LinkBlog
'Managing Holiday Stress' a LifeCare® guide (PDF)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Patient treatment manual (pdf)
Understanding post-traumatic stress disorder
recommended links
Depression Is Real Coalition
-
ABIL: Agoraphobics Building
Independant Lives -
Agoraphobia and Panic
Disorder Foundation -
Anxiety Disorders Association
of America - Anxiety Network Australia
- Anxiety-Panic.Com
- AnxietyZone
- Army Behavioral Health
- BrainPhysics - OCD
-
Canadian Network for Mood
and Anxiety Treatments - Children of Hoarders
- Choices in Mental Health (UK)
-
Dart Foundation: Gateway to PTSD
information -
David Baldwin's
Trauma Information Pages - e-couch free personal self-help guide
- EMDR Institute, Inc.
- EMDR Network Japan
- Fear of Flying course (free)
- Healthy Minds
- Information for People with Anxiety Disorders
- Internet Guide to REBT, CBT
- Living with a Brain Disorder
- Morita Therapy
- Mayo Clinic : Depression
- Mayo Clinic : GAD
- Mayo Clinic : OCD
- Mayo Clinic : Panic Attacks
- Mayo Clinic : PTSD
- Mayo Clinic : Social Anxiety
-
Medicines.org.uk - Anxiety &
Depression guides - Mind-Your-Mind Canada
- National Center for PTSD
-
National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) - No Such Thing As Crazy
- OCD Action, UK
- OCD Ireland
- Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
- Open Minds, Open Doors
- Out of the silence - site for young people with mental illness
- Paniccure.com
- Partners With PTSD
- Prescription Drug Information
- Psychiatric Service Dog Society
- PsychNews
-
Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) - Sane Australia
-
Shyness & Social Anxiety
Service of Australia -
Social Phobia/Social Anxiety
Association - Social Anxiety Support board
-
South African Depression &
Anxiety Group - Suicide Prevention Help
-
tAPir - the Anxiety Panic
internet resource -
The Panic Center (Free
CBT based programs) - The School of OCD
- UN-WHO Drug Trials Database
- U.S. Army Behavioral Health - PTSD
we support
"just don't smoke"
Yul Brynner
- Menthol cigarettes harder to quit
- Secondhand smoke in cars serious threat to kid's health
- Starting smoking young increases addiction risk
-
Smoking doesn't slim girls;
stunts boys' growth - 40 reasons why you should quit smoking
- Pregnant smokers 'prime' their kids to smoke
- Smoking related coronary artery disease quickly reversed if young smokers quit
- Not ready to quit? Try cutting back
- Half smoking again within year of lung cancer surgery
- Cutting back 'compensation' increases toxin load per cigarette
- Tobacco companies upped nicotine level 11% since 1998
- Workplace passive smoke increases lung cancer risk
- Hooked by genes: The DNA sequences cigarette companies love
- Smoking causes long lasting changes to brain's bio chemistry
- Nicotine receptor stimulant trebles the odds of stopping smoking
- Bupropion, nortriptyline double chances of quitting
- Nicotine's powerful role in reinforcing smoking
- Pregnant smokers raise child's risk of stroke, heart attack
- Smoking linked to pancreatic cancer
- Neurobiology of Smokers' Cravings
- 'Low cancer risk' cigarettes as deadly as regular kind
- Quitting reduces lung cancer death risk by 70%
- Fetal nicotine exposure linked to teen attention problems
- Outdoor second-hand smoke exposure can harm
- Response to day's first cigarette predicts ease of quitting
- 'Healthy' children of smoking parents aren't really so healthy
- Children of smokers have up to five times higher levels of a nicotine toxin
- Smoking increases risk of dementia
- Smoking kills even after quitting
- Antenatal second hand smoke exposure increases child's psychological problems
- Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO
- Just 1 cigarette can lead to nicotine addiction
- Smokers less likely to survive early stage lung cancer
- Smokeless tobacco delivers carcinogens more efficiently than cigarettes!
- Smoking permanently turns on genes that increase lung cancer susceptibility
- Secondhand smoke a health hazard for pets too
- Hypnosis for smoking cessation sees strong results
- Smoking doesn't burn fat
- Smoking linked to sagging breasts
- No evidence waterpipes decrease smoking harm
- Tobacco smoke + alcohol damage hearts more than either alone
anti torture campaign
- Torture experts write APA policy
- [APA] still rocked by torture debate
- Petition for psychologists
- AMA president says APA "did not accurately represent our ethical guidelines"
- Psychologists Aiding Torturers
-
Annual conference endorses
APA's torture policy :( - Physicians for Human Rights call on Congress to vote No on Military Commissions Bill
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Torture is a Form of Trauma;
Trauma Causes PTSD - Psychoanalysts' association condemns torture use
- Humiliating, inhumane or degrading treatment IS torture
- Two American psychologists accused of war crimes. U.S. DoD investigating.
- DoD report proves psychologists central to POW/detainee abuse (pdf)
- 40 psychologists demand APA change policy on torture (pdf)
- Did the American Psychological Association turn a blind eye to torture for medicine precribing rights?
- Will psychologists still abet torture?
- Psychologist, Author Mary Pipher Returns APA Award Over Interrogation Policy
- Guantanamo Medical Role Likened to South Africa Under Apartheid
Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. General John (Jeff) Kimmons, has stated that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through abusive interrogation methods in the last 5 years.
monument, Monmouth County
New Jersey.
Cutting back compensation increases toxin load per cigarette
Heavy smokers who have reduced their number of daily cigarettes still experience significantly greater exposure to toxins per cigarette than light smokers, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Minnesota.
Even when smokers in the two groups smoked as few as five cigarettes a day, heavy smokers who reduced their cigarette intake experienced two to three times the amount of total toxin exposure per cigarette when compared with light smokers, researchers report in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
In addition, researchers observed that the more that heavy smokers reduced their smoking, the more likely they were to increase their exposure to carcinogens per cigarette presumably because they took more frequent puffs or inhaled deeper or longer on each cigarette, a process referred to as "compensatory smoking." As a result, smokers who decreased their smoking to as little as one to three cigarettes per day experienced a four- to eight-fold increased exposure to toxins per cigarette as compared with light smokers.
Compensatory smoking occurs because smokers are trying to maintain a specific level of nicotine in their bodies, says Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D., lead author of the study and director of the University's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center in Minneapolis. Other factors, such as the sensory aspects of smoking, also may play a role in compensatory smoking, Hatsukami says.
"These results are consistent with other studies that show that people who decrease their smoking by 50 percent or more don't experience a comparable reduction in risk for lung cancer because they tend to smoke their fewer cigarettes more intensely," she says. "The best way to lower the risk for premature death is to stop smoking altogether."
For the study, Hatsukami and colleagues compared a group of 64 people participating in two smoking reduction intervention studies and who reduced their smoking to levels similar with a group of 62 light smokers. The researchers created a mathematical formula to calculate the degree of smoking compensation in reducers compared with light smokers. As part of the formula, they measured a biological marker, total NNAL, which indicates the amount of exposure to the tobacco-specific lung cancer-causing agent NNK.
The light smokers averaged age 48, were 53 percent female and smoked an average of 5.6 cigarettes a day. The reducers averaged age 51, were 39 percent female and smoked an average 26 cigarettes per day prior to cigarette reduction. All of the reducers studied decreased their smoking by at least 40 percent and smoked five cigarettes per day within six months of enrolling in the study.
Results indicated that the average level of NNAL for reducers was more than twice that of light smokers, even when the two groups smoked about the same number of cigarettes per day. The amount of smoking reduction was shown to be a strong predictor of compensatory smoking, with greater cigarette reduction associated with more compensation.
Hatsukami says heavy smokers fare better health-wise by quitting smoking than decreasing their cigarette intake: "Although light smokers have lower levels of disease risk than heavy smokers, a low rate of smoking still confers increased risk compared to non-smokers and quitters."
In a previous study of smoking reduction using nicotine replacement therapies such as gum or patches, the researchers observed that smokers who reduced their cigarette intake by 73 percent only experienced a 30 percent reduction in carcinogens because of compensatory smoking. Another study showed that a reduction of 62 percent in tobacco consumption was associated with only a 27 percent reduction in lung cancer risk.
The research was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Hatsukami DK, Le CT, Zhang Y, Joseph AM, Mooney ME, Carmella SG, Hecht SS.
Toxicant Exposure in Cigarette Reducers versus Light Smokers.
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2006 Dec;15(12):2355-8. · [Abstract]
Not only is continuing to smoke a bad idea for the obvious reason, that it increases the risk of developing lung cancer, but nicotine speeds up tumor growth by promoting cell division and blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) and also inhibits the action of chemo therapy drugs (Dasgupta et al, 2006)!