Attention, chocolate lovers: You may not be able to help yourselves. Swiss and British scientists have linked the widespread love of chocolate to a chemical "signature" that may be programmed into our metabolic systems.
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Kicking the Habit Takes Time
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TUESDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDayNews) -- Long-term counseling and medication can help improve the odds that smokers will be able to quit smoking. That news comes from a University of California, San Francisco study in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. In this study, 40 smokers received the antidepressant nortriptyline and counseling for a year. Thirty-nine smokers were given the drug and counseling for only a short period. Another 41 smokers received long-term counseling and a placebo. And another group of 40 received short-term counseling and placebo. Those who received the long-term medication and counseling had much better smoking-cessation results (50 percent) than those who received short-term medication and counseling. Those who received long-term counseling and placebo had a smoking cessation rate of 42 percent. The group that received short-term placebo and counseling had the lowest success rates for quitting smoking. The study authors said they hope their findings will help convince smokers to commit themselves to long-term treatment to quit smoking. Smokers who can't or don't want to take nortripltyline should still consider long-term counseling. "Although the results were not quite as good for the group not taking the medication, the results were still good enough that I believe long-term counseling could benefit many people who wish to stop smoking," study author Sharon Hall, a professor in the department of psychiatry, said in a prepared statement. More information The American Cancer Society has more about quitting smoking.
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