Health Scares Reduce Smoking but Not Waistlines, Survey Finds

Posted by Christine Armarego
Taken from:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/health/11smoking.html?_r=1&ref=health

Health Scares Reduce Smoking but Not Waistlines, Survey Finds
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: February 10, 2009

Smokers are three times more likely to quit if they get a wake-up call in the form of a heart attack, stroke, lung disease or cancer diagnosis, a new study has found.

But obese and overweight people lose two to three pounds at most after being diagnosed with a serious illness like heart disease or diabetes, according to the same report. The study, which looked at weight loss only in people under age 75, was published on Monday in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

It’s not entirely clear why heart disease would motivate patients to quit smoking but not to slim down, but the author of the paper noted that many health plans don’t cover weight-loss programs, with the exception of bariatric surgery, while many businesses and local health departments offer free or low-cost smoking cessation programs.

“People really are open to changing their behaviors after a health event, and this could really be a window of opportunity,” said study author Patricia S. Keenan, assistant professor of health policy at Yale School of Medicine. “I’m not sure the health care system is capitalizing on it, in terms of giving people the support they need to make these changes as they go forward.”

To do the study, Dr. Keenan analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a survey containing detailed health information about middle-aged and older adults collected every other year between 1992 and 2000. The data included information about 20,221 overweight or obese people under age 75 and about 7,764 smokers.

While only about one in 10 smokers who hadn’t been diagnosed with a serious illness quit cigarettes, almost one-third of smokers who had had a stroke or were diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or lung disease quit, the study found.

When smokers were diagnosed with two serious diseases, they were six times more likely to quit than other smokers, the study found.

Obese people lost very little weight after most diagnoses, though they lost up to half a point from their body mass index after finding out they had diabetes, the study found.

“One of the reasons they may not have found a big weight loss is because physician counseling alone is not going to impact weight loss,” said Sherry Pagoto, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. “The evidence for behavioral weight loss treatment suggests an intensive program is necessary.”

She added, “If there is a window of opportunity for weight loss, we’re missing it.”

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