The blog is about health and gives useful information on health and disease.

If you listen to the advertising and read the brochures, every organisation has the perfect program to virtually guarantee that you’ll quit. And each one of them can make it happen for you, but only if you really have made the commitment.

There’s a bit of controversy surrounding all the groups and clinics. Some authorities dismiss them out of hand, with the conclusion that the failure rates ate horrible and that claims to the contrary are statistically inaccurate. Others feel that formal programs can provide the additional impetus some smokers need.

One possible reason for the less-than-perfect success fate of all the programs is an exaggerated level of expectation smokers might feel as they plunk their money down. It’s as though by writing the cheque one delegates responsibility for success to the program rather than keeping that responsibility for oneself. It may well be that groups and clinics attract those who are least likely to succeed, since they want someone else to do it for them. Bear in mind that ultimately you must want to quit, and must go through the physical withdrawal that inevitably occurs. Moreover, you’ll have to make the lifestyle adjustments that allow you to live your life without cigarettes.

Who might benefit from joining a clinic? Women are likely to get more out of support groups and outside assistance than men. That’s because women are more able to open themselves up to help and suggestions. They go along with the program, following the ideas and tips to the letter, rather than fighting it as men tend to do. Women also have less need to show how tough they are in terms of going it alone. That, in fact, makes women less likely to succeed in going cold turkey.

A report from the US Surgeon General’s office indicates that on-the-job stop-smoking programs are more successful than community-based clinics. When you participate in on-the-job programs, you’re likely to be in greater contact with others making the same effort. You reinforce and support the resolve of others, and they provide the same for you. This is particularly important during the crucial first weeks after quitting.

If you have a stop-smoking program where you work, you might want to give it a try. Some companies provide this benefit, and more are adding the programs annually as they realise that healthier employees will lose less time from work and make fewer insurance claims.

For a list of the stop-smoking organisations in your area, look under “Smokers Information and Treatment” in the Yellow Pages, or contact your State Cancer Council.

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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol

Wherever one turns – America, Canada, Kenya, Britain – there is a struggle to get this 30-year established treatment accepted by either government health schemes or private insurance companies – companies who are quite prepared to pay for a treatment such as bypass surgery which will cost them on average ten times more than a course of chelation. What deters them?

The safety of chelation therapy is not in question. That has been established by long experience with treatments for which EDTA is accepted protocol, such as a blood condition known as thalassaemia, or for heavy metal poisoning.

What is not proved to medical requirements (double-blind trials) is its efficacy in treating circulatory disease. However, there have been some 200 scientific studies concentrating on the specific effects of EDTA in circulatory disease (more than have ever been done, as stated earlier, in respect to the medical procedures of bypass surgery and angioplasty) and these, plus overwhelmingly positive empirical evidence, must surely present sufficient grounds for experimental use in certain areas.

For example, what about those medicines that can’t help any more? Those patients whom the medical profession calls by the rather besmirching term of’ ‘refractory’? Since chelation is safe and they have been given up anyway what have they – or anyone else – to lose?

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Cardio & Blood/ Cholesterol