Author Archive

Nicotine coaxes the brain

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Researchers point out that environmental signals stimulate craving.

Researchers found that nicotine, the addictive component in cigarettes, “fool” the brain and memory to create associations between environmental cues and smoking behavior. This may explain why former smokers miss when lighting a cigarette in a bar or after eating.

The findings of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine published in the September 10 edition of the journal Neuron.

“Our brain normally establishes these associations between things that give support to our existence and environmental signals so that we have behaviors that lead us to have successful lives. The brain sends a signal of reward when we act in a way that contributes to our welfare “said co-author, Dr. John A. Dani, professor of neuroscience at BCM, in a press release from the university. “However, nicotine usurps this subconscious learning process in the brain, so we started to behave as if smoking was a positive action.” (more…)

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Direct contact with nicotine can cause tissue irritation

Monday, April 26th, 2010

A team of researchers from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) has participated in research that has shown that direct contact with nicotine may produce localized irritation, sources from the institution in Valencia.

Experts have found that nicotine activates a molecular receptor that is involved in the processes of inflammation and pain. This receptor, called TRPA1, is located in the nerve endings in the skin, as explained in the latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The work, which has been tested in mice, indicates that activation of this receptor, an excitatory ion channel, may be responsible for the irritation produced by nicotine in anti smoking therapies when applied locally by nasal sprays or using patches over skin.

CSIC researcher Felix Viana of the Church said that “it was thought that the irritation produced by nicotine was due solely to stimulation of nicotine receptors already known.” “We – he continued – we have shown that nicotine can directly activate TRPA1 protein, which acts as a trigger of neuronal signals that transmit sensations of burning and pain.” (more…)

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Multiple factors modify the risk of adolescent smoking

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

There is no single explanation for why teens start smoking, so concentrate on a single risk factor does not help you better understand why young people smoke, according to a study conducted in Canada.

This is the conclusion of the team of Dr. Jennifer O’Loughlin, who published the results of their study in American Journal of Epidemiology.

O’Loughlin, of the University of Montreal, Quebec, suggests that efforts to prevent smoking should take into account “the individual factors such as age, self-esteem, alcohol use and school performance.”

They should also be considered “contextual factors such as parental smoking and friends, and school smoking policies,” the expert told Reuters Health.

The team investigated how these factors modify the onset smoking in 877 students (half male) who had 13 years at baseline.

Over the next five years, the team interviewed every three months to students on the consumption of snuff and other factors potentially associated with smoking initiation. During this period, 421 (48 percent) began smoking, 87 of them (21 percent), daily. (more…)

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Women, alcohol and cancer

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

A study of nearly 1.3 million British women provides more evidence on moderate alcohol consumption and increased risk in a variety of cancers.

The British researchers surveyed middle-aged women with breast cancer in the clinics, about their health habits and followed up for seven years.

A quarter of women reported no alcohol use and most of the remainder reported that the average consumption was one drink per day.

The researchers compared to light drinkers of two or fewer drinks a week, with people who drank more.

Each extra drink per day increased the risk of breast cancer, rectum and liver, from the University of Oxford, researchers report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The type of alcoholic beverages such as, wine, beer or spirits did not matter, defined earlier research that alcohol consumption was associated with esophageal and oral cancer, only when the drinkers were smokers.

Furthermore, moderate drinkers actually had a lower risk of thyroid cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma and renal cell cancer.

For a woman the risk is manifested by a small total alcohol in developed countries, about 118 of every 1,000 women develop any of these types of cancer and every extra daily drink added 11 breast cancers, plus four other types.

But in the whole population, 13 percent of cancer cases in Britain may be attributable to alcohol, this being the conclusion of the study.

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Excessive consumption of alcohol causes pancreatitis

Friday, April 16th, 2010

pancreatitisPancreatitis is a condition that is serious and is caused by excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages increased by the presence of stones in the bile duct, when obstructed distal common bile duct call generates an inflammation of the pancreas. Usually the inflammation of the pancreas is presented in acute form, while in its chronic form there is no cure available.

As symptoms of the disease may be mentioned the intense abdominal pain that occurs in the pit of the stomach, with nausea and vomiting, the patient having an attack of severe constipation.

In 80% of cases the disease has a benign course and the person ceases to have discomfort in a period of 3 to 7 days, the rest is an evolution that leads to disease state of “serious” if it takes the form early intensive treatment.

Other causes that can lead to suffering from pancreatitis is the fact that a person suffers a car accident and the seat belt injury blow produces a level of pancreatic tissue, which brings with inflammation. (more…)

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Cocaine change the way genes function in the brain

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Prolonged exposure to cocaine can cause permanent changes in how genes are turned on and off in the brain, a finding that could develop more effective treatments for many types of addictions.

A mouse study conducted by the team of Ian Maze, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, found that chronic cocaine addiction prevented a specific enzyme to carry out its work of elimination of some genes in the brain’s pleasure circuits.

This effect was eager than rodents more drugs.

The research helps explain how cocaine use changes the brain, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study published in the journal Science.

“This discovery is enabling a new understanding of how the repeated use of drugs in the long term modifies the function of neurons,” Volkow said in a telephone interview. (more…)

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Smoking also cause back pain

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

A Finnish research was based on 81 previous studies confirmed that snuff addicts are more likely to suffer discomfort in the lower back. Teens, the most affected

After reviewing existing research, Finnish experts concluded that smoking is “modestly” associated with the risk of pain in the lumbar spine and the effects would be “at least partly reversible.”

These findings were published in the January issue of American Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Rahman Shiri, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, and colleagues wanted to know if smoking increases the risk of low back pain, a problem that affects about 8 out of 10 adults at some point in their lives.

Previous analysis of existing studies has reached different conclusions. While research suggests a relationship between smoking and back pain, another cast “unclear results.”

Finnish researchers identified and reviewed 81 studies conducted worldwide between 1966 and 2009, which included smokers, former smokers and people who had never smoked. They took account of back pain. (more…)

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To stop smoking, nicotine patches for longer

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

A study by the University of Pennsylvania said that treatments with these products extend over months that the recommended increase the chances of quitting.

Treatment with nicotine patches that are left in patients six months, and not the two recommendations would be much more effective in helping you quit smoking, according to new research published yesterday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study was conducted by the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Caryn Lerman, the author remarked that these new findings should serve to modify and give a new spin on smoking cessation treatments.

The research involved 568 people who used the nicotine patch Nicoderm Code and after six months, patches inactive. (more…)

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Characteristics of drug addiction treatment

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

drug addiction treatment

The fundamental characteristics of drug addiction treatment, consist of a series of consultations and medical interventions for the patient. In these sessions, medical, which can be given in different ways, seeks to support the addict in order to rehabilitate.

They are different techniques and forms of rehabilitation, adapting to the emergency department patient dependency, the risk of it and the properties of substances consumed. In turn, there are also differences according to the forms that can be used, according to the characteristics of each individual. There are treatments that, in most cases are characterized by individual. (more…)

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Detoxification and cessation of heroin

Monday, March 29th, 2010

withdrawalWhen addiction or dependence occur before a drug or synthetic chemical characteristics, the stage of detoxification has strong barriers that impede the process. The forms of interruption or detoxification of heroin, morphine, codeine or methadone, all opium-derived substances may be using the full stop drug consumption, or through a process of decreasing the dose gradually until achieve the cessation of use.

The main obstacle, in which most consumers can not stop the drug, or by which many consumers culminate by becoming addicted, the withdrawal syndrome. Any addictive substance, occurs when consumption is stopped, withdrawal.

As withdrawal is known to all the symptoms and effects produced by the body accustomed to a substance, when consumption slows it. These symptoms are the leading consumers to the need to eat again, a matter of avoiding them. (more…)

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