geoffrey modest medical blogs

  A study based on the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 1997-2018 assessed the association of smoking cessation and mortality from cardiovascular, cancer, and respiratory diseases (see smoking cessation 30 yrs til dec mortality JAMAIntMed2023 in dropbox or . doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6419.     Details :  -- 438,015 adults were included in NHIS, a cross-sectional household interview study, which included regular annual assessments of smoking rates (a questionnaire-based health survey with lots of questions about demographics, living situation, and health issues; very few questions about diet, a bit more about exercise, one question about stress but in the context of whether one participated in mindfulness-based stress reduction); this information was linked with the National Death Index  --mean age 47, 56% female, 76501 Hispanic/63083 non-Hispanic Black/270183 non-Hispanic White/ 28248 other.  -- causes of death , over 5.0 million per...

  The NY Times had a recent article on cytisine as an effective treatment for smoking cessation:  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/well/quit-smoking-cytisine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb   they make a few well-substantiated points: -- it is pretty easy to stop smoking, the issue is maintaing abstinence (and 47%  of those who try to quit are smoking 1 year later:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3723776/  ) -- cytisine was developed as a pill in Bulgaria in 1964 and has been used in Eastern Europe for 50 years for smoking cessation -- cytisine was approved in Canada in 2017 and Britain last year for smoking cessation -- there have been many scientific articles showing a great effect of cytisine in smoking cessation (several noted below), with a 2014 editorial by Nancy Rigotti referring to cytisine as “a tobacco treatment hiding in plain sight”:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1412313 ...