North Shore LIJ

April 05, 2012

Coming to Labels Soon: What Chemicals Are in Cigarettes

Kenneth Spaeth, MD
Director, Occupational and Environmental Medicine Center
Pat Folan, RN
Director, Center for Tobacco Control

Tobacco companies must display the concentration of 20 cancer-causing chemicals in cigarettes on warning labels beginning this June, according to a new requirement enacted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is the agency’s latest step to make the toxicity of cigarettes more transparent.

While there are more than 7,000 chemicals in cigarettes, 93 of them are proven to be harmful. However, the FDA selected 20 to display because of ease of testing, which ensures compliance. The 20 cigarette chemicals include such well-studied, recognized carcinogens as toluene, formaldehyde and benzene.

Just as nutritional labels on foods list such elements as calories, sodium and fats to help consumers make better-informed, healthier choices, the hope is that displaying the types and amounts of these chemicals on cigarette warning labels will add to the myriad motivators to inspire smokers to quit.

The FDA will also require tighter restrictions on tobacco company claims that characterize some tobacco products as “less risky” to health, including snuff and electronic cigarettes, which have been more heavily marketed in recent years.

Despite great success in the struggle against this scourge, smoking contributes roughly 20 percent of all deaths each year in the United States (more than HIV, drug and alcohol use, motor vehicle accidents, suicides and murders combined) at a cost of about nearly $200 billion. So the more we do to help people quit or never start using tobacco, the better off everyone will all be.

The North Shore-LIJ Center for Tobacco Control offers quit-smoking help. Call us at 516-466-1980.

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March 19, 2012

Anti-Tobacco Ads Show Painful Effects of Smoking

Pat Folan, RN

The painful reality of illness and damage suffered by real people because of smoking is the focus of a new anti-tobacco ad campaign. Launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ads show the toll of illnesses caused by smoking and secondhand smoke.

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March 05, 2012

Clouded in Smoke: Cigarettes Dull the Male Brain

Marc Gordon, MD

Everyone knows smoking is dumb. Now it looks like it makes you dumb, too: A recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that male smokers of a certain age experience faster loss of brain power.

Researchers found that, compared to men who never smoked, middle-aged men smokers are likely to experience more rapid decline in certain mental abilities over a period of 10 years. Recent ex-smokers also showed greater cognitive loss, although researchers observed no lasting effect in men who had quit more than 10 years earlier. The study also suggests that the negative association between smoking and cognition, especially at advanced ages, may actually be underestimated because of smokers' higher risk of death and drop-out.

Yet how smoking results in decreased mental abilities remains unclear. In this trial, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, elevated cholesterol or impaired lung function did not account for the effect. While the study didn't show an association between smoking and cognitive decline in women, there was a smaller proportion of women (about 30 percent) in the trial group and a higher percentage of women had never smoked. The average pack-years of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked were higher in men than in women and heavy alcohol consumption was considerably higher in men (38.7 percent) as compared to women (23.3 percent) smokers.

This study presents not only more evidence that smoking is bad for you, but it also shows that mid-life smoking is a modifiable risk factor which, left unchecked, will rob your brain of about 10 years.

Visit our main Web site to find a hospital in New York close to you or visit our Find a Physican tool to find a doctor best suited to your needs.

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February 02, 2012

Tobacco Worsens Heart Disease

Patricia Folan, RN
Daniel Jacobsen, NP

If you are a tobacco user and have heart disease or an irregular heartbeat, high cholesterol or high blood pressure, there are some things you need to know.

Smoking causes many health problems for everyone who does it, but some of the most significant damage is to the heart and blood vessels.

• Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in the US.
• Even smoking as little as one cigarette a day doubles your chance of having a heart attack. The more you smoke, the higher that risk goes.
• Quitting smoking may have a greater impact on your heart disease than any other treatment or medication.
• People who continue to smoke after their first heart attack are much more likely to have another heart attack compared to those who quit smoking after their first heart attack.
• People with high blood pressure who use tobacco have worse heart disease than nonsmokers, even with treatment.
• Quitting smoking can help reduce your low-density lipoprotein (LDL cholesterol) level, also known as the “bad” cholesterol.
• You are more likely to suffer a stroke. And when a tobacco user has a stroke, the stroke tends to be more severe, with worse outcomes. 

It is important for anyone who uses tobacco to think about quitting. Quitting tobacco is the number one thing you can do for your health. This is even more important for someone with heart disease.

Quitting is hard, but with help from North Shore-LIJ’s Center for Tobacco Control and your healthcare provider, you can succeed. For free, confidential help, call 516-466-1980.

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January 16, 2012

Nicotine Patch May Help Memory Impairment

Marc Gordon, MD

Nicotine patches may ease mild cognitive impairment, according to a new study in the journal Neurology. Study participants showed improved attention plus improvements in secondary measures of attention, memory and thought-processing speed. But the research did not demonstrate a significant difference between nicotine and placebo on overall improvement.

The study was conducted with 74 non-smokers with amnestic mild cognitive impairment, who were randomly assigned to receive either nicotine patches or placebo patches for six months. Amnestic mild cognitive impairment is characterized by measurable impairment in memory without obvious functional disability. It may represent an intermediate stage between normal aging and mild Alzheimer's dementia. Alzheimer’s is associated with a deficiency of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which sends signals between nerve cells by binding to specific receptors. Nicotine has the ability to bind to and activate some of these receptors.

The nicotine-treated group experienced weight loss, more adverse events and more discontinuations due to adverse events, but there were no severe adverse events, and overall, the nicotine patch appeared to be safe and relatively well-tolerated by the participants.

While these results are encouraging and justify further research into the potential therapeutic use of nicotine in mild cognitive impairment, it is important to bear in mind that this is a small, preliminary study. Full Post - to Detail View