Improving Life, One Breath at a Time®
tobacco | asthma | events | donations | volunteer | news | history | links | contact
|
|
Improving Life, One Breath at a Time® |
|
tobacco | asthma | events | donations | volunteer | news | history | links | contact |
|
|
The mission of the American Lung Association is to prevent lung disease and promote lung health. Tobacco is also linked to current adolescent issues like: High-Risk Drinking, Illicit Drug Use & High-Risk Sex Memory and Cognitive Impairment
Teen Quit Kit
1-877-966-8784 or 304-599-6981.
Last updated 1/21/2004
©1999 by ALAWV, Inc. All rights reserved |
TOBACCO DANGERS TODAY! Besides the obvious Health effects, listed below are some other reasons we can use to help increase the tobacco control priority in our schools.
Tobacco, High-Risk Drinking, Illicit Drug Use, and High-Risk Sex: Adolescents who smoke are seven times more likely to abuse or become addicted to illicit drugs than are nonsmoking teens. 16 The Harvard College Alcohol Study determined that student tobacco users are 4.62 times more likely to smoke marijuana and 3.6 times more likely to engage in high-risk drinking than are nonsmokers. Smokers are more likely to use illicit drugs than high-risk drinkers. 17 College students who are smokers are 50.0% more likely than nonsmokers to have had two or more sexual partners in the last month. 17 Even light smokers are over three times more likely to participate in high-risk sexual behavior when concurrently using alcohol or other drugs than nonsmokers. 15
Tobacco Use and Lower Academic Performance: Smokers have lower grade point averages (GPA) than nonsmokers. The Harvard College Alcohol Study found that smokers are 27.0% less likely than nonsmokers to have an above B grade average. Daily smokers were found to have even lower GPAs than high-risk drinkers. 17 Smoking prevalence in colleges has been found to be lower at highly selective schools. 18 Many factors interact to encourage tobacco use among youth, including tobacco advertising and promotion, tobacco use by peers and family members, and easy access to tobacco products. 19
Mental health disorders have been strongly associated with smoking, especially among adolescents and young adults. Smoking has been associated with suicidal tendencies. College students who are daily smokers are more than five times more likely to have either seriously thought about or attempted suicide than non-smokers. 15 Adolescent smokers are two times more likely to develop a major depressive disorder than adolescent nonsmokers. 16 A National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) 25-year study concluded that smoking is connected with several mental health disorders in adolescents and young adults. Heavy smokers (>20 cigarettes/day) were 6.8 times more likely to develop agoraphobia, had 5.5 times the risk of generalized anxiety disorder, and had 15.6 times the risk of developing panic disorder than non-smokers and light smokers. These drastic risk increases are thought to be tied to the damage that nicotine can do to the blood vessels that lead to the brain.
SMOKING CAUSES MEMORY AND COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IN ADOLESCENTS
Source: Yale U. Office of Public Affairs Date: 2005-02-01, opa@yale.edu, 203-432-8555 URL: http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/05-02-01-01.all.html ID: 189002
Adolescents who smoke show impairment of memory and other cognitive functions, according to a Yale study in Biological Psychiatry.
More than 4.5 million teenagers smoke cigarettes in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Leslie Jacobsen, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, and her research team tested working memory. This form of memory is used when keeping information in mind and manipulating it. They also evaluated verbal learning and memory, attention, mood, symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and tobacco cravings in 41 adolescent daily smokers and 32 nonsmokers. The groups were similar in age, gender and education.
"Adolescent smokers were found to have impairments in accuracy of working memory performance," Jacobsen said. Other studies show adult non-smokers and smokers have comparable focused, sustained and selective attention, and improved working memory, suggesting enhancement of performance by nicotine.
Study Indicates Secondhand Smoke Exposure Harms Children's Intellectual Development (Statement of Daniel E. McGoldrick, Director of Research, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids)
Washington, D.C. (January 4, 2005) - An important new study published in the January 2005 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives demonstrates a strong negative relationship between children's exposure to secondhand smoke and their performance on tests measuring reading, math and reasoning skills. The negative impact of secondhand smoke on children's cognitive ability was evident even at extremely low levels of exposure and held up when other possible explanations (e.g., poverty, parent education, etc.) were controlled. These disturbing findings add to the already long list of health harms caused by secondhand smoke to non-smokers of all ages. The study's clear message to parents is that children must be protected from secondhand smoke both at home and in public places. It's clear message to state and local policy makers is that they should enact comprehensive smoke-free policies that cover all workplaces and public places in order to protect everyone's right to breath clean air and help prevent the myriad health problems associated with secondhand smoke.
The new study, conducted primarily by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, involved nearly 4,399 U.S. children 6-16 years of age and measured exposure to secondhand smoke based on blood levels of a nicotine byproduct called cotinine. The study found that 84 percent of the children studied had detectable levels of cotinine and estimated that more than 33 million American kids are at risk for secondhand smoke-related reading deficits. This broad exposure, despite the fact that just 43 percent of the households reported a smoker in the home, suggests not only that parents should make their homes completely smoke-free, but that children are also exposed to dangerous levels of secondhand smoke outside the home. It is critical that parents be aware of the environments in which their kids are spending time and that elected officials implement polices to make all public places smoke-free.
The study found a strong negative correlation between levels of exposure to secondhand smoke and scores on standardized tests of reading, math and reasoning. Perhaps more important, even extremely low levels of secondhand smoke exposure were related to some decrease in performance. As the authors state, "we are unable to recommend a safe level of exposure to ETS (secondhand smoke) because there is no discernable threshold for the impact of ETS on cognitive functioning in children."
In addition to these new findings, secondhand smoke is scientifically proven to cause lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other illnesses and is responsible nationally for thousands of deaths each year. Secondhand smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals and 69 known carcinogens including formaldehyde, lead, arsenic, benzene and polonium 210. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently advised persons with heart disease to avoid settings where smoking is allowed because of the risk that even short-term exposure to secondhand smoke can trigger heart attacks. Studies show that kids are especially vulnerable to other people's smoke, suffering more respiratory problems, ear infections and asthma.
USA TODAY Hostile Personalities More Prone To Nicotine Addiction
The brains of aggressive hostile people light up much more under PET scans when exposed to nicotine. “We call this brain response a ‘born to smoke’ pattern,” said study leader Dr. Steven Potkin, professor of psychiatry and human behavior. “Based on these dramatic brain responses to nicotine, if you have hostile, aggressive personality traits, in all likelihood, you have a predisposition to cigarette addiction without ever having even touched a cigarette.” Study results appeared in the January issue of Cognitive Brain Research.
Potkin and Dr. James H. Fallon, professor of anatomy and neurobiology, gave study subjects standard psychiatric personality exams and separated them into two groups — those with high-hostility personality traits, which are marked by anger, aggression and anxiety, and those with low-hostility traits. Both groups included smokers and non-smokers. The groups were given nicotine patches of strengths of 3.5 or 21 milligrams, or placebo, and later subjected to PET scans to see if the nicotine triggered any responses in brain metabolism of glucose energy. While the PET scans showed no metabolic changes in the low-hostility subjects, nicotine induced dramatic metabolic responses in the high-hostility group individuals in the limbic system and the cortical and subcortical sectors of the brain. Among members of the high-hostility group, smokers showed a metabolic reaction only to the more powerful 21 milligram nicotine patch, while non-smokers reacted to both patches. The fact that non-smokers in the high-hostility group showed a significant metabolic response to nicotine provides the first biological evidence that people with high-hostility personalities are likely to become dependent on cigarettes because of their brains’ strong response to nicotine, said Potkin. “In turn, this might also help explain why other people have no compelling drive to smoke or can quit smoking with relative ease,” he added.
It is conceivable that a drug that can make a person less hostile and less aggressive could make it easier for that person to quit smoking. Another speculation: the association between drug use and crime may in part be due to the fact that the kinds of personalities most prone to become drug addicts are more aggressive in the first place. What would be interesting to know is whether people with high levels of hostility who never try drugs or cigarettes are more or less likely to become criminals than those who do. The answer may depend in part on which drug a hostile person becomes addicted to. Some addictive drugs might even have net calming effects that make a hostile and aggressive person less hostile.
Another interesting question: Suppose people with criminal records who smoke who were trying to stop smoking were studied. Would criminals who have a hard time quitting cigarettes who finally manage to quit become more or less likely to commit violent crimes than they were when they were still smoking?
One complication of studying links between nicotine and crime is that nicotine causes brain damage. Nicotine causes degeneration in one part of the brain, according to professor of psychology Gaylord Ellison, who announced the finding in the journal Neuropharmacology, and at this year's meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Ellison found that nicotine causes selective degeneration of the fasciculus retroflexus, the part of the higher brain that primarily controls the dopamine and serotonin levels in the body.
Dopamine controls movement, emotional response, and the ability to experience pleasure and pain, while serotonin regulates a person's mood.
Suppose a person has a brain that is aggressive and hostile and that person becomes a nicotine addict and basically racks up a bunch of brain damage. Then suppose that person manages to quit smoking. Is that person then even more hostile as a result of the brain damage? Or does the type of damage done have the effect of reducing violent behavior? A similar question can be asked about other addictive drugs because lots of addictive drugs cause brain damage.
There is increasing evidence that the fasciculus retroflexus (FR) represents a 'weak link' following the continuous administration of drugs of abuse. A variety of drugs which predominantly potentiate dopamine, including D-amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDMA, cocaine, and cathinone, all induce degeneration in axons from lateral habenula, through the sheath of FR, to midbrain cells such as SN, VTA, and raphe. For some drugs, such as cocaine, this is virtually the only degeneration induced in brain. Continuous nicotine also selectively induces degeneration in FR, but in the other half of the tract, i.e. in axons from medial habenula through the core of the tract to interpeduncular nucleus. This phylogenetically primitive tract carries much of the negative feedback from forebrain back onto midbrain reward cells, and the finding that these descending control pathways are compromised following simulated drug binges has implications for theories of drug addiction but also psychosis in general.
I am a skeptic on the issue of addictive drug legalization because if the barrier to access to addictive brain-damaging substances is lowered then more people will become addicts and damage their brains. What will be the net result? The legalization advocates can't answer that question. It may depend on the drug. Some drugs might damage circuits that cause hostility. Other drugs might damage circuits that suppress hostility. Also, hostility is not the only factor in play here. Impulsiveness, happiness, anxiety, and other aspects of personality may be enhanced or decreased by the sorts of selective brain damage various addictive drugs cause. By Randall Parker at 2004 February 14 02:04 PM Brain Addiction | TrackBack
Mental Decline; One More Reason!
In an article printed in the Morgantown (WV) Dominion-Post on 03/30/04, Study links smoking, decline in cognitive ability, Knight Ridder Newspapers http://www.dominionpost.com/a/news/2004/03/30/ai/
MILWAUKEE -- One of the last myths about smoking has been snuffed out by a study showing it accelerates mental decline in older people.
For years there had been conflicting information about whether smoking might offer some protection against developing dementia. But a large study in the latest issue of the journal Neurology indicates that smokers had a slow but significant decline in cognitive ability over time.
''We know there are lots of bad reasons to smoke, and this is another one,'' said co-author Lenore Launer, chief of neuroepidemiology at the National Institute on Aging.
Limited research in the 1990s suggested smoking might offer some protection against developing Alzheimer's disease, but those studies were flawed, Launer said.
To find out if there were any protective effect, researchers began following a group of 9,209 people aged 65 and older from several European countries. The study is the largest ever to examine the issue.
The subjects were determined to be free of dementia at the start of the study.
They were given a mental test at the start and at subsequent times over a two- to three-year period. The test commonly is used to measure cognitive ability and to screen for dementia.
Over the course of the study, those who never smoked showed a small, 0.03-point decline per year, a drop that is considered to be the result of normal aging.
Just one more reason!
Environmental Tobacco Smoke Increases School Absenteeism Gilliland FD, Berhane K, Islam T, Wenten M, Rappaport E, Avol E, Gauderman WJ, McConnell R, Peters JM. 2003. Environmental tobacco smoke and absenteeism related to respiratory illness in schoolchildren. Am J Epidemiol 157:861-869.
Research has shown that exposure to household environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is responsible for respiratory illnesses among young children; however, the ETS-associated morbidity for school-age children is less well defined. Previous research by a team including NIEHS grantees Frank Gilliland, William J. Gauderman, and John Peters of the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, has shown that asthma-related school absenteeism is a major problem in Southern California, accounting for a large portion of all absences. To determine the extent to which ETS exposure might be implicated in school absenteeism, these researchers and colleagues investigated the relationship between ETS exposure, asthma status, and respiratory illness-related school absences in 1,932 fourth-grade schoolchildren from 12 Southern California communities.
At study entry, more than 18% of the children were exposed to household ETS. Overall, ETS exposure was associated with a 27% increase in risk of school absences related to respiratory illness. Children living in a household with two or more smokers were at a substantially higher risk (75%) of such absences. Children with asthma were at the greatest increased risk of school absences related to respiratory illness. When exposed to one smoker, the risk for children with asthma was 2.35 times higher, and when exposed to two or more smokers, the risk increased to 4.45 times higher. Children who were exposed to ETS also had higher rates of absences related to all types of illness. This study demonstrates that ETS exposure is associated with increased respiratory illness-related school absenteeism among school-age children, with much higher risks for children with asthma. Approximately 9 million children in the United States suffer from asthma, and related school absences cause millions of lost work hours for parents who must stay home to care for their children. This research shows that ETS plays a major part in some of these absences and points out the need for smoking cessation programs, especially for the parents of children with asthma. Jerry Phelps
15. Halperin and Eytan; TTAC, http://www.ttac.org/college/facts/negative-effects.html.
16. Brown, 1996; TTAC, http://www.ttac.org/college/facts/negative-effects.html
17. Rigotti, 2000; ; TTAC, http://www.ttac.org/college/facts/negative-effects.html
18. Wechsler, 1998; TTAC, http://www.ttac.org/college/facts/negative-effects.html
19. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Reducing Tobacco Use: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000.
|
|
tobacco | asthma | events | donations | volunteer | news | history | links | contact |
