It is no secret that an addiction to cigarettes is one of the toughest habits to break. While there are some people who can quit by the strength of will power alone, the vast majority of the smoking population requires the assistance of cessation aids and numerous attempts before quitting cigarettes for good. But with medical reports and statistics piling up over the years detailing the dangers of nicotine, the need to stop smoking has become more of a trend than smoking ever was.

According to some figures, there are still over 1.1 billion people in the world who smoke cigarettes. In the United States alone, nearly 20 percent of the population still claims an affinity for cigarettes, though that number has decreased by more than half since 1965. But as society puts more of a focus on healthy living and positive lifestyle choices, in addition to entire cities across America outlawing smoking in public places, people are finding the motivation to quit the habit.

Quitting cigarettes requires more than will power for most people, though. The addiction to tobacco is not only physical but mental and emotional. Smoking a cigarette becomes part of life for the addicted, and many need to completely readjust their lifestyles in order to successfully kick the habit.

The first order of business to quitting the habit is to set a date for the last cigarette, which allows the person to get rid of extra packs of cigarettes, lighters, and ashtrays, as well as begin cleaning clothes, blankets, curtains, and any other household items that retain the smell of smoke. It is important to begin the first day of non-smoking with a fresh environment and little to no remnants of the smoking lifestyle.

Setting the date also allows the person to stock up on items that may help during the first 72 hours, when nicotine still resides in the body and the cravings for a cigarette will be the strongest. A person may choose to stock up on items like nicotine gum or patches to gradually let the body know that the process has begun. It also may be helpful to gather items that will help the oral fixation, such as straws or toothpicks, chewing gum, candy or lollipops, and snack items like carrots, celery sticks, and grapes. It may also be helpful to buy extra mouthwash and dental hygiene items to keep the mouth smelling and feeling fresh.

In addition to sharing the plan with family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors, it can also be helpful to start a journal. While it will be helpful to lean on everyone involved in daily life for encouragement and support, a log of thoughts and feelings may help put the process in perspective, especially if the journal focuses on the motivations for quitting.

A complete change in daily routine might be necessary. If smoking with coffee in the morning was a habit, there may be a need to start the day with water or juice instead. If smoking after meals was the norm, it might be helpful to immediately go for a walk after meals. Some form of exercise should be integrated into daily life as well, since the body will be craving some form of adrenaline that could be found in the healthy feeling that exercise provides.

After the first few days or weeks, it can be motivational to figure out the amount of money saved from not buying cigarettes and use it to buy something fun. Whether it is something that can aid the new, healthy lifestyle or simply something rewarding, it can further prove that cigarettes were more than a physical threat to one’s life but a financial strain as well.

The most important thing to keep in mind when quitting cigarettes is that the person has more control than the cigarette or the tobacco in it. Self-control is an asset, and remembering that you are in control of your life is the key to quitting. The assistance of others and cessation aids may be integral to success, but ultimately it is the person that is in control of habits and lifestyle choices. But if it so happens that a cigarette works its way into the person’s hands and he or she falls off the wagon, there is no reason to give up the process entirely. One mistake does not ruin the plan, and resuming the quitting process should be automatic.

It took time to become addicted to smoking, and it may take time to quit the habit. But your body, mind, pets, friends, and family will be forever grateful if the process of quitting is successful.

Asthma is one of the most common ailments of young childhood - rates among children under age 5 have risen 160% from 1980 to 1994 in the U.S. But while the list of triggers that set off bouts of wheezing and shortness of breath (allergies, pollution or strenuous exercise, for example) are well known, it's still not clear exactly how the various factors that cause asthma - including genes, environment and exposure to pollution - contribute to children's chances of developing the disease.

Now researchers at the University of Southern California say they have a clearer understanding. In their study of nearly 2,500 non-asthmatic children ages 5 to 9 who lived in the area, researchers found that the level of stress reported by the children's parents had a significant impact on the kids' susceptibility to other common contributors to asthma - namely exposure to pollution from traffic and secondhand smoke. Scientists found that children whose parents described themselves as stressed and anxious were 50% more likely to develop asthma than kids with non-stressed parents - at least when these youngsters were also exposed to pollution in a high-traffic, urban setting.

Parental stress alone did not increase the children's risk of asthma, but the combination of living in a household with high stress levels and being exposed to pollutants from traffic in the environment was sufficient to trigger the disease. The study found similar results with exposure to tobacco smoke.

Studying a combination of factors can help explain why some kids are more likely to develop asthma than others, says Rob McConnell, lead author of the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Childhood asthma is a complex disease and probably has many contributing causes," he says. "This study provides another clue as to what might be causing it."

The results also shed light on how risk factors like stress can increase the vulnerability of the respiratory system to environmental pollution or allergens. Because asthma involves inflammation in the airways in response to particulates that enter from the air, a separate factor that also increases the body's inflammatory response - like stress - can help create especially fertile conditions for asthma to develop. So a child who feels anxiety in response to parental stress, for example, may already have inflammation in his airways, which makes him more likely to develop asthma because of exposure to environmental pollutants.

"The message to take away is that various factors overlap to create asthma," says Dr. Leonard Bielroy, an allergy, asthma and immunology specialist in Springfield, N.J., who has studied some of the condition's intersecting risk factors. "And whether those factors are psychological or physical, the more they overlap, the greater the chance of developing asthma."

While McConnell and his group did not specifically measure stress levels in the study's participants - it's difficult to get a reliable reading in such a large number of youngsters quickly - other studies have shown that parental stress translates directly with more-anxious kids. McConnell hopes that these findings will spur additional studies to investigate why, for example, asthma rates tend to be higher among lower socioeconomic groups. "There are a lot of potential reasons why poverty might be associated with asthma," he says, including that poorer families tend to live in more highly polluted, densely packed urban areas.

But there might also be a psychological contribution, which his study has highlighted. "It's not poverty itself but something about poverty that increases the risk of asthma, and we are suggesting that stress is another exposure we ought to think about."

Original Post: news.yahoo.com

The projection from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based on the influenza pandemic in 1957, when almost 70,000 people in the United States died from the flu.

"Our planning assumptions for a severe pandemic were that up to 40 percent of the workforce might be affected and not able to work, either because they were ill or because they needed to stay home to care for an ill family member," Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Friday in a press conference.

But even if the new H1N1 virus never reaches that proportion, it is expected to gain strength come fall.

"We had a 6 to 8 percent attack rate just during the spring months," Schuchat said. "We think that in a longer winter season, attack rates would be two to three times as high as that," she said.

A public health campaign and a vaccination program, which will probably begin in October, could reduce the impact of the H1N1 swine flu, she said.

"We think we can limit, somewhat, the illness and severe complications of that kind of virus circulation with updated guidance and, of course, with the efforts we are making towards the development of a vaccine," Schuchat said.

Vaccine trials, already underway in Australia, are expected to begin in the United States next week, Schuchat said.

U.S. officials hope to have 160 million doses of injectable swine flu vaccine on hand by October, with more doses coming in the form of a nasal spray -- if trials of experimental vaccines are successful.

To determine who should receive the vaccine first, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet Wednesday.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where it is winter now, seasonal flu and the new H1N1 swine flu continue to spread, Schuchat said.

The good news is that "specimens we have collected have not changed. They are still the same strain we are seeing here, meaning that the vaccine we are working on is directed against the strain that is still active both here in the U.S. and in Southern Hemisphere countries," she said.

Also, the CDC, in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, cited four children in Texas who developed neurological complications from encephalitis, associated with the H1N1 flu. Two of them also had seizures, but all recovered and had no lasting neurological effects after leaving the hospital.

"This is a reminder that seizure, encephalitis and other neurologic complications can occur in the setting of influenza," she said.

Although less severe in summer, the H1N1 swine flu continues to spread, especially in summer camps and schools, Schuchat said.

Reacting to reports that some camps are giving children the antiviral drug Tamiflu in hopes of preventing the virus, Schuchat advised against this. Camps should follow the CDC's guidelines on protecting campers from the flu, she said.

Giving antiviral medications in hopes of providing a general immunity can increase the odds that the virus will become resistant to the drugs, Schuchat said. To date, five cases of the H1N1 flu have proved resistant to Tamiflu, she noted. So far, this resistant strain has not been passed on to anyone else, she said.

The CDC also reported Friday that there have been 43,771 confirmed cases of H1N1 infection and 302 deaths in the United States, although officials believe more than 1 million Americans have been stricken with swine flu. The reason for the disparity: The virus continues to produce mild symptoms and patients typically recover quickly. This was the final CDC report of case numbers, Schuchat said, noting in the future it will document swine flu trends.

Original Post: www.healthday.com

Research in mouse embryos found that the Sox17 gene "acts like a toggle or binary switch that sets off a cascade of genetic events," the study's senior investigator, James Wells, a researcher in the developmental biology division at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, said in a hospital news release.

"In normal embryonic development, when you have an undecided cell, if Sox17 goes one way, the cell becomes part of the biliary system," Wells explained. "If it goes the other way, the cell becomes part of the pancreas."

The discovery could prove important in guiding embryonic stem cells to become pancreatic beta cells, which scientists believe could be used to treat or cure type 1 diabetes. The disease occurs when insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are attacked by the immune system.

"With this study showing that turning one gene on or off in a mouse embryo instructs a cell to become pancreatic or biliary, now we'll see if that same gene, Sox17, can be used to direct an embryonic stem cell to become a biliary cell instead of a pancreatic cell," said Wells, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "This might be used one day to replace a diseased pancreas or bile duct in people."

Original Post: yahoo.com

People in developed countries like the United States are treated with HIV drugs soon after diagnosis, typically when their immune system shows signs of failing.

Doctors measure this by counting the number of immune cells called CD4 T-cells in the blood. In developed countries, HIV treatment usually begins when CD4 numbers drop below 350.

Many developing countries follow 2006 World Health Organization standards, which call for treatment when CD4 drops below 200 or when people start to develop complications from AIDS.

"While those standards accommodate the limited resources and short supply of medications in many settings, the greater prevalence of tuberculosis and other opportunistic infections in places like South Africa argue for earlier treatment initiation," Dr. Rochelle Walensky of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine, said in a statement.

Walensky used a computer model to calculate the cost of waiting to give HIV drugs over the next five years. She found starting treatment earlier would not only save lives but would be more cost-effective than delaying treatment, saving $1,200 for every year of life saved.

A Canadian study last year found cocktails of HIV drugs can help patients live an average of 13 years longer -- if they are lucky enough to get them.

Nearly 3 million people in the developing world now get HIV drugs -- about 70 percent of those who need them, according to the United Nations.

Makers include GlaxoSmithKline, Gilead Sciences Inc, Roche, Pfizer, Merck Inc, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories.

AIDS is caused by the fatal and incurable human immunodeficiency virus and is transmitted mostly through sex. It has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the early 1980s and infects an estimated 33 million.

GAY SEX TRANSMISSION

Most cases are in Africa, and most are transmitted during sex between a man and a woman.

But in some West African countries, HIV infection is 10 times more prevalent among men who have sex with men than in the general male population, British researchers have found.

A study reported in the Lancet medical journal by a team led by Dr. Adrian Smith of the University of Oxford suggests that the role of gay sex in the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS has been overlooked in Africa.

Smith's team found that stigma and prejudice may be keeping men in Africa from seeking treatment. Since many of these men also have sex with women, this may be putting many women at risk as well.

They called for more education and funding to fight HIV infection in this group.

Original Post: yahoo.com

A Spanish woman who was the oldest ever to become a new mother died Saturday at the age of 69, according to her family, BBC News reported.

Maria del Carmen Bousada was 66 when she gave birth to twin boys in 2006. She said she received fertility treatments at a California clinic after telling doctors she was 55. A Spanish newspaper said she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after giving birth to sons Christian and Pau, who are now 2 years old.

Bousada had said there was no reason to believe she would not live as long as her mother, who was 101 when she died. Even if she died prematurely, she said, her sons would never be alone, BBC News reported.

"There are lots of young people in our family," Bousada said.

Original Post: HealthDay

Female veterans aren't assured of privacy when they bathe and undergo physical examinations at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics, federal government auditors say.

No VA facility under review is complying fully with federal privacy regulations, said the Government Accountability Office, the Associated Press reported.

In many VA facilities, gynecological tables face the door. At four hospitals, female patients weren't guaranteed access to private bathing facilities. In two cases, there were no locks on bathing room doors, the GAO investigators found.

Privacy isn't the only issue for female veterans. VA hospitals lack child care and it can be difficult to find diaper-changing tables, the AP reported.

The VA knows that services for women need improvement, but changes are being made to "build the system that will provide care equal to the health care needs of all America's veterans, regardless of gender," said Patricia Hayes, chief consultant of the veterans strategic health care group at the VA.

Original Post: HealthDay