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September is National Recovery Month in the US. Recovery Month is a time dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of substance use and mental disorders. It’s also a time to celebrate those who are in recovery and those who do recover. The goal of the observance month is to educate others that addiction treatment and mental health services are effective, and that people can recover. With respect for this time, we compiled some statistics on addiction disorders to support awareness of these issues and show that individuals are not alone.

The post The impact of addictions and means of prevention, treatment, & recovery appeared first on OUPblog.

डिटॉक्स डाइट और हम Detox diet Tips एक जानकार से मिलना हुआ. चाय सर्व करते हुए उसने बताया कि वो आज कुछ नही लेगी  डिटॉक्स प्लान है … यानि सारे दिन बस एक ही चीज लेनी है और वो आज घिया ही ले रही है घिया की सब्जी, घिया का रायता… इससे शरीर के अंदर की […]

The post डिटॉक्स डाइट और हम appeared first on Monica Gupta.

This past summer, the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia, banned use of e-cigarettes and vapor pens in public parks. Officials enacted the restriction not because of rampant use of the devices in the city but, as mayor Jere Wood said, to “get ahead of the curve. Smokeless device use is soaring. To fulfill demand, vapor shops are popping up all over.

The post E-cigarettes may lead to youth tobacco use appeared first on OUPblog.

There are so many reports of agents that may cause cancer, that there is a temptation to dismiss them all. Tabloid newspapers have listed everything from babies, belts, biscuits, and bras, to skiing, shaving, soup, and space travel. It is also tempting to be drawn into debates about more esoteric candidates for causative agents like hair dyes, underarm deodorants, or pesticides.

The post Let’s refocus on cancer prevention appeared first on OUPblog.

दाने दाने में कैंसर… पान मसाला

तरह तरह के ब्रांड और तरह तरह के स्वाद पर एक बात सभी में समान है और वो है चटखारे ले कर खाने वाले दाने दाने में कैंसर छिपा है.. बेशक विज्ञापन बहुत आकर्षित करते नजर आते हैं, कई बार ऐसा लगता है कि पान मसाला नही खाया तो जिंदगी ही बेकार है … सफलता भी नही मिलेगी.

और उपर से ये टीवी वाले सच पूछो तो मैं इनसे बहुत नाराज हूं … क्यो?? अरे भई .. कैंसर का प्रोग्राम भी दिखाते है और प्रयोजक भी दिखाते है … आधे से ज्यादा विज्ञापन पान मसाले के ही होते हैं अब चाहे अजय देवगण हो, गोविंदा हो , शाहरुख हो ,,, और हम इम्प्रेस हुए जाते हैं.. टीवी हमारी जिंदगी में सीधा असर डालता है इसलिए ऐसे विज्ञापनों को दिखाने पर इन पर केस होना चाहिए… कि ये विज्ञापन हमें भ्रमित कर रहें  है.

सिविल जज सीनियर डिविजन सिद्धार्थ ¨सह ने कहा कि तंबाकू का सेवन स्वास्थ्य के लिए हानिकारक है। तंबाकू के सेवन से लोगों में तेजी से कैंसर जैसी खतरनाक बीमारियां हो रहीं हैं। आज की युवा पीढ़ी में यह लत तेजी से बढ़ता दिख रहा है, जो खतरनाक संकेत है। मुख्य चिकित्साधिकारी डा.अखिलेश कुमार ने कहा कि तंबाकू सेवन से प्रतिवर्ष 8 लाख लोग मौत के शिकार हो रहे हैं। जो चिंताजनक है। सीएमओ ने कहा कि तंबाकू से कई बीमारियां फैलती हैं। खैनी, पान, पान मसाला, सिगरेट आदि का सेवन बेहद खतरनाक है। बढ़ते हृदय रोग का एक प्रमुख कारण तंबाकू ही है। Read more…

No Smoking

– पान मसाला, सिगरेट और तंबाकू महंगा होने के बाद बावजूद कम नहीं हुए नशाखोर

ALLAHABAD: आलोक सिंह एक ऑटोमोबाइल कंपनी में फील्ड ऑफिसर हैं. उनकी सैलरी पंद्रह हजार रुपए है. वह स्मोकिंग करते हैं और रोजाना बीस सिगरेट पी जाते हैं. इस तरह से उनकी एक तिहाई सैलरी हर महीने धुएं में उड़ रही है. यह तो महज एग्जाम्पल है. ऐसे लाखों लोग हैं जो रोजाना तंबाकू, सिगरेट, पान मसाला की लत पर बड़ी रकम खर्च कर देते हैं. जिसकी वजह से शहर में तंबाकू उत्पादों की बिक्री का ग्राफ बढ़ता जा रहा है. सरकार द्वारा वैट टैक्स में बढ़ोतरी किए जाने के बाद उत्पाद महंगे हुए लेकिन बिक्री पर बहुत ज्यादा फर्क नहीं पड़ा.

तंबाकू से होने वाले नुकसान को लेकर सरकार भले ही लोगों को लाख जागरुक करने की कोशिश करे लेकिन नशाखोरी कम होने के बजाय बढ़ रही है. केवल शहर में रोजाना आठ से दस लाख रुपए के तंबाकू, सिगरेट और पान मसाला की बिक्री हो रही है. इनमें सबसे ज्यादा डिमांड सिगरेट की है. कुल बिक्री का आधा हिस्सा स्मोकर्स अदा करते हैं. होल सेलर्स बताते हैं कि तंबाकू उत्पादों के मार्केट में सीमित ब्रांड हैं लेकिन इनकी डिमांड बहुत ज्यादा है.

पहले से ज्यादा बढ़ गया पान-मसाले का क्रेज

हाईकोर्ट के निर्देश पर राज्य सरकार ने प्रदेश में गुटखे की बिक्री पर प्रतिबंध लगा दिया था. कंपनियों ने इस आदेश का पालन करते हुए पान मसाले का प्रोडक्शन शुरू कर दिया लेकिन इसके साथ तंबाकू के पाउच फ्री कर दिए. इससे गुटखा प्रेमियों को ऑप्शन मिल गया. अब वह पान मसाले के साथ पहले से ज्यादा तंबाकू का सेवन कर रहे हैं, जो कि सेहत के लिए बहुत ज्यादा हानिकारक है. कंपनियां तंबाकू के पाउच का पैसा पान-मसाले के जरिए वसूल कर रही हैं.

महंगाई भी कम नहीं कर पाई दीवानगी

सरकार द्वारा चालीस फीसदी वैट टैक्स में बढ़ोतरी किए जाने के बाद पान मसाले और सिगरेट के दाम तेजी से बढ़े हैं लेकिन इससे बिक्री पर ज्यादा फर्क नहीं पड़ा है. लोग अपना नशा पूरा करने के लिए बढ़े हुए दाम देने को भी तैयार हैं. पान मसाले में एक तो सिगरेट में तीन रुपए तक की बढ़ोतरी हुई है, जिससे सरकार का रेवेन्यू भी बढ़ा है. दुकानदार कहते हैं कि महंगाई के चलते कुछ लोगों ने जरूर नशा छोड़ा है लेकिन उससे ज्यादा संख्या उन टीन एजर्स की है जो नशे की लत का शिकार हो रहे हैं.

तंबाकू उत्पाद बेचने वाले कीडगंज के दुकानदार विवेक की मानें तो इस धंधे में ग्राहकों को बुलाना नहीं पड़ता है. वह खुद ब खुद चले आते हैं लेकिन चिंता का सबब है टीन एजर्स का नशे का शिकार होना. वह बताते हैं कि क्फ् से क्7 साल की उम्र के बच्चों में सिगरेट की लत तेजी से बढ़ रही है. अपना स्टेटस सिंबल मेंटेन करने और शोऑफ के चक्कर में वह शौकिया स्मोकिंग करते हैं और धीरे-धीरे एडिक्ट होने लगते हैं. शुरुआत में वह दस से पंद्रह रुपए की महंगी सिगरेट पीते हैं लेकिन नशे का शिकार होने के बाद 7 रुपए वाली सस्ती सिगरेट पीने से भी नहीं हिचकते. inextlive.jagran.com

कुछ समय पहले मेरी सहेली दक्षिण धूमने गई. उसे सुपारी पान मसाले का शौक है. रास्ते मॆं खत्म होने पर सोचा कि वहां मार्किट से ले लेगी. वहां जब पता किया तो पता लगा कि पान मसाला , सुपारी बैन है… वो हसंने लगी क्योकि उसे पता था कि हरियाणा जैसी जगह मे बैन का मतलब क्या होता है पर वहां सही मायने मे पता लगा कि बैन का मतलब बैन बैन ही होता है … काश देश भर की सरकार इसे अमल मे लाए … काश काश …

कुल मिला कर जब तक हम खुद से विचार करके इसे नकार न दे हमें समझ नही आएगी या साफ शब्दों में ये कहॆं कि  अक्ल नही आएगी.. अब ये हमारे उपर है कि विज्ञापन देख कर हमे भ्रमित होना है या …. केसर समझ कर इसे चबाते रहना है …

The post दाने दाने में कैंसर appeared first on Monica Gupta.

Does marijuana produce an amotivational syndrome? Whether the amotivational syndrome exists or not is still controversial; there are still too few poorly controlled small studies that don't allow a definitive answer. Most people who use marijuana don't develop this syndrome.

The post Does marijuana produce an amotivational syndrome? appeared first on OUPblog.

Last year was an important year in the field of public health. In 2014, West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, experienced the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in history, and with devastating effects. Debates around e-cigarettes and vaping became central, as more research was published about their health implications. Conversations surrounding nutrition and the spread of disease through travel and migration continued in the media and among experts.

We’ve chosen a selection of articles that discuss public health issues that arose in 2014, their effects on the present and implications for the future.

Header image: US specialist helping Afghan nomads by Sfc. Larry Johns (US Army). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Public health in 2014: a year in review appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Leonard Cohen’s decision to take up cigarettes again at 80 reveals a well kept secret about older age: you can finally live it up and stop worrying about the consequences shortening your life by much. Risk taking is not such a risk anymore, given the odds. Of course some take that more literally than others. I don’t plan to do a parachute jump when I turn 90, as President Bush #1 did. However, a new breath of freedom (and less worry) is an unexpected and pleasant benefit of older age that isn’t well known.

Research findings confirm this is true. In recent studies of many adults from many countries, people were asked to rate their level of well being on a scale of 1-10. Researchers found a fascinating relationship between age and well-being. 20 year olds start out pretty high, after which well-being consistently goes down with age, bottoming out around the early 50’s. What happens next came as a surprise to many: after this trough, well-being actually goes up with age, with 85-year-olds reporting slightly higher well-being than the 20-year-olds. These are known as the U-bend studies, because well-being through adult life takes the shape of a “U.”

One question we can ask is: how can elders feel better when they are much closer to death than younger people? My personal and clinical experiences suggest that we accept the reality of death, which helps us enjoy each day and its positives more, because we appreciate their preciousness. Pleasure in listening to music, seeing a beautiful sunrise or hearing early morning bird calls elicits more enjoyment than when we were younger.

We live in the “now”. One woman expressed it well in our support group for aging and illness: “My papers are in order, my will and all that. Only, I just got four chairs recovered in my apartment. I want to stick around at least to see how they look with the new covers.” Concerns about career are gone; elderly parents are gone and adult children are on their own (hopefully). Elders begin to see life from a broader perspective than their own personal being—we are concerned about the future of the planet and the fate of our children’s children’s children whom we may never see.

At 86, I heartily endorse Cohen’s decision to forego all the illness prevention and screening that made sense in his 50s but not in his 80s when it is not likely to prolong life. For me, that means enjoying the pleasures of food and drink as I choose. My modern vegetarian-ish children chide me for the red meat on the table and insist I should be serving kale smoothies and brown rice for dinner and drinking bottled water with lemon instead of alcohol. My husband of 89 and I enjoy beef and wine for dinner, and we have no plans to change that. As to more wholesome drinks, as a Texan, I have drunk Dr. Peppers since the age of 10. I could easily be a poster girl for its benefits, but I am warned about the dangers I run every day of their poisoning my brain by the artificial “everything” in them.

As to fall prevention, which is a big concern of our children, I understand their wishes to prevent a broken hip, but I love most of my rugs and they are part of the pleasure in my home. I will compromise just so far in taking them up. I will be prudent but not coerced into a life style my children feel is more appropriate for us. My colleague, Dr. Mindy Greenstein, is a psychologist who works with me in a geriatric research group, and with whom I compare notes on aging from our middle and old old age perspectives. I complain that my children act too “parental” at times and I remind her that at 91, if her father eats another latke beyond what his wife deems appropriate, is that really a make or break issue in his survival? Children want to help us oldsters to outsmart the Grim Reaper, and that is very tender. But eventually he wins. So why sweat the odds? We are lucky—and happy—to be here in our upper 80s.

The bottom line is that Cohen has it right about the freedom to do things we want over 80, but wrong about paying too much attention to calculating the prevention risk ratio. The best story to put this into perspective is the old man who went to his doctor and asked. “Doc, if I give up alcohol, cigarettes and women will I live longer?” The doctor replied, “No, but it will seem longer.”

The post Leonard Cohen and smoking in old age appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity around the world. With the announcement of vape as our Word of the Year, we have put together a timeline of the history of e-cigarettes.

1963
Herbert A. Gilbert patents a non-tobacco cigarette that heats a nicotine solution and produced steam, but it is never manufactured.

1979
Dr. Norman Jacobson, one of the pioneers of the word “vaping,” develops the Favor cigarette, a way to inhale nicotine with no smoke.

2003
Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik first develops an electronic alternative to traditional cigarettes.

2004
The first e-cigarettes, a Chinese invention, comes from the Ruyan company.

2007
E-cigarettes enter the US market.

February 2012
Nicotine and Tobacco Research publishes a study, entitled “Electronic Cigarettes: Effective Nicotine Delivery After Acute Administration,” which explores nicotine intake with different electronic cigarette devices.

June 2013
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will regulate e-cigarettes as medicines from 2016 when new European tobacco laws come into force.

December 2013
Nicotine and Tobacco Research publishes a study, entitled “Secondhand Exposure to Vapors From Electronic Cigarettes.” It reveals that “using an e-cigarette in indoor environments may involuntarily expose non-users to nicotine, but not to toxic tobacco-specific combustion products.”

December 2013
“World leading tobacco experts argue that a recently published World Health Organization (WHO)-commissioned review of evidence on e-cigarettes contains important errors, misinterpretations, and misrepresentations, putting policy-makers and the public in danger of foregoing the potential public health benefits of e-cigarettes.”

September 2013
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urges the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “issue a rule to regulate all tobacco products, including cigars, little cigars, e-cigarettes and others.”

15 January 2014
The Chicago City Council voted to regulate electronic cigarettes the same as traditional cigarettes,  which “prohibits the use of e-cigarettes in public places, requires stores selling them to keep them behind the counter, and prohibits their sale to minors.”

26 January 2014
The UK bans e-cigarettes for people under 18.

February 2014
The European Parliament approves regulations on e-cigarettes. “Beginning in mid-2016, advertising for e-cigarettes would be banned in the 28 nations of the European Union, as it already is for ordinary tobacco products. E-cigarettes would also be required to carry graphic health warnings and must be childproof. The amount of nicotine would be limited to 20 milligrams per milliliter, similar to ordinary cigarettes.”

March 2014
Journal of Psychiatric Research reports on e-cigarette use within different age groups and finds that “a notable proportion of adolescents and young adults who never smoked cigarettes had ever-used e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use was not consistently associated with attempting to quit tobacco among young adults. Adults most often reported e-cigarettes as a substitute for tobacco, although not always to quit. Reviewed studies showed a somewhat different pattern of e-cigarette use among young people (new e-cigarette users who had never used tobacco) versus adults (former or current tobacco users).”

14 April 2014
A US congressional report surveys the marketing tactics of e-cigarette companies, which directs sales towards youth, and calls on the FDA to set regulations for e-cigarette marketing.

24 April 2014
The FDA proposes regulations on e-cigarettes, which gives them authority over e-cigarettes and expands its’ authority over tobacco products. The AAP still urges the FDA to protect young people from the effects of e-cigarettes.

April 2014
A proposal from the FDA requires  e-cigarettes to “undergo an agency review,” which would ban e-cigarette sales to minors and require e-cigarettes to have warning labels.

April 2014
The AAP releases a statement on the dangers of e-cigarette poisoning in children.

4 May 2014
The AAP surveyed a random sample of adults, and according to the research presented, “the vast majority of young adults who have used the devices believe they are less harmful than regular cigarettes…”

12 May 2014
Tobacco Control BMJ releases a study on e-cigarette use and individuals with mental health conditions.

May 2014
A study for Nicotine and Tobacco Research finds that the vapors from e-cigarettes contain “toxic and carcinogenic carbonyl compounds,” and the amount of formaldehyde in the vapors is similar to the amount reported in tobacco smoke.

2 June 2014
A study titled “Exposure to Electronic Cigarette Television Advertisements Among Youth and Young Adults”, found that “exposure of young people ages 12 to 17 to e-cigarette ads on TV increased 256% from 2011 to 2013. Young adult (ages 18 to 24) exposure increased 321% over the same period.”

25 June 2014
The White House alters the wording of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulations, allowing the online sale of e-cigarettes.

26 June 2014
The British Medical Association (BMA) calls to ban e-cigarette use in public. Doctors and medical students decide that e-cigarettes may lead to nicotine addiction.

July 2014
The BBC bans the use of e-cigarettes in all its offices and studios.

August 2014
A study from Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “there is a risk of thirdhand exposure to nicotine from e-cigarettes,” although the exposure levels differ depending on the brand of the devices used.

August 2014
A study from Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “in 2013, over a quarter million never-smoking youth had used e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use was associated with increased intentions to smoke cigarettes.”

24 August 2014
The American Heart Association (AHA) calls on the FDA for more research on e-cigarettes, to apply the same regulations on e-cigarettes as tobacco and nicotine products, and to create new regulations to prevent access, sale, and marketing to youth.

26 August 2014
A World Health Organization (WHO) report states that e-cigarettes need regulation to “impede e-cigarette promotion to non-smokers and young people; minimize potential health risks to e-cigarette users and nonusers; prohibit unproven health claims about e-cigarettes; and protect existing tobacco control efforts from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”

The WHO reports that “governments should ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and outlaw tactics to lure young users.”

4 September 2014
The New England Journal of Medicine’s findings state that “like conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes may function as a ‘gateway drug’ that can prime the brain to be more receptive to harder drugs.”

October 2014
A study for Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “over 75% of US adults reported uncertainty or disapproval of the use of e-cigarettes in smoke-free areas. Current cigarette smokers, adults aware or have ever used e-cigarettes were more supportive to exempting e-cigarettes from smoking restrictions.”

Headline image credit: Vaping an electronic cigarette by Jon Williams. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

The post A brief history of the e-cigarette appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Vaping is having an interesting cultural moment. Use of the word is increasing rapidly, as the Oxford Dictionaries editors note, although many people are still unfamiliar with it. (In a totally scientific survey of ten 40-year-old parents on the playground of my son’s school, none had heard the word before. In my husband’s university department, some of the graduate students used the word, but the consensus among the faculty was that to vape meant to live life as a Visiting Assistant Professor.) This increased use comes as people attempt to define boundaries for the activity, to figure out where it is socially acceptable, and where it is not. Is vaping like smoking, and thus offensive and possibly dangerous to non-vapers? Or is it more like chewing gum — not polite, exactly, but something you might do surreptitiously at work or in a movie theater? Would you vape in a childcare center? In a hospital? These are not just questions of etiquette, but also of law — will vapers, like smokers, be required to keep a distance of 15 to 25 feet from any doors or windows?

The word vaping has already caused devotees of juice (the liquid used in e-cigarettes) to lose the first battle in the propaganda war. Vaping carries overtones of illicit drug use — vaporizers provided a cleaner high for marijuana-smokers for years before they were used in e-cigarettes — and sounds, as was reported in The Guardian last year, “worryingly like a form of sexual assault, or a bewilderingly ill-advised 1980s dance craze.” Let’s look now at some words from smoking’s history, to see how earlier battles over tobacco use played out, and how current questions about vaping might be resolved.

Like many of our other good stimulants, tobacco was brought to Europe from the Americas, first imported by the Spanish in the early 16th century. Tobacco (first English use, 1577) comes from Native American words for a pipe or a sort of cigar, which the Spanish assumed referred to the leaves of the plant itself. Columbus’s conscience, Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, described how when their expedition landed in Cuba, they found the Taino smoking these cigar-like “tabacos,” “by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue.” It was not a forgone conclusion that tobacco would be the English name for this miraculous plant — other candidates at the time were petum (1568), possibly derived from another Native American word, and nicotian (1577), from Jean Nicot, who brought the plant to France for the first time. (Nicot eventually gave his name to the tobacco genus, Nicotiana, as well as to its chemical of interest, nicotine (1817)).

Growing more and more popular with every passing year, tobacco seemed to be doing just fine with its common name, but others were coined for it to better advertise what were seen as its incredible health benefits — the holy herb, the queen mother herb, God’s remedy, and panacea (all 16th century). A panacea is a medicine reputed to cure all diseases, a tall order, but one that it was more than capable of fulfilling, according to proponents such as Anthony Chute, author of Tabaco (1595). The green leaves of the plant could cure any sort of laceration or skin ulcer, from a finger nigh severed by a giant chopping knife to the King’s Evil (Scrofula), the Canker, the Wolfe, and noli me tangere (“don’t touch me”), increasingly awful skin diseases. The smoke was thought to be even more efficacious, because of the humoral theory of medicine that held sway at the time. A healthy body had the proper balance of four humors, blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm, which gave it the proper temperature and moisture. Tobacco smoke was very hot and dry, and so could cure diseases in which the patient was excessively cold and moist — all kinds of coughs, rheums, bowel problems, and, the epitome of cold and wet, drowning.

The “native English” way of getting smoke into the body was the clyster (1398), or glyster — a tobacco enema. It was superseded by the pipe, a Native American invention and a more social way to smoke, but the original practice survived until the mid-19th century as the best way to revive drowning victims, and is still around in the expression to blow smoke up your ass, meaning “to give insincere compliments.” (Though wonderful, this derivation of the idiom is possibly apocryphal. There is a long and independent association between “empty words” and wind, smoke, or vapor.)

Like vaping today, there were questions about the social acceptability of “drinking tobacco,” as smoking was called. Was it genteel for women to smoke, for example? On one hand, smoking was good for women, who were constitutionally a little bit too cold and damp. On the other hand, smoking involved sucking on something in public, generally a no-no. Early tobacco pipes also tended to produce quite a lot of brown, sticky saliva, which stained clothing, created a funk (a strong stink, 1623), and needed to be spit somewhere, often on the floor, until the development of the spittoon (1840). Tobacco use gained its widest social acceptance with the rise of snuff (1683), finely ground tobacco snorted through the nose, which neatly avoided all these problems.

Taking snuff has many similarities with vaping. It required lots of accoutrements, all of which could show off one’s individuality, relative wealth, and taste. Vapers today can buy standard, preassembled e-cigs and tobacco-flavored juice, but many people prefer to customize their equipment, especially if they drip. Dripping involves putting a few drops of juice directly on the coil of an e-cig atomizer (the heating element) instead of using a cartridge with a reservoir of liquid and a wick, which according to drippers (?)…drips (?)…advocates of dripping, provides a purer taste and the option of changing flavors more frequently. It requires vapers to assemble their e-cigs themselves, choosing an atomizer, a drip tip (the part you put in your mouth), possibly a drip shield, and a variety juice flavors, from the hundreds available — “Mother’s Milk” (“a creamy custard with a sweet strawberry exhale”), for example, or “Boba’s Bounty” (“tobacco, honey, and marshmallow”). Snuff-takers needed a snuff-box — some devotees had hundreds, beautifully decorated — a rasp, to grind the tobacco leaves, a tiny spoon if they preferred not to dirty their fingers, and a dark-patterned handkerchief to catch their sneezes and clean their nostrils. Like juice, snuff could be colored and flavored in hundreds of combinations, including orange flower, rose, bergamot, musk, and tonka bean (a flavor like vanilla, now banned by the FDA for containing coumarin, which in high doses can damage the liver).

Vaping has many of the same things going for it that snuff did — it appeals to a knowledgeable, somewhat moneyed, consumer and offers a way to display individuality and discernment. Now all it needs is a better name…any ideas?

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Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity around the world. With the announcement of vape as our Word of the Year, we asked a number of scholars for their thoughts on this new word and emerging phenomenon.

*   *   *   *   *

“Electronic cigarettes (ECIGs) are a rapidly evolving group of products that are designed to deliver aerosolized nicotine to the user. If ECIGs are used in the short-term to help smokers quit tobacco use completely and then eliminate all nicotine intake, they have some potential to reduce the health risks that smokers face. However, ECIGs also present a potential public health challenge because of uncertainty regarding the long-term health effects of inhalation of an aerosol that contains, in addition to the dependence-producing drug nicotine, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, flavorants, and a variety of other chemicals. Very recent data demonstrate that ECIGs can be as effective as tobacco cigarettes in terms of the amount of nicotine delivered, raising the possibility that they also may be equally addictive. If ECIGs are as addictive as tobacco cigarettes, quitting them may be difficult for smokers who used them to stop smoking and for non-smokers, young and old, who began using them because ECIGs are marketed aggressively and flavored attractively. The rapid evolution of the product, coupled with the unknown effects of long-term inhalation of the aerosol highlight the need for ongoing, objective, empirical evaluation of these products with the goal of minimizing risk to individual and public health.”
— Thomas Eissenberg, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Co-director, Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, at Virginia Commonwealth University

“Vape is a practical solution to a recently-arisen lexical gap that points up the genius of English lexical expansion. It supplies a simple verb with predictable inflections (vaping, vaped), built on an already familiar pattern of consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e (as in bake, file, poke, rule, and hundreds of others). Vape also conforms to the one-syllable pattern of many verbs, standard and informal, denoting ingestion: eat, drink, chug, quaff, smoke, snarf, snort, whiff. Although the root vapor is from Latin, speakers have effortlessly nativized it by removing the unneeded second syllable.”

— Orin Hargraves, lexicographer, researcher of the computational use of language at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and author of many books, including It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Cliches.

“Vape is a great choice for Word of the Year, not just because 2014 was the Year of Vaping, but because it is aesthetically perfect for marketing vaporizing paraphernalia and taking over the eroding market for traditional smoking products. Think about it: smoking. It’s really an unattractive word related to other unattractive words, like choking and hacking. Hold that /o/ long enough and you’ll cough by the time you hit the /k/. Vape is hip — new vowels, new consonants, new look, same old addiction. It’s a stunning verbal makeover.”

— Michael Adams, Indiana University at Bloomington, author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon, Slang: The People’s Poetry, editor of From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages.

*   *   *   *   *

Headline image credit: Electronic Cigarettes by George Hodan via Public Domain Images.

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Since 1994, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) has been supporting the science and research community. To celebrate the society’s 20th anniversary and to help mark the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day on 31 May 2014, we invite you to read a free collection of articles published in the society’s journal, Nicotine & Tobacco Research (N&TR), covering both top scholarship and the growth of the society.

By Gary E. Swan

According to the WHO’s fact sheet on tobacco, chronic tobacco use caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century. If current trends continue, it may cause one billion deaths in the 21st century. The global tobacco epidemic kills nearly six million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke. More than 80% of these preventable deaths will be among people living in low-and middle-income countries. Unless there is continued and more rapid dissemination of best tobacco control and cessation practices, the epidemic will kill more than eight million people every year by 2030.

In addition to the global dissemination of tobacco control strategies to the large number of smokers who want to quit, there is a need to continue to inform and motivate health care providers to encourage their patients who smoke to quit. For example, a systematic review of studies from the United States using direct observation of physicians during medical encounters found that smoking was discussed infrequently (21% of all encounters), with only 36% of potentially eligible patients having received advice as recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force on smoking cessation.

Another compelling reason for persistent dissemination of evidence-based findings from the nicotine and tobacco research field is provided by the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), a new entity empowered to regulate tobacco products by the 2009 The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. In order to effectively regulate tobacco products, the CTP requires scientific evidence to support claims that new products, such as e-cigarettes, reduce exposure and subsequent harm to the smoking public. Evidence, both supportive and non-supportive, from the scientific community is currently being actively sought by the CTP.

Because of the lethality of chronic consumption of tobacco, effective tobacco control and smoking cessation approaches remain among the most cost effective life-saving medical procedures known to man. Methods such as taxation are highly effective and, for World No Tobacco Day 2014, WHO and partners have issued a call to countries to raise taxes on tobacco. N&TR has published many empirical studies on the effects of taxation on tobacco use.

The interval between the conduct of research and implementation of evidence-based prevention and treatment results remains unacceptably long from many perspectives. Hopefully newer electronic Web-based applications and technologies will facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration. The editors of N&TR believe such applications and technologies will enhance the dissemination of research evidence and, thus, facilitate the translation of scientific evidence for effective programs and services into everyday practice around the world. By so doing, we will be better positioned to reduce the enormous human and economic costs of global tobacco use.

Gary E. Swan, PhD, is the Founding Editor of Nicotine & Tobacco Research, a Past President of SRNT, and a Consulting Professor at Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center.

Nicotine & Tobacco Research is one of the world’s few peer-reviewed journals devoted exclusively to the study of nicotine and tobacco. Its mission is to publish a range of content representing all facets of the evidence-based science of nicotine and tobacco. The journal is published by OUP on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Dissemination of the science published by N&TR has long been a priority. The need for a renewed focus on the global dissemination of best practices and science as described in each of the papers from the 20th anniversary collection is as apparent today as it was more than a decade ago.

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While the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises) will not be released in American theaters until sometime next year, attendees of the Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival will get an opportunity to experience the film much sooner.

Kaze Tachinu, which opened in Japan on July 20th, is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, a World War II designer of Zero fighters, including the Mitsubishi A6M Zero which was used by the imperial Japanese navy for kamikaze missions and during the Pearl Harbor bombing.

“My wife and staff would ask me, ‘Why make a story about a man who made weapons of war?” Miyazaki told Japan’s Cut magazine in 2011. “And I thought they were right. But one day, I heard that Horikoshi had once murmured, ‘All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.’ And then I knew I’d found my subject… Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons… Really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.”

According to the South China Morning Post, this choice of subject matter, which lead to some veiled jabs at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has put Miyazaki in the crosshairs of conservative nationalists. He has also found himself defending the film to South Koreans offended of his glorification of a man so closely connected to a Japanese military that used forced laborers from the Korean peninsula. And, the Japan Society for Tobacco Control, has taken issue with the depictions of smoking presented in the film, especially in a scene where the lead character smokes a cigarette while sitting with his wife, who is bedridden and suffering from tuberculosis.

Despite the controversy (or perhaps because of it), Kaze Tachinu was Japan’s biggest opening of the year at ¥960M ($9M US) in its first two days, and has stayed at number for four consecutive weekends with a total box office gross of ¥7.2B ($74.1M US). em>Kaze Tachinu

By Lauren Pecorino

There is a tendency to complain about policies when writing blogs, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.

One of the best British campaigns is against cervical cancer. Getting personally posted invitations to attend your next PAP screening, supported by pamphlets of information, is something few women ignore. Those who try to ignore these invitations are rightly and relentlessly bombarded with regular reminders.

And, with the knowledge that a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is responsible for all cases of cervical cancer, the UK implemented a national school-based HPV vaccination programme that has proven to yield high uptake. By 2009, 70 percent of 12-13 year olds in the UK were fully vaccinated. These results are admirable compared to the results of alternative on-demand provisions offered by other countries including the USA. Note that the vaccine is recommended for early teens as it is a preventative vaccine and not a therapeutic vaccine, and must be administered before the initiation of sexual activity for it to be effective. The vaccine prevents about 70% of cervical cancers caused by two specific strains of HPV. PAP screening is still important to catch cases that are not prevented by the vaccine. An added bonus of this campaign is that the same vaccine also protects against some head, neck, and anal cancers caused by HPV infections.

Another great British effort is towards the prevention of lung cancer. The anti-smoking adverts have been haunting, especially the most recent one released by the UK Department of Health that shows a tumor growing on a cigarette. It is brilliant. I wish I had designed it. The advert strikingly conveys the message that if you saw the damage smoking causes, you would not smoke. The percentage of male cigarette smokers have fallen from 55% in 1970 to 21% in 2010 and a decreasing number of deaths due to lung cancer has followed this trend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The UK is also a model of good practice in that it is the only country in the world which has a network of free ‘stop-smoking’ services, recently supported by specialized training for National Health Service Stop Smoking practitioners.

We can help the national campaign at a personal level by being more opinionated and outspoken when it comes to letting those around us know that smoking is harmful and “uncool”- especially among the young. We must ensure the message is passed down to new generations.

Finally, the UK is at the leading edge in using stem cells to help replace organs damaged by cancer. Tracheal transplants using tracheal scaffolds from cadavers seeded with the patient’s own stem cells have been used to replace damaged tissue for patients with tracheal cancer. Currently scientists at University College London are developing very similar procedures to grow a new nose for a patient who had lost their nose to cancer. These innovative approaches are the result of a continuously open, well-supported but regulated stem cell research policy, not yet seen in the USA.

Well done Great Britain!

Lauren Pecorino received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Cell and Developmental Biology. She crossed the Atlantic to carry out a postdoctoral tenure at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London. She is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich where teaches Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. The teaching of this course motivated her to write The Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics, now in its second edition. Feedback on the textbook posted on Amazon from a cancer patient drove her to write a book on cancer for a wider audience: Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science.

Read a World Cancer Day Q&A with Lauren Pecorino.
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By Siegfried Weyerer

Depression in old age occurs frequently, places a severe burden on patients and relatives, and increases the utilization of medical services and health care costs. Although the association between age and depression has received considerable attention, very little is known about the incidence of depression among those 75 years of age and older. Studies that treat the group 65+ as one entity are often heavily weighted towards the age group 65-75. Therefore, the prediction of depression in the very old is uncertain, since many community-based studies lack adequate samples over the age of 75.

With the demographic change in the forthcoming decades, more emphasis should be put on epidemiological studies of the older old, since in many countries the increase in this age group will be particularly high. To study the older old is also important, since some crucial risk factors such as bereavement, social isolation, somatic diseases, and functional impairment become more common with increasing age. These factors may exert different effects in the younger old compared to the older old. Knowledge of risk factors is a prerequisite to designing tailored interventions, either to tackle the factors themselves or to define high-risk groups, since depression is treatable in most cases.

In our recent study, over 3,000 patients recruited by GPs in Germany were assessed by means of structured clinical interviews conducted by trained physicians and psychologists during visits to the participants’ homes. Inclusion criteria for GP patients were an age of 75 years and over, the absence of dementia in the GP’s view, and at least one contact with the GP within the last 12 months. The two follow-up examinations were done, on average, one and a half and then three years after the initial interview.

Depressive symptoms were ascertained using the 15-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). We found that the risk for incident depression was significantly higher for subjects

• 85 years and older
• with mobility impairment and vision impairment
• with mild cognitive impairment and subjective memory impairment
• who were current smokers.

It revealed that the incidence of late-life depression in Germany and other industrialized countries is substantial, and neither educational level, marital status, living situation nor presence of chronic diseases contributed to the incidence of depression. Impairments of mobility and vision are much more likely to cause incidents of depression than individual somatic illnesses such as diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease. As such, it is vital that more attention is paid to the oldest old, functional impairment, cognitive impairment, and smoking, when designing depression prevention programs.

GP practices offers ample opportunity to treat mental health problems such as depression occurring in relation to physical disability. If functional impairment causes greater likelihood of depression, GPs should focus on encouraging older patients to maintain physical health, whether by changing in personal health habits, advocating exercise, correcting or compensating functional deficits by means of medical and surgical treatments, or encouraging use of walking aids. Additionally, cognitive and memory training could prevent the onset of depressive symptoms, as could smoking cessation. If these steps are taken, the burden of old age depression could be significantly reduced.

Siegfried Weyerer is professor of epidemiology at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He has conducted several national and international studies on the epidemiology of dementia, depression and substance use disorders at different care levels. He is also an expert in health/nursing services research. He is one of the authors of the paper ‘Incidence and predictors of depression in non-demented primary care attenders aged 75 years and older: results from a 3-year follow-up study’, which appears in the journal Age and Ageing. You can read the paper in full here.

Age and Ageing is an international journal publishing refereed original articles and commissioned reviews on geriatric medicine and gerontology. Its range includes research on ageing and clinical, epidemiological, and psychological aspects of later life.

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By Mark S. Gold, MD

Public health officials and academics identified cigarette smoking and related disease as the nation’s number one killer and foremost driver of health costs in the 1980s. At that time overeating and obesity were not major problems, yet they may soon cause more disease, deaths, and health care costs than cigarettes. Food addiction, which may explain part of the epidemic, is slowly and finally  “catching on”. It’s been controversial, with some scientists dismissing it out of hand, so like any hypothesis, it needs additional tests.

If overeating is due to food acquiring drug-like or tobacco-like brain reinforcement properties, then the current globesity and overeating-related health crisis might have lessons to learn from tobacco. For example, taxes on tobacco products have been the single most important prevention tool in reducing smoking. Based on food addiction hypothesis, higher prices might also reduce soda consumption. A review suggested that for every 10% increase in price, consumption decreases by 7.8%. An industry trade publication reported even larger reductions; as prices of carbonated soft drinks increased by 6.8%, sales dropped by 7.8%, and as Coca-Cola prices increased by 12%, sales dropped by 14.6%. It follows that a tax on sweetened beverages might help consumers switch to water or more healthful beverages. Such a switch would lead to reduced caloric intake, and less weight gain.

Changing the attitudes and behaviors of the public combined to reduce smoking and smoking-related health care costs and suffering. Changing access to cigarettes by elimination of cigarette vending machines, raising the price per pack to decrease numbers of cigarettes or packs/day smoked, crafting PSAs to reduce smoking initiation, and training medical professionals to intervene and not look the other way, all helped reduce smoking.

Age of onset and exposure can change genes, and make use and addiction more likely. We know that early exposure to tobacco via second-hand-smoke, either in utero or in early life greatly increases the risk of life-long tobacco use and addiction. In the 1990s, children’s intake of sweetened beverages surpassed that of milk. In the past decade, per capita intake of calories from sugar/HFCS-sweetened beverages has increased by nearly 30%. Beverages now account for 10–15% of the calories consumed by children and adolescents. It is likely that food addiction models can be used to explain early exposure and changes in preference becoming fixed and persistent for life.  An extra can or glass of sugar or HFCS sweetened beverage consumed per day increases the likelihood of a child’s becoming obese increases by 60%.

Our efforts to manage and treat overeating and obesity might benefit from addiction methods and experience. We could develop realistic food addiction models and test new treatments. Would animals self-administer food or food constituents, avidly, with bingeing and loss of control? Yes. Our work (and Bart Hoebel’ s before) clearly demonstrates that sucrose and fructose corn syrup are self-administered as if they were drugs and that an opiate-like abstinence syndrome could be produced by detoxification or antagonist administration. Sugar stimulates its own taking  causes craving, wanting, withdrawal, and can motivate and change our behavior.. If the food addiction hypothesis were relevant to the human condition, these animal models could be used to test new medications. New treatments developed for overeating and obesity were previously shown to be effective in addiction medicine.

These new treatments approved by the FDA include phentermine plus topiramate and bupropion plus naltrexone. Topiramate has been used with success in alcohol dependence, bupropion in nicotine dependence, and naltrexone in opiate and also alcohol dependence. While early, these treatments are important tests of the addiction hypothesis and harbingers of more progress in the future. With addiction medicine and food addiction model systems, we may develop treatments which change food preference and not just appetite.

Food addiction may explain some, but certainly not all obesity. The Yale Food Addiction Scale may be used to screen patients for addiction-like pharmacological and psychological interventions. Medically-assisted smoking cessation efforts were enhanced once treatment advanced from simple nicotine replacement or detoxification, to the brain and the neurobehavioral attachment to cigarettes. With an addiction hypothesis that included dopamine, we discovered the efficacy of bupropion and then Chantix. Thus, rather than a successful short term treatment rate of less than 20%, we routinely helped 30% of smokers. Still, addiction-inspired public health measures rather than medically-assisted treatment were responsible for most of the successful cessation efforts, early intervention, and prevention.

Smoking-related disease caused 400,000 deaths per year in the USA plus an additional 40,000 deaths due to second-hand smoke. Until recently little effort was directed at preventing smoking or treating smokers, although we treated the lung cancers, stroke, erectile dysfunction and other diseases caused by smoking. With all this progress, all of the health savings related to smoking cessation will soon be replaced by obesity-related costs. Are these two events related? As smoking and addiction is associated with decreases in eating and weight, a nation detoxifying from smoking addiction should be expected to become overweight. Until recently, with the scientific support provided by food and addiction models, we have not applied the same lessons learned from tobacco to overeating and obesity.

Proposals for food taxes have been made and calculations formulated of revenue-benefits based on our experiences with tobacco taxation. Even when these fail, the public and health experts have to think through the idea that fruits and vegetables are more costly than fatty, sweet, fast foods. Using taxes on ingredients such as added sugar and fructose corn syrup would decrease exposure according to addiction models. This might make Coca-Cola and other sodas return to sucrose as in Mexican or Kosher Coke. Reducing portion size, while supported by cigarette experience with numbers of cigarettes per pack and purchase limits, is a weaker intervention than other approaches. Now we see food labels and calorie postings. This educates everyone as they consider is it worth the calories and do they have the time and energy to exercise away the calories ingested. Exercise is important, and promotes health, but is not a stand-alone obesity treatment or management strategy. Stigmatizing the overweight with added health premiums and workplace incentives has not worked well in the past. Blaming the patient, creating shame and guilt, doesn’t do much to inspire treatment efficacy.

Obesity has changed the width of the seats in airplanes, dress, and trouser sizes. It has also made high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugars, knee and joint pain, and other obesity-related problems routine in medical practice and treatment. Over the past three decades, rates of obesity have increased in the United States and elsewhere, so that now more people are obese and in need of treatment than ever. New approaches, evidence-based approaches, like those that have been used successfully to develop novel public health and treatment approaches for tobacco, alcohol, and other addictions are needed.

Mark S. Gold, MD is the co-editor of Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook with Kelly D. Brownell. He is the Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Florida. Dr Gold is a teacher of the year, researcher and inventor who has focused for much of his career on the development of models for understanding the effects of tobacco, cocaine, opiates, other drugs, and also food, on the brain and behavior. He began his work on the relationship between food and drug addictions while at Yale working with addicts in withdrawal. He has worked for 30+ years trying to understand how to change food preferences, make eating and drugs of abuse less interesting or reinforcing at the brain’s dopamine and other reinforcement sites. Kelly D. Brownell, PhD is professor of psychology, epidemiology, and public health at Yale University and is director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Dr. Brownell does work at the intersection of science and public policy. The Rudd Center assesses, critiques and strives to improve practices and policies related to nutrition and obesity so as to inform the public and to maximize the impact on public health.

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By Dr Alex Dregan

Do vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking make us forgetful?

As our bodies start to show the signs of ageing, our brain is naturally ageing too. But some older people can become forgetful and have trouble remembering common words or organising daily activities more than others. There are few proven interventions to prevent this kind of cognitive decline in older adults, although treating modifiable risk factors for vascular disease and stroke, such as cholesterol and body mass index (BMI), has been suggested as a promising approach to preventing or delaying cognitive impairment for a growing UK population of older adults. So is there a link between high blood pressure and forgetfulness?

Despite much recent interest, studies to date have reported inconsistent relationships between blood pressure and cognitive functioning. Evidence suggests that people diagnosed with high blood pressure levels tend to perform more poorly on most domains of cognitive functioning, including memory, learning, attention, and reasoning. However, clinical trials have so far failed to demonstrate that antihypertensive drugs used to lower or control high blood pressure levels are effective in preventing cognitive decline in older adults.  This inconsistent evidence poses a challenge when developing recommendations for the prevention of cognitive ageing.

Cognitive ageing, such as symptoms of forgetfulness, is increasingly seen as the result of the joint effect of several vascular disease risk factors, including high blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol levels, and smoking. However,  the combined influence of these on cognitive decline is less commonly explored among older adults at increased risk of both cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline.

In a recent paper, we looked at Framingham stroke and cardiovascular risk scores (a measure used to assess an individual’s probability of developing stroke or cardiovascular disease over a 10-years period) and investigated their association with cognitive decline in older adults. The study included over 8,000 adults aged 50+ living in private households in England. Participants with the highest risk of future stroke or cardiovascular events, based on their risk factors values, were found to perform more poorly on tests of memory and executive functioning after a four year period. This adds weight to the theory that the combined effects of risk factors for vascular disease and stroke may be associated with more rapid cognitive decline in older adults. In other words, those at greater risk of cardiovascular problems were likely to experience a more rapid onset of symptoms associated with cognitive decline, such as forgetfulness.

We believe that these findings support the need for a multifaceted approach when seeking to prevent cognitive decline. The main implication of this is the need for addressing the combined effect of multiple risk factors, including lowering high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, weight loss, and stopping smoking. Thus, healthcare professionals should encourage older people to adopt healthy lifestyles that would include stopping smoking and increased exercise (as well as improved diet not investigated here) and taking prescribed medicines aimed at controlling high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Such recommendations could potentially prevent or delay future declining memory or reasoning capacities in older adults, particularly those in higher risk groups.

The results also suggest that a harmful effect of high blood pressure on memory or reasoning abilities may develop over a prolonged period of time. This may be one reason why short-term trials have failed to show a consistent benefit from antihypertensive treatment on cognitive decline. For instance, since the negative impact of high blood pressure on memory or reasoning abilities takes place over a prolonged period of time, short-term treatment may not be sufficient to reverse or delay its adverse influence. Therefore, we would expect that any potential cognitive benefits from lowering blood pressure may only be observed over substantial periods of time.

These new results suggest that attention to the combined effects of multiple vascular risk factors may hold some promise as a strategy to prevent cognitive decline in older adults.

Dr Alex Dregan is a Lecturer in Translational Epidemiology within the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and King’s College London. He trained in Public health at the Institute of Education, University of London. His research interests are in translational epidemiology research as applied to public health. He is co-author of the paper Cardiovascular risk factors and cognitive decline in adults aged 50 and over: a population-based cohort study for the Age and Ageing journal,  and this has been made freely available for a limited time.

Age and Ageing is an international journal publishing refereed original articles and commissioned reviews on geriatric medicine and gerontology. Its range includes research on ageing and clinical, epidemiological, and psychological aspects of later life.

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Is this what they call the dog days? Not for me! This is my first summer living in Boston instead of Tucson, and I’m soaking up the beautiful high-80s temps they call “hot” around here and spending as much time outside as possible. But I did manage to go inside and find a few interesting tidbits for your personal interest and professional usefulness.

• Have you ever tried to explain to someone why their offhand comment that “that’s gay” offends you? Or been annoyed when you offer to help carry something heavy and you’re refused because you’re female? Maybe someone made a rude joke about Middle Easterners not knowing you are of Saudi descent? These are called “microaggressions,” and the Microaggressions Project, a collective blog made up of submissions from anyone who wants to share an experience of feeling belittled, ignored, or just frustrated, whether because of their religious beliefs, gender identity, race, victim status, or a variety of other factors. Without resorting to hate speech or angry tirades (and no specific names, locations, or other identifying information is in any of the submissions), this blog would not only be a great resource for teens who feel like their voices aren’t being heard, but you could talk with your advisory group and possibly start your own project, with something as easy as index cards and a locked jar or box.
• Do you do any prevention programs in your library regarding tobacco, alcohol, or substance abuse? Not that you aren’t doing a good job, but you might want to think about asking teens themselves to develop an engaging, innovative program. In a paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that teenagers were most receptive to anti-smoking ads when they were delivered by peers, not adults, and they were more interested in those ads that stressed the lifelong effects of smoking, particularly the negative ones like money spent on packs per week. Maybe sometimes negativity isn’t such a bad thing.
  Latimer, A.E., et al. (2012). Targeted smoking cessation messages for adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(1): 47-53.
• I hope it isn’t wishful thinking when I propose this next topic for your thousands of patrons who will be coming in in the next few weeks before heading off to college, maybe to return one last pile of books and DVDs or just to say goodbye and thanks to you, their ally. Make sure your collegebound patrons (as well as those who will be entering the workforce or alternative programs) know that reading doesn’t stop after high school. While the publishing industry makes up its mind on whether or not New Adult is a viable new category, plenty of bloggers are gathering resources for writers and readers who want to graduate from YA but not jump straight into books about 40something divorce(e)s. And the Book Report Network, a set of linked book review sites, recently launched 20Something Reads, a special branch dedicated to that same group. Slowly but surely, books are trickling out that deal with post-high school confusion to post-college drama.
• Weeding a bunch of old magazines? Before tossing them in the recycling bin, check out Ben Heine’s Pencil Vs. Camera Project. First, be wowed. Look up and count how many hours you’ve been at your computer. Then consider tearing out interesting pictures from magazines, printing out or Pinning some of your favorites of Heine’s, and encouraging your patrons to do the same. As someone whose stance on fine art is to enjoy but never partake, I recall a similar assignment in fifth grade art class, and I’m so proud of my drawing of deer that I still have it, more than a decade later. There’s somethin
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By Lauren Pecorino The statement "cancer is personal" can have several meanings. The fact that cancer affects one in three people over their lifetimes means that it is a disease that will hit close to home for everyone. Everyone will have family or friends that will be affected and loved ones will become cancer patients. Cancer is personal. Luckily, we are living in a new age when cancer patients are more likely than ever to be cancer survivors. There are 28 million cancer survivors in the world today. Out of approximately 12 million cancer survivors in the United States, 4.7 million received their diagnosis at least ten years ago. The good news that everyone should know is that there is progress in cancer management.

Apparently this is what happens when a small branch falls on a power line.

Interesting information about coffee and caffeine

Infographic: income levels of America’s major religious groups

This was surely an expensive Inception wedding reception.

The new FDA anti-smoking warnings are graphic.

Lego my car.

This woman is reading the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act–ALOUD.

This is Betty White holding a giant snake with Slash.

How McDonalds cuts 9 million pounds of fries a day

First film footage of the “new” Amazon tribe.

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Are we living in the “anti-60s”? The Oxford Comment compares the counterculture movement to the blogosphere and pop music today….Bieber vs. Beatles! Hipsters vs. Hippies! Let the showdown begin…

Want more of The Oxford Comment? Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!
You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.

Featured in this Episode:

Lauren Skypes with Gordon Thompson, Professor of Music at Skidmore College and author of Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out. You can read Thompson’s OUPblog column here.

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Michelle visits the Strand Book Store in New York City and speaks with John McMillian*, author of Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America,

and Jesse Kornbluth, founder of HeadButler.com.

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The Ben Daniels Band