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The eight body parts being damaged from smoking cigarettes
Less people could be quitting smoking since they started working from home during the pandemic, new research suggests. The decline in smoking rates across England has “stagnated”, with fewer people quitting plus more young people picking up the habit – according to experts at University College London (UCL), who analysed data from 2020 and 2022.
They found that before the pandemic, smoking prevalence fell by 5.2% per year, but the rate of decline slowed to just 0.3% per year during it. Lead author Dr Sarah Jackson from UCL, said: “These findings make bold policy action more urgent. The Government was already not on track to meet its target for England to be smoke-free by 2030.”
According to Dr Suhail Hussain, a private GP based in Hertfordshire, smoking raises blood pressure, damages blood vessels, and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks. “It can lead to the formation of plaque in the arteries, restricting blood flow,” he said – which can be particularly dangerous if clots form.
Jim Pattison, policy assistant at Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a public health charity set up by the Royal College of Physicians to end the harm caused by tobacco, added: “Smoking is the leading behavioural risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and smokers have a fourfold higher risk of CVD than non-smokers.”
“Tobacco smoke causes a range of respiratory diseases, including lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is also known to increase the risk of asthma (as well as being a major trigger for asthma symptoms), tuberculosis (TB) and pneumonia,” said Pattison.
“Smoking also damages the alveoli (air sacs) in our lungs, which prevents the proper intake of oxygen, often resulting in breathlessness. In 2017, 37% of all deaths from respiratory diseases in England were estimated to be attributable to smoking.”
The good news is, it’s never too late to quit and the damaging effects can improve after stopping smoking.
Source: Wales Online, 18 December 2023
See also: BMC Medicine - Have there been sustained impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on trends in smoking prevalence, uptake, quitting, use of treatment, and relapse?
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Revealed: Obesity linked to 3,000 ward admissions a day
Hospital admissions linked to obesity have doubled in six years to more than 3,000 people a day, according to NHS figures that highlight the extent of Britain’s weight problem.
Obesity is exacerbating illness or complicating the treatment of people ranging from expectant mothers to patients with arthritis and cancer. There are three times as many admissions linked to obesity as there are to smoking. More than 20 children a day are admitted because of obesity, a figure that has also doubled in recent years.
People in poorer areas are twice as likely to be taken into hospital with obesity as those in the richest areas, in the latest evidence that weight issues are hampering efforts to boost the labour market.
Figures published this month showed the cost of obesity to be an estimated £98 billion a year, which included £19 billion of NHS treatment and economic productivity losses of £15 billion.
The latest NHS Digital figures for England show a record 1.2 million admissions where obesity was a factor in 2022-23, up from 617,000 in 2016-17. This includes 8,716 occasions when obesity was the primary reason for admission, often for bariatric surgery, and hundreds of thousands more when obesity was a secondary diagnosis either contributing to a stay in hospital or complicating treatment.
Pregnant women are the most likely to have obesity as a complicating problem, with 147,143 maternity admissions where obesity was a problem for either mother or child. Arthritis, gallstones, breast cancer, heart disease and general pain were all involved in more than 10,000 annual admissions each.
Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said: “Ministers have squandered numerous opportunities to make the UK a healthier place to live, instead choosing to kick the can down the road time and again. All this is having a huge impact on people’s wellbeing, not to mention on our NHS and economy. Investing in improving public health would not only reduce pressure on the NHS, it would help get more people back to work and boost our economy.”
Cooper urged ministers to revive plans for a 9pm watershed on junk food advertising and a ban on buy-one-get-one-free deals on unhealthy food, both of which have been kicked into the long grass, as well as to give councils more cash for public health initiatives.
Source: The Times, 17 December 2023
See also: NHS Digital - Statistics on Public Health: Data Tables
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English councils warn funding offer will bring tax rises and service cuts
English councils will be forced to raise taxes and cut frontline services to avoid effective bankruptcy, local government networks have said, as they criticised a new funding offer from ministers.
Michael Gove, secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, on Monday announced a £64bn settlement for local authorities in 2024-25, representing an annual increase of 6.5 per cent with an additional £1bn in grants for social care.
The County Council Network, representing the largest local authorities in England, described the offer as “bitterly disappointing” in light of soaring costs and rising demand for services.
“With no additional funding announced, our councils will have no choice but to implement more severe reductions to services and to levy higher council tax rises,” said Barry Lewis, CCN vice-chair and finance spokesperson, on Monday. He added that an increasing number of local authorities would “struggle to deliver a balanced budget next year” if the government fails to improve its offer.
A record number of councils have been forced in recent years to issue “section 114” notices declaring their inability to meet a legal requirement to balance the books.”
Source: Financial Times, 18 December 2023
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Severe Obesity Is Increasing in Young U.S. Children
A new study adds to evidence that severe obesity is becoming more common in young U.S. children.
The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period.
"We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” said one of the study’s authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.”
The study looked at children ages 2 to 4 enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy foods and other services to preschool-aged children in low-income families. The children were weighed and measured.
The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Six years later, the rate had dipped to 1.8%. But by 2020, it was 2%. That translates to about 33,000 of more than 1.6 million kids in the WIC program.
Experts say severe obesity at a very early age is nearly irreversible, and is strongly associated with chronic health problems and an early death.
When Women, Infants and Children obesity rates dropped, some experts attributed it to 2009 policy changes that eliminated juice from infant food packages, provided less saturated fat, and tried to make it easier to buy fruits and vegetables.
The package hasn’t changed. But “the daily hardships that families living in poverty are facing may be harder today than they were 10 years ago, and the slight increases in the WIC package just weren’t enough,” said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a Duke University childhood obesity researcher.
Source: Time, 18 December 2023
See also: Jama Network - Severe Obesity in Toddlers: A Canary in the Coal Mine for the Health of Future Generations
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.
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