satiety. Until a safe drug is discovered that can give us the same feeling of fullness, experts recommend these tips:
- Drink more water to help you feel full and keep your hands and mouth busy. Eight 8-ounce glasses a day are good goal.
- Satisfy oral cravings by taking great care of your teeth. Brush and floss after each meal, then enjoy the clean feeling in your mouth.
- Chew on cinnamon bark. It has no calories and will take care of your need to chew something between meals.
- Keep low-calorie foods handy, especially crunchy fruits and vegetables.
- Take 10-minute exercise breaks; they’ll distract you from your tobacco cravings, help lower your stress and burn extra calories.
High-Tech Help to Kick the Habit
If you’ve decided to join the 3 million Americans who quit every year, you already know about going “cold turkey,” which only works for about 5 percent of smokers. Adding nicotine patches or gum doubles your chance of success to 10 percent—but if you’re ready to try a new tactic, here are some high-tech approaches:
- Laser Acupuncture. In a review published in American Journal of Medicine, 55 percent of people treated with laser acupuncture to stop smoking were still nonsmokers six months later—more than nine times the number who kicked the habit using needle acupuncture.
- Countdown Clock. (click: a free aid) offered by the American Cancer Society, the Smokeout Countdown Clock is a file you download to your computer. After you set a goal date for quitting, the Countdown Clock gives daily tips as the days tick down, plus support during your first month as a nonsmoker.
- Craving Stopper. Cigarette cravings last for just 30 seconds; if you make it that long without lighting up, the crisis is over. The Craving Stopper, another desktop download from ACS, is a fun memory game that distracts you from the craving.
Click: The Best Quit Smoking Apps for iPhone and Android
Smart Phone Apps to Help You Quit
The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health has created stop-smoking apps that could be valuable tools in your arsenal:
- QuitPal is an interactive app that lets you track your daily habits, connect with others trying to quit, set financial goals, offers a menu of proven strategies and motivational reminders, and even helps you create a video diary of your nonsmoking journey, plus watch video messages from friends and family.
- QuitGuide provides info on what to expect when you quit, how to prepare for your nonsmoking life, tips for quitting and how to connect with the online community of others trying to quit.
- Smokefree Teen QuitStart is designed especially for teens trying to give up cigarettes. It helps them identify smoking triggers, track and manage their moods, upload personalized reminders, and connect to a Facebook page of other teens with the same goals.
Click: 7 More Reasons to Quit Smoking (important information)
Click: Up to 30 percent (important information)
Click green for further info
This article is for your private use, only
__________________________________________________________
Woman Dies
After Receiving Smoker's Lungs in Transplant
Click green for further info
Jennifer Wederell, a 27-year-old British woman with cystic fibrosis, died of lung cancer after she received the lungs of a heavy smoker in an organ transplant.
According to BBC News, Wederell had been on the waiting list for a lung transplant for 18 months when in April 2011, she was told there was finally a match. She received the transplant, apparently not knowing the donor had been a smoker. In February 2012 a malignant mass was found in her lungs. She died less than 16 months after the transplant.
Her father, Colin Grannell, said he believed his daughter had died a death meant for someone else. "The shock immediately turned to anger insofar as all the risks were explained in the hour before her transplant," he told the BBC, "and not once was the fact smoker's lungs would be used mentioned."
Donor Dilemma
Wederell's case raises difficult issues regarding organ transplants. She was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a progressive and debilitating lung disease that affects more than 70,000 people worldwide, at the age of two. By her mid-20s, she relied on an oxygen tank 24 hours a day to survive.
Click Here: Should Younger Patients Get Better Kidneys?
Would she have been better off refusing the transplant, and hoping another set of organs became available that matched her blood type and came from a non-smoker?
"Probably not," said Dr. G. Alexander Patterson, surgical director of lung transplants at the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish transplant center in St. Louis, one of the largest organ transplant programs in the nation. "If she was critically ill and had poor chance of short-term survival, she was better off accepting the transplant."
Patterson said most hospitals, including those in the U.S., also transplant the lungs of smokers if they are of otherwise good quality.
"This is a necessity because there are far fewer donors than there are recipients and most patients who are on a waiting list would gladly accept a set of smoker's lungs in exchange for the ones they have, which usually have little chance of carrying them through to long-term survival."
Patterson said that his program would be likely to turn down an organ from a donor if smoking history was too extreme -- say, three packs a day for twenty years -- or if the donor had been known to engage in other risky lifestyle behaviors such as unprotected sex with multiple partners or intravenous drug use. Even those organs might still be used as part of an "extended criteria" donation, which utilizes organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplant, but are still healthy enough for a successful procedure if a patient needs it quickly.
About 17,000 Americans receive a transplant each year, and more than 4,600 die waiting for one, according to United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization charged with allocating the nation's organs. If surgeons do not accept less-than-perfect organs, Patterson said that the numbers might be much worse.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Harefield Hospital in London, where Wederell was treated, has since apologized to her family for not revealing all the information about her donor's medical history. But Patterson said most transplant surgeons don't share details about the smoking history of the donor with their patients unless they are asked directly.
Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City said he believed this was a mistake.
"They absolutely should have told her. When you have reasons to think a donor organ is suboptimal in some way, you must disclose it and allow a person to make their own decision. People have to know the risks they face," Caplan said.
Caplin said he thought surgeons might not review such risks in order to avoid having a difficult conversation -- and they may sometimes also feel they are the experts who know what is best for the patient.
"They should do it anyway. Reasonable people can deal with major sources of risk and are exceedingly unlikely to say no to a donation anyway because waiting lists are long and they know they might not get another donation in time," he said.
Patterson said that he understood why Wederell's family was upset, but that it's impossible to know why she developed cancer. Lung transplant recipients receive a great deal more immunosuppressant therapy (a drug that lowers the body's normal immune response) than other organ recipients to stop the body from rejecting the organ. This may have encouraged the cancer to grow.
"It's plausible that she would have succumbed to some type of cancer no matter what, but there's no way to know for sure," Patterson said.
Click green for further info
_________________________________________________________
After Receiving Smoker's Lungs in Transplant
Click green for further info
Jennifer Wederell, a 27-year-old British woman with cystic fibrosis, died of lung cancer after she received the lungs of a heavy smoker in an organ transplant.
According to BBC News, Wederell had been on the waiting list for a lung transplant for 18 months when in April 2011, she was told there was finally a match. She received the transplant, apparently not knowing the donor had been a smoker. In February 2012 a malignant mass was found in her lungs. She died less than 16 months after the transplant.
Her father, Colin Grannell, said he believed his daughter had died a death meant for someone else. "The shock immediately turned to anger insofar as all the risks were explained in the hour before her transplant," he told the BBC, "and not once was the fact smoker's lungs would be used mentioned."
Donor Dilemma
Wederell's case raises difficult issues regarding organ transplants. She was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a progressive and debilitating lung disease that affects more than 70,000 people worldwide, at the age of two. By her mid-20s, she relied on an oxygen tank 24 hours a day to survive.
Click Here: Should Younger Patients Get Better Kidneys?
Would she have been better off refusing the transplant, and hoping another set of organs became available that matched her blood type and came from a non-smoker?
"Probably not," said Dr. G. Alexander Patterson, surgical director of lung transplants at the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish transplant center in St. Louis, one of the largest organ transplant programs in the nation. "If she was critically ill and had poor chance of short-term survival, she was better off accepting the transplant."
Patterson said most hospitals, including those in the U.S., also transplant the lungs of smokers if they are of otherwise good quality.
"This is a necessity because there are far fewer donors than there are recipients and most patients who are on a waiting list would gladly accept a set of smoker's lungs in exchange for the ones they have, which usually have little chance of carrying them through to long-term survival."
Patterson said that his program would be likely to turn down an organ from a donor if smoking history was too extreme -- say, three packs a day for twenty years -- or if the donor had been known to engage in other risky lifestyle behaviors such as unprotected sex with multiple partners or intravenous drug use. Even those organs might still be used as part of an "extended criteria" donation, which utilizes organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplant, but are still healthy enough for a successful procedure if a patient needs it quickly.
About 17,000 Americans receive a transplant each year, and more than 4,600 die waiting for one, according to United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization charged with allocating the nation's organs. If surgeons do not accept less-than-perfect organs, Patterson said that the numbers might be much worse.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Harefield Hospital in London, where Wederell was treated, has since apologized to her family for not revealing all the information about her donor's medical history. But Patterson said most transplant surgeons don't share details about the smoking history of the donor with their patients unless they are asked directly.
Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City said he believed this was a mistake.
"They absolutely should have told her. When you have reasons to think a donor organ is suboptimal in some way, you must disclose it and allow a person to make their own decision. People have to know the risks they face," Caplan said.
Caplin said he thought surgeons might not review such risks in order to avoid having a difficult conversation -- and they may sometimes also feel they are the experts who know what is best for the patient.
"They should do it anyway. Reasonable people can deal with major sources of risk and are exceedingly unlikely to say no to a donation anyway because waiting lists are long and they know they might not get another donation in time," he said.
Patterson said that he understood why Wederell's family was upset, but that it's impossible to know why she developed cancer. Lung transplant recipients receive a great deal more immunosuppressant therapy (a drug that lowers the body's normal immune response) than other organ recipients to stop the body from rejecting the organ. This may have encouraged the cancer to grow.
"It's plausible that she would have succumbed to some type of cancer no matter what, but there's no way to know for sure," Patterson said.
Click green for further info
_________________________________________________________
Important article - study & apply
20-year Study with 45 K people
Quotation "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President)
Quotation "To stay healthy is to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President)
Low Heart Disease Risk for Vegetarians
Going meatless gives vegetarians a 32 percent lower heart disease risk than non-vegetarians, a British study found, offering further proof that eating meat can be hazardous to health. Processed meat is even more deadly.
The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, involved 44,561 people enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford Study, which began in England and Scotland in 1993. Researchers sought to compare a range of diets and their impact on overall health, and 34 percent of all participants were vegetarians.
"It's a very good study," said Dr. William Abraham, who directs the division of cardiovascular medicine at Ohio State University, noting the large proportion of vegetarians. "It's further evidence that vegetarian diets are associated with a lesser risk of developing ischemic*) heart disease or coronary**) artery disease."
*) ischemic heart disease = due to an abnormality of the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart - Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are known risk factors for ischemic heart disease because they constrict the blood vessels and cut off blood supply to the heart.
**) coronary heart disease = Heart disease is a result of plaque buildup in your coronary arteries -- a condition called atherosclerosis -- that leads to blockages. The arteries, which start out smooth and elastic, become narrow and rigid, restricting blood flow to the heart. The heart becomes starved of oxygen and the vital nutrients it needs to pump properly.
Click green here to read the ABC's of heart health.
He and Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at St. John Providence Health System in Michigan, agreed it's not about what's in the vegetarian diet that makes it so heart healthy - it's about what the vegetarian diet leaves out: saturated fat and sodium.
"Saturated fat is the single greatest dietary factor in the production of cholesterol," McCollough said, adding that people assume dietary cholesterol increases cholesterol levels though it's not true. "Sodium intake is the single greatest dietary determinant of blood pressure." HBP/hbp = high blood pressure
Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are known risk factors for ischemic heart disease because they constrict the blood vessels and cut off blood supply to the heart.
Abraham said he occasionally prescribes a vegetarian diet to patients who have already had heart attacks - but this study might persuade him to prescribe them preventively to patients with heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
McCollough, on the other hand, has never prescribed a vegetarian diet and said limiting sodium and saturated fats can be done by picking the right meats, controlling portion sizes and avoiding what he calls the three s-es: sugars, starches and saturated fats. He said the healthiest protein to eat is fish and the least healthy is beef. Behind fish, beans and nuts are the best way to get protein, he said.
Vegetarianism isn't always the answer because even vegetarians can eat too many sugars, one of the three-s categories, he said. For example, he added, vegetarians eat more cheese than non-vegetarians and, although it has some protein, about 60 percent of cheese is saturated fat.
Other studies have examined how (click green) daily servings of red meat can lead to early death and how processed meat can lead to heart disease and diabetes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2 million heart attacks and stroke a year in the United States, and about 800,000 deaths from heart disease.
Source:
(1) The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(2) European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford Study
______________________________________________________________
20-year Study with 45 K people
Quotation "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President)
Quotation "To stay healthy is to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President)
Low Heart Disease Risk for Vegetarians
Going meatless gives vegetarians a 32 percent lower heart disease risk than non-vegetarians, a British study found, offering further proof that eating meat can be hazardous to health. Processed meat is even more deadly.
The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, involved 44,561 people enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford Study, which began in England and Scotland in 1993. Researchers sought to compare a range of diets and their impact on overall health, and 34 percent of all participants were vegetarians.
"It's a very good study," said Dr. William Abraham, who directs the division of cardiovascular medicine at Ohio State University, noting the large proportion of vegetarians. "It's further evidence that vegetarian diets are associated with a lesser risk of developing ischemic*) heart disease or coronary**) artery disease."
*) ischemic heart disease = due to an abnormality of the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart - Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are known risk factors for ischemic heart disease because they constrict the blood vessels and cut off blood supply to the heart.
**) coronary heart disease = Heart disease is a result of plaque buildup in your coronary arteries -- a condition called atherosclerosis -- that leads to blockages. The arteries, which start out smooth and elastic, become narrow and rigid, restricting blood flow to the heart. The heart becomes starved of oxygen and the vital nutrients it needs to pump properly.
Click green here to read the ABC's of heart health.
He and Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at St. John Providence Health System in Michigan, agreed it's not about what's in the vegetarian diet that makes it so heart healthy - it's about what the vegetarian diet leaves out: saturated fat and sodium.
"Saturated fat is the single greatest dietary factor in the production of cholesterol," McCollough said, adding that people assume dietary cholesterol increases cholesterol levels though it's not true. "Sodium intake is the single greatest dietary determinant of blood pressure." HBP/hbp = high blood pressure
Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are known risk factors for ischemic heart disease because they constrict the blood vessels and cut off blood supply to the heart.
Abraham said he occasionally prescribes a vegetarian diet to patients who have already had heart attacks - but this study might persuade him to prescribe them preventively to patients with heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
McCollough, on the other hand, has never prescribed a vegetarian diet and said limiting sodium and saturated fats can be done by picking the right meats, controlling portion sizes and avoiding what he calls the three s-es: sugars, starches and saturated fats. He said the healthiest protein to eat is fish and the least healthy is beef. Behind fish, beans and nuts are the best way to get protein, he said.
Vegetarianism isn't always the answer because even vegetarians can eat too many sugars, one of the three-s categories, he said. For example, he added, vegetarians eat more cheese than non-vegetarians and, although it has some protein, about 60 percent of cheese is saturated fat.
Other studies have examined how (click green) daily servings of red meat can lead to early death and how processed meat can lead to heart disease and diabetes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2 million heart attacks and stroke a year in the United States, and about 800,000 deaths from heart disease.
Source:
(1) The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(2) European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford Study
______________________________________________________________
The Shot That May Prevents Heart Attacks
Flu shot
Did you know that? Do you believe that? There is some truth to the statement - however, every flu shot has also, always,
potential negative risks. It is not a one-sided clear matter. Thus, be careful. Study this article and decide yourself.
Realize: often the FDA - U.S. Food & Drug Administration does not make correct decisions. Often they are (not supposed to) influenced too much by the drug companies' "power" - a normal human behavioral pattern.
Please notice: STAF, Inc. does NOT endorse any flu shot
This article is provided for science research education
Nov 26, 2012
Click green for further info
If you’re tempted to skip your flu shot, consider this: Getting vaccinated cuts risk for a heart attack or stroke by up to 50 percent, according to two studies presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
Scientists from TIMU Study Group and Network for Innovation in Clinical Research analyzed published clinical trials involving a total of 3,227 patients, half of whom had been diagnosed with heart disease. Participants, whose average age was 60, were randomly assigned to either receive flu vaccine or a placebo shot, then their health was tracked for 12 months.
Those who got the flu shot were 50 percent less likely to suffer major cardiac events (such as heart attacks or strokes) and 40 percent less likely to die of cardiac causes. Similar trends were found in patients with and without previous heart disease. The findings suggest “that flu vaccine is a heart vaccine,” lead study author Jacob Udell told Fox News.
Why do flu shots help prevent heart attacks? To learn more, I talked to Bradley Bale, MD, medical director of the Heart Health Program for Grace Clinic in Lubbock, Texas.
The Secrets to Never Getting Sick
Flu and Heart Attacks Strike in Tandem
A number of studies have shown a link between heart attacks and a prior respiratory infection. A 2010 study of about 78,000 patients age 40 or older found that those who had gotten a flu shot in the previous year were 20 percent less likely to suffer a first heart attack, even when such cardiovascular risks as smoking, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes were taken in account.
Scarier still, researchers report that up to 91,000 Americans a year die from heart attacks and strokes triggered by flu. This grim statistic prompted the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology to issue guidelines recommending vaccination for patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The CDC advises flu shots for everyone over six months of age, but cautions that certain people should check with a medical provider before being immunized.
Sadly, fewer than half of Americans with high-risk conditions like heart disease get the shot, leaving themselves dangerously unprotected against both flu complications and cardiovascular events. In fact, the CDC actually uses heart attack rates to track seasonal flu outbreaks, says Dr. Bale. “They look for areas with a sudden surge in heart attacks and send a team to investigate, because the cause is almost always a spike in flu cases.”
At-Home Remedies that Actually Work
The Inflammation Connection
To picture how flu could ignite a heart attack or stroke in someone with CVD, think of cholesterol plaque as kindling, says Dr. Bale. “Inflammation, which has recently been shown to actually cause heart attacks, is what lights the match, causing plaque to explosively rupture through the arterial wall.”
When a plaque rupture tears the blood vessel lining, the body tries to heal the injury by forming a blood clot. If the clot obstructs a coronary artery, it can trigger a heart attack, while a clot that travels to the brain could ignite an ischemic stroke. It’s a myth that plaque buildup alone sparks heart attacks, since numerous studies have shown that what chokes off flow to the heart is a clot.
“Inflammation is a key player in destabilizing plaque, explaining why some people with relatively little build up in their arteries have heart attacks or stroke, while others with substantial plaque deposits never suffer these events,” says Dr. Bale, who advises all of his patients to get flu shots to guard against inflammation, the body’s response to viral and bacterial infections.
Another surprising benefit of getting a flu shot is reduced risk for pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lungs) and deep vein thrombosis (a clot in the legs).A 2008 study found that the threat of developing these problems dropped by 26 percent overall in participants who had been vaccinated in the previous year, with a 48 percent risk reduction in patients younger than 52.
Common Cold Treatments That Can Make You Sick
Other Vaccines that Reduce Heart Attack Risk
Along with a flu shot, Dr. Bale recommends two other vaccinations to reduce heart attack and stroke risk if you’re 50 or older and have CVD. If you don’t have plaque in your arteries, you should still get these shots, but at an older age, as discussed below:
7 Ways to Treat Psoriasis at Home. Even though there is no cure for psoriasis, many treatments exist to ease the symptoms.
Visit Healthline Today. Find the health and lifestyle information you need for a long life.
Avoid a Migraine Before it Happens. Find out what your weaknesses are to avoid feeling the pain.
7 Signs of ADHD. Learn how to recognize potential ADHD behaviors and know when to get help.
Foods That Boost the Immune System. Feed your immune system the right ingredients to help keep it running in peak condition.
Click green areas for further info
This article is for your private use, only
________________________________________________
Flu shot
Did you know that? Do you believe that? There is some truth to the statement - however, every flu shot has also, always,
potential negative risks. It is not a one-sided clear matter. Thus, be careful. Study this article and decide yourself.
Realize: often the FDA - U.S. Food & Drug Administration does not make correct decisions. Often they are (not supposed to) influenced too much by the drug companies' "power" - a normal human behavioral pattern.
Please notice: STAF, Inc. does NOT endorse any flu shot
This article is provided for science research education
Nov 26, 2012
Click green for further info
If you’re tempted to skip your flu shot, consider this: Getting vaccinated cuts risk for a heart attack or stroke by up to 50 percent, according to two studies presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.
Scientists from TIMU Study Group and Network for Innovation in Clinical Research analyzed published clinical trials involving a total of 3,227 patients, half of whom had been diagnosed with heart disease. Participants, whose average age was 60, were randomly assigned to either receive flu vaccine or a placebo shot, then their health was tracked for 12 months.
Those who got the flu shot were 50 percent less likely to suffer major cardiac events (such as heart attacks or strokes) and 40 percent less likely to die of cardiac causes. Similar trends were found in patients with and without previous heart disease. The findings suggest “that flu vaccine is a heart vaccine,” lead study author Jacob Udell told Fox News.
Why do flu shots help prevent heart attacks? To learn more, I talked to Bradley Bale, MD, medical director of the Heart Health Program for Grace Clinic in Lubbock, Texas.
The Secrets to Never Getting Sick
Flu and Heart Attacks Strike in Tandem
A number of studies have shown a link between heart attacks and a prior respiratory infection. A 2010 study of about 78,000 patients age 40 or older found that those who had gotten a flu shot in the previous year were 20 percent less likely to suffer a first heart attack, even when such cardiovascular risks as smoking, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes were taken in account.
Scarier still, researchers report that up to 91,000 Americans a year die from heart attacks and strokes triggered by flu. This grim statistic prompted the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology to issue guidelines recommending vaccination for patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The CDC advises flu shots for everyone over six months of age, but cautions that certain people should check with a medical provider before being immunized.
Sadly, fewer than half of Americans with high-risk conditions like heart disease get the shot, leaving themselves dangerously unprotected against both flu complications and cardiovascular events. In fact, the CDC actually uses heart attack rates to track seasonal flu outbreaks, says Dr. Bale. “They look for areas with a sudden surge in heart attacks and send a team to investigate, because the cause is almost always a spike in flu cases.”
At-Home Remedies that Actually Work
The Inflammation Connection
To picture how flu could ignite a heart attack or stroke in someone with CVD, think of cholesterol plaque as kindling, says Dr. Bale. “Inflammation, which has recently been shown to actually cause heart attacks, is what lights the match, causing plaque to explosively rupture through the arterial wall.”
When a plaque rupture tears the blood vessel lining, the body tries to heal the injury by forming a blood clot. If the clot obstructs a coronary artery, it can trigger a heart attack, while a clot that travels to the brain could ignite an ischemic stroke. It’s a myth that plaque buildup alone sparks heart attacks, since numerous studies have shown that what chokes off flow to the heart is a clot.
“Inflammation is a key player in destabilizing plaque, explaining why some people with relatively little build up in their arteries have heart attacks or stroke, while others with substantial plaque deposits never suffer these events,” says Dr. Bale, who advises all of his patients to get flu shots to guard against inflammation, the body’s response to viral and bacterial infections.
Another surprising benefit of getting a flu shot is reduced risk for pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lungs) and deep vein thrombosis (a clot in the legs).A 2008 study found that the threat of developing these problems dropped by 26 percent overall in participants who had been vaccinated in the previous year, with a 48 percent risk reduction in patients younger than 52.
Common Cold Treatments That Can Make You Sick
Other Vaccines that Reduce Heart Attack Risk
Along with a flu shot, Dr. Bale recommends two other vaccinations to reduce heart attack and stroke risk if you’re 50 or older and have CVD. If you don’t have plaque in your arteries, you should still get these shots, but at an older age, as discussed below:
- The herpes zoster vaccination against shingles. This shot protects against reactivation of the chickenpox virus almost everyone was exposed to during childhood. The virus, which lies dormant in nerve cells, can flare up, typically in older people, and cause a blistering skin rash that can lead to chronic nerve pain. Two large studies report that people who develop shingles are at up to four times higher risk for stroke, highlighting the value of vaccination. While shingles usually targets people who are 60 or older, about 20 percent of cases occur in people ages 50 to 59, which is why Dr. Bale advises being vaccinated at 50 if you have CVD. The CDC recommends the shot for everyone who is 65 or older, and people who are 19 or older and smoke or have asthma.
- Vaccination against pneumococcal pneumonia. If you’re 65 or older—or younger with risk factors for pneumonia—such as heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease, or diabetes—the CDC advises being immunized against pneumococcal pneumonia. A study of more than 84,000 people found that those who had been vaccinated were at lower risk for both heart attack and stroke. Given these benefits, Dr. Bale advises heart patients to be immunized at 50.
7 Ways to Treat Psoriasis at Home. Even though there is no cure for psoriasis, many treatments exist to ease the symptoms.
Visit Healthline Today. Find the health and lifestyle information you need for a long life.
Avoid a Migraine Before it Happens. Find out what your weaknesses are to avoid feeling the pain.
7 Signs of ADHD. Learn how to recognize potential ADHD behaviors and know when to get help.
Foods That Boost the Immune System. Feed your immune system the right ingredients to help keep it running in peak condition.
Click green areas for further info
This article is for your private use, only
________________________________________________
Article 1 of 2
Parental Study Shows Rise in Autism Spectrum
Date: March 20, 2013
Click green for further info
The likelihood of a school-aged American child receiving a diagnosis of autism, Asperger syndrome or a related developmental disorder increased 72 percent in 2011-12 from 2007, according to an analysis of a phone survey of parents released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Asperger syndrome is often considered a high functioning form of autism. It can lead to difficulty interacting socially, repeat behaviors, and clumsiness. (see article 2 below - Asperger Syndrome)
According to experts not involved in the report, the increase coincided with a period of soaring awareness of autism spectrum disorders among clinicians and schools, as well as parents.
The report emphasized that while the numbers changed from 1 in 86 children, ages 6 to 17, having received a diagnosis in a 2007 parent survey, to 1 in 50 children in the current report, most of the increase was because of previously undiagnosed cases.
“Our findings suggest that the increase in prevalence is due to improved recognition of autism spectrum disorders,” said Stephen J. Blumberg, a senior scientist with the centers’ National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the study, “as opposed to children with newly developed risks for them.”
Parents in the newer survey who reported that their children had received a diagnosis between 2008 and 2012 were far more likely to report that the diagnosis had been characterized as “mild” than parents who received the diagnosis earlier.
“We in the field don’t have a standard set of definitions about what is mild and severe yet,” said Dr. Susan L. Hyman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Yet this survey allows parents to determine whether they see their child as mild or severe.”
In keeping with earlier studies about autism spectrum disorders, the new report reflected gender disparities. In the new study, 1 in 31 boys had received a diagnosis, up from 1 in 56 boys in 2007. By contrast, 1 in 143 girls received a diagnosis, according to the latest report; in 2007, 1 in 204 girls received a diagnosis.
The rise in diagnoses was also generally greater among 14- to 17-year-olds, underscoring the likelihood that these were previously unrecognized cases.
Nonetheless, with parents describing 1 in 50 children as having significant social or other challenges, the new data “tells us the real numbers of children needing help to experience social and academic success,” said Deborah A. Fein, a co-author of a forthcoming study in Pediatrics about a widely used screening tool for autism in toddlers. “We need to find ways of funding and providing help to these children,” Dr. Fein, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, said in an e-mail.
Experts also reacted cautiously to the new report because of its methodology, in which researchers randomly dialed landlines and cellphone numbers, interviewing parents.
By contrast, a study released last year by the C.D.C.’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network looked directly at school behavioral assessments and clinical reports of children who were 8 years old in 2008 and applied a standard checklist of criteria for the diagnoses. While that study found a 78 percent increase in autism spectrum disorders from 2002 to 2008, it said the likelihood of a child receiving such a diagnosis was 1 in 88.
Because the methodologies were so different, as well as the age range of the children themselves, it was difficult, experts said, to draw conclusions about prevalence or diagnoses, not least because clinicians themselves use different assessment tools. A diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder can change as a child grows older.
Dr. Catherine Lord, director for the Center for Autism and Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell and Columbia, who was not involved in the C.D.C. study, said, “We can’t dismiss this report, but we can’t interpret it to mean that more people have a diagnosis. It means that more families are thinking of this as a possibility and maybe more professionals are bringing it up.”
According to experts not involved in the report, the increase coincided with a period of soaring awareness of autism spectrum disorders among clinicians and schools, as well as parents.
The report emphasized that while the numbers changed from 1 in 86 children, ages 6 to 17, having received a diagnosis in a 2007 parent survey, to 1 in 50 children in the current report, most of the increase was because of previously undiagnosed cases.
“Our findings suggest that the increase in prevalence is due to improved recognition of autism spectrum disorders,” said Stephen J. Blumberg, a senior scientist with the centers’ National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the study, “as opposed to children with newly developed risks for them.”
Parents in the newer survey who reported that their children had received a diagnosis between 2008 and 2012 were far more likely to report that the diagnosis had been characterized as “mild” than parents who received the diagnosis earlier.
“We in the field don’t have a standard set of definitions about what is mild and severe yet,” said Dr. Susan L. Hyman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Yet this survey allows parents to determine whether they see their child as mild or severe.”
In keeping with earlier studies about autism spectrum disorders, the new report reflected gender disparities. In the new study, 1 in 31 boys had received a diagnosis, up from 1 in 56 boys in 2007. By contrast, 1 in 143 girls received a diagnosis, according to the latest report; in 2007, 1 in 204 girls received a diagnosis.
The rise in diagnoses was also generally greater among 14- to 17-year-olds, underscoring the likelihood that these were previously unrecognized cases.
Nonetheless, with parents describing 1 in 50 children as having significant social or other challenges, the new data “tells us the real numbers of children needing help to experience social and academic success,” said Deborah A. Fein, a co-author of a forthcoming study in Pediatrics about a widely used screening tool for autism in toddlers. “We need to find ways of funding and providing help to these children,” Dr. Fein, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, said in an e-mail.
Experts also reacted cautiously to the new report because of its methodology, in which researchers randomly dialed landlines and cellphone numbers, interviewing parents.
By contrast, a study released last year by the C.D.C.’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network looked directly at school behavioral assessments and clinical reports of children who were 8 years old in 2008 and applied a standard checklist of criteria for the diagnoses. While that study found a 78 percent increase in autism spectrum disorders from 2002 to 2008, it said the likelihood of a child receiving such a diagnosis was 1 in 88.
Because the methodologies were so different, as well as the age range of the children themselves, it was difficult, experts said, to draw conclusions about prevalence or diagnoses, not least because clinicians themselves use different assessment tools. A diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder can change as a child grows older.
Dr. Catherine Lord, director for the Center for Autism and Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell and Columbia, who was not involved in the C.D.C. study, said, “We can’t dismiss this report, but we can’t interpret it to mean that more people have a diagnosis. It means that more families are thinking of this as a possibility and maybe more professionals are bringing it up.”
Click or search the internet with the title
Pediatrics Group Backs Gay Marriage, Saying It Helps Children
Source: NYT
___________
Mayo Clinic's Links to Autism:
- Autism - MayoClinic.com
www.mayoclinic.com/health/autism/DS00348
Autism — Comprehensive overview covers symptoms, causes, treatment of autism and parenting a child with autism.
Symptoms
Children with autism generally have problems in three crucial ...
Tests and diagnosis
Because autism varies widely in severity, making a diagnosis ...
Causes
Autism has no single, known cause. Given the complexity of ...
Coping and support
Coping and support. By Mayo Clinic staff. Raising a child with ...
Treatments and drugs
No cure exists for autism, and there is no one-size-fits-all ...
Risk factors
Risk factors. By Mayo Clinic staff. Autism affects children of all ...
More results from mayoclinic.com »
Autism treatment
Article 2 of 2
Asperger Syndrome
Asperger syndrome is often considered a high functioning form of autism. It can lead to difficulty interacting socially, repeat behaviors, and clumsiness.
Alternative Names
Pervasive developmental disorder - Asperger syndrome; Autistic spectrum disorder - Asperger
Causes
Hans Asperger labeled this disorder "autistic psychopathy" in 1944. The exact cause is unknown. More than likely, an abnormality in the brain is the cause of Asperger syndrome.
Genetic factors may play a role, since the disorder tends to run in families. A specific gene has not been identified.
Asperger syndrome is a pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main difference between Asperge rsyndrome and autistic disorder is that children with Asperger syndrome do not have speech or cognitive delays.
The condition appears to be more common in boys than in girls.
Although people with Asperger syndrome often have difficulty socially, many have above-average intelligence. They may excel in fields such as computer programming and science. There is no delay in their cognitive development, ability to take care of themselves, or curiosity about their environment.
Symptoms
People with Asperger syndrome become over-focused or obsessed on a single object or topic, ignoring all others. They want to know everything about this topic, and often talk about little else.
Exams and Tests
A health care provider experienced in diagnosing and treating autism is usually needed to make the actual diagnosis. Because there is no physical test for Asperger syndrome, the diagnosis will often be based on very specific criteria from a certain medical handbook.
Most doctors look for a core group of behaviors to help them diagnose Asperger syndrome. These behaviors include:
Physical, emotional, and mental tests are done to rule out other causes and look more closely for signs of this syndrome. The team that will see your child may include a psychologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, speech therapist, and other professionals who are experts in diagnosing children with Asperger syndrome.
Treatment
There is no single best treatment for all children with Asperger syndrome. Most experts feel that the earlier treatment is started, the better.
Programs for children with Asperger syndrome teach skills by building on a series of simple steps, using highly structured activities. Important tasks or points are repeated over time to help reinforce certain behaviors.
Types of programs may include:
Outlook (Prognosis)
With treatment, many children and their families can learn to cope with the problems of Asperger syndrome. Social interaction and personal relationships may still pose a problem. However, many adults with Asperger syndrome work successfully in mainstream jobs and are able to have an independent life, if they have the right kind of support available.
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Call for an appointment with your health care provider if your child:
References
Bostic JQ, Prince JB. Child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. In: Stern TA, Rosenbaum JF, Fava M, Biederman J, Rauch SL, eds.Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry . 1st ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Mosby Elsevier;2008:chap 69.
Raviola G, Gosselin GJ, Walter HJ, DeMaso DR. Pervasive developmental disorders and childhood psychosis. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics . 19th ed.Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 28
_________________________________________________
Asperger Syndrome
Asperger syndrome is often considered a high functioning form of autism. It can lead to difficulty interacting socially, repeat behaviors, and clumsiness.
Alternative Names
Pervasive developmental disorder - Asperger syndrome; Autistic spectrum disorder - Asperger
Causes
Hans Asperger labeled this disorder "autistic psychopathy" in 1944. The exact cause is unknown. More than likely, an abnormality in the brain is the cause of Asperger syndrome.
Genetic factors may play a role, since the disorder tends to run in families. A specific gene has not been identified.
Asperger syndrome is a pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main difference between Asperge rsyndrome and autistic disorder is that children with Asperger syndrome do not have speech or cognitive delays.
The condition appears to be more common in boys than in girls.
Although people with Asperger syndrome often have difficulty socially, many have above-average intelligence. They may excel in fields such as computer programming and science. There is no delay in their cognitive development, ability to take care of themselves, or curiosity about their environment.
Symptoms
People with Asperger syndrome become over-focused or obsessed on a single object or topic, ignoring all others. They want to know everything about this topic, and often talk about little else.
- Children with Asperger syndrome will present many facts about their subject of interest, but there will seem to be no point or conclusion.
- They often do not recognize that the other person has lost interest in the topic.
- Areas of interest may be quite narrow, such as an obsession with train schedules, phone books, a vacuum cleaner, or collections of objects.
- Their body language may be unusual.
- They may speak in a monotone, and may not respond to other people's comments or emotions.
- They may not understand sarcasm or humor, or they may take a figure of speech literally.
- They do not recognize the need to change the volume of their voice in different settings.
- They have problems with eye contact, facial expressions, body postures, or gestures (nonverbal communication).
- They may be singled out by other children as "weird" or "strange."
- Are unable to respond emotionally in normal social interactions
- Are not flexible about routines or rituals
- Have difficulty showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people
- Do not express pleasure at other people's happiness
- Delays in being able to ride a bicycle, catch a ball, or climb play equipment
- Clumsiness when walking or doing other activities
- Repetitive finger flapping, twisting, or whole body movements
Exams and Tests
A health care provider experienced in diagnosing and treating autism is usually needed to make the actual diagnosis. Because there is no physical test for Asperger syndrome, the diagnosis will often be based on very specific criteria from a certain medical handbook.
Most doctors look for a core group of behaviors to help them diagnose Asperger syndrome. These behaviors include:
- Abnormal eye contact
- Aloofness (= distance: indifference by personal withdrawal; "emotional distance")
- Failure to turn when called by name
- Failure to use gestures to point or show
- Lack of interactive play
- Lack of interest in peers
Physical, emotional, and mental tests are done to rule out other causes and look more closely for signs of this syndrome. The team that will see your child may include a psychologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, speech therapist, and other professionals who are experts in diagnosing children with Asperger syndrome.
Treatment
There is no single best treatment for all children with Asperger syndrome. Most experts feel that the earlier treatment is started, the better.
Programs for children with Asperger syndrome teach skills by building on a series of simple steps, using highly structured activities. Important tasks or points are repeated over time to help reinforce certain behaviors.
Types of programs may include:
- Cognitive behavior or talk therapy, to help children manage their emotions, repetitive behaviors, and obsessions
- Parent training, to teach techniques that can be used at home
- Physical or occupational therapy, to help with motor skills and sensory problems
- Social skills training, often taught in a group
- Speech and language therapy, to help with the skill of everyday conversation
Outlook (Prognosis)
With treatment, many children and their families can learn to cope with the problems of Asperger syndrome. Social interaction and personal relationships may still pose a problem. However, many adults with Asperger syndrome work successfully in mainstream jobs and are able to have an independent life, if they have the right kind of support available.
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Call for an appointment with your health care provider if your child:
- Does not respond to people
- Has odd or peculiar speech
- Has behavior that may lead to self-harm
References
Bostic JQ, Prince JB. Child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. In: Stern TA, Rosenbaum JF, Fava M, Biederman J, Rauch SL, eds.Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry . 1st ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Mosby Elsevier;2008:chap 69.
Raviola G, Gosselin GJ, Walter HJ, DeMaso DR. Pervasive developmental disorders and childhood psychosis. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics . 19th ed.Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 28
_________________________________________________
Good information for your good health
Drink Too Much? Affects your sleep?
Test These Sleep Tips
You already know that while falling asleep after an evening of celebratory margaritas is a piece of cake, you can kiss those sweet dreams goodbye. And science proves it. According to new research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, drinking anywhere from low, moderate, or high amounts helps people sleep soundly for the first half of the night but during the second half, slumber is fitful and time spent in R.E.M. (that restorative phase of sleep when people dream) is decreased. R.E.M.*) = Rapid Eye Movements - necessary for health. Also, growth hormone is building during sleep & R.E.M. sleep. Adult need the growth hormone for their health maintenance. Babies sleep close 20 24 h, toddlers over 12 hours, teenagers should sleep 9 - 11 hours (but the modern technology is hurting their sleep time).
Do NOT keep TV or any electronics in your bedroom - same with children (if your home space allows) - they radiate health-challenging waves.
Most American adults and in mostly worldwide in the developed countries do not get enough sleep. Our sleep is restorative, gives us new growth hormone and strengthens our nervous system and brain power. An adult need to sleep 6 - 8 hours - most do not. Change your sleeping habits for your better, healthier, wealthier, longer life.
Good to know about the alcohol effects for your important sleep for the next time you hit the town, but what if you've already consumed alcohol and are desperate for some shut eye? Here are some tips for sleeping through the night:
Plan ahead: While at the bar, limit your number of drinks as the evening winds down. "What makes people wake up during the night is the alcohol leaving their bloodstream," says Lisa Shivers, M.D., a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "But if you lengthen the time between your last drink and bedtime, you're likely to wake up much earlier in the night when you're more exhausted and can easily fall back asleep."
Drink water: "One of the major effects of alcohol is dehydration which can disrupt sleep," says Shivers. So when you get home, chug a few glasses of H2O, but not too much that you'll wake up frequently to urinate.
Nix the sleep aids: It may be tempting to pop Tylenol PM, but don't. "Both alcohol and sleep aids suppress your central nervous system," says Shivers. "If you mix more than one substance with a sedating effect, it could depress your drive to breathe and lead to suffocation."
Curl up in the fetal position: People who sleep on their backs tend to develop sleep apnea**), a dangerous disorder that involves pauses in breathing. "But even if you don't have sleep apnea and you drink heavily, you could develop it," says Shivers. "So after drinking, sleep on your side." Plus, if you suddenly become ill during the night, you're less likely to choke if you're positioned on your side.
Go to bed "dirty" when you have been drinking: It's an old wives tale that people sober up when they take a cold shower. "You'll only wake yourself up, not diminish the effects of alcohol," says Shivers. In addition, even though you have not been drinking. A glass of wine or a a bottler of beer is not "drinking" - it is enjoying your life. Avoid stronger liqueur in the evening. It may be better to have the shower in the morning, hot/warm or cold. On the other hand, warm shower in the evening may be relaxing to the muscles & mind - may help you sleep like a baby.
*) Rapid eye movement - R.E.M. sleep - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Rapid_eye_movement_sleep - Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) is a normal stage of sleep characterized by the rapid and random movement of the eyes. REM sleep is classified into ...
Physiology - Theories about the function(s ... - REM sleep in animals
**) Sleep apnea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_apnea
Sleep apnoea is a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing or instances of abnormally low breathing, during sleep. Each pause in ...Obstructive - Snoring - Didgeridoo - Polysomnography
Source: Journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
_______________________________________________
Drink Too Much? Affects your sleep?
Test These Sleep Tips
You already know that while falling asleep after an evening of celebratory margaritas is a piece of cake, you can kiss those sweet dreams goodbye. And science proves it. According to new research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, drinking anywhere from low, moderate, or high amounts helps people sleep soundly for the first half of the night but during the second half, slumber is fitful and time spent in R.E.M. (that restorative phase of sleep when people dream) is decreased. R.E.M.*) = Rapid Eye Movements - necessary for health. Also, growth hormone is building during sleep & R.E.M. sleep. Adult need the growth hormone for their health maintenance. Babies sleep close 20 24 h, toddlers over 12 hours, teenagers should sleep 9 - 11 hours (but the modern technology is hurting their sleep time).
Do NOT keep TV or any electronics in your bedroom - same with children (if your home space allows) - they radiate health-challenging waves.
Most American adults and in mostly worldwide in the developed countries do not get enough sleep. Our sleep is restorative, gives us new growth hormone and strengthens our nervous system and brain power. An adult need to sleep 6 - 8 hours - most do not. Change your sleeping habits for your better, healthier, wealthier, longer life.
Good to know about the alcohol effects for your important sleep for the next time you hit the town, but what if you've already consumed alcohol and are desperate for some shut eye? Here are some tips for sleeping through the night:
Plan ahead: While at the bar, limit your number of drinks as the evening winds down. "What makes people wake up during the night is the alcohol leaving their bloodstream," says Lisa Shivers, M.D., a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "But if you lengthen the time between your last drink and bedtime, you're likely to wake up much earlier in the night when you're more exhausted and can easily fall back asleep."
Drink water: "One of the major effects of alcohol is dehydration which can disrupt sleep," says Shivers. So when you get home, chug a few glasses of H2O, but not too much that you'll wake up frequently to urinate.
Nix the sleep aids: It may be tempting to pop Tylenol PM, but don't. "Both alcohol and sleep aids suppress your central nervous system," says Shivers. "If you mix more than one substance with a sedating effect, it could depress your drive to breathe and lead to suffocation."
Curl up in the fetal position: People who sleep on their backs tend to develop sleep apnea**), a dangerous disorder that involves pauses in breathing. "But even if you don't have sleep apnea and you drink heavily, you could develop it," says Shivers. "So after drinking, sleep on your side." Plus, if you suddenly become ill during the night, you're less likely to choke if you're positioned on your side.
Go to bed "dirty" when you have been drinking: It's an old wives tale that people sober up when they take a cold shower. "You'll only wake yourself up, not diminish the effects of alcohol," says Shivers. In addition, even though you have not been drinking. A glass of wine or a a bottler of beer is not "drinking" - it is enjoying your life. Avoid stronger liqueur in the evening. It may be better to have the shower in the morning, hot/warm or cold. On the other hand, warm shower in the evening may be relaxing to the muscles & mind - may help you sleep like a baby.
*) Rapid eye movement - R.E.M. sleep - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Rapid_eye_movement_sleep - Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) is a normal stage of sleep characterized by the rapid and random movement of the eyes. REM sleep is classified into ...
Physiology - Theories about the function(s ... - REM sleep in animals
**) Sleep apnea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_apnea
Sleep apnoea is a sleep disorder characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing or instances of abnormally low breathing, during sleep. Each pause in ...Obstructive - Snoring - Didgeridoo - Polysomnography
Source: Journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
_______________________________________________
Too many Americans still drink too much: study shows
That still means:
(1) the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men, and one for women
(2) And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day
On any given day in the U.S.:
(1) 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal dietary guidelines recommend, according to a new study that also finds:
(2) 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged "heavy" drinkers.
That still means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men, and one for women.
"And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day.
But the fact remains that it is a significant public health problem that many people do drink in excess," said Patricia Guenther, the lead study author and a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
Guenther said members of the committee that drafted the current USDA guidelines on alcohol consumption wanted to know how many adults exceeded the limits.
She and her colleagues collected data from a nationally representative survey on health and nutrition, which included about 5,400 adults over age 21. Among other things, each was asked how much alcohol they drank the previous day.
The researchers found that 64 percent of men and 79 percent of women said they drank no alcohol at all that day, and another 18 percent of men and 10 percent of women drank within the recommended amounts.
Nine percent of men said they had three to four drinks the day before and 8 percent of women said they drank two to three alcoholic beverages, the researchers report in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
The heaviest drinkers of all were the 8 percent of men who had five or more drinks, and 3 percent of women who had four or more.
"Overall the study confirms that rates of unhealthy alcohol use in the U.S. are significant," saidJennifer Mertens, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, who was not involved in the study.
Regularly drinking more than recommended levels "is linked to increased alcohol-related problems," Mertens wrote in an email to Reuters Health.
"Binge drinking (more than four drinks on any one day for men and more than three on any one day for women and older adults) even one time can increase the risk of injury from falls, motor vehicle accidents, and other accidents," she added.
Among men, the 31-to-50-year-old age group had the most heavy drinkers - 22 percent. Among women, the heaviest drinkers - 12 percent - were between 51 and 70 years old.
Guenther said that's important to note because it highlights that heavy drinking is not just part of life among the college-age set.
"People need to be aware that there are people of all ages who drink to excess," she told Reuters Health.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed advisory group, urges health care providers to screen all adults for risky drinking behaviors (see Reuters Health story of September 24, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/Vz4Fpp).
Guenther said her team's study is also important in that it may help people recognize whether they themselves are drinking more than recommended.
"There are people who don't realize that they are drinking more than what's beneficial to their health," she said.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion
___________________________________________________________
That still means:
(1) the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men, and one for women
(2) And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day
On any given day in the U.S.:
(1) 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal dietary guidelines recommend, according to a new study that also finds:
(2) 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged "heavy" drinkers.
That still means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men, and one for women.
"And in fact, most adults don't drink at all on any given day.
But the fact remains that it is a significant public health problem that many people do drink in excess," said Patricia Guenther, the lead study author and a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
Guenther said members of the committee that drafted the current USDA guidelines on alcohol consumption wanted to know how many adults exceeded the limits.
She and her colleagues collected data from a nationally representative survey on health and nutrition, which included about 5,400 adults over age 21. Among other things, each was asked how much alcohol they drank the previous day.
The researchers found that 64 percent of men and 79 percent of women said they drank no alcohol at all that day, and another 18 percent of men and 10 percent of women drank within the recommended amounts.
Nine percent of men said they had three to four drinks the day before and 8 percent of women said they drank two to three alcoholic beverages, the researchers report in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
The heaviest drinkers of all were the 8 percent of men who had five or more drinks, and 3 percent of women who had four or more.
"Overall the study confirms that rates of unhealthy alcohol use in the U.S. are significant," saidJennifer Mertens, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, who was not involved in the study.
Regularly drinking more than recommended levels "is linked to increased alcohol-related problems," Mertens wrote in an email to Reuters Health.
"Binge drinking (more than four drinks on any one day for men and more than three on any one day for women and older adults) even one time can increase the risk of injury from falls, motor vehicle accidents, and other accidents," she added.
Among men, the 31-to-50-year-old age group had the most heavy drinkers - 22 percent. Among women, the heaviest drinkers - 12 percent - were between 51 and 70 years old.
Guenther said that's important to note because it highlights that heavy drinking is not just part of life among the college-age set.
"People need to be aware that there are people of all ages who drink to excess," she told Reuters Health.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed advisory group, urges health care providers to screen all adults for risky drinking behaviors (see Reuters Health story of September 24, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/Vz4Fpp).
Guenther said her team's study is also important in that it may help people recognize whether they themselves are drinking more than recommended.
"There are people who don't realize that they are drinking more than what's beneficial to their health," she said.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion
___________________________________________________________
Yearly U.S. death numbers caused by drunk driving
We need to stop blaming the tools and start blaming the fools
Drunk drivers accounted for
10,228 traffic deaths last year
That's 31% of traffic deaths due to drunk drivers
Traffic deaths due to drunk drivers have increased 52% since 1982.
Now, last year, there were there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms. So drunk drivers kill almost as many people as murderers and more people than guns do.
32,310 traffic deaths, 12,664 murders.
10,228 killed by drunks, 8,583 killed by guns.
According to MADD (= mothers against drunk driving) *) , one person is injured every minute of every day by a drunk driver in this country.* That amounts to 60 people every hour, 1,440 people a day, 10,080 people a week and 524,160 people a year. And those statistics do not include the people who died from their accident injuries.
All of the numbers are higher for cars and drunks than for guns and murderers, and yet we're not banning cars.
Also, Gun Crimes have gone down everywhere that Concealed Carry Laws have permitted Law Abiding American Citizens to carry concealed carry firearms.
You see, drunk drivers, like other criminals, don't care about the law. They don't abide by the law.
So, you have to have "Uninsured Motorist" coverage because of all the drunks driving without a license, registration or insurance.
They DON'T CARE what the law is. They BREAK the law and drive drunk anyway. They KILL people daily with those cars.
And yet, we don't have background checks for cars. We don't talk about banning cars. You see, it's not the CAR, it's the DRUNK DRIVING CRIMINAL who is the problem.
It's the same with guns. CRIMINALS DON'T CARE about the Law. It's not the gun, just like it's not the car. It's THE CRIMINAL that's the problem, not the gun.
We Americans have the right to carry gun for our own protection - the 2nd constitutional amendment states so.
Click green:
MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving
www.madd.org/
The mission of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime and prevent underage drinking.
See the next article below for further info
_____________________________________
We need to stop blaming the tools and start blaming the fools
Drunk drivers accounted for
10,228 traffic deaths last year
That's 31% of traffic deaths due to drunk drivers
Traffic deaths due to drunk drivers have increased 52% since 1982.
Now, last year, there were there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms. So drunk drivers kill almost as many people as murderers and more people than guns do.
32,310 traffic deaths, 12,664 murders.
10,228 killed by drunks, 8,583 killed by guns.
According to MADD (= mothers against drunk driving) *) , one person is injured every minute of every day by a drunk driver in this country.* That amounts to 60 people every hour, 1,440 people a day, 10,080 people a week and 524,160 people a year. And those statistics do not include the people who died from their accident injuries.
All of the numbers are higher for cars and drunks than for guns and murderers, and yet we're not banning cars.
Also, Gun Crimes have gone down everywhere that Concealed Carry Laws have permitted Law Abiding American Citizens to carry concealed carry firearms.
You see, drunk drivers, like other criminals, don't care about the law. They don't abide by the law.
So, you have to have "Uninsured Motorist" coverage because of all the drunks driving without a license, registration or insurance.
They DON'T CARE what the law is. They BREAK the law and drive drunk anyway. They KILL people daily with those cars.
And yet, we don't have background checks for cars. We don't talk about banning cars. You see, it's not the CAR, it's the DRUNK DRIVING CRIMINAL who is the problem.
It's the same with guns. CRIMINALS DON'T CARE about the Law. It's not the gun, just like it's not the car. It's THE CRIMINAL that's the problem, not the gun.
We Americans have the right to carry gun for our own protection - the 2nd constitutional amendment states so.
Click green:
MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving
www.madd.org/
The mission of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime and prevent underage drinking.
See the next article below for further info
_____________________________________
See also the article above
Here below is an example of STAF, Inc.'s responses to any related article on the internet
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
"Why someone is capable of doing so horrible as the recent mass shootings?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Practically all mass shooters have two things in common: (1) they are victims of a divorce & (2) they are all males.
A growing boy needs especially his father's continuous presence and guidance, more so than his mother's. The moral in our marriages has gone close to a zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love & healthy attention - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being. The young mass killers suffer from the Broken Marriage Syndrome™.
In a family separation & divorce both spouses will experience (1) health challenges leading to a shorter life span and
(2) to added financial difficulties. Any traditionally done marriage can be healed. Giving up as the first solution is not reasonable for anyone. A separation and a divorce are serious child abuse.
Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - the most important listed here: (1) overall increased risks to health & welfare; (2) 5 times more likely to commit suicide; (3) 32 times more likely to run away; (4) 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders; (5) 14 times more likely to commit rape; (6) 9 times more likely to drop out of school; (7) 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs; (8) 20 times more likely to end up in prison; (9) increased learning difficulties; (10) increased risk of divorce when grown; (11) increased out of wedlock pregnancies; (12) Latest discovery by the researchers: highly increased risk of having a stroke during his/her life time.
In the CT case all these above reasons were present. The mass shooter Adam Lanza hated his mother (killed her first) because she had initiated the divorce and took his father away.
He hated his father because (as any child would wrongly feel) Adam believed his father did not love him any longer and had abandoned him. The article above says "it is not known why Adam hated his father". Any child specialist would know this reason. The article also clearly points out that autism is not the reason for a violent behavior. But uncontrolled jealousy and denied love are - some of the reasons for Adam's behavior. E.g., in many cultures (not that it is right) going after the other lover was widely (and still is) admired and even permitted.
The long-term solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. In the U.S. marriage happiness & child raising education for every family & every teenager in our schools (and colleges) is fully missing today but is present in most other developed countries in their school curricula.
In a happy home with both parents present the children grow up healthy - no Broken Marriage Syndrome™ and no reason to go to punish the world by killing everyone around.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a fully new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency, and to be named its first federal director. New legislation and training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
Visit STAF,Inc.'s extensive websites. To find the correct website, use STAF, Inc.'s Radio Show title "DrDrCanYouHelpMe" in the internet search. Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
______________________________________________________
Here below is an example of STAF, Inc.'s responses to any related article on the internet
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
"Why someone is capable of doing so horrible as the recent mass shootings?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Practically all mass shooters have two things in common: (1) they are victims of a divorce & (2) they are all males.
A growing boy needs especially his father's continuous presence and guidance, more so than his mother's. The moral in our marriages has gone close to a zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love & healthy attention - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being. The young mass killers suffer from the Broken Marriage Syndrome™.
In a family separation & divorce both spouses will experience (1) health challenges leading to a shorter life span and
(2) to added financial difficulties. Any traditionally done marriage can be healed. Giving up as the first solution is not reasonable for anyone. A separation and a divorce are serious child abuse.
Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - the most important listed here: (1) overall increased risks to health & welfare; (2) 5 times more likely to commit suicide; (3) 32 times more likely to run away; (4) 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders; (5) 14 times more likely to commit rape; (6) 9 times more likely to drop out of school; (7) 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs; (8) 20 times more likely to end up in prison; (9) increased learning difficulties; (10) increased risk of divorce when grown; (11) increased out of wedlock pregnancies; (12) Latest discovery by the researchers: highly increased risk of having a stroke during his/her life time.
In the CT case all these above reasons were present. The mass shooter Adam Lanza hated his mother (killed her first) because she had initiated the divorce and took his father away.
He hated his father because (as any child would wrongly feel) Adam believed his father did not love him any longer and had abandoned him. The article above says "it is not known why Adam hated his father". Any child specialist would know this reason. The article also clearly points out that autism is not the reason for a violent behavior. But uncontrolled jealousy and denied love are - some of the reasons for Adam's behavior. E.g., in many cultures (not that it is right) going after the other lover was widely (and still is) admired and even permitted.
The long-term solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. In the U.S. marriage happiness & child raising education for every family & every teenager in our schools (and colleges) is fully missing today but is present in most other developed countries in their school curricula.
In a happy home with both parents present the children grow up healthy - no Broken Marriage Syndrome™ and no reason to go to punish the world by killing everyone around.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a fully new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency, and to be named its first federal director. New legislation and training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
Visit STAF,Inc.'s extensive websites. To find the correct website, use STAF, Inc.'s Radio Show title "DrDrCanYouHelpMe" in the internet search. Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
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Poker Is America
Games People Play
Let’s start by getting this straight: poker is about money. If you took the money out of it, I wouldn’t play. But even when I lose, I’ve had a good time. I love playing poker as an escape from the world I usually live in, and I especially love playing at Hollywood Casino in Charles Town, W.Va., where you can find me about two afternoons a week.
A poker table is America the way that television commercials portray it but it seldom is. A normal table of 10 at Charles Town has at least two or three Asians, one or two blacks, maybe a Latino, another one or two players who hail from some other part of the world, and maybe four or five plain-vanilla whites like me. Age is distributed from young guns in their 20s who raise relentlessly to geezers like me who are too tight and passive.
The occupational and income mix is so random that we might as well have been drawn out of a hat. On a typical table a few weeks ago, I had a retired Army colonel across from me sandwiched between the owner of a Vietnamese restaurant and a farmworker who weighed north of 250, tattoos covering both arms. I had too much sense to ask what the player on my right with the big diamond earring, radiating street cred, does for a living. On my left was a matronly woman who runs a construction firm with her husband. At a table nearby was a top White House official from a previous administration.
Occasionally you’ll sit at a silent table, but more often there’s conversation about sports, families, girlfriends, boyfriends and poker — almost never about politics, thankfully.
If you’re a regular, you know the dealer, who has dealt to you for many hours over the months, and probably already have a friendly acquaintance with two or three of the players. The conversation is not only good-natured but carefully polite. “Sir” is used more often at a poker table than anywhere outside a military base. For example, when your opponent has made an incredibly dumb call but ended up winning the pot, poker etiquette dictates that you say, preferably with a mildly inquiring tone, “How could you call that raise, sir?”
Poker is mannerly in other ways. To gloat over winning a big pot or complain about losing one is equally bad form. When you’ve won by getting lucky, it is appropriate to acknowledge your luck to the person you beat. “That was really sick” is a useful formulation.
Poker tables are pure meritocracies. The pecking order of respect at Charles Town is determined by how good you are at the game. Other players may like you personally, but if you’re a bad player you’re a bad player, and nothing about your status in the outside world makes any difference. For readers with high-powered degrees and high-powered jobs, let me suggest that nothing will do more to keep your feet on the ground than to start playing poker in a public casino. Poker is a game of incomplete information involving complex intellectual tasks, self-discipline and the courage to take properly calculated risks. When you are outthought and outplayed not just once, but regularly, by a skinny 28-year-old wearing a football jersey and with his baseball cap on backward, it is hard to condescend to him because he doesn’t wear grown-up clothes and never went to college. It will also do you good to be in the deference-free zone that is a poker room — as in recently, when I was cashing out and the woman in the cashier’s cage, noting my stack of chips with the patterns on the edges carefully aligned, said confidentially, “Your O.C.D. is showing, baby doll.”
Apart from putting overeducated elitist snobs in their place, the dealers and players at Charles Town could give lessons to the rest of the country about making the melting pot work. In the year and a half I’ve played there, I have not experienced a moment of tension arising from anything involving race, class or gender. I’m not saying such moments never occur, but they’ve never occurred around me. Better than that, it has been as if those issues don’t exist.
I guess there was one exception, though it didn’t involve any tension. I was at a table where the four players to my immediate left and right were ethnically Croatian, Afghan, Korean and Indian. All four had apparently grown up in the United States, judging from their perfect colloquial English. The conversation turned to children, and I revealed that my daughter was engaged to an Italian — a real Italian, living in Bologna. A silence ensued. Then the Afghan asked earnestly, “Do you trust him?” The others murmured that they wondered the same thing. I was in the midst of a bunch of American guys being solicitous of one of their own and dubious about foreigners. And I said to myself, is this a great country or what.
Last year I published a book called “Coming Apart,” lamenting that America’s new upper class is segregated from, and ignorant of, life in ordinary America. I got a lot of criticism for not recommending any policies that would fix the problem. O.K., now I’ve got one: Don’t just make poker legal. Make it mandatory.
Continue reading “Games People Play”: (click green title to read) Tennis: Love-Love by James Atlas, Solitaire: Me vs. Me by Francine Prose, Ping-Pong: Head Game by Pico Iyer and Frisbee: Ultimate Sport by Jason Lucero.
Source: NYT & Charles A. Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of “Coming Apart.”
MORE IN OPINION (1 OF 25 ARTICLES) Rape on the Reservation Read More »
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This article is to honor a good product that sells worldwide and adds to the economy in the State of Kentucky
Maker's Mark to restore alcohol content of whiskey
Maker's Mark reverses decision to cut amount of alcohol
in whiskey, restores historic level
Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world's bourbon supply
There are 4.9 million bourbon barrels aging in Kentucky, which outnumbers the state's population
Production of Maker's Mark started in 1954, after its originator, T. William "Bill" Samuels Sr., purchased the distillery
known as "Burks' Distillery" in Loretto, Kentucky for $35,000.
Today: Two famous products: (1) Maker's Mark, (2) Jim Beam (click green)
Click: Maker's Mark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker's Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to
cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.
Rob Samuels, Maker's Mark's chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.
"We've been tremendously humbled over the last week or so," Samuels, grandson of the brand's founder, said of customers' reactions.
The brand known for its square bottles sealed in red wax has struggled to keep up with demand. Distribution has been squeezed, and the brand had to curtail shipments to some overseas markets.
In a tweet Sunday, the company said to its followers: "You spoke. We listened."
Fans of the whiskey applauded the move and questioned why the company moved to change in the first place.
"Some things you just got to leave alone," Todd Matthews, 42, of Livingston, Tenn., said.
Company officials said much customer feedback came from Twitter and Facebook. On those sites, comments on Sunday's change of course ranged from angry to celebratory to self-congratulatory. The statement on Maker's Mark's Facebook page drew more than 14,000 "likes" and 2,200 comments within two hours of Sunday's announcement.
The change in recipe started with a shortage of the bourbon amid an ongoing expansion of the company's operations that cost tens of millions of dollars.
Maker's Mark Chairman Emeritus Bill Samuels, the founder's son, said the company focused almost exclusively on not altering the taste of the bourbon while stretching the available product and didn't consider the emotional attachment that customers have to the brand and its composition.
Bill Samuels said the company tinkered with how much water to add and keep the taste the same for about three months before making the announcement about the change Monday. It marked the first time the bourbon brand, more than a half-century old, had altered its proof or alcohol volume.
"Our focus was on the supply problem. That led to us focusing on a solution," Bill Samuels said. "We got it totally wrong."
Both Bill and Rob Samuels said customer reaction was immediate. Company officials heard from "thousands and thousands of consumers" that a bourbon shortage was preferable to a change in how the spirits were made, Bill Samuels said.
"They would rather put up with the occasional supply shortage than put up with any change in their hand-made bourbon," Rob Samuels said.
The change in alcohol volume called for the recipe and process to stay the same, except for a "touch more water" to be added when the whiskey comes out of the barrel for bottling, Rob Samuels said.
When production restarts Monday, those plans are off the table, Bill Samuels said.
"We really made this decision after an enormous amount of thought, and we focused on the wrong things," Bill Samuels said.
Maker's Mark is owned by spirits company Beam Inc., based in Deerfield, Ill. Its other brands include Jim Beam bourbon.
Maker's is made at a distillery near the small town of Loretto, 45 miles south of Louisville.
Its bourbon ages in barrels for at least six summers and no longer than seven years before bottling.
The supply shortage at Maker's comes amid growing demand for Kentucky bourbons in general.
Combined Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey sales from producers or suppliers to wholesalers rose 5.2 percent to 16.9 million cases last year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, a national trade association that released figures last week. Revenue shot up 7.3 percent to $2.2 billion, it said. Premium brands, generally made in smaller batches with heftier prices, led sales and revenue gains.
Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world's bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers' Association. There are 4.9 million bourbon barrels aging in Kentucky, which outnumbers the state's population.
Source: Kentucky Distillers' Association
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California Winery Ages Wine in Ocean
The wine is expected to sell between $130-150 per bottle
A winery is aging it's wine where no U.S. bottle has gone before: at the bottom of the ocean.
Mira Winery, based in the Napa Valley, will drop four cases of 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon off the coast of the Charleston, S.C., harbor in specially-designed cages today.
"It was born of the fact that we saw that some European wineries had experiments with both aging wine and storing wine in the ocean which we found interesting," Jim Dyke, president of Mira Winery told ABC News.
Dyke said that no American winery had aged wine like this before. Despite the Napa grapes, the company's roots are in South Carolina and this influenced what ocean they chose.
"We're interested in establishing a process for maybe a larger quantity for a larger length of time going forward," said Dyke. This time, the wine will be aged for three months.
The winemakers took into account four factors when designing the cages that would hold the wine: aging, light, pressure, temperature.
A steel-exterior case was created that would allow a diver access to the wine to remove a single bottle, as well as allow the ocean to be in the cage and really surround the wine.
"What we think is that we might be scratching the surface of 'aquoir,' elements of ocean and weather that age the wine," said Dyke, noting that the temperature in the warehouse was exactly the same as the current temperature of the ocean.
After the wine is taken out of the ocean, chemical tests of the wine will be performed. A number of wine enthusiasts and sommeliers tasted the wine and will do a comparison when the wine has finished aging.
Alice Feiring, wine expert and author of the Feiring Line newsletter, described the ocean-aging process as "more of a curiosity, perhaps is more effort than it can be worth."
No matter the aging process, the cuvée, or blend, always differs in taste.
"There is always some difference in the cuvées*), which would make sense as there's different pressure exerted on the bottle. Perhaps they are 'fresher,' as they are raised in a more complete darkness? But you will always have a difference in taste which varies because of storage conditions, " she said.
Created in 2012 by grape-grower Larry Hyde and wine-maker Gustavo Gonzalez, Mira Winery distributes to restaurants in California, South Carolina and Washington D.C. Gonzalez is one of about 40 winemakers to have ever made a 100-point wine.
The wine is expected to sell between $130-150 per bottle.
*) A type, blend, or batch of wine, esp. champagne
Click: Cuvée - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuvée
Cuvée (French pronunciation: [kyve]) is a French wine term derived from cuve, meaning vat or tank. The term cuvée is used with several different meanings, ...
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Inmates Sue Beer, Wine Cos. for $1 Billion
Five Idaho inmates are blaming alcohol for the crimes that put them in prison and are suing some of the nation's top liquor and wine companies for $1 billion.
Keith Allen Brown, Steven Thompson, Woodrow Grant, Cory Baugh and Jeremy Brown all claim that alcohol led them to their crimes and they should have been warned of the beverages' addictive nature.
"If I was not an alcoholic, the shooting would never have happened," Jeremy Brown said in his affidavit. Brown, 34, is serving a 20- to 30-year sentence for a 2001 shooting that seriously injured a man.
The plaintiffs' crimes range from manslaughter to grand theft. They are currently serving time at Idaho's Kuna facility.
Their lawsuit, filed in Boise's U.S. District Court last month, targets eight defendants, including Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Miller Brewing and the owner of Jim Beam whiskey, American Brands. The inmates claim the companies are responsible for their crimes and should have put warning labels on their products.
"I have spent a great deal of that time in prison because of situations that have arose because of people being drunk, or because of situations in which alcohol played a major role," Jeremy Brown said in his affidavit. "At no time in my life, prior to me becoming an alcoholic, was I ever informed that alcohol was habit forming and addictive."
Keith Brown is serving a 15-year prison sentence after shooting a man to death five years ago. Baugh and Thompson are both serving 3 to 7-years for grand theft and drug convictions. And Grant is serving up to 7-years for drug and aggravated battery convictions.
All five men share the same story about booze.
"I fear the day I am released from prison," Grant, 27, said in his affidavit. "I do not know if I can be a productive member of society and still control the desires and craving to use alcohol."
The inmates do not have an attorney, but Boise attorney Joe Filicetti told ABC News affiliate KIVI that alcohol addiction and its side effects are pretty common knowledge.
"If you put these guys through depositions and you ask them 'What do you know about alcohol?' I think it's pretty common knowledge that it's addictive," Filicetti told KIVI. "It's well known to be addictive. It's well known to be something that causes you to reduce your inhibitions and to do things you otherwise wouldn't do."
The beer and wine companies have not responded to ABC News for comment.
Comments from the public:
(1) Can I sue the Beer company for all those ugly women I have woken up next to?
(2) There are plenty of alcoholics that don't commit crimes.
(3) Two of these men have drug convictions. Why don't they sue their drug dealer.
(4) Another frivilous lawsuit - again we entertain the ridiculous and the absurd ... how about those companies get together and sue these five upstanding gentlemen for slandering their businesses????? What next; will we get inmates suing their victims for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and... More
(5) Sue your parents. If they had practiced safe sex you wouldn't be in jail either
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Violent, Drunk and Holding a Gun
Multiple mass shootings by deranged young men have made keeping firearms out of the hands of mentally ill people a big part of the gun debate.
Given the enormity of those crimes, that is understandable. Federal law does, in fact, prohibit gun ownership by mentally ill people if a judge has found them to be dangerous or they have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. President Obama has also initiated executive actions to ensure that federal background checks include complete information on people barred from owning guns for mental health reasons and to clarify that federal law allows health care providers to report patients’ credible threats of violence to the authorities.
But a focus on mass murder, while critical, does not get at the broader issue of gun violence, including the hundreds of single-victim murders, suicides, nonfatal shootings and other gun crimes that occur daily in the United States. And focusing on the mentally ill, most of whom are not violent, overlooks people who are at demonstrably increased risk of committing violent crimes but are not barred by federal law from buying and having guns.
These would include people who have been convicted of violent misdemeanors including assaults, and those who are alcohol abusers. Unless guns are also kept from these high-risk people, preventable gun violence will continue.
VIOLENT MISDEMEANORS Federal law prohibits felons from buying and possessing firearms; it also bars people convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. But it permits gun purchase and ownership by people convicted of other violent misdemeanors, defined variously under state laws, including assault and battery, brandishing a weapon or making open, credible threats of violence. Many people convicted of violent misdemeanors were originally charged with felonies but then convicted of lesser charges because of plea bargains. And research shows that people who have been convicted of any misdemeanors and who then legally buy a handgun are more likely to commit crimes after that gun purchase than buyers with no prior convictions.
California provides a case study. It changed its law in 1991 to prohibit individuals convicted of violent misdemeanors from buying guns for 10 years after the conviction. Before that, a study showed that gun buyers with even a single prior misdemeanor conviction were nearly five times as likely as those with no criminal history to be arrested for gun-related or other violent crimes. After the law was enacted, a significant decrease in arrests was attributed to the denial of gun sales to people with misdemeanor records.
ALCOHOL ABUSE Federal law prohibits the purchase and possession of guns by anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” But the statute ignores alcohol abuse. That is also a mistake. The evidence linking alcohol abuse and gun-related violence is compelling. One study found that subjects who had ever been in trouble at work for drinking or were ever hospitalized for alcohol abuse were at increased risk of committing homicide and suicide.
Other studies also suggest that alcohol abuse is a factor in the association between gun ownership and the criminal justice system. The difficulty in policing alcohol abuse for purposes of gun control is that there is no precise definition of abuse. Pennsylvania, however, provides a useful example. It bars gun purchases by those who have been convicted of three or more drunken driving offenses within a five-year period. That criterion identifies drinkers with demonstrated tendencies toward recklessness and lawbreaking.
President Obama has instructed the Justice Department to review the federal prohibitions on gun ownership and to make legislative and executive recommendations “to ensure dangerous people aren’t slipping through the cracks.” The answers are already out there.
Source: NYT, 2/24/13 Editorials
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The Price of Public Violence
Date: February 23, 2013
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EVERY year, the Chicago Police Department issues a report with the macabre title “Chicago Murder Analysis.” It’s a short but eye-opening document. Do the calculations and you realize that in the past 15 years, 8,083 people have been killed, most of them in a concentrated part of the city. There’s one particularly startling revelation that gets little notice: in 2011, more than four-fifths of all murders happened in a public place, a park, an alleyway, on the street, in a restaurant or at a gas station.
When Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old public school student and band majorette who just a week earlier had performed at President Obama’s inauguration, was killed on Jan. 29, she was standing under an awning in a park with a dozen friends. They all saw or heard it when she was shot in the back. One of them, in fact, was wounded by the gunfire. Which brings me to what’s not in the “Chicago Murder Analysis”: Over the past 15 years, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, an estimated 36,000 people were shot and wounded. It’s a staggering number.
We report on the killers and the killed, but we ignore those who have been wounded or who have witnessed the shootings. What is the effect on individuals — especially kids — who have been privy to the violence in our cities’ streets?
I ask this somewhat rhetorically because in many ways we know the answer. We’ve seen what exposure to the brutality of war does to combat veterans. It can lead to outbursts of rage, an inability to sleep, flashbacks, a profound sense of being alone, a growing distrust of everyone around you, a heightened state of vigilance, a debilitating sense of guilt. In an interview I heard recently on the radio, the novelist and Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien talked about how the atrocities and nastiness of battle get in your bones. The same can be said for kids growing up in Hadiya’s neighborhood.
The ugliness and inexplicability of the violence in our cities comes to define you and everyone around you. With just one act of violence, the ground shifts beneath you, your knees buckle and all you can do is try the best you can to maintain your balance. But it’s hard.
For a two-part series on “This American Life,” I spent five months beginning in August with two social workers at Harper High School in Englewood, an impoverished neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The previous school year, Harper had lost eight current and former students to gun violence — and 21 others were shot and wounded.
On the first day of school, when I met the social workers, Crystal Winfield Smith and Anita Stewart, they were dragging, unsure whether they could make it through another school year. Just two months earlier, in June, a 16-year-old sophomore, Shakaki Asphy, whom they had been very close to, was gunned down while standing on the porch of an abandoned building talking with a friend. That friend, Thomas, had already witnessed a number of other shootings, including one at age 10 when, at a party, the birthday girl, who was also 10, was hit by a stray bullet.
I sat in the social workers’ office when Thomas told Ms. Stewart and Ms. Winfield Smith that he wanted to hurt someone. At first I thought it was tough guy talk, but then I realized he was trying — the best he could — to be honest about some feelings he had, feelings that scared him. “You’ve got kids walking around who just are on guard with everything and everyone,” Ms. Winfield Smith told me. “It’s almost like you don’t have a moment to rest.”
Harper’s school psychologist, Elizabeth Stranzl, told me of one 16-year-old boy whose friend was gunned down in front of him, in the morning on the way to school. The boy, who had been doing well at school, began to drift. When walking through the neighborhood he’d have hallucinations, imagining that he was seeing his dead friend, imagining ways that he might have protected him. He became disconnected from friends and from school. His affect became flattened. “You could see the transformation,” Ms. Stranzl said. “He was present, but he wasn’t. He just felt defeated.” She worried he was getting more active in the streets.
In December, the Department of Justice released a little-noticed report that suggested that children exposed to community violence might turn to violence themselves as “a source of power, prestige, security, or even belongingness.” The report went on to recommend that these children should be treated by professionals. At Hadiya Pendleton’s school, the principal said that over the Christmas holidays two students were shot and injured. If their experiences were at all typical, they were undoubtedly treated at a hospital emergency room and then released without any referral for counseling.
In Philadelphia, there’s a remarkable, albeit small, program, Healing Hurt People, a collaboration of Drexel University’s College of Medicine and School of Public Health, which scours two emergency rooms in the city for young men and teens who have been shot and pulls them in for counseling. When the program’s founder, Ted Corbin, was an emergency room doctor in Washington, D.C., he saw how shooting victims were treated and then sent back out on the streets, where, if they didn’t do injury to themselves, they’d most likely injure someone else. “If you don’t peel back some of the layers,” Mr. Corbin told me, “you don’t know how to stop that recycling of people.”
AS Dr. Corbin and his colleagues began to work with shooting victims in Philadelphia, they saw clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. I visited the program last summer and met one young man who had night terrors so real that his girlfriend feared for her safety. Another young man told me that whenever he passes the spot where he was shot, he thinks he sees himself on the ground writhing in pain, and he approaches the specter to assure himself that he’ll be O.K. Another who was shot and paralyzed in an argument over a pair of sunglasses said that whenever he thinks about revenge or gets angry, which is often, he has incapacitating phantom pains in his legs. Two of the young men I spoke to had attempted suicide. Virtually all spoke of feeling alone, of not trusting anyone. And all admitted to drinking or smoking marijuana to keep the memories at bay, though, as they often discovered, the effect could be just the opposite.
Dr. Corbin told me that the young men he and his colleagues encounter hesitate to share their experiences because they fear they’ll be blamed. He also told me of a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the hand in a case of mistaken identity. At school, no adult asked what had happened to him, and he didn’t want to tell any of his teachers because he felt ashamed. He felt that they’d think he’d done something to deserve it. “We try to let them know they’re not crazy for feeling these things,” Dr. Corbin told me.
The violence also profoundly affects those working on the front lines, like Harper’s social workers. Not long ago, Anita Stewart told me that she has a recurring dream about Shakaki, the young girl who was murdered last June, in which she grapples with how to tell Shakaki that she’s been killed. After Ms. Stewart told me about this dream, she said, more to herself than to me, “No, you need to accept it, she’s dead.”
As Tim O’Brien says, it gets in your bones. In the wake of Hadiya Pendleton’s shooting, we’ve talked about stiffer gun control laws, about better policing, about providing mentoring and after-school programs, all of which are essential. But missing from this conversation is any acknowledgment that the violence eats away at one’s soul — whether you’re a direct victim, a witness or, like Anita Stewart, simply a friend of the deceased. Most suffer silently. By themselves. Somewhere along the way, we need to focus on those left behind in our cities whose very character and sense of future have been altered by what they’ve experienced on the streets.
Alex Kotlowitz is a writer in residence at Northwestern University and the author of “There Are No Children Here.”
Op-Ed Contributor: Rape on the Reservation
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Source: NYT
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Are We in Danger of a Beer Monopoly?
Date: February 26, 2013
Every day, the Web site BeerPulse tries to list every single new beer available in the United States. And that’s harder than you might imagine. Recently, the site posted Cigar City’s Jamonera Belgian-style Porter, Odell Tree Shaker Imperial Peach IPA, as well as a rye lager, a cherry blossom lager and a barley wine. And the list goes on, and on. In 1978, there were 89 breweries in the United States; at the beginning of this year, there were 2,336, with an average of one new brewery per day. Most of them are tiny, but a handful, like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada, have become large national brands. At the same time, sales of Budweiser in the United States have dropped for 25 consecutive years.
So I was surprised to learn that the Justice Department is worried that Anheuser-Busch InBev, the conglomerate that owns Bud, is on the cusp of becoming an abusive monopoly. In January, the department sued AB InBev to prevent it from buying the rest of Mexico’s Grupo Modelo, a company in which it already carries a 50 percent stake. The case is not built on any leaked documents about some secret plan to abuse market power and raise prices. Instead, it’s based on the work of Justice Department economists who, using game theory and complex forecasting models, are able to predict what an even bigger AB InBev will do. Their analysis suggests that the firm, regardless of who is running it, will inevitably break the law.
For decades, they argue, Anheuser-Busch has been employing what game theorists call a “trigger strategy,” something like the beer equivalent of the Mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine. Anheuser-Busch signals to its competitors that if they lower their prices, it will start a vicious retail war. In 1988, Miller and Coors lowered prices on their flagship beers, which led Anheuser-Busch to slash the price of Bud and its other brands in key markets. At the time, August Busch III told Fortune, “We don’t want to start a blood bath, but whatever the competition wants to do, we’ll do.” Miller and Coors promptly abandoned their price cutting.
The trigger strategy, conducted in public, is entirely legal. In fact, it’s how airlines, mobile- phone companies and countless other industries keep their prices inflated. Since that dust-up in the late ’80s, the huge American beer makers have moved in tandem to keep prices well above what classical economics would predict. (According to the logic of supply and demand, competing beer makers should pursue market share by lowering prices to just above the cost of production, or a few cents per bottle.) Budweiser’s trigger strategy has been thwarted, though, by what game theorists call a “rogue player.” When Bud and Coors raise their prices, Grupo Modelo’s Corona does not. (As an imported beer, Corona is also considered to have a higher value.) And so, according to the Justice Department, AB InBev wants to buy Grupo Modelo not because it thinks the company makes great beer, or because it covets Corona’s 7 percent U.S. market share, but because owning Corona would allow AB InBev to raise prices across all of its brands. And if the company could raise prices by, say, 3 percent, it would earn around $1 billion more in profit every year. Imagine the possibilities. The Justice Department already has.
Representatives from AB InBev, however, have stated that the potential Corona acquisition is less about dominating the dwindling (albeit still $90 billion per year) U.S. beer market and more about a larger, global strategy. In that regard, AB InBev has been on quite a roll. The Brazilian firm Companhia de Bebidas das Américas, or AmBev, was born in 1999 around the concept of using innovative technology and managerial efficiency to disrupt the competition and channel the profits into buying them out. The company swallowed up several Latin American firms; in 2004, it merged with the Belgian giant Interbrew; in 2008, the new conglomerate, InBev, took over Anheuser-Busch. Along the way, it also picked up China’s third-largest brewer and the Canadian beer company Labatt.
We are still in the very early stages of what appears to be a global version of the scale-based consolidation we’ve seen in the United States over the past century. Before Prohibition, beer was largely a regional business, with thousands of small breweries serving markets often defined by city blocks. Until fairly recently, retail, food manufacturing, banking and countless other industries were also largely the domain of local or regional firms. And while in recent decades companies have scrambled to command international markets, the global fights have largely been over dominance of the United States, Western Europe and Japan.
But the goal of the Grupo Modelo merger, the company has stated, is to gear up for the big beer fight of the 21st century. As the traditional beer markets of the United States, Europe and Japan age, the most lucrative markets will be in China, India, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the wealthier countries of Africa and other places where, every single day, millions of young consumers will buy their first legal beer. On this front, AB InBev is already facing staunch competition from Denmark’s Carlsberg, Britain’s SABMiller and Japan’s Asahi. It’s not exactly worried about Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada.
These firms are among the many preparing for a global market several times larger than any that has ever existed. This helps explain why we have seen so many mergers in the past few months. The Justice Department recently approved the marriage of Penguin and Random House, and is expected to do the same with American Airlines and US Airways. Office Depot and OfficeMax are planning a merger of their own. These megamergers, however, do not inevitably create destructive monopolies. Carl Shapiro, the former chief economist at the Justice Department, told me that large mergers improve competition. Together, Penguin and Random House may be able to better stave off Amazon; American Airlines and US Airways can contend with Delta. Similarly, Office Depot and OfficeMax, once merged, may finally be large enough to really scare Staples. Fear, Shapiro says, is the key. Markets work best, he says, when “everyone has to watch their back.”
Shapiro admits that the Justice Department has lagged behind the work of many economists, and has been complicit in our fear of large mergers. (In some key decisions, like the 1962 Supreme Court ruling to block the merger of Brown Shoe and the Kinney Company, courts hurt consumers by preventing corporate efficiency.) But economic forecasting has improved since then, Shapiro says, and become more flexible. After AB InBev executives tweaked their Grupo Modelo acquisition plans, so not to affect their domestic interests, the Justice Department started to rerun the numbers. They’ll issue an opinion soon.
Over the coming decades, though, the opinion of American government officials might not matter quite so much. China’s National People’s Congress approved its first antimonopoly law in 2008, which, many economists fear, could be used to block foreign competitors and to promote local giants. India’s version, which went into effect in 2009, is even less clear. It’s quite possible that the true monopolistic battles of the 21st century will not be among massive corporations but among the self-interested governments. We can only hope that they don’t engage in a trigger strategy of their own.
Source: NYT
____________________________________________________
U.S. States that drink the most beer
The top five U.S. states for beer consumption per capita are:
North Dakota, New Hampshire, Montana, South Dakota and Wisconsin
6 least beer per capita are: Utah, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Kentucky
Date: July 2013
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U.S. Preference and consumption of alcoholic beverages varies not only by person but by location. And the beer industry recently released figures outlining consumption by state.
The top five states for beer consumption per capita are North Dakota, New Hampshire, Montana, South Dakota and Wisconsin, according to the Beer Institute, a trade organization. North Dakota drank about 45.8 gallons of beer per resident 21 and older last year, the institute said. Per capita figures do not include residents under 21 years old.
Meanwhile the U.S. states that consume the least beer per capita are: Utah, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Kentucky, according to the institute. Utah residents drank about 20.2 gallons of beer on average last year, according to industry data.
RELATED: Big Breweries Face Threat Worse Than Craft Beers
In some states, demographics can explain beer trends, said Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, an industry group that represents more than 1,000 craft breweries.
Thanks to its oil and gas boom, "North Dakota has a lot of employed young males," Watson said. And Utah’s low beer consumption is related to its large portion of Mormon residents, who don't drink, as well as restrictive alcohol regulations, Watson told "Big Data Download."
Meanwhile, beer competes with other alcoholic beverages at bars, stores and restaurants across Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Maryland, according to Watson.
RELATED: Fewer corks popping with rising economy
And while data find that consumers using the company's search engine are usually researching brands such as Pabst Blue Ribbon, Foster's, Budweiser, Corona and Heineken, craft brews have been getting more popular.
"I think we're seeing a revolution in consumer demand,” Watson said. “Consumers are demanding more full-flavored beers for more occasions. And we've seen an explosion ... in the market sales, the volume produced and the number of craft breweries in the country."
More than 13.2 million barrels of beer were sold in the United States last year, up about 15 percent from 2011, according to the Brewers Association.
And men drank most of it, according to industry data. Men drink about 72 percent of beer of all types, including craft brews, the association said.
Income level also affects craft consumption. About 59 percent of craft beer by volume is drunk by Americans with annual household income of at least $75,000, according to the industry. And on average, craft beer drinkers spend two more years in school than the general population, the data say.
Perhaps not surprisingly, alcohol sales also tend to spike, rising by 107 percent one day before storms.
Comment from the public:
(1) The big beer boys still don't have a clue what real beer is meant to taste like . That's their problem . A quality beer doesn't care about the weather;
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Source: The Beer Institute, a trade organization
____________________________________________________________
What People Buy Before Big Storms
Perhaps not surprisingly, alcohol sales also tend to spike, rising by 107 percent one day before storms
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Before a snowstorm, hurricane or any severe weather event, most retailers can expect certain items to sell out quickly. Knowing what consumers are looking for can help a retailer stock its shelves with the right inventory.
Marketing firm Interactions analyzed data collected from Google BigQuery—an analysis tool—and Tableau—analytics software—to identify how severe weather events influence shoppers’ behavior. The study looked at snowstorms over a three year period.
The study found that if weather reports called for a storm one week ahead of time, people still waited until the day before to do their event-specific shopping.
RELATED: How a Cool Summer May Save You Money
Grocery sales tend to spike up to three days before a storm hits. Sales rose 68 percent the day before the event, 79 percent two days before the event and about 12 percent three days prior to the event over 2010.
Looking at the subcategories, the study uncovered the fact that over 2010, sales of canned meat jumped 182 percent one day prior to storm events. Condensed soup sales spiked almost 80 percent, cracker snacks jumped 51 percent and produce sales jumped almost 70 percent.
Perhaps not surprisingly, alcohol sales also tend to spike, rising by 107 percent one day before storms.
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Source: Big Data Download
_____________________________________________________
Your Own Wine Tests - Make Additional Income
In your parties arrange a similar TASTE TESTS & publish them in your Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Website, Company Magazine, Other place - A model for the testing party just below.
In addition, you can sell your taste tests & results in magazines, newspaper, and even syndicate them nationwide/worldwide. On the internet, your website and other sites, you can ear, royalties from the public viewing your tests and the ads that are present by Google etc.
Do a quality job, a quality marketing - and you'll get good financial results when you provide a good quality service. We people like reading all kinds of test results - most likely you have done it also.
When you succeed give your report to us at the STAF, Inc.
Email your tests for our view and comments as you wish.
Suggested categories:
(1) Red Wine, (2) White Wine, (3) Beer, (4) Whiskey, (5) Brandy, (6) Gin (7) Champagne (8) Sparkling Wine, (9) Tequila, (10) Other- list can be much longer.
Prepare a list from the internet, visit wine stores, look at wine books.
In each category you can test several wines, e.g.
Red wine: Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah or Shiraz, Zinfandel, Merlot, Bordeaux, Italian wines, Argentina, New Zealand, Australian, Eastern European, German, Russian, etc. wines. Local U.S. wines - plenty of wineries.
It's fun - educational - and may lead you to an additional income
Not-So-Official-But-Still-Seriously-Done-Test
Canned beer taste test
By Carolina Santos-Neves | Epicurious – Thu, Jan 31, 2013
Only these canned beers are fridge-worthy
One big-name brew easily outshines its rivals — and it's even low in calories
Budweiser ranks dead last
Apparently, Noah had some brew stashed aboard the Ark. In ancient Babylon, clay tablets were used to record recipes for this thirst-quenching beverage. The pharaohs of Egypt were buried with vessels of beer, to sustain them on the journey to the afterlife. Refreshing, affordable, and a perfect partner with all manner of foods, this combination of yeast, malt, and other ingredients has long been humankind's drink of choice.
As the beer movement has continued to, well, ferment, with increasingly esoteric methods and ingredients, we have tried to cover the scene from all angles, but the one thing we had yet to do is taste-test classic, everyday canned beers. These are the brands you find at your local supermarket, the cans you keep stocked in the cooler, and the go-to brews for a casual gathering like a Super Bowl party, a tailgate, or a day at the beach.
In addition to wide availability, canned beer offers affordability ($6.49 compared with $8.59 for a six-pack of higher-end brew) and convenience (no bottle opener required!). Plus, cans (vs. glass) are ideal for even the rowdiest crowds. Yet, do these inexpensive canned beers taste nearly as good as the more elite brands? With that question in mind, 15 judges tasted ten popular, nationally available canned beers, and the answer was…maybe. While none of these brews won the full four forks, the three finalists would be fine to serve at any large party.
# 1 Coors Light - The Winner
($5.19 per six-pack)
Pros: There was no question that this one was the winner. Tasters described it as mildly foamy, aromatic, full of life, golden, smooth, and light, but with a bite. One judge said, "It has character, especially for a light beer."
Cons: Slightly grainy to some.
Editors' rating: 3 forks.
# 2 FIRST RUNNER-UP : Standard Beer
Tecate
($6.49 per six-pack)
Pros: One judge crowned this his favorite because of its caramel color, lusciousness, and bold beer flavor. Another taster labeled it "sweet and smooth— like a good brew should be."
Cons: Some wished for more carbonation.
Editors' rating: 2.5 forks.
# 3 FIRST RUNNER-UP: Light Beer
Amstel Light
($7.39 per six-pack)
Pros: Panelists praised this beer for one simple reason: It doesn't taste like light beer. They hailed it as full-bodied and flavorful. One judge said it best: "This tastes like one of the more expensive beers I'd be able to afford once in a while." Another judge liked its "spice."
Cons: A bit too malty for some tasters' palates.
Editors' rating: 2.5 forks.
The Other Contenders: The Bottom Three
Judges found that Budweiser had a tinny flavor, and its pale golden color didn't help matters. Miller tasted diluted. Pabst Blue Ribbon was described as having a bit of a bite yet was watery and somewhat bitter.
All ten varieties we evaluated are available nationwide in supermarkets or online. Listed from highest to lowest score achieved, they are:
(1) Coors Light, (2) Amstel Light, (3) Bud Light, (4) Natural Light, (5) Tecate,
(6) Heineken, (7) Miller Lite, (8) Pabst Blue Ribbon, (9) Miller, (10) Budweiser.
Methodology: In a blind taste test, judges compared the flavor, consistency, and appearance of ten types of canned beer (five were light beers; five, standard brews). All were tasted with salted pretzels. We ranked the beers according to the Epicurious four-fork rating system (four being best).
__________________________________________________
Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink
FOREWORD
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, STAF, Inc. President
STAF, Inc. is neutral relating to "to drink or not to drink" alcoholic beverages. Your personal decision.
The science research shows that 1 (- 2) glass(es) wine (red, dark) or 1( - 2) beer(s) daily may help in maintaining health. There is nothing wrong enjoying 1 (-2) glass(es) or 1 (- 2) bottle(s) of beer daily, maximum. More than that is over-drinking and definitely harmful for any human's health. If you want to save in expenses, enjoy wine or beer just on the weekends - but not by binge-drinking - that's killing. Smoking & overweight & over-drinking is a 100 % sure way to every possible sickness, to much pain & suffering & to a shorter life.
STAF, Inc. can help in any addiction - with a lifetime result-guarantee based on only a-one-time fee
The first and only double-guarantee in the U.S. and worldwide
The best good health maintaining is to eat daily natural*), not processed, not fast(=bad)-food, vegetables most in raw form & combination of fruit & berries & nuts and other - see STAF, Inc.'s new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program developed for the U.S. gov. use in the new health care legislation (home page & University & College tab - in this same website - and STAF, Inc.'s Radio Shows - see in this website tab: Radio/TV Shows
*) Natural food: Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, it kills"
Quotation: "To stay healthy in life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President
______________________
Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink
Click green below in the text for further info
After three years of declining sales, shipments of domestically sold beer are up by more than 1% in the United States this year. Sales of light beer and specialty beer, such as Budweiser Light Platinum, Shock Top, and Blue Moon, have been the driving force in the resurgence of U.S. breweries.
While sales of specialty, craft, and small-market beers have improved dramatically, many of the traditional, full-calorie beers that were once the staples of most breweries have fallen behind. In the five years ending in 2011, sales of Budweiser, which was once the top-selling beer in the country for years, have fallen by 7 million barrels. Sales of Michelob are down more than 70%. Based on data provided by Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the nine large — or once-large — beer brands with a five-year decline in sales of 30% or more.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: 13 Pro Teams Running Out of Fans]
(AP Photo/Miller Brewing Company, HO)While regular, full-calorie beer was once the mainstream, now light has become the primary beer of choice. Budweiser, once by far the most popular beer, has now fallen to third place in domestic sales, with 17.2 million barrels shipped in 2011, compared to Coors Light’s 17.4 million. The U.S. beer leader is, by a long shot, Bud Light, with 39.15 million barrels sold last year.
Budweiser did not quite make the 30% decline in sales cutoff for our list, but many other traditional brews did. Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee’s Best and Miller Genuine Draft have all lost 50% of their sales since 2006. Michelob shipped 500,000 barrels domestically in 2006, but sold just 140,000 in 2011.
While light beer has supplanted full-calorie beer in popularity, sales of most leading light brands have been flat over the past several years. In fact, many of the beers on our list with the biggest declines are light beers that either didn’t catch on or faded out of popularity. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS executive editor Eric Shepard explained that it is specialty beers and craft beers — not light beer — that have eaten into sales of traditional full-calorie beer in the past year.
Shepard explained that like most major brand-centered industries, the beer industry has entered a period of aggressively marketing new brands and flavors. “I think that part of the reason that brewers felt we had three down years was primarily the economy… but it was also a lack of innovation, and so now you’re seeing [the beer industry] rev up these things,” he said. “The buzzword for this year was innovation.”
To combat the growing popularity of craft brews, major breweries such as Anheuser-Busch Inbev (NYSE: BUD) and MillerCoors have aggressively marketed their own specialty beer. Bud Light Platinum, which debuted during the Super Bowl, has been very successful, beating most expectations. Shock Top, also produced by Anheuser-Busch, sold 600,000 barrels last year, more than double the previous year’s sales. Another Belgian white beer, Blue Moon, which is sold by MillerCoors, was the 18th-most popular beer sold last year. Shepard expects the focus on nontraditional brews to continue at least through next year. This will likely further reduce sales of the declining brands on our list.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: Most Educated Countries in the World]
24/7 Wall St. identified the nine beers Americans no longer drink based on INSIGHTS top 50 beer brands with at least 500,000 barrels in sales in either 2006 or 2011 with sales declines of 30% or more over the same period. Sales for flavored malt beverages and craft beers were excluded from the analysis.
These are the nine beers Americans no longer drink.
9. Milwaukee’s Best Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 35.5%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 1.2 million
Milwaukee’s Best Light, according to SABMiller, one half of MillerCoors, is a “leading low-calorie beer in the near-premium segment.” Although the brand has been on shelves since 1986, in recent years customers have abandoned the beer. Sales volume dropped by more than a third between 2006 and 2011, versus a decline of just 4% for all top brands. Last year, Milwaukee’s Best Light sold 750,000 barrels, 5.8% less than in 2010. Meanwhile, sales for the top brands fell by just 1.7% during that time.
8. Miller High Life Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 37.6%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 390,000
Miller High Life Light was first sold in 1994 as the low-calorie version of Miller High Life, often referred to as “the champagne of beers.” But while customers have continued buying the original Miller High Life — sales declined just 3.6% between 2006 and 2011 — they have deserted the light version — which saw sales decline by more than ten times that number. In 2011, sales fell by 80,000 barrels, or 17%, from 2010.
7. Amstel Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 47.7%
> Brewer: Heineken
> Barrels sold (2011): 340,000
Debuting in 1980, Amstel Light claims to have been the first imported light beer available in the U.S. The brand, brewed by Heineken, is the only imported beer, as well as the only beer not brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev or MillerCoors, on this list. Neither of these brewers experienced a sales decline as large as that of Heineken between 2010 and 2011, when U.S. sales volume fell by 3.9%. One cause was Amstel Light sales, which fell by 13.9% — more than any other major Heineken brand.
6. Miller Genuine Draft
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 52.3%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 1.6 million
Miller Genuine Draft, marketed as having “the fresh taste of draft beer in a bottle,” has lost consumers’ attention in recent years. It was one of just six beers that had sales volume fall by half between 2006 and 2011. During this time, the total number of Miller Genuine Draft barrels sold fell by 1.7 million, more than any other beer on this list. Only one other brand bottled by MillerCoors — Miller Lite — had a larger decline in barrels sold over this time span.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: Best and Worst Run States in America]
5. Old Milwaukee
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 52.8%
> Brewer: Pabst Brewing Company
> Barrels sold (2011): 460,000
Old Milwaukee is brewed by the Pabst Brewing Company, which sold itself to C. Dean Metropoulos — described by The New York Times as “a veteran food executive known for corporate turnarounds” — in 2010. Last year, the Chicago Tribune reported that employees felt Metropoulos’ marketing plans were moving the company away from the philosophies and practices that made it successful. From 2010 to 2011 alone, sales decreased by 12.4% — worse than 80% of top brands.
4. Milwaukee’s Best
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 57.1%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 750,000
MillerCoors claims that Milwaukee’s Best is “brewed for a man’s taste,” and is “highly drinkable [and] highly affordable.” However customers have stopped buying — and drinking — the brand. Between 2006 and 2011, no major brand made by MillerCoors had a larger percentage decrease in sales. The beer is one of the worst-ranked brews on BeerAdvocate.com.
3. Budweiser Select
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 60.8%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 775,000
Budweiser Select, introduced in 2005, claims to offer a “distinctively full flavor,” with just 99 calories per 12-ounces — roughly the same as Michelob Ultra. The brand has not sold well since its introduction, with sales declining by 1.2 million barrels between 2006 and 2011 — more than all but a few top brands. In 2009, Anheuser-Busch InBev also introduced Budweiser Select 55, which the company describes as “the lightest beer in the world with fewer calories than any other beer option currently available.”
2. Michelob Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 66.3%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 425,000
From 2006 to 2011 shipments of Michelob Light fell by 66.3%, more than any other major light beer in the U.S. While sales of Michelob Light declined, sales of Michelob Ultra — introduced in 2002, with just 95 calories per 12 ounces — rose by 10.3% from 2006 to 2011. Anheuser-Busch InBev no longer prominently markets the beers on its websites alongside the better-selling Michelob Ultra. Between 2010-2011, sales of Michelob light fell by 19%, more than all but two of the top brands we reviewed.
1. Michelob
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 72.0%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 140,000
American consumers have abandoned Michelob — a lager brewed since 1896 — at a faster rate than any other beer. From 2006 to 2011, sales declined from 500,000 barrels to 140,000, with a 20% drop between 2010 and 2011 alone. No other beer on this list sold less than Michelob. The next-lowest selling beer, Amstel Light, still sold 200,000 barrels more than Michelob last year. The brand has not always struggled. According to Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS’ Eric Shepard, “the superpremium category — basically between Budweiser and the imports — Michelob pretty much had that to itself for many years.”
Click green above and in the text for further info
This article is for your private use, only
___________________________________________________________________
FOREWORD
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, STAF, Inc. President
STAF, Inc. is neutral relating to "to drink or not to drink" alcoholic beverages. Your personal decision.
The science research shows that 1 (- 2) glass(es) wine (red, dark) or 1( - 2) beer(s) daily may help in maintaining health. There is nothing wrong enjoying 1 (-2) glass(es) or 1 (- 2) bottle(s) of beer daily, maximum. More than that is over-drinking and definitely harmful for any human's health. If you want to save in expenses, enjoy wine or beer just on the weekends - but not by binge-drinking - that's killing. Smoking & overweight & over-drinking is a 100 % sure way to every possible sickness, to much pain & suffering & to a shorter life.
STAF, Inc. can help in any addiction - with a lifetime result-guarantee based on only a-one-time fee
The first and only double-guarantee in the U.S. and worldwide
The best good health maintaining is to eat daily natural*), not processed, not fast(=bad)-food, vegetables most in raw form & combination of fruit & berries & nuts and other - see STAF, Inc.'s new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program developed for the U.S. gov. use in the new health care legislation (home page & University & College tab - in this same website - and STAF, Inc.'s Radio Shows - see in this website tab: Radio/TV Shows
*) Natural food: Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, it kills"
Quotation: "To stay healthy in life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc. President
______________________
Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink
Click green below in the text for further info
After three years of declining sales, shipments of domestically sold beer are up by more than 1% in the United States this year. Sales of light beer and specialty beer, such as Budweiser Light Platinum, Shock Top, and Blue Moon, have been the driving force in the resurgence of U.S. breweries.
While sales of specialty, craft, and small-market beers have improved dramatically, many of the traditional, full-calorie beers that were once the staples of most breweries have fallen behind. In the five years ending in 2011, sales of Budweiser, which was once the top-selling beer in the country for years, have fallen by 7 million barrels. Sales of Michelob are down more than 70%. Based on data provided by Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the nine large — or once-large — beer brands with a five-year decline in sales of 30% or more.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: 13 Pro Teams Running Out of Fans]
(AP Photo/Miller Brewing Company, HO)While regular, full-calorie beer was once the mainstream, now light has become the primary beer of choice. Budweiser, once by far the most popular beer, has now fallen to third place in domestic sales, with 17.2 million barrels shipped in 2011, compared to Coors Light’s 17.4 million. The U.S. beer leader is, by a long shot, Bud Light, with 39.15 million barrels sold last year.
Budweiser did not quite make the 30% decline in sales cutoff for our list, but many other traditional brews did. Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee’s Best and Miller Genuine Draft have all lost 50% of their sales since 2006. Michelob shipped 500,000 barrels domestically in 2006, but sold just 140,000 in 2011.
While light beer has supplanted full-calorie beer in popularity, sales of most leading light brands have been flat over the past several years. In fact, many of the beers on our list with the biggest declines are light beers that either didn’t catch on or faded out of popularity. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS executive editor Eric Shepard explained that it is specialty beers and craft beers — not light beer — that have eaten into sales of traditional full-calorie beer in the past year.
Shepard explained that like most major brand-centered industries, the beer industry has entered a period of aggressively marketing new brands and flavors. “I think that part of the reason that brewers felt we had three down years was primarily the economy… but it was also a lack of innovation, and so now you’re seeing [the beer industry] rev up these things,” he said. “The buzzword for this year was innovation.”
To combat the growing popularity of craft brews, major breweries such as Anheuser-Busch Inbev (NYSE: BUD) and MillerCoors have aggressively marketed their own specialty beer. Bud Light Platinum, which debuted during the Super Bowl, has been very successful, beating most expectations. Shock Top, also produced by Anheuser-Busch, sold 600,000 barrels last year, more than double the previous year’s sales. Another Belgian white beer, Blue Moon, which is sold by MillerCoors, was the 18th-most popular beer sold last year. Shepard expects the focus on nontraditional brews to continue at least through next year. This will likely further reduce sales of the declining brands on our list.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: Most Educated Countries in the World]
24/7 Wall St. identified the nine beers Americans no longer drink based on INSIGHTS top 50 beer brands with at least 500,000 barrels in sales in either 2006 or 2011 with sales declines of 30% or more over the same period. Sales for flavored malt beverages and craft beers were excluded from the analysis.
These are the nine beers Americans no longer drink.
9. Milwaukee’s Best Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 35.5%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 1.2 million
Milwaukee’s Best Light, according to SABMiller, one half of MillerCoors, is a “leading low-calorie beer in the near-premium segment.” Although the brand has been on shelves since 1986, in recent years customers have abandoned the beer. Sales volume dropped by more than a third between 2006 and 2011, versus a decline of just 4% for all top brands. Last year, Milwaukee’s Best Light sold 750,000 barrels, 5.8% less than in 2010. Meanwhile, sales for the top brands fell by just 1.7% during that time.
8. Miller High Life Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 37.6%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 390,000
Miller High Life Light was first sold in 1994 as the low-calorie version of Miller High Life, often referred to as “the champagne of beers.” But while customers have continued buying the original Miller High Life — sales declined just 3.6% between 2006 and 2011 — they have deserted the light version — which saw sales decline by more than ten times that number. In 2011, sales fell by 80,000 barrels, or 17%, from 2010.
7. Amstel Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 47.7%
> Brewer: Heineken
> Barrels sold (2011): 340,000
Debuting in 1980, Amstel Light claims to have been the first imported light beer available in the U.S. The brand, brewed by Heineken, is the only imported beer, as well as the only beer not brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev or MillerCoors, on this list. Neither of these brewers experienced a sales decline as large as that of Heineken between 2010 and 2011, when U.S. sales volume fell by 3.9%. One cause was Amstel Light sales, which fell by 13.9% — more than any other major Heineken brand.
6. Miller Genuine Draft
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 52.3%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 1.6 million
Miller Genuine Draft, marketed as having “the fresh taste of draft beer in a bottle,” has lost consumers’ attention in recent years. It was one of just six beers that had sales volume fall by half between 2006 and 2011. During this time, the total number of Miller Genuine Draft barrels sold fell by 1.7 million, more than any other beer on this list. Only one other brand bottled by MillerCoors — Miller Lite — had a larger decline in barrels sold over this time span.
[More from 24/7 Wall St.: Best and Worst Run States in America]
5. Old Milwaukee
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 52.8%
> Brewer: Pabst Brewing Company
> Barrels sold (2011): 460,000
Old Milwaukee is brewed by the Pabst Brewing Company, which sold itself to C. Dean Metropoulos — described by The New York Times as “a veteran food executive known for corporate turnarounds” — in 2010. Last year, the Chicago Tribune reported that employees felt Metropoulos’ marketing plans were moving the company away from the philosophies and practices that made it successful. From 2010 to 2011 alone, sales decreased by 12.4% — worse than 80% of top brands.
4. Milwaukee’s Best
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 57.1%
> Brewer: MillerCoors
> Barrels sold (2011): 750,000
MillerCoors claims that Milwaukee’s Best is “brewed for a man’s taste,” and is “highly drinkable [and] highly affordable.” However customers have stopped buying — and drinking — the brand. Between 2006 and 2011, no major brand made by MillerCoors had a larger percentage decrease in sales. The beer is one of the worst-ranked brews on BeerAdvocate.com.
3. Budweiser Select
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 60.8%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 775,000
Budweiser Select, introduced in 2005, claims to offer a “distinctively full flavor,” with just 99 calories per 12-ounces — roughly the same as Michelob Ultra. The brand has not sold well since its introduction, with sales declining by 1.2 million barrels between 2006 and 2011 — more than all but a few top brands. In 2009, Anheuser-Busch InBev also introduced Budweiser Select 55, which the company describes as “the lightest beer in the world with fewer calories than any other beer option currently available.”
2. Michelob Light
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 66.3%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 425,000
From 2006 to 2011 shipments of Michelob Light fell by 66.3%, more than any other major light beer in the U.S. While sales of Michelob Light declined, sales of Michelob Ultra — introduced in 2002, with just 95 calories per 12 ounces — rose by 10.3% from 2006 to 2011. Anheuser-Busch InBev no longer prominently markets the beers on its websites alongside the better-selling Michelob Ultra. Between 2010-2011, sales of Michelob light fell by 19%, more than all but two of the top brands we reviewed.
1. Michelob
> Sales loss (2006-2011): 72.0%
> Brewer: Anheuser-Busch InBev
> Barrels sold (2011): 140,000
American consumers have abandoned Michelob — a lager brewed since 1896 — at a faster rate than any other beer. From 2006 to 2011, sales declined from 500,000 barrels to 140,000, with a 20% drop between 2010 and 2011 alone. No other beer on this list sold less than Michelob. The next-lowest selling beer, Amstel Light, still sold 200,000 barrels more than Michelob last year. The brand has not always struggled. According to Beer Marketer’s INSIGHTS’ Eric Shepard, “the superpremium category — basically between Budweiser and the imports — Michelob pretty much had that to itself for many years.”
- States That Drink the Most Beer
- 12 Companies Paying Americans the Least
- States with the Highest (and Lowest) Taxes
Click green above and in the text for further info
This article is for your private use, only
___________________________________________________________________
'World's Best Beer'
Finally Available in The U.S.
- only temporarily - limited amounts -
December 2012
- more another time -
Beer aficionados are pouncing at the rare opportunity to buy one of the world's most elusive and revered beers for the first - and perhaps only - time in the United States.
It is called Westvleteren XII, and it is often hailed as the "world's best beer" by reviewers and fans.
Westvleteren XII is produced by Trappist monks in Belgium and sold at the abbey of Saint Sixtus in the Belgian countryside. The beer can usually only be purchased by reservation at the abbey - and reservations are extremely hard to come by.
But when the abbey found itself hurting for money for an expensive renovation, the monks reluctantly made the decision to sell the beer outside of the walls of the monastery on a one-time-only basis.
"I think it will be the last [time]," Westvleteren Brewery spokesman Mark Bode told NPR. "They say, 'We are monks, we don't want to be too commercial. We needed some money to help us buy the new abbey and that's it,' Back to normal again."
Beginning today, limited quantities of the beer are being sold in the U.S. and abroad. A number of stores have been sent "bricks" of the beer, which include six bottles and two glasses from the monastery. The gift box retails for $84.99.
"The phone has been ringing off the hook," Megan McBrayer, manager at New York City's Beer Table Pantry, told ABCNews.com. She said the store received 24 cases of the beer and has already sold many of them.
McBrayer said beer lovers are taken with "the whole mystique about it and the rarity of it."
"It consistently rates as one of the best beers in the world," she said. "It's been something that [beer lovers] have wanted for a long time, but it's been completely unattainable."
Click green for further info
This article is for your private use, only
_____________________________________________
Finally Available in The U.S.
- only temporarily - limited amounts -
December 2012
- more another time -
Beer aficionados are pouncing at the rare opportunity to buy one of the world's most elusive and revered beers for the first - and perhaps only - time in the United States.
It is called Westvleteren XII, and it is often hailed as the "world's best beer" by reviewers and fans.
Westvleteren XII is produced by Trappist monks in Belgium and sold at the abbey of Saint Sixtus in the Belgian countryside. The beer can usually only be purchased by reservation at the abbey - and reservations are extremely hard to come by.
But when the abbey found itself hurting for money for an expensive renovation, the monks reluctantly made the decision to sell the beer outside of the walls of the monastery on a one-time-only basis.
"I think it will be the last [time]," Westvleteren Brewery spokesman Mark Bode told NPR. "They say, 'We are monks, we don't want to be too commercial. We needed some money to help us buy the new abbey and that's it,' Back to normal again."
Beginning today, limited quantities of the beer are being sold in the U.S. and abroad. A number of stores have been sent "bricks" of the beer, which include six bottles and two glasses from the monastery. The gift box retails for $84.99.
"The phone has been ringing off the hook," Megan McBrayer, manager at New York City's Beer Table Pantry, told ABCNews.com. She said the store received 24 cases of the beer and has already sold many of them.
McBrayer said beer lovers are taken with "the whole mystique about it and the rarity of it."
"It consistently rates as one of the best beers in the world," she said. "It's been something that [beer lovers] have wanted for a long time, but it's been completely unattainable."
Click green for further info
This article is for your private use, only
_____________________________________________
Common Life Shorteners & Killers
- All your own choice -
Smoking, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Addiction, Wrong Nutrition, Lack of Exercise, Poor Sleeping,
Overweight & Obesity - Unhappy Relationships - Divorce - Poor Education - Impatience
Sleep: Enough is 6 - 8 h for an adult, 8-11 to a teenager, 9-10 to a toddler, close to 24 for a baby
Nutrition: "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, it kills"; Fast food =bad food = non-food, kills
Exercise: - Walking daily 30+ minutes is enough = 25 - 30K steps (use a pedometer)
___________
STAF, Inc. has all answers & all services
for you how to get rid of your Life Shorteners & Killers
Start studying in details this whole website
then contact STAF, Inc.'s Advisers for life-saving help
Article # 1 of 3
(Article # 2 just below)
Scientists find gene link to teenage binge drinking
Research shows that the heaviest binge drinkers worldwide are the British youngsters
December 3, 2012 (Reuters) - Scientists have unpicked the brain processes involved in teenage alcohol abuse and say their findings help explain why some young people have more of a tendency to binge drink.
A study published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal found that a gene known as RASGRF-2 plays a crucial role in controlling how alcohol stimulates the brain to release dopamine, triggering feelings of reward.
"If people have a genetic variation of the RASGRF-2 gene, alcohol gives them a stronger sense of reward, making them more likely to be heavy drinkers," said Gunter Schumann, who led the study at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry.
Alcohol and other addictive drugs activate the brain's dopamine systems, which induces feelings of pleasure and reward.
Worldwide, some 2.5 million people die each year from the harmful use of alcohol, accounting for about 3.8 percent of all deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
Recent studies also carried out by scientists at the IoP have found that RASGRF-2 is a risk gene for alcohol abuse, but until now the mechanism involved in the process was not clear.
For this study, scientists initially looked at mice who had been modified to have the RASGRF2 gene removed, to see how they reacted to alcohol. They found the lack of RASGRF-2 was linked to a significant reduction in alcohol-seeking activity.
They also discovered that when the mice did consume alcohol, the absence of RASGRF-2 reduced the activity of dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) - preventing the brain from releasing dopamine and limiting any sense of reward.
The team then analyzed brain scans of 663 14-year old boys and found that when they were anticipating a reward in a mental test, those with genetic variations to the RASGRF2 gene had more activity in an area of the brain closely linked to the VTA and also involved in dopamine release.
This suggests people with a genetic variation on the RASGRF-2 gene release more dopamine when anticipating a reward, and hence derive more pleasure from it, the scientists said.
To confirm the findings, the team analyzed drinking behavior from the same group of boys two years later when many of them had already begun drinking frequently.
They found that those with the RASGRF-2 gene variation drank more often at the age of 16 than those without it.
"People seek out situations which fulfill their sense of reward and make them happy, so if your brain is wired to find alcohol rewarding, you will seek it out," Schumann said in a statement about the research. "We now understand the chain of action: how our genes shape this function in our brains and how that, in turn, leads to human behavior."
Experts writing in The Lancet journal said up to 210,000 people in England and Wales will be killed prematurely by alcohol in the next 20 years, with a third of those preventable deaths due to liver disease alone.
See the U.S. alcohol abuse related yearly death numbers below in Article # 2
______________________________________
- All your own choice -
Smoking, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Addiction, Wrong Nutrition, Lack of Exercise, Poor Sleeping,
Overweight & Obesity - Unhappy Relationships - Divorce - Poor Education - Impatience
Sleep: Enough is 6 - 8 h for an adult, 8-11 to a teenager, 9-10 to a toddler, close to 24 for a baby
Nutrition: "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, it kills"; Fast food =bad food = non-food, kills
Exercise: - Walking daily 30+ minutes is enough = 25 - 30K steps (use a pedometer)
___________
STAF, Inc. has all answers & all services
for you how to get rid of your Life Shorteners & Killers
Start studying in details this whole website
then contact STAF, Inc.'s Advisers for life-saving help
Article # 1 of 3
(Article # 2 just below)
Scientists find gene link to teenage binge drinking
Research shows that the heaviest binge drinkers worldwide are the British youngsters
December 3, 2012 (Reuters) - Scientists have unpicked the brain processes involved in teenage alcohol abuse and say their findings help explain why some young people have more of a tendency to binge drink.
A study published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal found that a gene known as RASGRF-2 plays a crucial role in controlling how alcohol stimulates the brain to release dopamine, triggering feelings of reward.
"If people have a genetic variation of the RASGRF-2 gene, alcohol gives them a stronger sense of reward, making them more likely to be heavy drinkers," said Gunter Schumann, who led the study at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry.
Alcohol and other addictive drugs activate the brain's dopamine systems, which induces feelings of pleasure and reward.
Worldwide, some 2.5 million people die each year from the harmful use of alcohol, accounting for about 3.8 percent of all deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
Recent studies also carried out by scientists at the IoP have found that RASGRF-2 is a risk gene for alcohol abuse, but until now the mechanism involved in the process was not clear.
For this study, scientists initially looked at mice who had been modified to have the RASGRF2 gene removed, to see how they reacted to alcohol. They found the lack of RASGRF-2 was linked to a significant reduction in alcohol-seeking activity.
They also discovered that when the mice did consume alcohol, the absence of RASGRF-2 reduced the activity of dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) - preventing the brain from releasing dopamine and limiting any sense of reward.
The team then analyzed brain scans of 663 14-year old boys and found that when they were anticipating a reward in a mental test, those with genetic variations to the RASGRF2 gene had more activity in an area of the brain closely linked to the VTA and also involved in dopamine release.
This suggests people with a genetic variation on the RASGRF-2 gene release more dopamine when anticipating a reward, and hence derive more pleasure from it, the scientists said.
To confirm the findings, the team analyzed drinking behavior from the same group of boys two years later when many of them had already begun drinking frequently.
They found that those with the RASGRF-2 gene variation drank more often at the age of 16 than those without it.
"People seek out situations which fulfill their sense of reward and make them happy, so if your brain is wired to find alcohol rewarding, you will seek it out," Schumann said in a statement about the research. "We now understand the chain of action: how our genes shape this function in our brains and how that, in turn, leads to human behavior."
Experts writing in The Lancet journal said up to 210,000 people in England and Wales will be killed prematurely by alcohol in the next 20 years, with a third of those preventable deaths due to liver disease alone.
See the U.S. alcohol abuse related yearly death numbers below in Article # 2
______________________________________
Article # 2 of 3
(Article # 3 just below)
Alcohol linked to 75,000 U.S. deaths a year
Third leading cause of mortality, government study finds
Alcohol is a great shortener of life
Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives
of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study finds
Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco use and poor eating and exercise habits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the study, estimated that 34,833 people in 2001 died from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits.
Another 40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use.
Researchers considered any man who averaged more than two drinks per day or more than four drinks per occasion to be an excessive drinker. For women it was more than one drink per day or more than three drinks per occasion.
“These results emphasize the importance of adopting effective strategies to reduce excessive drinking, including increasing alcohol excise taxes and screening for alcohol misuse in clinical settings,” the study said.
Men accounted for 72 percent of the excessive drinking deaths in 2001, and those 21 and younger made up 6 percent of the death toll.
Light or moderate drinking can benefit a person’s health, but heavy drinking increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disorders, certain cancers and liver disease.
Excessive drinkers are also more likely to die in car accidents. The United States aims to cut the rate of alcohol-related driving fatalities to 4 deaths per 100,000 people by 2012, a 32 percent drop from 1998.
_______________________________
(Article # 3 just below)
Alcohol linked to 75,000 U.S. deaths a year
Third leading cause of mortality, government study finds
Alcohol is a great shortener of life
Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives
of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study finds
Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco use and poor eating and exercise habits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the study, estimated that 34,833 people in 2001 died from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits.
Another 40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use.
Researchers considered any man who averaged more than two drinks per day or more than four drinks per occasion to be an excessive drinker. For women it was more than one drink per day or more than three drinks per occasion.
“These results emphasize the importance of adopting effective strategies to reduce excessive drinking, including increasing alcohol excise taxes and screening for alcohol misuse in clinical settings,” the study said.
Men accounted for 72 percent of the excessive drinking deaths in 2001, and those 21 and younger made up 6 percent of the death toll.
Light or moderate drinking can benefit a person’s health, but heavy drinking increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disorders, certain cancers and liver disease.
Excessive drinkers are also more likely to die in car accidents. The United States aims to cut the rate of alcohol-related driving fatalities to 4 deaths per 100,000 people by 2012, a 32 percent drop from 1998.
_______________________________
Article # 3 of 3
(Articles # 2 & 1 just above)
Even Moderate Beverage Drinking
Linked to Increased Cancer Risk
The research, published Friday, 2/15/13, in the American Journal of Public Health
It marks the first time that researchers have examined alcohol-related cancer rates in 30 years.
Click green
above & below
for further info
The risks for mild to moderate drinkers are very low
The people who drink small amounts of alcohol
needn't be duly concerned about this
No binge drinking, keep your daily amount in one of any: wine, beer,
New research shows that even a single alcoholic drink per day can increase your risk of developing certain types of cancer, including breast cancer in women.
Though people have long believed that a glass or two of wine can be good for your heart, the new study, conducted in conjunction with researchers in the U.S., Canada, and France, shows that the cancer risks far outweigh any heart-healthy benefits.
Related: What the Author of "Drinking With Men" Has to Say About Boys, Bars, and Drinking Alone
"Alcohol has long been known and recognized as a human carcinogen, so even some alcohol consumption raises your risks," Dr. Timothy Naimi, an alcohol researcher at Boston University's School of Public Health and a physician at the Boston University Medical Center who helped design and direct the study, told in an interview. "On the balance of all people who begin drinking, many more people are killed by alcohol than helped by it."
Related: Heavy Drinking Raises Risk of Divorce
"No public health body or clinical body recommends that people start drinking to improve their health," he added.
The research, published Friday, 2/15/13, in the American Journal of Public Health, relied on existing data about cancer deaths, alcohol consumption, and risk estimates from other scientific studies. It marks the first time that researchers have examined alcohol-related cancer rates in 30 years.
They found that alcohol could be blamed for about 20,000 cancer deaths each year, or 1 out of every 30 cancer deaths in the United States, which was about what they expected. But while heavy drinkers faced the highest risks, about a third of those deaths were among people who drank only small amounts of alcohol—1.5 alcoholic drinks or fewer per day. And it didn't matter what type of drink was consumed; standard servings of beer (12 ounces), wine (5 ounces), and hard liquor (1.5 ounces) all contain the same amount of alcohol.
The stats sound scary, but Naimi told that the risks for mild to moderate drinkers are very low. "The people who drink small amounts of alcohol needn't be duly concerned about this," he said. "But it is important to recognize that when it comes to cancer, there's no free lunch."
While more men die from alcohol-related cancers than women (men do tend to drink more), women have more adverse consequences from drinking, not only because they tend to have less body mass than men, but because they also metabolize alcohol less efficiently. The study found that about 6,000 female breast cancer deaths each year—or 15 percent—could be attributed to alcohol consumption; for men, cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus were the most common types of alcohol-related cancer. Alcohol is also linked to cancer of the liver, colon, and rectum.
The study also eliminated the common misconception that Europeans, especially in France and Germany, are healthier than Americans even though they drink plenty of alcohol. If Europeans are healthier, Naimi said, it's not likely because of their drinking habits: The number of cancer deaths attributable to alcohol in Europe was higher than in the United States.
Researcher acknowledge that people are unlikely to give up alcohol altogether. "In general, drinking less is better than drinking more, and for people who drink excessively it's something to think about," Naimi said. "Alcohol is a big preventable cancer risk factor that has been hiding in plain sight."
__________________________________________
(Articles # 2 & 1 just above)
Even Moderate Beverage Drinking
Linked to Increased Cancer Risk
The research, published Friday, 2/15/13, in the American Journal of Public Health
It marks the first time that researchers have examined alcohol-related cancer rates in 30 years.
Click green
above & below
for further info
The risks for mild to moderate drinkers are very low
The people who drink small amounts of alcohol
needn't be duly concerned about this
No binge drinking, keep your daily amount in one of any: wine, beer,
New research shows that even a single alcoholic drink per day can increase your risk of developing certain types of cancer, including breast cancer in women.
Though people have long believed that a glass or two of wine can be good for your heart, the new study, conducted in conjunction with researchers in the U.S., Canada, and France, shows that the cancer risks far outweigh any heart-healthy benefits.
Related: What the Author of "Drinking With Men" Has to Say About Boys, Bars, and Drinking Alone
"Alcohol has long been known and recognized as a human carcinogen, so even some alcohol consumption raises your risks," Dr. Timothy Naimi, an alcohol researcher at Boston University's School of Public Health and a physician at the Boston University Medical Center who helped design and direct the study, told in an interview. "On the balance of all people who begin drinking, many more people are killed by alcohol than helped by it."
Related: Heavy Drinking Raises Risk of Divorce
"No public health body or clinical body recommends that people start drinking to improve their health," he added.
The research, published Friday, 2/15/13, in the American Journal of Public Health, relied on existing data about cancer deaths, alcohol consumption, and risk estimates from other scientific studies. It marks the first time that researchers have examined alcohol-related cancer rates in 30 years.
They found that alcohol could be blamed for about 20,000 cancer deaths each year, or 1 out of every 30 cancer deaths in the United States, which was about what they expected. But while heavy drinkers faced the highest risks, about a third of those deaths were among people who drank only small amounts of alcohol—1.5 alcoholic drinks or fewer per day. And it didn't matter what type of drink was consumed; standard servings of beer (12 ounces), wine (5 ounces), and hard liquor (1.5 ounces) all contain the same amount of alcohol.
The stats sound scary, but Naimi told that the risks for mild to moderate drinkers are very low. "The people who drink small amounts of alcohol needn't be duly concerned about this," he said. "But it is important to recognize that when it comes to cancer, there's no free lunch."
While more men die from alcohol-related cancers than women (men do tend to drink more), women have more adverse consequences from drinking, not only because they tend to have less body mass than men, but because they also metabolize alcohol less efficiently. The study found that about 6,000 female breast cancer deaths each year—or 15 percent—could be attributed to alcohol consumption; for men, cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus were the most common types of alcohol-related cancer. Alcohol is also linked to cancer of the liver, colon, and rectum.
The study also eliminated the common misconception that Europeans, especially in France and Germany, are healthier than Americans even though they drink plenty of alcohol. If Europeans are healthier, Naimi said, it's not likely because of their drinking habits: The number of cancer deaths attributable to alcohol in Europe was higher than in the United States.
Researcher acknowledge that people are unlikely to give up alcohol altogether. "In general, drinking less is better than drinking more, and for people who drink excessively it's something to think about," Naimi said. "Alcohol is a big preventable cancer risk factor that has been hiding in plain sight."
__________________________________________
Hangover Cures and Myth
By ABC News Good, high-level professional info
After the Times Square ball drops on New Year's Eve and copious amounts of Champagne get toasted and drunk, many might find themselves forgetting more "auld acquaintances" than they intended and waking up to 2013 with a vicious hangover.
A hangover is essentially a build-up of acetaldehyde, a toxin in the liver. When one overdoes it on the booze, the liver can't produce enough glutathione, a compound that contains the amino acid L-cysteine, to combat it. Cysteine breaks down acetaldehyde into water and carbon dioxide, which is then flushed out of the body as urine.
While nothing has been shown scientifically to "cure" a hangover, Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News' chief medical editor, offered these tips to help nurse the pain:
• Drink plenty of water. Alcohol is quite dehydrating.
• If you have a headache, take aspirin or ibuprofen the next morning, not acetaminophen (Tylenol). Acetaminophen is processed by your liver that has just taken a hit from your overdrinking.
• Go to bed. Most hangovers are over after eight to 24 hours but before you do …
• Pull out your smartphone and record a video message to yourself. Tell yourself how lousy you feel and repeat this phrase: "I won't overdrink again, I won't overdrink again, I won't overdrink again."
Other suggestions from our past contributors include how to avoid a hangover while still slugging back the brewskies, and what to do if the hangover arrives anyway:
While You're Boozing:
1. Sip Slowly
If you drink your alcohol slowly instead of guzzling it down, doctors say it helps give the stomach a fighting chance to absorb the toxins so your body isn't assaulted with booze.
2. Eat Fatty Foods
Food products with a lot of fat in them, such as chips, can help slow down the absorption of alcohol.
3. Avoid Carbonated Drinks
Doctors say carbonation can increase the absorption of alcohol, so put down the rum and Coke.
The Morning After - Happy Hangover:
1. Sleep, Sleep, Sleep
Time will heal all wounds.
2. Flush Your System
When you are dehydrated, your body is depleted of potassium and sodium, which is why you have that achy "hit by a dump truck" feeling the next morning.
Doctors say try to replenish your body with lots of fluids. Drink water or drinks that are heavy in electrolytes, such as sports drinks or coconut water.
3. Be Leery of Caffeine
Caffeine, like alcohol, is a diuretic, which can further dehydrate your body after drinking, making the headache much worse, so doctors recommend extra water if you're going to reach for a cup of coffee, tea or an energy drink.
But people who regularly drink minimal amounts of caffeine might find it helps soothe their headache. While the causes of a hangover aren't completely understood, a leading theory for the pounding headache is that alcohol dilates blood vessels in the brain and caffeine constricts the blood vessels, which might bring relief to some people.
4. Avoid the 'Hair of the Dog'
While that Bloody Mary or extra pint of beer with breakfast the next morning sounds like a rallying move, doctors say more alcohol means more dehydration, meaning more hangover hurting. Even if you don't feel the pain now, you will later.
5. Have a Snack
According to the Mayo Clinic, bland foods, such as toast and crackers, can help boost blood sugar and settle your stomach. Eating chicken noodle or bouillon soups, which are loaded with sodium and potassium, can help make you feel better.
Foods and drinks that contain fructose, such as honey, apples, berries or fruit juice, as well as vitamin C and B can also help burn off alcohol.
Final Thoughts: Not to be a buzz kill, but the bottom line is that the best way to to avoid a hangover is to stay away from the booze. Entirely.
Comments from the public:
(1) When I was in the Navy, we used to go to the guys who worked on the oxygen systems for the airplanes. 15 minutes breathing 100% oxygen completely relieves a hangover.
(2) Ceviche is the best hangover cure ever
ceviche - definition of ceviche by the Free Online Dictionary ...www.thefreedictionary.com/ceviche
ce·vi·che or se·vi·che (s -v ch , s -). n. Raw fish marinated in lime or lemon juice with olive oil and spices and served as an appetizer.
Click green for further info
_______________________________________________________
Eleven teammates turn on Lance Armstrong,
testify that he was part of 'sophisticated' doping program
10/10/12
Click green for further info
The Lance Armstrong story has just entered the realm of conspiracy thrillers.
Lance Armstrong faces further allegations that he was at the center of a doping ring. (Reuters)The United States Anti-Doping Agency has charged that Armstrong is the centerpiece of, in the agency's words, "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
Eleven former teammates of Armstrong's are among 26 people who provided sworn testimony that the seven-time Tour de France winner used performance-enhancing drugs, encouraged others to do so and helped maintain the secrecy of the program.
"The [United States Postal Service] Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices," the agency said in a press release. "A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today."
[Related: USADA's entire 202-page report]
Armstrong has consistently denied ever using any form of illegal drugs in the course of his historic career. In August he quit his fight against USADA, saying via statement, 'There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' "USADA assembled a thousand-plus-page paper trail of interviews, financial statements and lab results. Teammates who testified include George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis and Frankie Andreu. The report, the agency contends, is "conclusive and undeniable proof that brings to the light of day for the first time this systemic, sustained and highly professionalized team-run doping conspiracy."
Armstrong has not commented publicly on the report. His attorney sent a letter to USADA Tuesday which states that USADA acted as "prosecutor, judge, jury, appellate court and executioner."
The testimony is a devastating blow to the legacy of one of the most decorated athletes in all of sports. Armstrong won the Tour de France seven consecutive times and is a cancer survivor. The Lance Armstrong Foundation, through its LiveStrong outreach, has raised more than $325 million to spread awareness and assistance to victims of cancer through the sale of more than 72 million iconic yellow bracelets.
But Armstrong has also been the most visible face of a sport consistently tainted by allegations of doping. He had for years appeared to ride above the charges that brought down many of his fellow riders, including Landis and Hamilton. But as sporting agencies began to voice concerns about Armstrong, he fought back vigorously and consistently, contesting the sampling procedures, the handling of his samples and even the motivations and objectivity of the testing agencies.
USADA began to zero in on Armstrong in 2012. In June, the agency filed official charges of doping and drug trafficking, suspending him from competition in both cycling and triathlons. Two months later, after years of court action and public denials, Armstrong decided to stop his fight against USADA.
As a result, USADA served Armstrong with a lifetime ban from sports that fall under its direction and stripped him of his seven Tour de France victories, though there is a difference of opinion as to who has jurisdiction over that process. UCI (International Cycling Union) insists it does, not USADA. The Tour itself will wait for the UCI's verdict on the validity of USADA's case. For the record, Armstrong is still listed as the winner between 1999 and 2005 on the Tour de France website.
Armstrong's problems aren't limited to the sporting arena. While a federal criminal investigation against Armstrong has been dropped, a Department of Justice investigation continues. It questions whether Armstrong and his teammates fraudulently used taxpayer money in the form of U.S. Postal Service sponsorship dollars to perpetuate the illegal doping program.
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A must to study article
Warning: this stuff kills you
as smoking and overweight does - except
"Five-Hour Energy "product can kill you faster
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"Five-Hour Energy" Product
Linked to Heart Attacks, 'Spontaneous Abortion'
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You know those little vials of who-knows-what that TV bills as a healthier alternative to energy drinks. Turns out they might make you die. Or to be more specific, the flavored energy shot "has been mentioned in some 90 filings with the F.D.A., including more than 30 that involved serious or life-threatening injuries like heart attacks, convulsions and, in one case, a spontaneous abortion,"according to a New York Times investigation.
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Don't worry, 5-Hour Energy fans, Monster Energy drink is a culprit, too. Following a review of FDA records, The Times found that 5-Hour Energy was implicated in at least 13 deaths over the last four years, while Monster was cited in five deaths in a review last month. Both the paper and the FDA are careful to point out that correlation does not equal causation in these horrifying examples of pick-me-ups gone wrong. Nevertheless, we're pretty sure coffee will remain our stimulant of choice for the foreseeable future.
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The scariest thing about the Times report isn't necessarily the threat of heart attack or spontaneous abortion. It's the fact that nobody really knows what's going on with energy drinks -- or in 5-Hour Energy's case "dietary supplements" -- that become implicated in fatalities. Even scarier, is that the companies making these potions know that it's happening. They're required by federal law to report cases that link their products to fatalities to the FDA. They don't want to talk about it either. "I am not interested in making any comment," Manoj Bhargava, the chief executive of Living Essentials, the company that makes 5-Hour Energy. (Go ahead and let the irony of that company name sink in.)
We're immediately reminded of the Four Loko debacle from a couple of years back. In case you forgot, some brilliant product team decided that it would be a good idea to take all of the ingredients in your standard energy drink -- caffeine, taurine, B vitamins -- and mix it with high proof malt liquor and sell it for about two bucks a can. Fast forward a few months later, and people were dead after drinking the stuff, a horrible turn of events that eventually caused the government to ban the formula. It was eventually re-released without all of the energy additives. Fast forward a few more months later, and America figured out a way to bring back to old upper-downer specialty cocktail. Just drop a 5-Hour Energy into a can of Four Loko and BOOM! You've got yourself an evening of fun. Or heart attacks.
So maybe 5-Hour Energy is the cause of those grizzly sounding deaths, and maybe it isn't. Either way, we've seen this chain of events before. Somebody like The Times spots the correlation. Some government agency conducts an investigation, maybe banning some things even though that won't bring the victims back from the dead. And, inevitably, nobody wins.
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Loopholes in Tobacco Regulation
September 1, 2012
Loopholes in Tobacco RegulationGive the tobacco industry credit for ingenuity. Just when it looked as if federal regulators could block their ability to addict children and young adults, several companies that make cigars and pipe tobacco have sidestepped the barriers by taking advantage of loopholes in federal law.
One loophole involves a law enacted in 2009 that raised the federal tax on cigarettes, small cigars and roll-your-own tobacco, partly to deter smoking among young people and partly to help pay for a children’s health insurance program. Larger cigars and pipe tobacco, however, were taxed at a much lower rate.
Some manufacturers then relabeled “roll-your-own tobacco” as “pipe tobacco” to qualify for lower taxes. Similarly, some cigar makers made their small cigars slightly heavier to qualify for the lower rate. With just a small increase in weight, a small cigar can qualify as a large cigar, for tax purposes, even though it more nearly resembles a typical cigarette and can cost as little as seven cents a cigar.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August that a steady decline in cigarette consumption over the past decade had been partially offset by a big increase in consumption of pipe tobacco and large cigars.
The second loophole involves a separate federal law enacted in 2009 that gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. The agency banned candy and fruit flavors in cigarettes so that young people would not be enticed into the habit. But cigars were not covered. As a result, the use of flavored cigars appears to have skyrocketed among young adults and is also affecting the smoking habits of school-age youngsters.
Young adults ages 18 to 24 years old have a much higher rate of cigar smoking than older adults and are much more likely to smoke flavored cigars. There is also evidence that even younger people are being similarly affected. A study in Maryland found that while cigarette smoking declined sharply in the state between 2000 and 2010, cigar smoking among high school students rose by 11 percent, and three-fourths of those students smoked flavored cigars.
It seems clear that the regulatory steps designed to keep tobacco products out of the hands of young people are not working as well as they could. This is no accident. A report issued on Aug. 27 by Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat of California, who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, cited internal documents from several manufacturers that revealed deliberate plans to manipulate existing products and create new ones to evade taxes and flavor bans.
The F.D.A., which has the authority to extend its jurisdiction to cigars and other tobacco products any time it wishes, should move to eliminate flavored cigars and other manipulative practices as soon as it has enough evidence. As for the disparity in tax rates, Congress and the states ought to tax all tobacco products at the same rate to prevent shifting to lower-taxed products.
NYT, 9/2/2012
Editorials
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Important info for you wanting to quit smoking - study this article, then contact STAF, Inc. for further guidance
STAF, Inc. is the only organization giving you in Quitting Smoking service
a lifetime result guarantee with only a one-time fee
In quitting, former smokers
discovered non-traditional advice
Gum. Patches. Carrot sticks. Meditation. Self-hypnosis. Cold turkey. Isolation. Having kids.
Ask smokers, and they'll tell you they've tried them all when attempting to quit.
11/15/12 marks 2012's Great American Smokeout, a day when organizations across the country encourage smokers to stop, and Yahoo News asked former smokers to offer to advice to those trying to quit.
While there's no perfect salve for smoking, certain solutions work better for some than others. Indeed, many who shared their stories said prescribed or traditional methods simply didn't succeed. Here's a collection of stories and tips they shared this week.
Family is a powerful motivation to quit
Jeff Briscoe started smoking socially at 20 and relied on it during law school. Soon, it became part and parcel to bachelorhood, and for a half decade, he clung to a pack-a-day routine, clipping cigarette coupons and defying price increases. He preferred Camel Lights.
But then he married a non-smoker. Kids followed, as did regret. He felt guilty, and he didn't want his kids around smoke:
"I never feared quitting because I knew it must be done. I rapidly reduced to three to four cigarettes per day. Though enough to serve as a crutch, it made ending a seven-year habit less intimidating. As it happened, I caught bronchitis shortly after the birth of our second child and a week passed without any smoking.
"When I recovered, my wife informed me I had already quit. While not my intention, I went seven days without smokes and didn't even have any in my possession. She challenged me to keep going. Though weight gain followed, I was successful. Seven years later, I have never smoked again."
Be where the cigarettes aren't
Go to jail.
If you want to quit smoking, it's that easy, Douglas Stewart says.
When he was a troublemaker kid, Stewart landed in jail, where he discovered cigarettes cost $5 per cigarette. Because tobacco was, as he says, unattainable, he quit for two years.
For those not keen on a stint in the pokey, he offers the next best thing: "Do your best to replicate that type of isolation." Here's his advice:
"The second time I quit smoking I did so by taking a rather short trip to the Berkshires and rented a house directly on Lake Garfield. The owner would not allow smoking, so I packed up everything I needed and headed out leaving cigarettes behind. The key here is to bring everything that you need on trip like this. Doing so will ensure that you do not purchase cigarettes (or bum one) if you have to head to the store because you forgot something. Once you make it past the first few days you can start to think of yourself as a non-smoker and also start to congratulate yourself daily, or even hourly."
'Small victories became larger ones'
"I puffed down smokes for 15 years," Monica Bullock says, "and I loved every single one of them."
At 17, she started because of her "cool" new stepsister, and her pack of Marlboro's. Experimentation turned to habit, leading to clove cigarettes and marijuana. "I don't blame anyone but me," she says.
Fifteen years later, after raising a son and battling serious lung infections, she quit—many times:
"I gave it up, about 50 times. I tried gum, but that didn't work. I hated all that chewing. The patches were OK until I started wearing patches and smoking. Eventually, I sought prayer and encouragement from a local religious group. I began counting my victories differently too. Instead of 'just quitting,' I quit for an hour, then two, then six—then a whole day.
"Small victories became larger ones until, one day, I realized I hadn't smoked in days. I won't lie and say that I don't think about it occasionally, but I sure don't crave them anymore. I quit smoking and so can you. Count the small victories."
Self-hypnosis helped this smoker quit
Eric Brennan
"These cigarettes taste like crap."
That's what Eric Brennan told himself repeatedly. And that's how he stopped smoking.
He took up smoking at 11. At 13, he was sucking down a pack every day. "Whatever the reason," he says, "I know now how stupid of a decision it was."
In his 30s, strenuous tasks during his job as a construction worker would leave him winded. But it took athletic embarrassment for him to quit: "After a pathetic foot-race loss to an uncle who was 20 years my senior, I knew it was time to give it up."
He eschewed nicotine gum, patches and medication. He quit the old-fashioned way: He just stopped smoking.
"I used a technique that my grandfather had used years ago to help him quit smoking: self-hypnosis. Every day for an entire month, every time I lit a cigarette, I would tell myself how gross they tasted. I'd repeat the mantra to myself with every cigarette: 'These cigarettes taste like crap.' Each cigarette soon got less and less flavorful.
"By the end of the month, I had a pack of cigarettes that was half full and I was smoking just a few cigarettes a day. In about 45 days, I couldn't even stand the smell of them. I didn't even finish the last pack; I just tossed them in the garbage and never looked back. While not all of us might not be that strong-willed (or easily fooled), everyone can quit if they just put their mind to it."
Meditation eliminates the 'sad crankies'
Jo Burns started early, in her teens, mimicking her parents, who also smoked. But that was part of the culture in the 1970s, and warning labels didn't always help: "What?" Burns asks facetiously, "Cigarettes are really bad for us?"
Decades later, in 2002, she was 42 and still quitting smoking—"for what felt like the 100th time."
She finally quit with the help of meditation and herbal supplements:
"I knew I had to find a long-term method for dealing with the lingering urge to smoke. Distraction methods weren't particularly helpful for me, so instead of chomping on carrot sticks or taking up knitting, I began to meditate. When the desire to smoke hit I would take a few deep breaths, try to relax and let myself experience the discomfort of wanting a cigarette. Knowing it would pass in a few minutes, I learned to simply ride it out."
Avoiding others who smoke is key
Boredom led then-15-year-old Sharyl Stockstill to plunk change into an old-fashioned cigarette vending machine in Albuquerque, N.M.
Thirty-four years later, she's still struggling to quit—but she's nearly there. Part of the problem, for years, was that her sons and daughter smoked too. Quitting as a group is nearly impossible, she says: "When all four of us attempted to quit, we met with success until one of us failed, and then we all four tumbled like dominoes."
Now her sons have moved out of state, and she and her daughter are seeing success:
"It was only when I was with others who were smoking real cigarettes that I stumbled and fell flat on my face. So, this time, I will keep on track by avoiding others when they are smoking. My daughter and I have an agreement: If either of us fails, we will not smoke around the other. One of the best tips I can give is to avoid other smokers. Just the smell and sight of someone smoking can trigger overpowering desires to light up again."
Heart attack forces end to 36 years of smoking
Regina Hurley
At 12, Regina Hurley was smoking a pack a day. By 20, it was two packs.
"Marlboro 100's every single day for 36 years," she says. "If I got in the car, answered the phone, got upset, or opened a soda, I lit a cigarette."
Even though she knew smoking wasn't cool, and she knew it was killing her, she couldn't quit on her own.
"Two months ago, I had a heart attack, and was forced to make the decision to either quit smoking or die an early death," Hurley says. "I choose to live."
"I tried going cold turkey, but even as serious as I am about quitting it just didn't work for me. So, I joined a free online smoking cessation program for Georgia residents. They send me patches in the mail and counsel me when I need someone to talk to. The patches help a lot with cutting down on the number of cigarettes I smoke each day. Another thing that I have found very helpful is changing my daily routines. Small things can make a big difference -- like not smoking as soon as I get out of bed each morning and drinking a cup of coffee without a cigarette every day."
She says she's quitting Thursday—for good.
"Thursday is the Great American Smokeout. It's also the day I've decided to quit. I am going to quit smoking cigarettes forever on Thursday. Please, join me and let's all live longer, healthier lives."
More stories from smokers:
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Vegetable juice a completely different way to quit smoking forever
The smoker's dilemma: one man's journey to stop
A good reason -- pregnancy, your dog, money, anything -- is key to quitting smoking
Quit smoking or give up on a relationship
Thoroughly and hopelessly hooked on cigarettes -- but quitting anyway
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‘Warning: Smoking Will Kill You’
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.
Around (click the green for added info) 400,000 people die each year from smoking, which
cuts lives short on average about 13 years. That does not include the 50,000 who die from exposure to secondhand smoke or the 8.6 million whose illnesses are caused by smoking.
Smoking kills. Smoking can kill you, your children, your whole family.
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Congress took note of these facts when it passed (click the green for added info) the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, which requires large, graphic warnings on cigarette packages about cancer, strokes and other deadly diseases caused by smoking. The new warnings were carefully chosen to replace text-only warnings that had become ineffective — “unnoticed and stale,” the Institute of Medicine reported — in the face of the tobacco companies’ long history of deceptive advertising.
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a 2-to-1 (click the green for added info) ruling
last week, struck down the new warnings on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment rights of the tobacco companies. It ruled that the government failed to provide evidence that the warnings would reduce smoking rates, and therefore could not justify what it called a restraint on corporate free speech.
But this view ignores that these companies have spent billions of dollars over many decades misleading consumers about smoking’s terrible consequences, and that the warnings require companies to disclose accurate information. As Judge Judith Rogers noted in dissent, there is good evidence that bolder warnings will “alleviate” some of the harm.
“The government has an interest of paramount importance in effectively conveying information about the health risks of smoking to adolescent would-be smokers and other consumers,” she said, and “nothing in the Supreme Court’s commercial speech precedent would restrict the government” from doing that with warnings.
In March, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in a related case, disagreed with the majority in the District of Columbia Circuit, upholding the new warnings. There is now an important conflict to resolve in the federal circuits about the labeling requirement. The government should seek review of this ruling, and either the full District of Columbia court or the Supreme Court should uphold the law.
August 28, 2012
Source: NYT
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The web provider, weebly.com, is working on this page and on this whole website to find out the reason for the technical malfunctioning.
The orderly, original set up for article topics, lines and additional links with the complete texts is not holding.
The lines are jumping unevenly, changing the font size and boldness is changing by itself after the website work. All is fine when STAF, Inc.'s editors save & publish the new information. When next time starting to work on the editing and placing new material, the pages may appear badly messed up - it happens after STAF, Inc.'s editors exit the whole website.
H0wever, all information stays in this extensive website and is available in full in every page and for every article.
STAF, Inc. is sorry for the inconvenience - the web provider will repair this technical malfunctioning.
All material in this website is being used in College & University education for every degree level. Despite the "jumping lines & other technical difficulties", you will and every web visitor still will get the high level science information.
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