HHS HealthBeat (January 28, 2011)

Happy over quitting

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Quitting smoking might make you happy as well as healthy.

Researcher Christopher Kahler of Brown University saw it in 236 men and women who wanted to quit smoking, set quit dates, and got nicotine patches and smoking-cessation advice. Some stayed off smoking throughout the study, some quit but then smoked again, and some never quit.

Kahler looked at mood test scores. He says people who were tobacco-free were happiest, and those who never quit were least happy. For those in the middle:

``For those who were successful at some times during the study but not in others – when they looked the most psychologically healthy, when they reported the least symptoms of depression, was the weeks in which they were not smoking.’’ (10 seconds)

The study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011