Calendar

«« Jan 2008 »»
S M T W T F S
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Search Box


HealthCentral Top Site Award

IBS Tales Hope Award

LinkBlog

'Managing Holiday Stress' a LifeCare® guide (PDF)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Patient treatment manual (pdf)

Understanding post-traumatic stress disorder

  More

Contact

Mailing List

RSS Feeds








Translation

Disclaimer

All content within Anxiety Insights is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your doctor or other health care professional.

Anxiety Insights is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a reader based on the content of this website.

Anxiety Insights is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites.

Always consult your doctor if you are in any way concerned about your health.

recommended links

Depression is Real's Down & Up Show
      Weekly audio-casts from the
      Depression Is Real Coalition

we support

Kiva.org - micro loans that change lives

Moving a Nation to Care : Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, by Ilona Meagher

No Longer Lonely.com

"just don't smoke"


"Don't smoke, whatever you do, just don't smoke."
                        Yul Brynner

Hit Counter

Total: 1,105,806
since: 14 May 2006

Admin console

Log-In

My Blog    My Profile

Leave Message

Add as neighbors






Blogion.com

Blog Flux Directory



Blogarama - The Blogs Directory

blog search directory

BlogTagstic - Blog Directory

Find Blogs in the Blog Directory



LS Blogs

Top Health Sites





Health Blogs - Blog Top Sites

Webloogle Blog Directory

Bloggapedia - Find It!

Smoking related coronary artery disease quickly reversed if young smokers quit

The early stages of coronary artery disease in young smokers can be reversed quickly if they choose to put out their cigarettes for good, according to a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging study in the December Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

"I believe this is the first PET study that shows abnormal coronary function is reversible after only one month of smoking cessation," said Nagara Tamaki, a professor and chair of the nuclear medicine department at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. "Smoking cessation normalized abnormal coronary artery function, thus supporting its value in preventing heart disease in young adults," he explained. "In addition, this is an important report with PET imaging that shows abnormal coronary artery function can be measured by coronary blood flow and flow response to cold stimulation (also called 15O-water PET) in healthy young smokers," noted the co-author of the report. Researchers from the Japanese university also noted that improvement was "preserved" six months after the study's subjects stopped smoking, "supporting the value of smoking cessation for prevention of coronary artery disease particularly in the young," said Tamaki.

"This study provided a noninvasive look at the early stages of coronary artery disease in smokers and the recovery time of coronary endothelial dysfunction after giving up cigarettes," indicated Tamaki. Coronary endothelial dysfunction occurs when the heart's blood vessels aren't flexible enough to expand in response to increased blood flow. Smoking can damage the endothelium-the innermost layer of the artery-and over time, plaques can narrow coronary arteries, allowing less blood to flow to the heart muscle. Rupture of these plaques may result in a stroke, heart attack and death.

It's generally known that the risk of death from coronary artery disease is up to six times higher in smokers than in nonsmokers, and about half of all smokers who continue to smoke will end up dying from a smoking-related illness. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for 438,000 deaths annually (about one of every five deaths). Since coronary endothelial dysfunction is both "a significant predictor of cardiovascular events" — and reversible — its early detection is important, said Tamaki. PET-a diagnostic imaging test that measures metabolic activity and generates images of organ or tissue function-"will continue to provide insight into coronary risk analysis and risk management (such as smoking cessation and lowering one's cholesterol)," he added.


Morita K, Tsukamoto T, Naya M, Noriyasu K, Inubushi M, Shiga T, Katoh C, Kuge Y, Tsutsui H, Tamaki N.
Smoking Cessation Normalizes Coronary Endothelial Vasomotor Response Assessed with 15O-Water and PET in Healthy Young Smokers.
J Nucl Med. 2006 Dec;47(12):1914-1920.   [Abstract]