News
Amy Whitehouse Emphysema Startles Experts
Stopping smoking is contagious
Cigarette lighters
Smokers are warned that kids ‘wanna be like you’
Amy Whitehouse Emphysema Startles Experts
The shocking revelation by her father that 24-year-old British singer-songwriter
Amy Winehouse may have a mild form of emphysema leaves experts with more
questions than answers.
Winehouse collapsed at her north London home last Monday and was admitted
into a London hospital, where she had been all week under going tests.
Winehouse's
father, Mitch Winehouse, told the London Sunday Mirror that his daughter
was told she would have to wear an oxygen mask unless she stops smoking
drugs and cigarettes.
Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association
said, "Generally, we don't really see emphysema until a person is
in their 40s, but in a small number of people it could occur much earlier,
especially in someone who smoked a long time.
“Amy has been diagnosed with what he called "a small amount of emphysema." The soul singer's lungs do show a small amount of scarring, but her illness has not progressed "too far," her father said. "It's not irreparable. Really, she can't even smoke anymore, let alone that other thing. She's responding very well to treatment, she's flourishing," he said.
The singer's U.S. publicist, Tracey Miller, said that Winehouse is "showing early signs of what could lead to emphysema but is reacting well to treatment."
What is emphysema?
Emphysema involves damage to the air sacs or alveoli
in the lungs, reducing the amount of oxygen the body can take in. Symptoms
typically include shortness of breath and a chronic cough, according to
the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The most common cause is smoking.
The disease, once entrenched, cannot be reversed. The condition can be
stabilized, however, if a person stops smoking. Still, "lung units
or alveoli do not come back," Horovitz said. Symptoms can be treated
with bronchodilators, steroids, inhalers and, in a worst-case scenario,
oxygen, Horovitz added.
If your interested in finding out more about emphysema take a look at website
below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/medical_notes/456591.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/health/newsid_7469000/7469955.stm
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Emphysema/Pages/Introduction.aspx?url=Pages/What-is-it.aspx
Stopping smoking is contagious
Smoking has always been a social habit, but researchers now believe that quitting may be a social activity too.
“Smoking may be addictive but quitting is contagious, according to a provocative study of why people give up the weed”, reported The Times. It says that the findings come from a 32-year study that collected data from more than 12,000 people. When people quit smoking it had a knock on effect on their families, friends and work colleagues. People whose spouses quit were 67% less likely to smoke, while friends of quitters were 36% less likely and siblings 25% less likely.
The research has used new methods to look at data from a previous study. The researchers assessed peoples’ smoking habits and looked at what effect quitting had on the chance that a husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or workmate would continue to smoke. This approach to looking at social influences on quitting provides reliable evidence and some measure of how groups of people can affect each other’s non-smoking habits. It sheds some light on what the researchers describe as the “the collective dynamics of smoking behaviour”.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808446,00.html
Cigarette lighters
Since March 2008, it has been illegal to sell cigarette lighters that are not child resistant or novelty lighters that appeal to children. This is great news as a number of serious fires have been started accidently by children playing with lighters
Families are being encouraged to change their old lighters for new ones that are child resistant. And to be wary of very cheap lighters for sale on market stalls or at car boot fairs as they may not be child resistant.
Smokers are warned that kids ‘wanna be like you’
A new £5.2 million campaign has been launched that highlight’s the danger
to parents that their smoking will dramatically increase their children’s
chances of becoming a smoker too.
The new NHS Smokefree advertising campaign is currently running on TV, online, radio, ambient and outdoor media. The TV advertising is set to the music of ‘I wanna be like you’ from ‘The Jungle Book’ movie and starts by showing harmless examples of how young children copy their mums and dads as they go about their daily life – relaxing at home, doing household chores and even watching TV. The film then takes a sinister turn and ends with a little girl picking up a crayon to copy her mother as she takes a drag on a cigarette.
A hard-hitting poster campaign picks up this same theme, featuring a child’s crayon resting on an ashtray, along with press adverts showing childish artistic portrayals of their parents smoking.
Public Health Minister, Dawn Primarolo MP, said:
“This campaign highlights the fact that children absorb what is going on
around them - therefore habits such as smoking seem normal in young people’s
eyes. Stopping smoking is the best thing you can do for your own health
but what people may not realise is that it’s also an incredibly positive
thing to do for the futures of those closest to you.
News Archive Check out some more smoking news.