Women may be able to give up smoking and also control weight gain

Several women apparently don’t quit smoking as they fear putting on weight. This is due to the fact that nicotine apparently stifles the appetite and increases a smoker’s metabolism. But a new meta-analysis claims that women who gave up smoking while receiving treatment for weight control are supposedly able to control their weight gain in a better way and are said to be more effective in quitting smoking.

This fining apparently refutes present clinical guidelines that advocate that trying to diet and to quit smoking simultaneously could damage attempts to give up cigarettes.

Formerly, it was believed that an individual could only alter one health threat behavior at a time.

Bonnie Spring, lead author of the study and a professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine commented, “Women who smoke often feel caught between a rock and hard place, because they’re concerned about their health but also concerned about their appearance. Now they don’t have to choose between the two.”

Spring further mentioned, “But these findings show that, at least in the case of smoking and eating, you actually get an added benefit when you try to change a couple of behaviors at once.”

Spring’s paper checked the outcomes from 2,233 smokers in 10 studies from 1991 to 2007.

The study illustrated that women whose treatment dealt with both smoking and weight control had about 29 percent more chances to quit smoking in the short term i.e. at three months and roughly 23 percent in the long term i.e. from 6 to 14 months as compared to those whose treatment attended to only smoking. Women whose treatment supposedly comprised of smoking and weight control apparently also did not put on much weight as opposed to whose treatment incorporated only smoking. It was observed that they put on an average of around 2.1 pounds less in the short term and about 2.5 pounds less in the long term.

Spring anticipates the study outcomes could alter doctors’ attitudes and present clinical guidelines about merging weight control and smoking cessation.

More studies also are apparently required that present longer-term intrusion for weight and smoking cessation. The literature on weight control supposedly illustrates that patients lose the advantage when they discontinue treatment.

The study was published in the journal Addiction.