Flavored Cigarette Ban: infringement on rights or end to gateway drug?

By Jackie King

As of September 22, 2009 it became illegal to import, make, sell and buy cigarettes with any kind of flavoring (including fruit, clove, vanilla, chocolate and cinnamon) in the United States.  This does not include menthol cigarettes but the ban on others is making the millions who smoke them quite unhappy.  Rants began all around campus, but do you know the real reasons?

“Public health officials say [these cigarettes] turn children into life-long nicotine addicts.” Because they taste good so people are more likely to smoke them.  “These flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular smokers,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told reporters.   Despite the fact that they say this though, it is unclear how many of these products are actually used in the country.  They believe that teens are the most likely to buy these products because they are sweetened, but have no idea how many actually do.

Dr. Lawrence Deyton, head of the FDA’s new Center for Tobacco Products said that in a historical memo “from one tobacco manufacturer, outlining plans to directly target children by making ‘a cigarette that’s obviously youth-oriented’ and by featuring ‘flavor which would be candy-like but give the satisfaction of a cigarette’” makes it quite clear the plan of tobacco companies

This new law is just one of many to come in an effort to crack down on tobacco companies as a way to combat the health catastrophe many believe tobacco to be.  Menthol was excluded from this law but many hope not for long.  FDA is also trying to ban flavoring from cigars, snuff, and chewing tobacco.  It is all part of federal effort to reduce what officials say causes “438,000 deaths – one of every five deaths – each year. Adults who smoke, [they] said, die an average of 14 years earlier than non-smokers.”

Another article reports that “Surveys have also indicated that young teenagers believe flavorings make tobacco products more appealing and safer.”  In reality it has been said that flavored cigarettes are less safe because the filters are different or non-existent.  This is not the cause of the ban though, nor seems to be mentioned anywhere as an extra reason for it.  Perhaps if safety were the reason then not as many would be outraged.  Why should a 21-year-old college student be stopped from smoking her favorite flavor of cigarettes just because somewhere some 13-year-old may be trying them?  This 21-year-old will still smoke, just not be smoking the ones she loves.  And how many teens actually start smoking because the flavors are good?  How many of these teens would start smoking no matter what?  The idea of preventing teens from smoking is a good one, but with the utter lack of data the FDA actually has there seems to be no real reason for this extreme of an action.  If the FDA does not have data on flavored cigarette purchases before the ban, then how will they actually measure the effect the ban has?

On a side note, manufacturers were not informed that this law would go into effect until September 14 leaving them little time to sell off what had been made.  Also, how many jobs were lost in the process?  Tobacco companies have a lot of money, but the factory workers depend on these jobs for a lively hood.

Do you smoke flavored cigarettes?  Will you stop smoking now or just switch to another kind of cigarette?  If you want flavor in your tobacco, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

CONSIDER QUITING SMOKING ANYWAY… for your health and the health of those around you.

Links:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/QuitToLive/law-bans-sale-flavored-cigarettes/story?id=8640262

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/16080

Do you have the right BMI to graduate?

By Allison Lefkowitz

I’m sure more times than not someone, whether it be a doctor or a parent, says you need to exercise. How would you feel if someone told you that you wouldn’t be able to graduate if you did not pass a fitness class that you were required to take because your BMI is too high?

Lincoln University in Pennsylvania has this requirement, which was put into effect for students who entered the university in the fall of 2006 and are graduating now. Student’s, whose body mass index, or BMI, is 30 or above must take a fitness course, which meets three hours per week. A BMI of 30 or above signifies “obesity.” As discussed in class, a BMI is not a great measure because it doesn’t take into account muscle. The university tackled this issue by taking waist measurements in order to count out the people that weren’t really overweight.

I think that this is a requirement that shouldn’t be given to only overweight individuals, but to all the students. Exercise is beneficial for everyone. One reason that they are targeting overweight students is because obesity can increase someone’s risk for stroke, heart disease and diabetes. Regardless of being obese or not, the student should ultimately be able to make their own choice about taking the class, they shouldn’t be required to do so.

We have learned in class that obesity is becoming more common than ever and exercise and physical activity is the first step to put an end to it. I think that this requirement is trying to emphasize the importance of exercise and a healthy life style, but I think to deny someone graduation is a little extreme. If a student has the grades and has done everything right to get to that point, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to graduate. The fitness class is a good start, but the student has to want to change their lifestyle in order for it to be effective. I feel that many students may look at this as just another class and do what is necessary to pass and not really understand the purpose of the class and not continue exercising after the class is finished. In this case, was the program really effective?

Link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/30/lincoln.fitness.overweight/index.html

Chewing gum to help your grades?

By Courtney Hazlewood

In college, students spend many hours before a test cramming knowledge into their mind in hopes that they can recall it tomorrow, in a lot of cases they can’t. The article that I researched may be of some help. Researchers at blank university conducted a research about how chewing gum can help aid concentration when studying and recall during test taking. According to the article there has never been an actual research done on this subject before this one.

There were two experiments that were conducted to see how chewing gum and cognition relate. The first experiment was to see the “reliability of the reported enhancement in word recall”. The second experiment was to see if “the taste of gum, without the associated chewing, is sufficient to produce any effects upon memory”. They would obtain this information by having four different groups learn 15 different words in two minutes. The groups were then tested immediately after they learned the words. They were then tested 24 hours after they learned the words to see how much they remembered. For the second experiment there were four different groups assigned. The experiment was the same as the first one, for the exception of participants were asked to suck the gum instead of chew the gum. 

For the first experiment the participants were separated into four different groups, and the groups tested were gum (learning)-gum (recall): gum- no gum: no gum-gum: no gum-no gum. The results for the immediate recall of the 15 words the group that showed the least amount of words recalled was the group that had no gum at all. The group that showed the most immediate recall was the group that had gum during the learning process and during the recall process. The other two groups were very similar in results during immediate recall. During the delayed recall (24 hours time elapsed) no gum during learning and gum during recall group showed the least amount of improvement. The group that showed the most words recalled was the group that had gum during both recall and learning.

For the second experiment the four different groups that were tested were gum-gum, suck-suck, no gum- gum, and no gum-suck. The results for the immediate recall showed that gum-gum and suck-suck were both able to recall the most words. The results for the delayed recall showed that the gum-gum group was able to recall the most words. The group with the least words recalled was no gum-suck group.

With many college students they have a lot of test anxiety. They usually get this anxiety from either not studying for a test and failing, or studying and still failing. When the student sees the test what happens in the brain is that the information is sent to the hypothalamus then to the hippocampus where the memory of you failing your last test is. It also goes to the amygdala where the person remembers what it felt like to fail that test. What this study shows is that you can eliminate that whole process or create a better one by chewing gum while studying.

From both experiments you gather that having gum while learning and having gum during recall is helpful. For the second experiment they thought that may be having the taste of gum would help during recall. The results from the second experiment actually showed that the taste is not what helps with recall; it’s the act of chewing. This action seems very similar to how sent is a good way to recall information and memory. When you smell a familiar smell it sends a signal to your cerebrum which holds memories.

Personally I think this research could have been done better. They could have used more participants. Also they could have conducted it a little better, by having either more words to memorize or less time to memorize them in. Within the 24hours all participants should have been observed to see if they were secretly studying the words on their own. But I do believe that chewing gum while studying helps with recall in the long run. So for all students studying during finals week I suggest chewing gum during studying and recall time to help eliminate anxiety.

Is Your Diet Making You Moody?

By Elena Albanese

As the cliché saying goes: you are what you eat, so what do you think you will become if you avoid or restrict the intake of one of the most predominantly valuable macronutrients in the human diet? It is no secret that one of the fastest growing dietary trends is consuming a low carbohydrate diet in order to shed quick pounds. But what most low carb or “Akin’s attitude” activists neglect to inform is the fact that inadequate carbohydrate intake is linked to unusually high feelings of anger, tension and depression.

Dieters or individuals limiting their overall caloric intake, especially those eliminating carbohydrates from their diet, tend to be highly irritable and moody. According to Judith Wurtman, director of the Women’s Health Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Adara Weight Loss Center, the prime reasoning behind this involves the strong correlation between the release of serotonin paralleling to carbohydrate intake. Serotonin is the “feel good” brain chemical or neurotransmitter that that elevates mood and happiness, suppresses appetite and acts as a natural tranquilizer. Restricting dietary carbohydrates causes the brain to stop regulating this chemical making them more susceptible to generate dynamic mood swings. Diets such as Atkins and South Beach diets are famous for causing this tension.

As an advocate of a diet high in complex carbs for both weight loss and stress reduction, Wurtman structuralized an experiment using rats as her test subject. She researched the behavioral changes in rats placed on a three week ketotic (low carb) diet, concluding that they in fact had much lower levels of serotonin encompassing their brains. She also detected that the rats went on a binge, once starch was finally brought back to their presence.

Due to the fact that low-carb diets lower serotonin levels, Wurtman believes this type of dieting technique would be “dangerous for those who are already struggling with depression or bipolar disorder.” (Wurtman, 2008). She goes on to state that decreasing this chemical can interfere with individual’s antidepressant medications.

As with any theory, there always comes a plausible dispute. The argument towards this study comes from activists of low-carbohydrate diets indicating that the overall promise of eliminating carbohydrates is ironically to reduce mood swings and increase alertness, ridding away fatigue.

Frederick Samaha, chief of cardiology at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Philadelphia, detested her own research differentiating the low carb and low fat diet. She found no noticeable difference in mood between the two groups. “What we found, overall, was that people [on either diet] felt good because they were losing weight and becoming healthier,” Samaha says. “But there was a high drop-out rate, around 40 percent, and it may be that those folks left because they didn’t see any improvement in their quality of life.”

When it comes to choosing sides, I am personally a carb-lover. Not only due to delicious satisfaction I get from eating them, but I believe that carbohydrates are essential and provide the body with fuel it needs to sustain life. Our bodies are like a car and carbohydrates perform the same benefits for our body as gas does for a car, without this vital fuel both these systems would fail to run. In agreement with Wurtman’s study it is lucid why low-carb dieters experience low serotonin and mood levels. What a healthy plate should consist of is balance, variety and portion control. I found this study to be beneficial to promote the eradication of fad dieting, such as the famous low-carb craze.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/could-your-diet-be-affecting-your-emotions/

Teens & Tanning

By Erin Williams – Gress

An article titled “Cancer and Teen Tanning: Where’s the Regulation?”, by Adi Narayan, was published in the most recent edition of Time Magazine. The article discusses a 19 year old girl who was diagnosed with melanoma after finding a malignant tumor on her right arm. The teen, Jodi Duke, was a fair skinned, red-headed sixteen year old when she first stepped into a tanning salon. She had told reporters that she “just wanted luminous, golden skin like her friends at school”.

“First it was once every couple of weeks. Then once every week. And later it was everyday,” Jodi Duke told Time Magazine. Regardless to all the warnings that the FDA and the news give to the public about tanning salons, people in today’s society still choose image, status, and popularity over health, even if it means life or death. The decisions people make to go tanning usually starts off as a desire to be the stereotypical “beautiful,” then turns into an addiction, convincing themselves that their tan just isn’t enough.

Another article published four years ago by Sanjay Gupta is titled, “Health: Tanning Addicts”. This article discusses a study done by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch.  The study included 145 random citizens sunbathing on the beach. After they were asked a number of questions about sunbathing and tanning, conclusions showed that 26% of them were categorized as tanning addicts. When a second survey by the American Psychiatric Association was conducted, the number increased to 53% of Americans are considered addicting to tanning.

I was talking to my roommate the other day about tanning. She began telling me about a friend of hers that is so addicted to tanning that she goes TWO times a day.  As much as tanning salons try to lure you in with special offers, packages, and promotions, one thing they don’t allow is tanning more than once within a 24-hour period. Instead of taking this as a hazardous hint, this girl would jump from tanning salon to tanning salon in order to tan more than once in a day: addicted?

For people that are so obsessed with tanning and having that image of “beautiful”, the chances of them caring about their body later on in life and avoiding the tanning salon is very slim. other alternatives to unhealthy UV rays would be self-tanning lotions, mystic tans, or even professional airbrushed tans. If the idea of ruining your body and the risk of cancer isn’t enough to scare all of you that go to tanning salons, just imagine all the wrinkles you’re going to have when you’re older…Wrinkles are not the stereotypical image of “beautiful”.

Yoga for Anxiety and Depression

By Elena Albanese

One profound form of meditative exercise that appears to modulate the stress-response system is yoga. The practice of yoga is eminent for decreasing the physiological arousal of the sympathetic fight or flight stimulus by reducing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and easing respiration. There is also evidence that yoga practices help increase heart rate inconsistency, an indicator of the body’s ability to respond to stress more flexibly. A predominant byproduct of this relaxation training is that it amplifies somatic awareness or the physiological response and adaptations to specific challenges triggered by the body. Yoga gets individuals in touch with their inner and outer bodies. Regular yoga practice can promote an individual to get in touch with general adaptations accumulating in their body, such as breathing depth, respiration, muscular tension, and heart rate, they were previously blinded by.

A German study conducted 24 “emotionally distressed” women to take two 90-minute yoga classes a week for approximately three months, whereas women in the control group maintained their normal daily activities. By the end of the three months the women in the yoga group perceived their scores for stress, depression, anxiety, energy, fatigue, and well-being; depression scores improved by 50%, anxiety scores by 30%, and overall well-being scores by 65%. (Brown, 2009). Initial complaints of headaches, back pain and poor sleep quality also improved drastically in the yoga group than in the control group confirming that the practice of yoga will optimally help relax the mind and body.

Due to the importance of controlled breathing throughout the sustained positions, yoga helps relieve and calm feelings of depression and anxiety, which can further aspire to more chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease or metabolic disorders. According to recent controlled trials, yoga practice has demonstrated improvements in mood and quality of life for the elderly, people caring for patients with dementia, breast cancer survivors, and patients with epilepsy. (Brown, 2009). With this, it is valid to conclude that yoga is a beneficial technique and practice in order to optimize chronic disease and infections.

Who needs to waste money on a therapist or a prescription to tranquil medications, when the answer to stress-health is free? In addition to this Havard Mental Health Letter, copious studies and findings have revived the epidemic that all form of yoga positions enhances longevity while declining morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases. I know with my experience and journey throughout my yoga class I most certainly agree with the findings of these studies. By holding the positions on the joints and muscles in my body I can feel a rush of tension and frustration of the stressors encompassing my life releasing from my system. As a huge fan of the practice of yoga, I can honestly claim that it pumps up my endorphin level, enlightens my mood, increases my stamina to get me through my daily routines, and most importantly optimizes my overall immunity and well-being.

Works Cited:

Brown, RP, et al. (2009, April). Yoga for Anxiety and Depression. HarvardHealth.

Stress That’s Good for Your Health?

By Gregg Albaum

Final exams are around the corner, it is the end of the semester, the holiday season is coming, papers are due next week, and you have to work on your Health Psychology project. Are you feeling stressed yet? Ohio State researchers found that when mice are under short-terms tress, they were better prepared to fight and defend off a flu virus. Now this can be important because of the H1N1 Pandemic. So now you can go ahead and not worry so much and forget about flu shots! (just kidding…) Really though, you should still get the flu-shot.

Along with other studies, it has been shown that short-term stress reduces the risk of a lot of diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. Now you can be wondering yourself, doesn’t stress increases your chances at have a heart attack? The link with stress to high blood pressure is what we all know and think of.  That is the case to people with stressful jobs, and difficult family situations. But, what the article explains is that periodic bursts of stress that are quickly resolved have the opposite effect, inspiring the body to repair itself. Wow, interesting, right? So pile on that stress from finals, because once it is over and you are worry free, you can thank the short-term stress for the future.

Reference:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/200912/stress-is-good-your-health

Be grateful for those brutally honest friends…

By Kris Root

No one can deny loving compliments from friends and strangers.  They make us feel good.  And who doesn’t love having people backing you up and telling you how awesome you are when someone criticizes you? Well, studies show that these optimistic, friendly compliments and responses sometimes make us feel worse about ourselves.  The article “Yes, I suck: self-help through negative thinking,” describes how thinking positively highlights how unhappy with yourself and/or the situation you really are.

Two studies are cited in the article.  In the first, randomly selected participants were asked to write an essay opposing funding for the disabled.  Upon finishing, they were all embraced for how nicely written their views were.  Participants reported feeling even worse about what they did after they received compliments for it.  Apparently trying to make them feel better about themselves through praise and assurance had adverse effects.

In the second study, 68 students had their self esteem measured via questionnaire.  Then, they were split into two groups and told to write down their thoughts and feelings about themselves, life, etc. for 4 minutes.  One of the groups heard a bell ring every 15 seconds and had to say to themselves, “I am a loveable person.”  The other group, the control, did nothing but write for the 4 minutes.  After those 4 minutes, they received the questionnaire again and were told to re-evaluate their self esteem after writing their feelings.  Those in the experimental group with already low esteem reported it as being even lower, despite the encouraging words.

So, what do these studies tell us?  Well to me, it means that I need those brutally honest people in my life; they are the ones that really help me.  By highlighting the truth, especially the truth we don’t want to hear, it “urge[s] people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than try to reject and fight them.”  It’s the ‘that which you resist, persists’ saying.  Why try and think positively to yourself saying ‘oh I’m not that whiney,’ or ‘I’m not doing that horribly; I am succeeding,’ when you really are whiney and doing horribly on something?  To me, it’s a lot of psycho-babble bullshit in order to make yourself feel better that gets in the way of you helping yourself or reaching your full potential.  In reality, things don’t just take care of themselves and you still feel bad about yourself or the situation.  Why not tell yourself the truth and then do something to fix it.  Use the negativity as motivation.

There could be larger studies done about the power of negative thinking to better yourself, because 68 people is not a lot, but apply this ‘self help through negative thinking’ to your own life.  Knowing the truth, particularly the whole, brutal truth, puts things in perspective. Athletes, for example, greatly benefit from this.  As an athlete, I don’t want things to be sugar coated; what good does that do me?  If I want to get better, succeed, and be the best, I need, “yea your swing really needs work in this area,” not, “sure you look fine.”      There is a certain way to go about the brutal truth, especially for certain populations including those who may be struggling with obesity or an eating disorder.  You cannot come right out and say, ‘you’re fat,’ or ‘you need to eat.’  You do, however, need to tell them the truth in order to help them, or the disorders will persist.

We learned about social support in class, and I think this article tells us to surround ourselves with an honest social support group in order to better ourselves.  It’s not necessarily the best thing to have people always agreeing with what you say or complimenting you in every way.  We all need our eyes opened every once in a while; then, we can fix things.  Be honest, but at the same time, optimistic and realistic about the change you want or need to make.  So, what do you think?  Can you apply this negative thinking to any aspects of your life?  What aspects of your life, or someone else’s would this not pertain to?

Reference:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html

Working out for mind and body

By Chris Paladino

Whenever you hear about exercise and your health it always has to do with looking good and losing weight. Now that there is research out there that says exercise can make you smarter or can make you less anxious really got me thinking. Before I even read this article, I felt like whenever I was stressed or needed to study, I would prefer to get a work out in first. I feel better after and feel more focused. Now that I know there is a reason for that, I will try to  exercise more often when I need to study in order to focus better. From the the articles I read, (see the links below) this seems to be a new area in reserach but I would like to know more about it and how exercise affects the brain.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17662246/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52161&pf=3&page=1

Never Talk to Strangers?

By Jennie Brill

Your parents probably always told you to stay away from strangers. But what if strangers could actually be helpful?

One of my professors participated as a runner in the recent New York Marathon. In class, he told all of us how cool it was to see and hear all the people cheering for hours from the sidewalks for the thousands of runners passing by them. He remarked that the encouragement from these total strangers inspired him to push through the pain he felt and to finish the race.

Interestingly, I came across a blog entry on psychologytoday.com that discusses this very occurrence. David Rock, the author of the blog, has developed the SCARF Model of the brain’s five primary goals. The entry about the NY Marathon discusses the R- relatedness. (The other goals are status, certainty, autonomy, and fairness).

While many Marathon participants may be driven by the well-known, “runner’s high,” something else may be at work. One of the runners that Rock spoke to exclaims, “I’ve never felt so deeply connected to the human race.” This feeling of positive energy that stems from social support is something Rock has termed, “relatedness high.” He believes that a basic human instinct is to strive to relate to other humans. Feeling connected to other people is very significant to emotional, and even physical, health.

We have learned in class that having strong social support in stressful situations is extremely beneficial. People who feel lonely have higher stress levels, and therefore more health risks, such as high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. It seems that the runners in the marathon were able to experience the psychological benefits of social support even though the supporters were complete strangers.

The science behind the positive psychological effects of relating and feeling comfortable with other people involves the chemical oxytocin. When we share and connect with people oxytocin is released in our brains, signaling a pleasurable response. Oxytocin has also been shown to increase our sense of trust in others, which is an important factor in forming healthy social relationships. So, relatedness helps us build a social network, which provides support, which benefits personal health. It sounds like Rock knows what he is talking about.

But it is important to note that he is not a psychologist, and he has not conducted any actual controlled research to test his model. One possibility for an experiment is to give participants a moderately stressful task to complete (perhaps jogging a mile, or solving math problems). Half of the participants could have spectators cheering and encouraging them, and the other half could have silent spectators barely paying attention. Then the participants’ level of stress could be measured to assess whether social support and relatedness made a difference.

So next time you feel stressed and lonely, look around. That stranger across the room could potentially improve your life. Or you could improve his/hers. I’m not saying to immediately trust strange people you meet at the bar. Just remember to keep an open mind and a positive attitude, and try to encourage others on their way.

References:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/200911/what-do-halloween-the-ny-marathon-and-chocolate-have-in-common

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7777651