quit smoking, gained weight

I'm having a terrible time loosing 15 lbs? I gained it after I quit smoking for 29 years. I am having trouble with belly weight? Premenopause I guess. Its very depressing that I can't fit my last summer clothing :(

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Rheumatoid Arthritis, Smoking, and Drinking Alcohol

The potential risks smoking and drinking pose to people with rheumatoid arthritis.By Stephanie Schupska
WebMD Feature

You already know that smoking is bad for you and that it's unhealthy to drink too much alcohol.

But do you know how tobacco and alcohol relate to rheumatoid arthritis -- your odds of developing RA, or, if you already have RA, your odds of making it worse?

Joint Stiffness and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Joint stiffness is a hallmark of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic disease that affects 1.3 million adult Americans. Resulting from an abnormal response of the immune system, rheumatoid arthritis inflames the soft tissue that lines the surface of joints (called the synovium). It is a systemic disease that not only makes joints stiff and painful, but can also affect other parts of your body, such as internal organs. By noting symptoms such as joint stiffness and seeking early treatment, you can...

Read the Joint Stiffness and Rheumatoid Arthritis article > >

Here's what the research shows.

Smoking may make people more likely to get RA. And, depending on their genes, it may make their RA worse. On top of that, smoking mixed with RA can lead to even greater problems, like heart disease.

“Very clear studies indicate that tobacco is highly associated [with] and probably causal in rheumatoid arthritis and is causal in the worst form of the disease,” says Susan Goodman, MD, an assistant attending rheumatologist and internist at the Hospital for Special Surgery and assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Your genes may also matter. A Swedish study, published in December 2010, shows that the odds of developing RA was related not just to how much a person smokes, but also to their genetic makeup. People with a certain gene variation, called HLA-DRB1, who smoke are much more likely to get rheumatoid arthritis than someone who doesn’t smoke -- and to have severe RA.

“It turns out that people who smoke who bear this genetic factor are much more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis and do develop more severe disease," Goodman says.

Smoking can also make dealing with the disease more difficult.

“In a lot of the studies on the course of rheumatoid arthritis, patients who smoke do less well, and they’re less likely to achieve remission,” Goodman says. “They’re more likely to have a worse outcome. Smoking gives them a worse prognosis.”

Smoking can increase painful rheumatoid nodules, which form in the joints, she says. It can also lead to heart disease, which -- even on its own -- is a big problem in people with RA. And smoking makes it worse.

“In the last 10 years, there have been studies that show the leading cause of death in patients with RA is cardiovascular disease,” says Walter Moore, MD, senior associate dean for graduate medical education and veteran affairs at Georgia Health Sciences University and chief of rheumatology at Charlie Norwood Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “And smoking itself is clearly associated as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.”

Stroke is another concern for RA patients.

“RA is an illness like diabetes. In and of itself, it’s a risk factor for heart attack and stroke,” says Andrew Ruthberg, MD, an assistant professor of medicine and an attending physician at Rush University Medical Center and director of Rush Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinic. “And those two things conspire to raise your risk for those other problems to a higher level.”

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To Stop Smoking, Teens Should Start Moving

FRIDAY, April 12 (HealthDay News) -- A small amount of daily exercise can help teen smokers cut down on or quit their harmful habit, according to a new study.

Researchers looked at 233 teens at 19 high schools in West Virginia, which has one of the highest smoking rates in the nation. Nearly 13 percent of people under age 18 in the state are smokers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All the teens in the study were daily smokers who smoked an average of half a pack a day on weekdays and a pack a day on weekends. They also had other unhealthy behaviors.

"It is not unusual for teenage smokers to engage in other unhealthy habits. Smoking and physical inactivity, for instance, often go hand in hand," study lead author Kimberly Horn, associate dean for research at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, in Washington, D.C., said in a university news release.

The teens in the study were divided into three groups: one group took part in a smoking cessation program combined with a fitness program, another group took part in the smoking cessation program only and the third group heard only a short antismoking lecture.

All of the teens increased their amount of daily physical activity just by being in the study. Those who increased the number of days in which they did at least 20 minutes of exercise -- equivalent to a short walk -- significantly reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked.

Teens were more likely to quit smoking if they took part in the combination smoking cessation and fitness program and increased the number of days in which they did at least 30 minutes of exercise, according to the study, which was published online April 9 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"This study adds to evidence suggesting that exercise can help teenagers who are trying to quit smoking," Horn said.

-- Robert Preidt
Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved. SOURCE: George Washington University, news release, April 9, 2013

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Parents: Revealing Your Past Smoking, Pot Use May Not Help Your Kids

Title: Parents: Revealing Your Past Smoking, Pot Use May Not Help Your Kids
Category: Health News
Created: 2/22/2013 10:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/22/2013 12:00:00 AM

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Smoking Pot May Raise Stroke Risk in Young Adults

By Mary Brophy Marcus

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking pot may double a young adult's risk for stroke, new research suggests, but experts point out the study is small and not conclusive.

Scientists from New Zealand presented their data Wednesday at the American Stroke Association annual meeting, in Honolulu.

"Sixteen percent of stroke patients had positive cannabis screens, compared with only 8 percent of control participants," said study author Dr. Alan Barber, a stroke neurologist and professor of clinical neurology at the University of Auckland.

"We think the relationship between cannabis and stroke is certainly plausible," Barber said. "We know [from other studies] cannabis reduces the time to angina, that it's associated with myocardial infarction [heart attack] and heart rhythm problems. It can also cause vasoconstriction. If you constrict arteries in the brain, you can have reduced blood flow.

"We believe the association is not just a chance one, but worthy of further investigation," he added.

Barber's study involved 160 stroke patients and 160 healthy participants, all between 18 and 55, an age range during which people rarely suffer a stroke, he said.

Of the stroke patients, 150 had been admitted to the hospital for an ischemic stroke -- the most common kind of stroke, in which blood flow is blocked to the brain. The other 10 had been admitted for a transient ischemic attack (TIA or "mini-stroke"). All were given urine tests that screened for evidence of marijuana use.

Barber said the ingredients in marijuana show up in urine tests for three or four days if you only use it occasionally, but urine will test positive for the drug for 30 to 40 days in daily users.

The 160 control group patients had come to the hospital as internal medicine admissions with non-stroke diagnoses and did not know they were involved in the study. Their urine samples had been tested for other reasons and were about to be discarded.

"As a consequence, the controls were anonymous -- we only could know age, sex and ethnicity," Barber explained.

The results after the drug screens: Twenty-five (more than 15 percent) of the stroke patients had positive cannabis screens and were also more likely to be male (84 percent) and tobacco smokers (88 percent). Of the control urine samples, thirteen (8 percent) were positive for marijuana.

"There was a doubling for the risk of stroke," Barber said.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Two experts said the study is worthwhile, but doesn't lead to any concrete conclusions.

"It's not a strong study, not one you can hang your hat on, but it's better than others we've got," said Dr. Daniel Labovitz, director of the Stern Stroke Center at Montefiore Medical Center, in New York City.

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Smoking Doubles Women’s Sudden Death Risk

Dec. 11, 2012 -- Smoking cigarettes may more than double a woman’s risk of sudden cardiac death. But quitting can reduce that risk significantly over time, according to a new study.

Sudden cardiac death is a sudden, unexpected death caused by loss of heart function. It is the leading cause of heart-related deaths in the U.S. and is responsible for up to 400,000 deaths per year.

Researchers found that women who were current smokers were two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death than nonsmokers. The risk of sudden cardiac death was even higher among heavy and lifetime smokers.

“We found the more that you smoke, the higher the risk of sudden cardiac death,” says researcher Roopinder Sandhu, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada. “But the important thing is that this risk can be eliminated after smoking cessation.”

The study showed that quitting smoking had an almost immediate effect in reducing the risk of sudden cardiac death within five years among women without any symptoms of heart disease.

For women already diagnosed with heart disease, the benefits of quitting smoking took much longer to take effect.

Researchers say for many women, sudden cardiac death is the first sign of heart disease.

Although smoking is a known risk factor for sudden cardiac death, researchers say few studies have looked at the nature of this relationship in a large number of women both with and without heart disease.

This study looked at the impact of smoking and smoking cessation on the risk of sudden cardiac death among 101,018 women who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study. The results appear in Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology.

During 30 years of follow-up, 351 cases of sudden cardiac death were reported.

Researchers found the amount and duration of cigarette smoking was strongly associated with the women’s risk of sudden cardiac death.

“Even with a very small amount, one to 14 cigarettes per day, women’s risk of sudden cardiac death was almost two-fold higher compared to women who did not smoke,” says Sandhu, who conducted the study as a visiting scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Overall, the study showed:

The risk of sudden cardiac death increased by 8% for every five years a woman smoked.Heavy smokers who smoked 25 cigarettes a day or more had more than three times the risk of sudden cardiac death than women who didn’t smoke.Women who smoked for more than 35 years had a 2.5 times higher risk of sudden cardiac death than never smokers.

“This is an important study because it links smoking to sudden cardiac death in those unfortunate women who don’t make it to the hospital,” says Nieca Goldberg, MD, medical director of the women's heart program at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

“The study shows that even modest levels of smoking can increase the risk of sudden cardiac death,” says Goldberg, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association. “People should know that just one cigarette is too much.”

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Smoking May Make Hangovers Worse

ByDenise Mann
WebMD Health News Reviewed byLouise Chang, MD

Dec. 5, 2012 -- New research suggests that your hangover will be worse if you smoke when you drink.

People who smoke on a day when they have been drinking alcohol heavily are twice as likely to report hangover symptoms as those who only drank. In the study of college students, heavy drinking was defined as about five or six cans of beer in one hour.

But substance abuse experts not affiliated with study are quick to point out that binge drinking and smoking -- alone and together -- can have far worse consequences than hangover symptoms. Smoking increases the risk for cancer, heart disease, and stroke, and binge drinking can lead to addiction, alcohol poisoning, car accidents, and unprotected sex.

“In general, people smoke more when they drink because it counteracts some of the sedative effects of alcohol,” says researcher Damaris J. Rohsenow, PhD. She is a professor of behavioral and social sciences at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I. 

“People also tend to feel better when they smoke while drinking because both increase the release of [the brain chemical] dopamine.” Dopamine is known as the brain’s pleasure chemical.

The findings appear in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

13 Best Quit-Smoking Tips Ever

A Bad Combination

Exactly how smoking makes a hangover worse is not fully understood. Both alcohol and smoking can disrupt sleep, which may make hangovers feel a lot worse, Rohsenow says. What’s more, the dopamine rush may also be followed by a shortfall of this brain chemical.

The study included 113 college students from a Midwestern university. They answered an online survey daily for eight weeks. Questions concerned how much they drank or smoked on the day before as well as their current-day hangover symptoms.  

According to the findings, students smoked about seven cigarettes a day, and this number jumped to more than 10 on heavy or binge-drinking days. Students reported drinking an average of more than two drinks a day, and more than 10 on average on heavy drinking days.

“The best way to avoid a hangover is not to drink that much, but if you smoke, it will aggravate it, so this provides another reason to not smoke,” she says.

Binge Drinking Is Risky Business

Cory Trevena is the student assistance program coordinator at Caron Treatment Centers in Wernersville, Pa.  “Using cigarettes while drinking certainly could add to the hangover effect,” she says. But binge drinking is prevalent on many college campuses and has more serious consequences than a worsened hangover.

“The focus should not be on the short-term hangover, but on the likelihood of developing addiction and other harmful consequences,” she says.

Patrician Hincken agrees. She is the director of addiction recovery services at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. “Having a hangover is connected to binge drinking, which we know is extremely risky to begin with,” she says.

Hangovers are red flags that you drank too much. They should not be considered normal. Getting drunk with friends is not social drinking. “Social drinking is having one or two drinks while out with friends,” Hincken says.

View Article Sources

SOURCES:

Jackson, K. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, January 2013.

Damaris J. Rohsenow, Ph.D, professor of behavioral and social sciences, Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Patricia Hincken, director of addiction recovery services, Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y.

Cory Trevena, student assistance program coordinator, Caron Treatment Centers, Wernersville, Pa.

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