Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes and may have long lasting effects in offspring. In England, 26% of women smoke in the year before their pregnancy and 12% smoke through to delivery. The rate is similar or even higher in other high income countries.
Guidelines suggest adding nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) to behavioral smoking cessation support in pregnant smokers because of their excellent safety profile and proved effectiveness in other groups of smokers. However, there is a lack of good quality evidence on the effectiveness of NRT in pregnant smokers.
So a team of researchers based in France set out to assess the efficacy of 16 hour nicotine patches among 402 pregnant women aged over 18 years and between 12 and 20 weeks’ gestation, who smoked at least five cigarettes a day.
Participants were randomized to receive either nicotine patches or placebo patches up to the time of delivery. Doses were individually adjusted to try to match participants’ nicotine intake to that achieved by smoking.
Participants were assessed monthly and received behavioral smoking cessation support. The primary outcome measures were complete abstinence (confirmed by levels of carbon monoxide in expired air) and birth weight.
Nicotine patches offered no benefit over placebo in terms of increasing smoking cessation or birth weight.
Complete abstinence was achieved by only 11 (5.5%) of women in the nicotine patch group and only 10 (5.1%) in the placebo patch group. The average time to the first cigarette smoked after target quit date was 15 days in both groups.
Average birth weight was 3065g in the nicotine patch group and 3015g in the placebo patch group.
Blood pressure was significantly higher with the nicotine patch than with placebo, suggesting that further studies with nicotine in pregnant smokers should control for blood pressure, they add.
“These are disappointing results and should encourage efforts to evaluate new approaches that are both drug and non-drug related,” conclude the authors. “In the absence of evidence based drug interventions, behavioral support remains the core intervention to help pregnant smokers to quit.”
In an accompanying editorial, Leonie Brose at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, points to the delay in behavioral support in the first two weeks of the study, and suggests this may explain why both groups had low success rates.
However, she says, in contrast with disappointing results and a slim evidence base for drug treatment, good evidence shows that psychological interventions help pregnant smokers to quit.
“It may be too early to abandon the option of NRT entirely,” she writes. “However, a much greater effort is still needed to identify, test, and deliver more effective treatments for pregnant smokers who struggle to quit.”
… Continue reading here.
Diet And Weight Loss News — Sciencedaily
— Courtesy “Science News Daily” (ScienceNewsDaily.com) <p> <p>Question by Brian: bodybuilding competition?
what are the world competitions like
Mr. Universe
Mr. Olympia
Mr. America
and so on please give me a list from the highest to lowest
Best answer:
Answer by ClickMaster
Bodybuilding competitions are a joke. They’re beauty contests for narcissistic, vain men who just love to look at themselves in mirrors. The simple fact is there is no money and very little interest in bodybuilding. Women hate big muscle-bound men and most guys don’t really care. So, the contests can’t afford the sophistication of other sporting events.
Mr. Olympia used to be rigged. Joe Weider, who made his fortune selling junk supplements and stupid magazine to teen males, started it and it was run by his brother and wife. Can you spell “nepotism”? And, of course, his hand picked golden boy Arnold, won most of the early contests. Can you spell “conflict of interest”?
Bodybuilding is a generally corrupt business funded by the sale of worthless magazines loaded with bad information, websites like bodybuilding.com (that had to pay a $ 7million fine for selling dangerous drugs), and bogus supplements. And, many old time bodybuilders are now spent, broken down, and in poor physical condition from steroid or growth hormone abuse, synth injecting, and over training.
If Lance Armstrong can get away with doping for years while under the most intense antidoping scrutiny in organized sports, what do you think is going on in the pro bodybuilding contests?
Good luck and good health!!
♠
What do you think? Answer below!
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