Women have a more difficult time quitting smoking than men

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His study of 30 men and women observed that after a cigarette, women feel more relief of stress and other 'symptoms' than men.

Nicotine may be more addictive for women, the scientist commented.

Actually the so-called nicotine addiction lasts only three days which explains why using chemical nicotine products to 'help' quit smoking is actually not much help.  Numerous studies have found that the difficulty in quitting smoking is that it's fulfilling a need in the lives of smokers. It's one of those habits which requires life changes to successfully quit - adding exercise for example, is a much better relief of stress than cigarettes. Exercise also raises the daily caloric needs while making the heart healthy.  If a person smokes to avoid eating, then munching on a low fat snack like air popped popcorn is much healthier than smoking a cigarette. (If you are Christian, try praying when you feel like a cigarette - the "Hail Mary" works well for Catholics and is how I quit smoking 28 years ago!)

Possibly the greatest reason women continue to smoke, despite the devastating effects cigarettes have on the body is that they feel smoking helps to keep their weight down.

Popular periodicals have had articles stating that nicotine, supposedly raises the basal metabolism allowing women to have more calories without 'getting fat' (read that as anything larger than a size 8).  Models have long known that if one is sucking on a cigarette, one can avoid eating - an estimated 95 percent of models smoke cigarettes.

However, scientific studies have disagreed with the popular literature - long term studies show that people who smoke actually gain MORE weight in 20 years than do those who don't smoke.  So much for the 'basal metabolism' myth which does little more than encourage people to destroy their bodies while supporting the tobacco industry.

A little known fact about cigarettes is that each cigarette smoked, floods the body with over one million free radicals - these are aborrated molecules which attack us on the cellular level.  Cigarettes are one of the most efficient ways to break down the immune system and ultimately, smokers have a much greater chance of cancer. (95 percent of chronic lung disease patients are or were smokers - smoking also greatly raises the risk of aneurysm and you so don't want to go there!)

Again, I am continuously surprised that scientists studying tobacco and other products, don't seem to do their homework before they report their results.

I will always remember a demonstration I saw in a biology movie while in High School in the early 1960's.  A couple of drops of liquid nicotine was placed on a rat and right before our eyes, the rat died within seconds.  Least we forget that nicotine IS a poison and we've known about that for at least 40 years!

Source: Nicotine and Tobacco Research