Washington: It's just been a couple of days since he won the Pulitzer, but Indian American cancer specialist Siddhartha Mukherjee has no time to celebrate. He is already back at work, seeing patients and even doing some writing - though he says it will be a while before he gets a topic for another book."You know, I have gone back to work really - full clinic, clinical responsibilities, back to...
06:50 PM, Apr 22, 2011
Siddhartha Mukherjee's monumental 'The Emperor of All Maladies' meticulously outlines the trajectory of cancer (derived from the Greek word "karkinos," meaning crab) over thousands of years, starting in ancient Egypt. In 2010, seven million people around the world died of cancer. Many have experienced the horrors of this disease through personal experience. The author provides us with a global view of this "shape-shifting entity [that is] imbued with such metaphorical...
11:51 AM, Apr 20, 2011
New Delhi: After a ban on plastic packaging for tobacco products, the Supreme Court is now considering a total ban on gutka and other smokeless tobacco products. Srinath Reddy, PHFI said, "Tobacco is the number one killer. It kills more than 1 million Indians every year. If you are considering this as a food product, clearly its a very hazardous food product. So the PAFA act comes into play." Meera...
09:16 AM, Apr 13, 2011
Will the Finance Minister be the final straw in your giving up your smoking habit? The budget is the time of the year when the excise duty rates on how much cigarettes will be taxed is announced. Usually, these taxes are passed on to the end consumer. So, if cigarette prices go up further, will you end up cutting down on smoking, or will you be forced to give up...
07:59 PM, Feb 27, 2011
Sydney: Older smokers are likely to damage their grey matter and lose cognitive functions at a greater rate than non-smokers. Cognitive functions involve thought, memory and information processes enabling us to learn new things and comprehend what is being said. The study led by Osvaldo Almeida, research director of The University of Western Australia, found that chronic older smokers experienced a marked reduction of grey matter in certain brain regions,...
11:54 AM, Feb 10, 2011
Washington: US President Barack Obama has finally kicked his smoking habit, first lady Michelle Obama said on Tuesday. It has been "almost a year" since the president had a cigarette, his wife told reporters at a White House luncheon to mark the first anniversary of her "Let's Move" childhood health initiative. "It's been a while and I'm very proud of him," she was quoted as saying by The Washington Post....
12:18 PM, Feb 09, 2011
London: Can't quit smoking? Blame the faulty wiring in your brain, say scientists. A team at the Scripps Research Institute have discovered a brain pathway which they say, if not functioning correctly, can lead to an uncontrollable desire to smoke, the 'Daily Mail' reported. The fault lies in a receptor protein that is normally activated by the nicotine in cigarettes and dampens the desire for yet more of the drug,...
06:18 PM, Jan 31, 2011
Fulton, Mississippi: When Neil Brown got high on dangerous chemicals sold as bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven't been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Wave, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky. Some say the effects of the powders are as powerful as abusing methamphetamine. Increasingly, law enforcement...
11:43 AM, Jan 23, 2011
London: Trying to kick the butt? Then, avoid watching movies and TV programmes that are packed with smoking scenes, scientists have suggested. A team of researchers from Dartmouth College found that smokers itch for a cigarette when they watch someone light up in a film as the action is embedded in their minds. According to them, brain areas known to interpret and plan hand movements lit up as the smokers...
03:53 PM, Jan 21, 2011
New York: Teenagers who frequently encounter the Marlboro man, or other familiar icons of the tobacco and cigarette industry, may be more likely to be lured into lighting up, according to a study. Nearly a quarter of all high school students in the United States smoke cigarettes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of these, nearly a third will continue smoking and die early from...
03:37 PM, Jan 19, 2011
Washington: Scientists have issued a stark warning about smoking - it begins to damage your genes within mere minutes and not years after it reaches your lungs. Their report is the first study to detail the way certain substances in tobacco cause DNA damage linked to cancer, reports the journal Research in Toxicology. University of Minnesota's Stephen S Hecht, professor in medicinal chemistry, who conducted the study, and his colleagues...
04:26 PM, Jan 16, 2011
New York: Getting personalized phone counseling along with web-based guidance makes it easier to quit smoking, suggests a new study. After 18 months, smokers who got phone calls from experienced counselors in addition to following a web-based cessation program had nearly double the quit rates of smokers who just used the web program, according to a report published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Numerous studies have examined the...
05:05 PM, Jan 12, 2011
Thimpu, Bhutan: Bhutan police can raid homes of smokers in a search for contraband tobacco and are training a special tobacco sniffer dog in a crackdown to honor a promise to become the world's first smoke-free nation. Buddhist Bhutan, where smoking is considered bad for one's karma, banned the sale of tobacco in 2005, but with a thriving tobacco smuggling operation from neighboring India, the ban failed to make much...
10:23 AM, Jan 12, 2011
London: Cigarette smoking may completely disappear by 2050, experts believe. A combination of rising prices and the ban on lighting up in public places could finally kill off the habit, reports express.co.uk. According to a 72-page report by Citigroup analysts, it is quite possible that there will be no smokers left in Britain or many other developed countries in about 30-50 years. Many smokers are being put off by the...
11:22 AM, Jan 09, 2011
New Delhi: Promising to quit smoking is one of the most common New Year resolutions. However, by the end of the first week of January, the craving for nicotine drives people to break the pledge. Will power may not be enough to kick the habit, experts say. With some help from doctors and by using a nicotine substitute, chances are high to get over the craving. "This is the third...
01:33 PM, Jan 04, 2011
Spaniards spend a lot of time in bars, and will probably spend less time now. ...
04:20 PM, Jan 03, 2011
New York: A new study may offer women one more reason to kick the smoking habit before becoming pregnant: a potentially reduced risk of early miscarriage. In a study of nearly 1,300 Japanese women with a past pregnancy, researchers found that those who smoked heavily early in pregnancy were more than twice as likely as non-smokers to suffer a miscarriage in the first trimester. There are many reasons for women...
12:58 PM, Dec 31, 2010
New York: Smokers who successfully quit may enjoy yet another health benefit: improved cholesterol profiles. A boost in "good" cholesterol comes with quitting despite weight gain after putting out the last cigarette, hints a new study. If confirmed in future research, the finding could shed light on the strong, yet somewhat mysterious relationship between smoking and heart health. Up to 20 percent of heart disease deaths are currently blamed on...
10:03 AM, Dec 24, 2010
Boston: The award on Thursday came in addition to USD 71 million in compensatory damages awarded to Marie Evans' estate and to her son William on Tuesday. A jury found Lorillard Inc had enticed the woman and other black children to smoke by handing out free cigarettes outside their low-income housing project in Boston in the early 1960s. Evans vs Lorillard was the first case to claim the cigarette maker...
08:15 AM, Dec 18, 2010
New York: Exercise and diet each reduced the risk, but both combined, along with a lack of smoking, caused the risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) to fall by more than 70 percent, said study author Julie Mares, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "We don't need to be passive victims of these ravages of old age," Mares told Reuters Health. "Relatively small things could make a difference in...
09:44 AM, Dec 16, 2010
