Clinical Trials and Medical Blog

We’ve had a couple of articles and community comments about Zyban and other ways to stop smoking. When you decide to stop smoking the most difficult part is to resist the urges. It doesn’t matter that each craving lasts only 3-5 minutes. It’s still the whole 5 minutes to battle with your willpower! These seven tips will help you to resist the urge to smoke one urge at a time.

1. Remind Yourself Why You Quit

Every time you experience a craving remind yourself why you quit. It’s the excellent idea to take a blank index card and list all the reasons why you decided to quit smoking. List as many as you can, the more the better. If necessary, take the second index card. Carry them with you all the time. Every time you feel the urge to smoke take the index card and slowly read all your reasons why you decided to stop. After you finish reading your urge will pass! (If not, read them one more time or come up with more reasons.)

2. Reward Yourself

Make it a habit to reward yourself at the end of each nonsmoking week. Think of something you want (it doesn’t have to be something expensive, a nice home made meal or hot bath will work). Take the index card and write down what would you give yourself at the end of the week. When the urge comes take a look at the index card with your reward. Isn’t it worth coping for 3 minutes?

3. Be prepared for your urges

Get yourself prepared for the urge to smoke in advance. In most cases something triggers the craving (certain feelings, people, or places). You have to know what triggers the urge.

Lets do a really quick exercise. Take a blank piece of paper and divide it into 2 columns. On the one side list your triggers (like “stuck in traffic”, “drinking morning coffee”, “arguing with colleague”…) and in the second column write down the alternative course of action.

For example, instead of smoking while drinking your morning coffee you could read a newspaper. Instead of smoking after the hot argument with your colleague you can take a walk around a block or write down everything you think about this person, then tier this piece of paper in shreds and throw it away. Don’t be lazy, write it down! This exercise really works!

4. Call your friend

This method works great. Call someone who can support you, who can talk with you for a couple of minutes. You can call your nonsmoking friend, or someone who’s trying to quit smoking too.

5. Distract yourself with a quick task

Think of a small task you have to do, something what would take you 5-10 minutes. Make a call, send a fax, make yourself a cup of coffee, water the plant in your office. Anything! Your task is to distract yourself until the urge will pass. (Hint: Try to find activity that makes smoking impossible!)

6. Drink a Glass of Water

Take a glass of water and drink it with a straw. First of all having something in your mouth to chew on will help, second it will take you a couple of minutes to drink the whole glass and the urge will pass. Plus, don’t forget that you’re supposed to drink 8 glasses of water every day!

7. Power Tip

That’s the disgusting one, but it often works. Print a small picture of smoker’s lungs and put it somewhere in your wallet. I know the view is not pretty, but something like this can stop you dead on your track from lighting up. Take a look! Really! THIS could be your lungs! You love yourself, and you respect your body. Why harm yourself?

Zyban contain the active ingredient “bupropion hydrochloride” and is one of the newest drugs on the market that can help smokers in their battle to give up smoking. Rather than being a nicotine replacement therapy product, it acts in the brain. It does not replace the nicotine that is obtained from smoking a cigarette with but uses bupropion to affect neurotransmitters in the brain stored in nerve cells and are involved in transmitting messages.

Bupropion prevents two of these neurotransmitters, noradrenaline and dopamine, from being reabsorbed back into the nerve cells. Noradrenaline and dopamine are responsible for moderating mood and various other processes in the brain. It is thought that bupropion helps people to quit smoking by increasing the amount of noradrenaline and dopamine free to act in the brain.

Zyban is the trade name of the drug “bupropion” and it was approved as a stop smoking aid in 1997. The same drug, bupropion, was previously and still is known as an anti-depressant and is manufactured under the name of Wellbutrin. The manufacturing of Zyban came about after smokers, who were taking the anti-depressant medication Wellbutrin, declared that they no longer had such a desire or craving to smoke cigarettes. Further research, based upon these claims, found that bupropion was in fact a highly effective tool in helping people to stop smoking.

The starting dose is one tablet once a day for six days, increasing on day seven to one tablet twice a day. There should be an interval of at least eight hours between doses. It is best to take your first dose when you get up in the morning and your second dose at least eight hours later. Try to avoid taking your second dose at bedtime, as difficulty sleeping (insomnia) is a common side effect of the medicine.

Personally I’ve tried everything to give up smoking and I’ve still not tried Zyban, it would have to be the very last thing I try as it does appear to have several side effects I’d rather not risk.

Over the last 20 - 25 years there has been a big increase in high-income nations in the number of older people being vaccinated yearly for the ‘Flu virus. But now, some scientists are calling for some placebo effect trials to test the efficacy of such high numbers of people getting vaccinated.

Despite the increase of those being vaccinated in the US, 15% - 65% from 1980, there has been no decline in the number of US flu related deaths.

read the full article

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has initiated a task force to investigate the possibility of making every UK citizen have “Presumed Consent” unless they specifically opt out or object.

This move follows on from a report published by Prof. Sir Liam Donaldson earlier this year, however Dr. Harry Brown from Scotland rejected the proposal and there are patient groups in England who are against the plans.

This move will be reviewed by “The Organ Donation Taskforce”, set up in 2006, who will weight up the ethical issues involved which includes giving the family of the deceased individual the final say in the matter.

In Britain around 8,000 people require a transplant, but only 3,000 are carried out leaving 4,000 people every year to die waiting for an organ. Volunteer schemes fall far short of the requirements and only a quarter of the UK populations have signed up to it, especially low in Black and Asia donors even though they are more likely to require organs due to a higher rate of diabetes.

At the moment due to the Human Tissue Act 2004, it’s forbidden to remove the organs or tissue without the consent of the dead person or his/her relatives, which is crazy when you look at how many people are dying from the lack of donors.

While there is still over one person dying every day from the lack of organ donors, this move can only prove positive. It makes sense to put the onus on the donors to opt out rather than in.

The Department of Health is considering adding chickenpox to the list of vaccines available to children. The vaccine has been used in the USA for some time and this is the first time that such a move has been considered in the UK.

A spokesman said: “This work is at a very early stage. The JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) considers a wide variety of issues around vaccination and immunisation.”

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WebMD has a good article on the benefits and risks of clinical trials. It’s a good place to start if you’re thinking of volunteering.

People participate in a clinical trial for many reasons. Healthy people may join clinical trials to contribute to medical science and improve medical knowledge and care for others. Clinical trials also may provide free medical care during the trial, which appeals to some people.

Definitely worth a read: www.webmd.com

The US is considering allowing terminally ill patients to trial and use new drugs that have passed Phase I testing but are not yet approved for general use.

Obviously this engenders strong feelings on both parts - Is it ethical? Should terminally ill patients be allowed to choose? Will their illness prejudice any decisions they make?

An interesting article in two parts at www.bmj.com

Yes, says Emil J Freireich, patients with limited life expectancy should have the same privileges as all individuals in a free society and be able to judge risks for themselves.

No, says Dean Gesme, the allure of promising new drugs engenders false hope, and using experimental drugs outside trials will damage both individuals and science.

Read more

Or should we keep the current system of opt-in?

Every day one person dies because a suitable donor hasn’t been found for them - whether it’s a new heart, kidney or liver these people could be saved if enough people opted in to organ donation.

So, why don’t we have a system of presumed consent? At the moment around 20% of the population are registered as donors but it is thought that as many as 70% would be willing to donate their organs after death.

Find out more about registering for donation

If you’d like to discuss this topic we have set up an area in the forum: community.medtrials.co.uk

New government proposals will give grants to pregnant women to encourage them to eat more healthily.

The “health in pregnancy” grant will be formally announced by the health secretary Alan Johnson on Wednesday in the government’s first major speech on health policy.

Women are expected to be given a £200 grant and advice on eating healthily from 2009 with the aim being to reduce the inequality between rich and poor families across England and Wales.

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Being involved in the www.MedTrials.co.uk website I am also interested to see what opportunities there are to work in Clinical Trials, not just as a volunteer.

I would be interested to hear what jobs are available and where people look to find suitable jobs in the Pharmaceutical industry? Please leave a comment if you have any information.