A significant knowledge gap about smoking cessation practices among perinatal substance abuse staff at a single center means pregnant women are often not being counseled about the dangers of tobacco and encouraged to quit, new research suggests. Perinatal substance abuse counselors from the Johns Hopkins Center for Addiction and Pregnancy in Baltimore, Maryland, fared significantly…
The spread of poor diets with large amounts of processed food, fat and refined sugar could be leading to increasing levels of inflammation in the body and, as a result, contributing to increased asthma prevalence, say researchers. The researchers looked at the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) in people with asthma compared with healthy controls…
Exercise might help reduce the risk of hospital readmission in people with a progressive lung condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a new study finds. “Our findings suggest that regular physical activity could buffer the stresses of hospitalization,” said study author Huong Nguyen, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and…
On Friday, March 28, 2014, researchers stated that bans on smoking in public and the workplace led to a 10 percent drop in premature births and in emergency asthma treatment for children. The evidence, based on the records of more than two million children, comes from 11 published investigations into the impact of local…
Reuters Health reports that mold exposure in the home raises the risk of asthma symptoms, researchers found. Men were especially vulnerable after recent exposure to visible mold. “The mold exposure that we were talking about is the typical mold that we all see in our homes from time to time, that is, mold that…
A retrospective study of almost 39,000 patients shows that opportunities to diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at an earlier stage are frequently being missed in both primary and secondary care in the UK. The findings, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, reveal missed opportunities to diagnose COPD occurred in up to 85 percent of…
It isn’t rocket science that parents should not be smoking at home with children that suffer from asthma. A new study finds, that secondhand smoke may be counteracting the effects of the child’s asthma treatment. The study, published in the journal Chest, finds that the oxidants in cigarette smoke were shown to be capable…
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a deadly, colorless, odorless, poisonous gas. It is produced by the incomplete burning of various fuels, such as coal, wood, oil, propane, and natural gas. Other sources of CO are products and equipment such as cars, lawn mowers, portable generators and power washers. In addition, Smokers and Firefighters have extreme exposure…