March Healthy Update Newsletter.....this month is on CIGARETTE
SMOKING........ I quit 6/11/2000......6/11/2001 will be one year for
me :>))
If you smoke....please read this......if you know someone who
smokes......please forward this newsletter to them.....maybe it will
help
them kick the habit. There are 3 informative articles in this months
newsletters.
Please stop by my web site see what's new.
http://www.herbals-unlimited.com

**SMOKING TRIPLES PNEUMONIA RISK**
NEW YORK-- Pack-a-day smokers face nearly 3 times the
risk of developing
pneumonia compared with nonsmokers, according to
researchers.

Pneumonia risks rose with increases in "duration of
the habit, the average
number of cigarettes smoked daily, and cumulative
(lifetime) cigarette
consumption," report Dr. Carlos Gonzalez of the
Institute of Epidemiological
and Clinical Research in Barcelona, Spain, and
colleagues there and
elsewhere. The findings are published in the August
issue of the journal
Chest.

The investigators compared the smoking histories of
205 pneumonia patients
with those of 475 healthy 'control' subjects.

They found that people who smoked more than 20
cigarettes per day had a
three times higher risk for pneumonia than nonsmokers,
even after adjusting
for other risk factors such as the presence of asthma
or tuberculosis. In
fact, the researchers estimate that "one of every
three observed pneumonia
cases in adults would have been avoided if no one in
the population had
smoked."

According to the authors, smoking may contribute to
pneumonia by triggering
"alterations in the immune system and inflammatory
functions" that reduce
the body's ability to fight off disease.

But there was also some good news in the report --
studies have shown that
immune responses return to normal, healthy levels soon
after individuals
quit smoking. In fact, Gonzalez and colleagues report
that pneumonia risks
among ex-smokers dropped by 50% within 5 years of
kicking the habit.

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Want to quit? I quit with the help of Nicodex.....herbal
supplement. I smoked 25 years! If I can do it...you
can to. Check out Nicodex at my web site at
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=======================================

**11 MINUTES PER CIGARETTE**
WESTPORT, Dec 31 - Researchers in Great Britain
estimate men lose an average of 11 minutes of life for
every cigarette they smoke.

Writing in a letter to the editor in the January 1st
British Medical Journal, Dr. Mary Shaw and colleagues
from the University of Bristol, in England, calculated
that if a man begins smoking at age 17 and continues
to consume an average of 16 cigarettes per day until
his death at an average age of 71, he will have smoked
about 311,688 cigarettes throughout his life.

Based on mortality rates of male smokers and
nonsmokers in England and Wales, the researchers
calculated that the average smoker loses 6.5 years of
life, which equates to 11 minutes per cigarette.
"It's a simple message that should have a large
resonance for many people," Dr. Shaw said in an
interview with Reuters Health.

To put their estimation "in perspective," Dr. Shaw
said, she and her colleagues composed a list of
activities that the average man can do with the time
he might save by not smoking. For example, for each
cigarette smoked, he might miss an opportunity to
"call a friend," "read a newspaper," or have "fairly
frantic sexual intercourse."

In their letter, the investigators posit that "[t]he
first day of the new year is traditionally a time when
many smokers try to stop, and on 1 January 2000 a
record number might be expected to try to start the
new millennium more healthily."

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Want to quit? I quit with the help of Nicodex.....herbal
supplement. I smoked 25 years! If I can do it...you
can to. Check out Nicodex at my web site at
http://www.herbals-unlimited.com/nico.htm
=======================================

**DON'T BE FOOLED BY LIGHT CIGARETTES**
NEW YORK -- Because smokers take more frequent and
larger puffs when they smoke low- and medium-yield
cigarettes, the amounts of tar and nicotine that they
inhale are double or more than double estimates
published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),
report researchers from the American Health
Foundation.

The study results suggest that the 80% of smokers in
the United States who commonly choose to smoke "light"
cigarette brands are being exposed to higher doses of
nicotine and lung carcinogens than those indicated by
FTC figures.

"The FTC list of numbers are very poor guides for
consumers, and over the years people on their own and
with perhaps the sly encouragement of the tobacco
industry have come to rely on lower tar and nicotine
yield numbers as indications of safety," said Steven
Stellman, study co-author and the chief of the
division of epidemiology at the American Health
Foundation in Valhalla, New York.

Stellman suggested that the study findings might push
smokers to "think more seriously about quitting. Maybe
this will nudge people who are on the verge of
quitting to seek out some of the many available
resources out there to help them stop."

But the researchers also warn that the doses of
nicotine medications, such as the nicotine patch, used
to help smokers trying to kick the habit may need
revision because they are often based on official
estimates of the nicotine content of cigarettes.

Researchers interviewed 133 healthy smokers between
the ages of 18 and 50 in Westchester County, New York,
who smoked only medium- or low-yield cigarettes,
giving them a 4-day supply of their brand and
examining the remaining butts to establish the amount
smoked and the exact manner the cigarettes were held
and handled. Factors examined to determine the levels
of tar and nicotine actually inhaled included the
length of each individual puff, the number of puffs
taken, the total number of cigarettes smoked, and the
flow of the smoke.

When these indicators were established, a piston-type
smoking machine was used to "machine smoke" each
smokers' brand and analyze the resulting amounts of
tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide -- as well as other
carcinogens such as the nitrosamine NNK, which is
found only in tobacco. Stellman and his team found
that when compared with the method the FTC has used
since 1936 to calculate cigarette carcinogen levels,
the low- and medium-yield cigarette smokers inhaled,
respectively, 2.5 and 2.2 times more nicotine and 2.6
and 1.9 times more tar than the government listings
indicate.

The investigators also found that smokers generally
took longer puffs with shorter intervals between puffs
than the FTC's own machine-based protocol assumes is
the case. Their report is published in the January
19th issue of the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Stellman
emphasized that the importance of this finding is that
it points out how the smoking public is being misled
when making choices about cigarettes. "Although the
FTC is very careful about not making health claims,
everyone knows that tar and nicotine are bad for you
-- so many smokers are encouraged to choose low-yield
cigarettes with an eye to possible health
consequences," said Stellman.

"The smoking habit is extraordinarily difficult to
shake once you have it, and for many years many in the
health community had hoped that we would find safer
lower-yield cigarettes -- but these facts are
mitigated by the way that people smoke," said
Stellman.

Stellman pointed out that discrepancies in the
reported figures have arisen because the FTC estimates
"have very little relevance to the way people actually
smoke.... One of the principal characteristics of the
FTC calculation method has been that all of the
numbers come from smoking all of these different
cigarettes in exactly the same way. So we have
abandoned these settings and reset the smoking
machines to the way that people actually smoke their
cigarettes. When we did that, we found that the tar
and nicotine intake levels are approximately twice as
high than in the FTC reports... And so someone who
thinks that switching from a medium-yield brand to a
low-yield brand would give them a 50% or more cut in
nicotine and tar intake as suggested by the FTC would
actually only be cutting intake by about 25%-30%,"
said Stellman.

He added that this miscalculation has given smokers a
false sense of security since "by the time a person
gets lung cancer a smoker has generally been smoking
about 40 years. And in that time he or she has
generally changed brands about four or five times, and
because the tobacco industry has been lowering its tar
and nicotine brands over time everyone has experienced
the change" and assumed that their carcinogen intake
has been similarly lowered when in fact their manner
of smoking has changed to compensate for the brand
changes.

But Stellman cautioned that for those who do decide to
quit, the study results indicate that the commonly
used nicotine patch therapy, in particular, can fall
victim to the FTC number reporting problem. "People
who use this method set the dosage based on the FTC
numbers, and in our opinion they're setting their
doses up too low and therefore setting themselves up
for a failure," said Stellman, suggesting that smokers
who try this route should realistically understand
their intake levels if they want to succeed in
quitting.

In an editorial, Judith Wilkenfeld of the Washington
DC-based Committee on Tobacco Product Change and
colleagues note that the study findings suggest that
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not the FTC,
should be responsible for regulating tobacco products.

"The FDA would have the authority and expertise
necessary to make tobacco product manufacturers
accountable for clearly and accurately describing the
toxicity and addictiveness of their products to their
customers," Wilkenfeld's team writes.
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Last chance before you hit the delete button......do
you want to finally quit??? Do you want to get healthy
again.......I no longer have chronic bronchitis, ear infections,
bad breath, smelly clothes, smelly hair. Do you want
to try to quit smoking? Please check out Nicodex
It worked for me.....It may work for you. Here is the address
one more time.
http://www.herbals-unlimited.com/nico.htm
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Trish
Email; trish@...
Web Site; http://www.herbals-unlimited.com
ICQ# 52898091