He said that 30% of those above the age of 30 suffer from up to 40 kinds of illnesses which include heart problems and 57 types of cancer.

“Statistics show that every day about 50 teenagers below the age of 18 start smoking and most of them become hardcore smokers,” said Chua in a speech read by Kuala Dipang state assemblyman Dr Chong Fah during the anti-smoking run here Sunday.

He said that according to a recent World Health Organisation report, more than 100,000 youths started smoking daily.

“In 1998, the Government introduced therapy for smokers in four major hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Ipoh and Seremban.

“Today, 44 hospitals and 111 health centres provide this treatment,” he said.

Chua said that in 1999, about 1,000 smokers were able to kick the habit.

He added that the ministry had compounded 11,211 people for smoking in public places that year.

Of the number, 1,366 were youths.

Chua said the ministry was taking various steps to reduce the use of cigarette advertisements by sports and cultural organisations.

He said another measure taken was to direct manufacturers to reduce cigarettes’ tar content from 20mg to 15mg and nicotine from 1.5mg to 1.3mg.

About 1,000 adults and schoolchildren participated in the 4km run which was organised by the Malaysian Anti-Smoking Organisation.

Carr, who gave up smoking in 1983 and began helping others do the same, was diagnosed with the disease last week, the Mail said on Sunday.

A best-selling author of numerous “how to” books, Carr has influenced millions to forgo their addictions and has built a series of clinics around the world aimed at helping people quit smoking.

He currently controls 70 clinics in 30 countries around the world which in the last year alone helped 45,000 deal with their addictions, .

A spokesman for Carr said: “It is not possible to tell if Allen’s cancer is linked to his previous 100 cigarette a day addiction.”

“He is certain that had he not quit, he would have been dead 20 years ago,” said the spokesman.

Carr said since he stopped smoking more than 23 years ago he has been the happiest man in the world and he still feels the same way.

Source: Xinhua

Researchers in the US state of Texas blood-tested rats after feeding them varying doses of nicotine and alcohol.

They believe lower alcohol levels found in “smoking” rats are explained by how alcohol is absorbed into the blood.

But if the same is true in humans, they warn it means smokers are likely to drink more and suffer related problems.

Writing in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the scientists explained their theory on why the level of alcohol in the rats’ bloodstream fell as their nicotine level increased.

They believe the effect may be occurring because nicotine somehow delays the movement of alcohol into the intestines – a major site for the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream.

While being held in the stomach, the alcohol molecules are metabolised, leaving less alcohol to pass from the stomach to the intestines and into the blood.

Susan Maier, health administrator at the US-based National Institutes of Health, said the breakdown of the alcohol could lead to increased levels of toxic alcohol by-products in the body.

She said: “This would be particularly harmful for adolescents and young adult drinkers, since these populations are amenable to this type of drinking pattern, and may develop chronic alcohol-related diseases earlier in life because of it.”

Dr David Ball, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said: “This is a really interesting study. I’m surprised nobody has done it before.

“Obviously, this is a rat study rather than a human study. The most important thing would be to see if this holds true in humans, then we need to see what the implications are.”

The findings appear in the second issue for July 2006 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

Neil C. Thomson, M.D., of the Departments of Respiratory Medicine and Immunology at the University of Glasgow, and seven associates studied 11 asthmatics who continued to smoke and 10 who quit for six weeks. After only one week of no cigarettes, the researchers said that the lung function test results of the non-smoking patients had improved to a “considerable degree.”

“The improvement in lung function seen after smoking cessation was clinically significant,” said Dr. Thomson. “It demonstrates that there is a reversible component to the harmful effects of smoking on the airways in asthma.”

“The degree of improvement noted for smoking cessation far exceeds that of high-dose anti-inflammatory treatment, such as oral prednisolone, 40 mg daily for 2 weeks, which had no effect on lung function in smokers in our current study and in our previous work,” he continued. “The improvement could be due to the removal of the acute bronchoconstrictor effects of cigarette smoke or a reduction in the proinflammatory effects of cigarette smoke on the airways.”

In addition to the improved lung function test scores, the “quit” group also showed a reduction in sputum neutrophil counts when compared to those of smokers. Neutrophils are white blood cells (phagocytes) that engulf bacterial and fungal infections, along with ingesting foreign debris.

“Sputum neutrophil counts are reported to be increased in heavy smokers with asthma compared with nonsmokers with asthma,” said Dr. Thomson.

The authors noted that in many developed countries, more than 20 percent of adults with asthma are active smokers, with particularly high rates of acute asthmatics visiting hospital emergency rooms.

The smokers with asthma recruited for this study were aged 18 to 60 and had lung function score results of less than 85 percent of their predicted level. They all had a cigarette history of over 10-pack-years and smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day. The investigators saw no differences in the baseline physiological characteristics between the smoking group and those who quit.

Of the 10 subjects who successfully stopped smoking and completed the six-week study, five used nicotine patches, one employed acupuncture and four quit without any aid. The researchers believe that their findings highlight the importance of smoking cessation for adults with asthma.

Source: The Hindu