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Monday, Monday.  Don't trust that day.  For those of you too young to remember, that was the Mamas and the Papas, lamenting Monday, the day that every week seems to have more of than Fridays. But Monday may be a good day for something.   Quitting smoking . According to Kim Painter at USA Today, "Monday is a particularly popular day to think about it – or at least Google it." Google searches for terms such as "quit smoking help" make up a higher proportion of all searches on Mondays than on any other day, Painter reports.  Could be like the diet thing.  OK, I ate like a pig all weekend but on Monday, I'll start watching my portions again. Call it the Monday Momentum (just made that up). Searches for help with quitting smoking decline through the week and reach a low point on Saturdays – when they are 145% lower than on Mondays, Painter quotes the American Medical Association. "People see Mondays as a fresh start, a chance to get their acts to...

You've seen them.  The commercials where the woman talks about losing her fingers, the obese one about having to have her son wash her and take care of her toileting needs because she's confined to bed. The one I find the most horrifying, the woman who has to hold an artificial voice box to her throat to talk, her voice a mechanical, unhuman sound. Seems they've worked. More than 200,000 Americans quit smoking after the graphic, federally-funded, anti-cigarette ads ran earlier this year, according to Brady Dennis at The Washington Post. “The TIPS campaign surpassed our expectations,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden told reporters in a call Monday, saying the results represented more than a doubling of initial goals, Dennis notes. “That’s a tremendous success story. These are Americans that will live longer lives, healthier lives with lower health-care costs.” Even better, 100,000 more are expected to quit. "The $54 million ad series, which ended in June 2012, featu...

A new study has just found that, on average, smoking clips 10 years off your life, according to a story today in The New York Times.  My mother smoked when I was a child and I remember seeing a film when I was in 5th grade showing a smoker's lungs, all black and scarred from smoking. I raced home to ask her to please, please stop smoking, and she assured me she was "checked" every year and was fine.  She continued to smoke for over 20 more years -- even going so far as to pretend she had quit, then begging to take the garbage out at a party I threw at my apartment, only to come back the dumpster smelling of smoke. My mom died a little more than a year ago of congestive heart failue at 84 so I guess she was one of the lucky ones.  Maybe because of her, I never ever picked up a cigarette.  The study also goes on to say that if you can quit by 40, you have almost a full life expectancy.  I have friends who smoked to lose weight, or keep it off, and others ...