Do you know why smokers quit smoking?

Prof. Know Why answers for your general knowledge and awareness on why smokers quit smoking:

If you are a smoker, you may know that the urge to smoke is contagious, but did you know that quitting the puff is, too? Well, a team of researchers, recently, has found that contagious pattern with smoking cessation. They observed that a smoker is more likely to kick the habit of smoking if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling does so.

Moreover, the research showed that smokers tend to quit smoking in groups as those who don't stop puffing, increasingly find themselves pushed to the edge of their social circles.

"Your smoking behavior depends upon not just the smoking behavior of the people you know, but also the people who they know" and so on, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the new report.

This latest study, by Christakis and his colleague James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, which appeared in New England Journal of Medicine and was funded by the National Institute on Aging, focused on people's smoking habits in the social network.

The findings back up previous studies showing that peer influence plays a key role in smoker's decision to stop smoking and provide evidence that the "buddy system" used by smoking cessation, weight loss and alcoholism programs to change addictive behavior, works.

The researchers examined the social lives of 12,067 people in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking the health of residents of that Boston suburb from 1971 to 2003. They were able to reconstruct people's ties to one another since participants had to list contact information for their family, friends, co-workers and neighbors so researchers would not lose track of them over the years. The prevalence of smokers in the Framingham study over the years mirrored national trends.

Not surprisingly, the greatest influence was seen in close relationships. When a spouse stops smoking, the other partner is 67 percent less likely to smoke. Similarly, when a friend quits smoking, the chance of the other, continuing to smoke, drops by 36 percent. The odds are similar among co-workers and siblings, also.

People who were connected to others by up to three degrees of separation were also influenced. If one person quits smoking, the chance of a person two degrees apart, stopping the smoking habit is 29 percent. In a three-degree separation, the chances are 11 percent.

"One person in the group gets the motivation to quit and it starts to cascade and ripple through the group," said Fowler.

Jill Palmer, 28, was a one-pack-a-day smoker until she checked into a cessation program last year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she works. She took nicotine gum and worked with a counselor to set a “quit date”. Several days after Palmer went smoke-free, her husband also threw away his last pack. "It was spurred by my timing. He didn't want to be a smoker anymore," said Palmer, who credits her nonsmoking co-workers with persuading her to enroll in the cessation program.

The researchers found, by analyzing random samples of smoking clusters, that whole groups became nonsmokers over time because people who remained smokers found themselves moving to the fringe of their social circles.

So, that says it all, why smokers quit smoking? –They are actually forced to!

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Do you know why we can’t quit smoking?

Prof. Know Why answers:

We all know and probably believe the health risks associated with smoking tobacco. Even though, the smokers find it really difficult to quit smoking, no matter how hard they try! The nonsmokers would obviously say that the smokers never actually give a serious effort to kick the puff or there’s always a lack of will.

But now, there’s an answer to why people can’t quit smoking, easily. It has been proven through scientific research that someone’s unsuccessful attempts to stop smoking a hundred times over, reasons to the proteins in the brain.

A genetic study of 14,000 people in Europe and the US has shown that variations in segments of two proteins that serve as gateways for nicotine entry into brain cells can predict the risk of addiction. The study by US and Canadian scientists has shown that people with specific gene sequence coding for these proteins are more likely to be addicted to nicotine than people whose sequences are subtly different. The two proteins called “alpha-3” and “alpha-5” form sites on brain cells which are activated during the process of addiction. The findings were published recently in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Previous studies from Australia, North America, Scandinavia and China had indicated that the tendency for habitual heavy smoking (up to 20 cigarettes a day), was influenced by the genetic makeup. Researchers had then estimated that two-thirds of the risk of heavy smoking is genetic – believed to be a combination of several genes.

In the new study, the American-Canadian team found that variations in alpha-3 and alpha-5 could be used to predict the number of cigarettes per day during the period of heaviest smoking. This study has also provided the strongest statistical evidence – although there is no evidence for this yet – that people with certain variations in the alpha-3 and alpha-5 genes might find it easier to quit smoking than others.

So until the pharmaceutical companies come up with the new drugs based on the study that could help quit smoking, the smokers can carry on puffing to glory, blaming it all on the brain proteins.

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