Forget nicotine patches and gum.  Efforts to quit smoking have officially moved into the 21^st century.

According to British researchers, smokers are twice as likely to succeed in quitting if they receive supportive text messages, USA Today reported.

The researchers followed 5,800 smokers in their attempts to quit the habit.  One group was sent motivational text messages while another group received “placebo texts” that thanked them for participating in the study.

The motivational message group received five texts a day for the first five weeks and three per week for the next 26 weeks.

A sample text message read: “TXT2STOP: think you’ll put on weight when you quit? We’re here to help – We’ll TXT weight control and exercise tips, recipes and motivation tips.”

The smokers were also able to text for help during cravings or relapses and would receive appropriate tips for dealing with their current situation.

After six months, the study participants were all tested for a substance found in cigarettes.  Those who had received the motivational texts were twice as likely to still be smoke-free.

The smokers reported the messages helped them through the quitting process, according to lead researcher Caroline Free.

“It made them feel less isolated while they tried to quit,” Free said.

For a small group of smokers, however, the texts actually became unhelpful because the messages reminded them of smoking, which emphasizes the need for individually tailored support.

Only 10.7 percent of smokers receiving motivational messages were still abstinent after six months, but this was double the rate of those who did not receive the messages.  Free suggested that increased personalization and interactivity could make the program even more effective.

The study was published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Click here to read more from USA Today.

Nobody wakes up one morning and suddenly decides to be a smoker. Smoking is a habit picked up from others who smoke. It’s a social disease. Individuals do it in imitation of somebody they respect who smokes, like parents or teachers, or they do it because their high school or college friends smoke and they want to fit in.

But once you put a cigarette in your mouth, you are exposed (not to mention that you are exposing everyone around you, as well) to the effects of nicotine, which is one of the most highly addictive drugs available today. And the more you smoke, the greater is your urge to smoke, and the more addicted you become.

The smoking habit will wreak havoc throughout the decades of your life because once you start to smoke, its deleterious effects spiral out of control, much like credit card debt. Smoking is associated not only with all kinds of cancer, from oral cancer to cervical cancer, but also with heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States today for both men and women. Since smoking also affects the respiratory system, chronic smokers have a higher incidence of bronchitis (an inflammation of the lining of the tubes that connect the windpipe to the lungs) and emphysema (a chronic lung disease usually caused by exposure to toxic chemicals or tobacco smoke) than those who don’t smoke.

And smoking interferes with the immune system as well; that is, smokers are more prone to getting chronic diseases, flu, and viral illnesses than are nonsmokers.

Then there are the secondary effects that smoking has on others. Pregnant women who smoke have smaller-sized babies and have higher rates of premature babies. And children who are exposed to secondhand smoke have higher levels of asthma.

If you are a smoker, there may be no better thing you can do for your health than to quit smoking, and the best time to quit is as a young adult. You may have started smoking in high school or college, but now you are on your own, away from the peer pressures of your schoolmates and the influence of your parents (who may be smokers themselves), and making a new life for yourself. This is the easiest time to kick the habit.

Of course, quitting is easier said than done. As Mark Twain remarked: “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.”

The reason it’s so difficult to quit is that it’s really a dual challenge, and you are unlikely to succeed in your quest unless you meet both challenges head-on.

The first challenge involves breaking the physical dependency that smoking causes. An absence of nicotine leads to withdrawal symptoms, including anxiety, nervousness, and an overwhelming desire for more nicotine. Very few people can go cold turkey and never pick up another cigarette again. Most people need to be gradually desensitized of their nicotine addiction.

One way to do that is with Nicorette gum or the nicotine patch. These products allow you to alter, over a course of weeks, the amount of nicotine that you ingest, until your body gets used to having no nicotine at all. Acupuncture and hypnosis have also helped people reduce or eliminate the withdrawal symptoms–irritability, depression, and lack of energy–that come from kicking the nicotine habit.

The second challenge for the smoker seeking to quit involves breaking the mental habit that smoking reinforces. The best way to do that is through the same system that got you smoking in the first place, through a peer support system. Just as in overcoming any addiction, breaking the smoking habit requires a support group, which can consist of friends, family, and/or coworkers. But you have to have somebody who is willing to be there for you, to give you the support you need when you are most likely to want to pick up another cigarette.

Quitting should be celebrated at every little step of the way because you’ll be seeing the benefits of your efforts in the minutes, days, weeks months, and years after you quit:

–Twenty minutes after you smoke your last cigarette, your heart rate drops.

–Twelve hours later, the carbon monoxide level in your bloodstream returns to normal.

–Two to three weeks after quitting, your circulation improves, and your lungs begin to function normally.

–One year after you quit, the excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker.

–In five years’ time, your risk of stroke is reduced to that of a nonsmoker.

–In ten years’ time, your risk of dying of lung cancer is about half that of a smoker.

–And in 15 years, your risk of coronary heart disease is like that of someone who never smoked.

The long and short of it is, the sooner you quit, the quicker you’ll regain your health.

Scientists may be close to discovering developing a blood test to identify lung cancer in its early stages, which would save thousands of lives each year.

Professor Jachim Shultze, M.D., and his team have identified over 480 molecules in the blood which show specific patterns of change when a person develops lung cancer.  The molecules are nucleic acids that form in the body due to certain genes.

The changes in the blood occurs even when the tumor is still in a very early stage.  There are four different stages of lung cancer, and the later stages – stages 3 and 4 – have an extremely high mortality rate.

“The prognosis for patients in stage 3 and 4 is still very poor even today; even with the most modern therapies, the point of death can only be postponed,” said Dr. Shultze in a press release.

While lung cancer in stage 1 can be treated surgically and even be cured in many cases, only about 15 percent of cases are caught that early.  Because the cancer typically goes undetected for so long, over 80 percent of all lung cancer patients die within two years of diagnosis.

The researchers hope their blood tests may someday become part of routine practice.  The method is simple: The doctor takes a blood sample from the patient and within 24 hours knows with a high degress of certainty whether the patient has lung cancer or not, even if no symptoms are present.

Dr. Shultze and his team developed the test by investigating the blood of over 200 smokers.  Half had lung cancer, and the rest were either entirely healthy or had another lung disease.

“It was important to us that a subsequent test not only be able to differentiate lung cancer patients from healthy subjects, but also from persons with chronic lung diseases,” said Shultze.

The researchers then examined the patients’ blood samples for certain nucleic acids and in doing so, a pattern emerged.

The researchers are now planning a much larger study with ten times as many patients, in order to confirm the results.  If the study is successful, a blood test for lung cancer may soon hit the market.

The urine test has become a mainstay of American workplaces, used to test for illegal narcotic use among employees.

But, in a growing trend among hospitals, it’s being used to test for something decidedly less illegal – nicotine.

Hospitals around the country are shifting from smoking bans to all-out “smoker” bans, the New York Times reported.  Frustrated with the inefficiency of softer policies, which include banning smoking on company grounds, offering cessation programs and increasing health care premiums for smokers, they are now instituting tobacco-free hiring policies, which treats cigarette use much like that of drugs.

Similarly, a new employee who is caught smoking will face termination.

According to the hospital spokespeople, they believe turning away smokers will increase worker productivity, reduce health care costs and encourage healthier living.

The measures – which have so far been adopted in states like Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas – have sparked intense debate, even among anti-tobacco groups, who worry about the infringement of personal freedom.

However, hospitals said that banning smokers was necessary to advance their institutional missions of promoting personal well-being and to find ways to reduce rising costs in health care.  On average, a smoker costs companies $3,391 more a year each for health care and lost productivity than a nonsmoker, according to federal estimates.

Click here to read more from the New York Times.