Peach Pits!? Msn E-Cig article 8/16/09

[gpdo24]

Check out Article on MSN.COM today entitled NEW WAYS TO QUIT SMOKING. Made me angry, how about you?
Sry I am a caveman and do not know how to post link to the referenced article.
Hoping that the more civilized members of this forum can correct the misinformation and vested interests represented in this most recent insult to Nicotine addicts everywhere.

 

[TheIllustratedMan]

I believe this is the link:

New Ways to Quit Smoking - MSN Health & Fitness - Health Topics

Looks like you're referring to this section:

From China comes the Ruyan E-Cigarette, an electronic nicotine inhaler designed to mimic the smoking experience, complete with exhaled vapor. Nicotine vaporizing cartridges are snapped into the device, and are available in four different nicotine doses, from 0 mg to 16 mg. Ruyan also sells e-pipes and e-cigars.

Do these products work, or are they gimmicks?

Thomas Glynn, American Cancer Society director of cancer science and trends, says people are very curious about high-tech devices, but he’s concerned that there is no data yet to back up their use.

“I don’t see anything in [these newer approaches] that I’d say is a magic bullet,” he says. “Unfortunately, one real challenge we have in helping people to stop is getting them to accept that quitting is hard work.”

There’s also a risk, Glynn says, that people will try high-tech methods and, if they don’t work, “might throw their hands up and say, ‘I can’t stop.’ And we’ll lose an opportunity for someone who can quit.”

Glen Morgan, a clinical psychologist and program director at the tobacco Control Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute, concurs.

“If I’m not familiar with a product or heard of studies supporting its use, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody any more than, say, chewing peach pits if you have cancer,” he says.

Looks to me that all they're saying is the same old "there's no clinical research, I don't know if they work, so I can't recommend them." That's actually a reasonable argument, and he's likening it to if he were to recommend chewing on peach pits as a way to cure cancer. No one has done a study on it, no one knows if that would work, so he's not going to start telling his patients to try using it over things that do have studies. He's not saying that it's going to hurt, just that he has no idea, and can't say one way or the other.

 

[gpdo24]

Why include an admitted no nothing as an expert in an article aimed at those seeking solutions to a life threatening addiction? The autosuggested memetic is the linkage of e-cig usefulness to the sucking of peach pits. The words are not the issue the impact of the imaging is.

 

[ladyraj]

The peach pit may be a reference laetrile as it pertains to a cancer treatment that was controversial and atributed to the placebo effect. I take particular professional umbrage to this passage from the article:

"Genetics may contribute one day to further improving the odds of quitting. A study published in the Sept. 15 issue of Biological Psychiatry found that genes strongly affect quit rates in those using the antidepressant bupropion. People with a certain gene responsible for metabolizing both the drug and nicotine were more than two times as likely to quit using bupropion compared with placebo. Interestingly, those without the gene were just as likely to quit using either bupropion or placebo. Quit rates were almost equal, at approximately 32 percent, for all but the first placebo group."

The genetic componant, which at best guesstimates accounts for only one third of observable human behavior and motivation, is a simple way of citing one "possible" unproven explanation for the persistence of smoking. The drug Wellbutrin (Bupropion) has been around since the 1980s and there was a hint of an association that people smoked less when using it. Perhaps, persons suffering from a low level depression smoked more as a coping mechanism and the use of the anti-depressant, Bupropion, removed the need for smoking more to cope. There is no genetic componant in the scenario of smoking as a coping mechanism.

This is one more article on the long list of uses for anti-depressant medications. Even if our genetics had a "depression gene" or made one more susceptible to depression we are also shaped by our environment (guesstimated two thirds). Persons born with these maladaptive genes have propered despite great adversity. Humans are much more flexible than the mere combinations of genes...the mind has a place as well.

Our minds choose e-cigs.

 

[Fisherman]

Seems like half the world is coming out with this garbage, and we can expect a whole lot more. People protecting their interests/salaries, some of them possibly too thick to understand what is happening out there, some just saying what they're being told to say. None of them are smokers desperate to break the "habit".

However, we know that vaping represents one of the most monumental and beneficial shifts in the wellbeing of our society and we're not going back to analogs, no matter what they say or do. Their lies will eventually be exposed, I'm sure of that, because the truth will out.

The members of the establishment who monitor these columns, including this thread, are still fairly relaxed about where vaping is heading because they don't realise how quickly it is changing peoples lives, and that these people have seen the light. The box is open and it can't be closed.

 

[Applejackson]

"Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward." --Abraham Lincoln

 

[Shan123]

I think I can explain why Wellbutrin helps some people quit smoking. It nearly helped me quit, when I wasn't intending to and had no reason at the time to want to quit.

I took it on and off for years. It has one peculiar side effect for some people: It makes cigarettes taste really foul. I smoked a LOT less when I was taking Wellbutrin. I noticed this before it was also marketed as Zyban. I strongly suspect the reason it morphed into Zyban was that those following patients on Wellbutrin noticed an uptick in the number of them who quit smoking. Certainly not everyone experiences that side effect, but a small number of people must.

 

[ladyraj]

I think I can explain why Wellbutrin helps some people quit smoking. It nearly helped me quit, when I wasn't intending to and had no reason at the time to want to quit.

I took it on and off for years. It has one peculiar side effect for some people: It makes cigarettes taste really foul. I smoked a LOT less when I was taking Wellbutrin. I noticed this before it was also marketed as Zyban. I strongly suspect the reason it morphed into Zyban was that those following patients on Wellbutrin noticed an uptick in the number of them who quit smoking. Certainly not everyone experiences that side affect, but a small number of people must.

It morphed in to Zyban not only because of the side effect of decreased smoking....the "new" packaging and name made a bunch of money. Who needs to sell a 20+ year old med with no patent protection unless one can rename it, tweak the ingrediants, and call it a cessation aid for 10-100 times the cost of Wellbutrin?8-o

 

[yknotagain]

I've often wondered if the stats for Zyban helping people quit smoking includes those who committed suicide taking it?

 

[Applejackson]

Oops. Double post. Phone issues.

 

[Applejackson]

I've often wondered if the stats for Zyban helping people quit smoking includes those who committed suicide taking it?

That's Chantix. Zyban's an anti-depressant.