Cigarette Smoking Causes Sleep Disturbances

February 12, 2008

This medical news about health and wellness is brought to you as a service from Dr Steven Horvitz and The Institute for Medical Wellness.

Below are excerpts from an article in Medscape concerning smoking and your health.

Cigarette Smoking Causes Sleep Disturbances

February 7, 2008 — Smoking cigarettes impairs sleep quality, possibly due to nicotine withdrawal, according to a study in the February issue of Chest, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

• The results of this study could represent "yet another motivating factor" to convince smokers to quit the habit, said Dr. Punjabi. "From a preventive health perspective, I think it's very important that we now add sleep disturbance to the armamentarium of issues related to smoking."
• Smokers spent more time in light sleep and less time in deep sleep than their nonsmoking counterparts.
• The study shows that cigarette smoking "can alter sleep architecture independent of factors such as age, gender, race, anthropometric measures, caffeine and alcohol consumption, medial comorbidity, and mental health status," the authors conclude.
• The direct effects of smoking on sleep seen in this study should provide further ammunition for public health campaigns to reduce smoking. "The people who smoke are not getting a restful sleep, and that has ramifications for them on a daily basis; they're tired, they're going to be tired the next day, and most likely they will have diminished level of alertness," said Dr. Punjabi. "Those are direct effects that poor sleep quality will have on their daily living."

Chest. 2008;133:427-432.

Pauline Anderson is a freelance writer for Medscape.
Medscape Medical News 2008. © 2008 Medscape

We are learning more and more every day that people that do not get restful sleep, have more medical issues than those who get the necessary sleep. Sleep apnea, another medical disorder that causes non restful sleep, has already been linked to high blood pressure and heart disease. We have known for years that cigarette smokers have a higher risks of both these illnesses. Whether cigarette smoking directly causes high blood pressure and heart disease, or whether it may be secondary to poor sleep quality as possibly implied by the article above will stir much future debate.

But we can leave the debating to the scientists and the politicians. What we need to take from this article is that cigarette smoking causes many effects on the body, very few of which are healthy. I will again advise all my patients to refer to my battle plan for quitting smoking. It can be found by clicking here.

Steven Horvitz, D.O.
Board Certified Family Medicine
Founder of The Institute for Medical Wellness

Cholesterol May Help Build Muscle

February 6, 2008

This medical news about health and wellness is brought to you as a service from Dr Steven Horvitz and The Institute for Medical Wellness.

Cholesterol May Help Build Muscle

Low cholesterol levels may be good for your heart, but cholesterol levels that are too low may negate exercise-related muscle gain, says a Texas A&M University study of 50 men and women, ages 60 to 69.

Participants took part in a 12-week exercise program that included stretching, riding a stationary bike and weightlifting. They all ate similar meals, CBC News reported.

The most impressive gains in muscle strength occurred in those with the highest cholesterol levels, rather than those with the lowest levels.

The study authors said cholesterol may play an important role in muscle tissue repair, which is critical in building muscle mass, CBC News reported.

"As you exercise, your muscles can become sore because they are rebuilding muscle mass. More cholesterol may result in a more robust inflammatory response. We know that inflammation in some areas, such as near the heart, is not good, but for building muscles it may be beneficial, and cholesterol appears to aid in this process," lead investigator Steven Riechman, assistant professor of health and kineisiology at Texas A&M, said in a prepared statement.

The study was published in the Journal of Gerontology.

The hypothesis that cholesterol is bad for your health and should be lowered at all costs is starting to unravel. As many of my patients know, I have not been a fan of cholesterol lowering medications. I view cholesterol as a marker for human health and disease, but not as a cause of disease.

Cholesterol is made by our body, in our liver, whether we eat cholesterol and fat in our diets or not. Obviously cholesterol must have some positive actions in our bodies. The article you just read appears to be one positive action. Hopefully in the near future more medical studies will be conducted and published showing more beneficial actions of cholesterol.

Achieving good cholesterol levels is important. But how you achieve those levels is more important. Using medications to improve your cholesterol levels is like painting a car with a rusty engine. The cholesterol and paint will look wonderful, but the car engine, heart and vascular system do not always benefit. A good analysis of cholesterol lowering medications was written and appears in Business Week magazine, Jan 28, 2008 edition.

I would like to provide a link to another site that reviews cholesterol lowering treatments with a slightly different analysis than you usually hear on the news. I am providing this link as fuel for thought and I would welcome any comment or feedback.

Steven Horvitz, D.O.
Board Certified Family Medicine
Your Partner in Health!