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By Dr Colin Mendelsohn, Tobacco Treatment Specialist, Sydney www.colinmendelsohn.net.au Waterpipe smoking is becoming increasingly common among young people in some parts of Australia. However there are many misconceptions about waterpipe use. In the waterpipe (hookah, shisha, narghileh), air is drawn through heated charcoal, then through perforated aluminum foil and moist tobacco (‘Maassel’) in the head [...]
The largest study of its kind has shown that smoking during pregnancy could cause epigenetic changes in the fetus, resulting in birth defects and health problems later in life. Christina Markunas of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and her colleagues have found that newborn children of mothers who smoked while pregnant are more [...]
The debate over the health and legal implications of e-cigarette use has divided experts across the world. Local authorities will now need to face up to the issue after e-cigarettes were banned in Western Australia. - Eamonn Duff, Amy Corderoy via Electronic cigarettes: the truth behind the smoke and mirrors. Image from: Unsplash
Eighty per cent of adult smokers start smoking before 18 years of age, at an average age of 15 years. (1) Young people assume that they will stop before they experience any serious health problems. However, nicotine dependence can develop very quickly and most regular teenage smokers are soon unable to quit, often before they [...]
Most adult smokers begin smoking during adolescence. They quickly become addicted and most struggle to quit for decades afterwards. Prevention in the early years can prevent this battle from even starting. Here are 5 strategies that can help: 1. Avoid that first cigarette Young people vastly underestimate the addictive potential of smoking and think [...]
Many teenagers want to quit smoking and make serious attempts to do so each year. However, most are addicted to nicotine and have little knowledge about the quitting process. In most cases young people go ‘cold turkey’, quitting abruptly without any assistance or medication. Not surprisingly, quit rates are very low. Here are 5 tips to [...]
The more tobacco advertising teenagers see, the more likely they are to start smoking, according to a new study. Every 10 tobacco ads that teens view increases their risk of starting to smoke by nearly 40 percent and boosts their chances of becoming a daily smoker by 30 percent, the German researchers found. via Tobacco [...]
Researchers at Imperial College London and the Human Genetics Foundation (HuGeF) in Italy have identified a number of sites in the DNA of blood that have been chemically tagged as a result of smoking. These tags are also detectable in lung tissue and could be used to measure the increased risk of certain cancers such [...]
70% of smokers say they want to quit. Most smokers start when they are teenagers. Tobacco is addictive, out of the 3 million smokers in Australia, 70% want to quite but find the habit very hard to kick even though they are aware of the health risks. Saturday 1 December 2012, saw a new turning [...]
Jealousy, guilt about their own habit and wanting a smoking "buddy" are among the reasons to wreck other people's quitting attempts.Data collated from 6,300 current and former smokers by Pfizer shows 31 per cent of smokers admit being saboteurs.The study also found that 72 per cent of smokers who have tried to quit think someone [...]
