Who Consumes The Most Tobacco and Alcohol

With spending habits waning amid soaring interestrates and rising gas prices, it is perhaps useful to note the trends in the stickiest of spending habits - tobacco, alcohol, and fast food...

Norway tops the heap in terms of alcohol and tobacco spend...

How Smoking Affects Your Body And Appearance

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is well-known that smoking cigarettes or inhaling secondhand smoke can lead to a myriad of health problems down the line. If you still need convincing, read on to learn about how smoking directly affects different parts of your body and your physical appearance.

Skin

Ironically, while smoking a cigarette may look “cool” when you’re relaxing, it is actually making you less physically attractive with every puff. Studies show that smoking causes premature sagging and wrinkling of the skin, so that smokers can look about 1.5 years older than nonsmokers. Since smoking also decreases the amount of oxygen in the blood, the skin also takes on a gray, ashen tone, replacing the natural glow or blush of healthy skin. It also slows down the wound healing process, so unsightly scars and stretch marks can become more prominent.

Body Weight & Fat

Contrary to popular belief, smoking can actually make you fatter. According to studies conducted by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, heavy smokers tend to have greater body weight than nonsmokers. Smoking can cause insulin resistance, an important hormone that regulates body fat storage. The fact that smokers cannot breathe smoothly can also lead to a decrease in exercise and a sedentary lifestyle, hence making it difficult to shed pounds.

Lungs

When you inhale a mouthful of cigarette smoke, you are literally killing off the cilia in your airways. Cilia are the hair cells in your throat that helps the airway expel mucus or irritants, so without them, the smoker would be coughing away nonstop at all the mucus buildup in the throat due to the irritants from the smoke. Not only do the risks of esophageal, throat, mouth, and lung cancer increase dramatically, the lung’s ability of getting oxygen for the body also decreases. Lastly, cigarette smoke coats the walls of lungs with tar (yes, the stuff we pave roads with!), and it can take 10 years or for the body to neutralize the substance.

Heart & Blood

Since the lungs cannot get adequate oxygen to flow through the body, the heart works harder to get what little oxygen there is throughout the body. The blood pressure and rate also increases. Elevated CO2 levels in the blood also causes cholesterol deposits on the blood vessel walls, so clotting is more frequent, and the blood becomes stickier and less fluid. Hence, heart attack, stroke, and other life-threatening cardiovascular problems can easily become a reality with smoking.

Hormones

The amount of toxins and carcinogens in cigarette smoking causes the body to go into “alert mode,” which results in internal inflammation everywhere. Stress hormones are secreted from the adrenal glands above the kidneys, increasing the blood pressure (hence the usual jolt of energy smokers receives). Your blood also goes into overdrive to try and rid the body of such toxins. Smoking also messes with insulin, an important metabolic hormone, so it also increases the risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes.
Sources:

• American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
• Women’s Health magazine
• Ohio State University Medical Center
• MSN – Healthy Living

I heart smoke

Green Flavour

Female Smoking

Latest reports show female smokers make up nearly 20 percent of the world’s tobacco smokers, and that figure is likely to grow due to successful ad campaigns targeting women, with consumption growing fastest among younger women and girls.
As a result, the rate of deaths among this population is also likely to grow – adding to the 5 million who now die each year worldwide from tobacco use and passive smoking. The WHO says the number could reach 8 million deaths by 2030.
To combat the millions the tobacco industry spends each year on ads, health advocates are now trying to step up public awareness campaigns along with anti-smoking restrictions, taxes and bans, especially in low income, developing nations with few controls.

 What’s Behind the Surprise Global Spike in Female Smoking?

Biology Nicotiana

There are many species of tobacco, which are encompassed by the genus of herbs Nicotiana. It is part of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) indigenous to North and South America, Australia, south west Africa and the South Pacific. Many plants contain nicotine, a powerful neurotoxin, that is particularly harmful to insects. However, tobaccos contain a higher concentration of nicotine than most other plants. Unlike many other Solanaceae, they do not contain tropane alkaloids, which are often poisonous to humans and other animals.

Despite containing enough nicotine and other compounds such as germacrene and anabasine and other piperidine alkaloids (varying between species) to deter most herbivores, a number of such animals have evolved the ability to feed on Nicotiana species without being harmed. Nonetheless, tobacco is unpalatable to many species, and therefore some tobacco plants (chiefly tree tobacco, N. glauca) have become established as invasive weeds in some places.

Quick Facts about hookah smoking

• Compared to a single cigarette, hookah smoke is known to contain:
• Higher levels of arsenic, lead, and nickel1
• 36 times more tar
• 15 times more carbon monoxide
• Smoking a hookah requires taking longer and harder drags, increasing levels of inhaled
nicotine and carcinogens in the lungs.
• The longer the hookah session, the more nicotine and toxins one takes in.
• A 45 to 60 minute hookah session exposes the smoker to approximately the same amount
of tar and nicotine as one pack of cigarettes.
• Sharing mouthpieces without washing them can increase the risk of spreading colds, flu,
and infections—even oral herpes.
• Health risks of smoking hookahs include cancer, heart disease, lung damage, and dental
disease.5
• Do not think that if you are just visiting a hookah bar, that you are in the clear. There are still
high levels of damaging secondhand smoke to all who are present.

Becoming a smoker: Young women smoking

Generally, young people demonstrate their possession of cultural capital and secure their position within social hierarchies on the basis of what and how they consume.To this end, young women’s narratives of learning to smoke and their attempts to embody‘smoking cool’ can be read as the accrual of capital, or the acquisition of social skills and competencies that serve as markers of distinction. Some young women portrayed themselves as coming to smoking with an existing cultural knowledge or‘smoker’s capital’, a natural affinity for smoking thought to occur by virtue of one’s previous exposure to tobacco in their home or community environments. Likewise, through their experiences and interactions with other young tobacco users adolescents described building up their smoking identities and the capital which resulted from being recognized as skilled or ‘real’ smokers.

Smoking is not only a social practice but also a bodilyone, in that how the cigarette is held and smoked can demonstrate bodilycompetence . . . that must be acquired through practice’. The needto be seen as a ‘real’ smoker is particularly evident in the narratives of younger tobaccousers, some of whom are still struggling with their smoking technique and comportment,attempting to ‘get it right’ and pass as more relaxed, competent and experienced. InRenée’s case, age and gender differences contributed to her initial awkwardnesswith cigarettes, as a new smoker amongst a group of older males, friends of her then-newboyfriend.In considering the distinctions young women made between themselves and moreexperienced smokers, a Bourdieusian analysis further illustrates how adolescents signifycultural capital through mastering the largely unspoken knowledge around the correctway to smoke. Likewise, smoking can alsosymbolise one’s initiation of ‘grown up’ practice as ‘the subtle bodily schema incorporate-rated in the cultural practice of smoking are osmotic reflexes of the transition into adulthood. For Mackenzie, this consisted of moving from what she termed ‘fake’ smokingwhen first experimenting during pre-adolescence, to ‘real’ andregular smoking as a teenager. Although not everyone would admit to smoking incor-rectly or to faking it, this fake/real distinction points to the imperative of demonstratinga seemingly effortless skill with cigarettes as a key aspect of the cool adolescent’s socialrepertoire. Consequently, smoker’s capital is not only about doing it right, but is alsoabout doing it for real, as self-conscious smoking does not carry much weight amongadolescents.

The Wild Wild West of e-cigarette manufacturing

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside may as well tell smokers looking to switch to e-cigarettes to keep smoking regular cigarettes based on their study claiming that current versions of the cigarette alternative present a range of issues that pose possible public health risks. Published in today’s online issue of Tobacco Control, the UC Riverside study looked at five brands of e-cigarette — an “electronic nicotine delivery system” — for design features, accuracy and clarity of labelling and the quality of instruction manuals and associated print material supplied by the manufacturers. The study authors said that they uncovered design flaws in some brands of the e-cigarettes, noticed inadequate labelling in the packages and identified quality control issues, including leaky cartridges. This led them to suggest that regulators remove e-cigarettes from the market.

“Some people believe that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for conventional cigarettes,” said study co-author Dr. Prue Talbot, director of UC Riverside’s Stem Cell Center. “However, there are virtually no scientific studies on e-cigarettes and their safety. Our study — one of the first studies to evaluate e-cigarettes — shows that this product has many flaws, which could cause serious public health problems in the future if the flaws go uncorrected.”

The authors’ failure to mention anything about the use of e-cigarettes as a harm reduction method while discussing the device’s public health impact frustrates ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “What’s missing is whether e-cigararette vapors are safe or not. They only insist that we don’t know and shouldn’t take our chances. The message they send with such articles is: Keep on smoking.”

ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross points out that the researchers’ objective was to investigate current manufacturing practices for the product, but that they failed to mention that e-cigarette manufacturing is in its infant stage of development. “If this were about a plant that manufactured Lipitor or asthma inhalers, you’d say ‘How could they get away with that?’ But we’re in the Wild Wild West of e-cigarette manufacturing with very little regulatory oversight as yet. Yes, we need to ensure that e-cigarette makers use good manufacturing practices. Yet, if given the choice, I’d still rather smoke an e-cigarette manufactured now than a traditional cigarette produced under tightly regulated manufacturing practices.”

Passive smoking and children

In 2003, over 11,000 people in the UK are estimated to have died as a result of
passive smoking.* Although regarded for many years as little more than a
nuisance, exposure to ambient tobacco smoke released directly by burning
tobacco and indirectly by exhalation of smoke by smokers (also variously
referred to as environmental tobacco smoke, second-hand smoke, or tobacco
smoke pollution) is now a recognised cause of significant short- and long-term
harm to others. Many of those adverse health effects were summarised,
particularly in relation to adult exposure, in an earlier Royal College of
Physicians report.†
Increasing awareness of these health risks has led the UK and several other
countries to introduce legislation restricting or prohibiting smoking in enclosed
public places. This legislation has typically been justified by the legal and moral
obligation to ensure safe working environments and, in the UK, to prevent the
600 or so deaths previously estimated to be caused each year by passive smoking
at work.* However, these are the minority of deaths caused by passive smoking,
the bulk of which (an estimated 10,700 deaths in adults in 2003)* arise from
exposure to tobacco smoke in the home.
Passive smoking in the home is also a major hazard to the health of the
millions of children in the UK who live with smokers, and the extent of this
health problem has not, to date, been accurately quantified. In this report, we
therefore use established literature and additional analysis to estimate the
prevalence, determinants and trends in passive smoking exposure, present new
systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the magnitude of the effects of passive
smoking on the main recognised health consequences in children, and estimate
the numbers of cases of illness and death arising from these effects. We also
quantify the effect of exposure to smoking behaviour on the risk of children
starting to smoke, and estimate the number of children who do take up smoking
as a consequence. We then consider the financial cost of the disease burden for
the NHS and wider society arising from all of these exposures. The report also
explores ethical issues relating to passive smoking and children, and public
opinion on measures to prevent passive smoking, concluding with policy options
that would reduce exposure of children to this significant health hazard and
negative behavioural model.
Governments, and societies, have a duty to ensure that children grow up in a
safe environment, and are protected from explicit or implicit encouragement to
take up hazardous behaviours such as smoking. This report provides some of the
background and policy measures necessary to ensure that that duty is discharged.
I am personally very grateful to John Britton and the other members of the
RCP’s Tobacco Advisory Group, and the many contributors to this report who
have continued the excellent tradition of the RCP in this important area.

Taiwan Children Health Study

The Taiwan Children Health Study (TCHS) has a multipurpose nationwide design, and is focused on common environmental factors such as outdoor pollutants and household ETS exposure. Communities in Taiwan were selected with the aim of maximizing the variability and minimizing the correlations of exposures to outdoor pollutants based on historic routine air monitoring data. In communities with pollution patterns of interest, neighborhoods with stable, largely middle-income populations were identified from 2004 census data.
To address community-level sources of variability, we randomly sought participating communities within existing financial constraints. School district representatives in participating communities were consulted to identify suitable schools, based on demographic stability, likely parental cooperation, and absence of local pollution sources. Our study population finally comprised middleschool children from 14 diverse communities in Taiwan. To permit cross-sectional assessment of environmental factors, we recruited 350-450 participants from each of the study communities. In each classroom targeted for participation, every student was invited to volunteer.
Classroom-level incentives were used to encourage participation. In each school, science, health, or physical education classes were targeted, excluding any special classes for gifted or learning-disabled subjects. The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board at our university hospital, and it complied with the principles outlined in the Helsinki Declaration [28]. Questionnaire of respiratory health A total of 5,804 seventh and eighth-grade children were recruited from public schools in 14 Taiwanese communities in 2007.
The questionnaire was distributed in all communities simultaneously; subjects were given the forms by project staff following their pulmonary function tests and asked to complete and return them the following day. Questionnaire responses by parents or guardians were used to categorize children’s asthma status, age at asthma diagnosis, wheeze, and history of bronchitic symptoms. Children were considered to have asthma if there was a positive answer to the question “Has a doctor ever diagnosed this child as having asthma?” Active asthma was defined as physician-diagnosed asthma with any asthma-related symptoms or illness in the previous 12 months. Serious asthma was defined as ever visit emergency rooms or ever hospitalized. Early-onset asthma was defined as age of onset for asthma before 5 years of age. Late-onset asthma was onset after 5 years of age. Wheeze was defined as any occurrence of the child’s chest sounding wheezy or whistling.
Current wheeze was defined as wheezing for 3 or more days out of the week for a month or longer in the previous year. Bronchitis status was positive if subjects had a physician-diagnosed episode in the prior 12 months. Chronic cough was defined as cough in the morning or at other times of the day that lasted for three months in a row or more during the prior 12 months. Chronic phlegm was defined by a “yes” answer to the question “Other than with colds, does this child usually seem congested in the chest or bring up phlegm?”