A new study reveals that hypnosis is the best method for smoking cessation, if you truly wish to stop smoking!

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According to the Centers For Disease Control, secondhand smoke may be a lot more harmful than commonly believed. The CDC also says, smoking bans are saving lives and reducing the rate of heart attacks.

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Warning: This short video may make you want to stop smoking! Watch the effects of smoking and nicotine on your body - in detail.

Happy New Year!

The Boulder City Fire Department came out with their own message on New Year’s resolutions. They say, the best New Year’s resolution is to stop smoking!

This January, more than a million people will toss out their cigarettes and try to kick their deadly addiction to nicotine.

The incentive to quit smoking can be seen with many of the Fire Departments’ medical calls. A large portion of our respiratory emergencies involve patients who have smoked all of their lives and for their remaining years will struggle for every breath due to diseases like emphysema.

Whether you’ve been smoking for a few months or many years, it doesn’t take much time to start feeling the benefits of quitting smoking and you’ll also enjoy these improvements in your health and life:

- Increased life expectancy. The earlier you stop, the longer you’ll live and the better you’ll feel. If you quit before age 50, for instance, your risk of dying from a tobacco-related disease will significantly decrease.
- Improved appearance. Smoking encourages premature wrinkling, bad breath, stained teeth, gum disease and yellow fingernails.
- Money saved. Not just on cigarettes, but also on health-care costs.
- The gratitude of friends and family. You won’t affect their health with second-hand smoke.

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Another study confirms that areas that have a smoking ban experience significant drops in heart attack rates. These findings also teach us a lot about the danger of secondhand smoke.

These latest stats came in today from Colorado.

A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic drop in heart attack hospitalizations, according to a new study that is considered the best and longest-term research to show such a link.

The rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect. There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it’s a clear sign the ban was responsible.

The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least eight earlier studies have linked smoking bans to decreased heart attacks, but none ran as long as three years.

Smoking bans are designed not only to cut smoking rates but also to reduce secondhand tobacco smoke. It is a widely recognized cause of lung cancer, but its effect on heart disease can be more immediate. It not only damages the lining of blood vessels, but also increases the kind of blood clotting that leads to heart attacks. Reducing exposure to smoke can quickly cut the risk of clotting, some experts said.

Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and about 3,000 lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers each year, according to statistics cited by the CDC.

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The Hartford Courant ran a great article today that featured a MDs take on smoking cessation and quitting smoking. Here’s an excerpt: 

As the nation starts to examine how to reform our gadget-laden, overpriced health delivery system, we can find a prime example of what is wrong with American health care in a subject that is given much lip service but very little substantive action: tobacco addiction.

In my busy family practice office, I see the whole spectrum of tobacco-related disease. The middle- aged man with lung cancer; the recent retiree with worsening emphysema wheeling her oxygen tank down the hall; and the 13-year-old, trying to walk with bravado, who reeks of cigarette smoke.

The cycle of young experimentation, addiction and disease is laid out in front of me day after day, year after year, generation after generation. Having taken care of more than my share of dying smokers, I am always urging patients to quit smoking.

Cigarette addiction kills more than 400,000 Americans a year and is the single most preventable cause of disease and death of our patients.

Quitting smoking is certainly still not an easy thing, but I know that helping patients to stop smoking is the single most powerful, effective medical intervention that a physician can make anywhere in medicine.

Yet it is with smoking cessation that the flaws in our health care system are so starkly demonstrated. Patients already sick with cancer, emphysema or heart disease are supported by our system, which will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat them. When it comes to helping someone quit smoking before they become ill, many of our private insurers and both Medicaid and Medicare refuse.

Medicare will not pay for a visit to help a patient quit smoking unless the person is already sick. A smoking cessation visit is labeled "medically unnecessary."

Saving a couple hundred dollars today will cost us tens of thousands in the not-too-distant future. This is absurd.

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Offering yet another reason to never start smoking, a new study finds that both current and former smokers run an elevated risk of the heart rhythm disorder Atrial Fibrillation.

The condition, also known as AF, is the most common heart arrhythmia in the U.S., affecting about 2 million people. During an episode of AF, abnormal electrical activity in the heart causes its upper two chambers to beat in a rapid, uncoordinated rhythm; the arrhythmia itself is not life-threatening, but over time AF can contribute to stroke or heart failure in some people.

While smoking is a well-known risk factor for heart disease, it has not been clear whether the habit boosts the risk of AF specifically.

The new findings, reported in the American Heart Journal, suggest that it does — even after smokers quit smoking.

The bottom line, lead researcher Dr. Jan Heeringa told Reuters Health, is that AF "has to be added to the long list of diseases" linked to smoking.

Even when the researchers took other factors into account — such as age, and whether participants had high blood pressure or had ever suffered a heart attack — smoking itself was still linked to higher AF risk.

But the finding does not mean that quitting smoking is "meaningless," the researcher stressed. It’s known that smokers who quit smoking lower their risk of developing a number of smoking-related ills, including lung cancer and heart attacks.

"To stop smoking, at any age, has huge beneficial effects on health," Heeringa said.

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Yet another reason to stop smoking:

“Smoking is the most lethal legal activity in our society.”

The quote of the week comes from Dr. James Mulshine, a professor of internal medicine and associate provost for research at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

According to the Lung Cancer Alliance, lung cancer killed 160,390 people in 2007. That translates into 439 people a day!

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It’s the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, killing more people each year than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney and melanoma cancers combined.

It’s typically discovered too late to be treated successfully, with about 85 percent of victims dead within five years of diagnosis.

And nine out of 10 cases of the disease are tied to a single behavior — smoking.

Lung cancer killed 160,390 people in 2007, according to the Lung Cancer Alliance. That’s an average of 439 people a day.

And tobacco caused 90 percent of those deaths, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Quitting smoking also will allow people to avoid the host of other health problems that come with it, most notably cardiovascular disease.

"If you avoid smoking, you have avoided the Mount Everest of avoidable health hazards," says Dr. Michael Thun, VP of epidemiology and surveillance research for the American Cancer Society.

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The Australian Medical Association (AMA) asked all smokers in Australia to gift their loved ones with the best Christmas gift ever this year: to stop smoking.

"Top of the list of gift ideas has got to be making a commitment to your family, and to yourself, to quit smoking in 2009," said AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua.

She said, the report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare that revealed lung cancer is outstripping breast cancer as a killer of women emphasized the need for Australians to tackle this dangerous habit right now.

Dr Capolingua urged smokers to think about quitting as something not just for themselves but also for the important people in their lives.

"Smokers need to think about the consequences of their addiction - how it does and will impact on the people close to them.

"This is not just about the very real health risks of passive smoking, it’s about the example you set for those around you, particularly kids, and the worry you cause your loved ones by smoking.

"Smokers also need to seriously consider the risks to their own health and how this will impact on their family.

"Smoking is a death-sentence - you’re actively sacrificing years you could spend with your loved ones.

"By quitting, you will reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, blindness, sexual dysfunction and infertility to name just a few. Quitting is the best favor you can do yourself, and it is never too late or too early to quit.

"There is no better present to friends and family than making the commitment to be healthier, and live longer."

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