Tag Archives: quit smoking

Healing Hearts, Honoring My Mother

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Whether it be a chocolate heart, a broken heart, or someone having your heart, Valentine’s Day has the word heart on all of our lips. While the clichés can be cute or sickening, depending on your general outlook of the holiday, the word heart has become an identity for our personality in reference to our emotions.

Very few people will first think of the pump-like organ that regulates blood circulation from its home in our chests. Even fewer people give thought to the health of that organ, which is unfortunate since 1 in 4 deaths is caused by heart disease, making it the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. To refocus our awareness of the true definition of the word, February is American Heart Month.

You can be proactive about your heart health — and that of those you love.

There are different kinds of heart disease, which obviously means that there are different causes. While cardiovascular disease can refer to different heart or blood vessel problems, the definition is widely used in reference to damage done by a buildup of fatty plaques in your arteries. As that buildup thickens, the walls of the arteries harden, which obstructs blood from being distributed to your organs.

This process is called atherosclerosis, but we know it as coronary artery disease. While some heart conditions can be due to heart defects that you may have been born with, atherosclerosis is the most common cause of cardiovascular disease and is caused predominantly by correctable problems: obesity, lack of exercise, an unhealthy diet, and smoking. Continue reading →

STD Awareness: HPV and Smoking

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cigaretteThursday, November 21, is the Great American Smokeout, a day to abstain from smoking — and, one hopes, to quit for good. “That’s great,” you say, “but what do cigarettes have to do with sexually transmitted diseases?”

Good question!

First, let’s talk about HPV. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is known as the “common cold of STDs” — because pretty much every sexually active person will contract it, even people with very few sex partners. Aside from complete abstinence, the best way to avoid an HPV infection is to be vaccinated with Gardasil, which protects against four common HPV strains — two that cause genital warts, and two that cause certain cancers, such as cervical cancer and oropharyngeal cancer. You can further reduce risk by using condoms and dental dams during all sexual activities, limiting sexual partners, and choosing partners who have had few or no previous partners — however, these risk-reduction methods don’t guarantee that you’ll remain HPV-free.

Harmful chemicals from cigarettes can end up in your cervical mucus!

If you’re sexually active, you could have contracted HPV without ever knowing about it. Most infections are asymptomatic (meaning that you never develop symptoms) and transient (meaning that they go away on their own after a year or two). When symptoms do appear, they can manifest as genital warts, penile skin lesions, cervical abnormalities, and signs of cancer elsewhere on the body. And, sometimes, an HPV infection can become persistent, meaning that it doesn’t go away. Luckily, there are steps you can take to decrease risk of developing HPV symptoms, and to increase your chances of fighting off an HPV infection. And one of those things is to quit smoking! Continue reading →

Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does, Part 4: Helping You Quit Smoking

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Welcome to the latest installment of “Over 90 Percent of What Planned Parenthood Does,” a series on Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona’s blog that highlights Planned Parenthood’s diverse array of services — the ones Jon Kyl doesn’t know about.

Recent challenges to contraceptive access make the scenario all too easy to imagine: A woman goes to her health care provider to get her annual check-up and to renew her prescription for birth-control pills. She’s been going to the same health center and using the same birth control pills for years, but this time a nurse practitioner refuses to renew her prescription.

Heavy smoking and use of birth control pills increase risk of a first-time heart attack by a factor of 30.

The scenario is easy to imagine when we’ve seen the concept of religious liberty stretched beyond its limits. The concept has been used to trump other liberties, to excuse organizations from compliance with health care mandates that ensure access to the contraceptives that many struggle to afford. But the scenario just described is exactly what happened to a woman in Iowa, whose clinic refused to renew her prescription for birth control pills, not because of bills passed by lawmakers, but because of her age, 42, and the fact she smoked. Those two factors made use of birth control pills risky for her — and a liability for her provider.

Today is World No Tobacco Day, so this installment of our “Over 90 Percent” series takes a look at the toll smoking takes on sexual health, and what Planned Parenthood health centers can do to help people quit. The World Health Organization launched World No Tobacco Day in the late 1980s to encourage tobacco users around the world to quit tobacco for at least 24 hours. It has also served as a day to promote other anti-tobacco initiatives and raise awareness about the effects of tobacco use. Continue reading →

Planned Parenthood Services for Men: We’ve Got You Covered

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At Planned Parenthood, we’re passionate about women’s health, and indeed, our health care centers are well known for their top-notch services aimed at the female population. But not a lot of people associate Planned Parenthood with men’s health — despite the fact that we offer a wide range of services for men, ranging from those you expect (like condoms) to those you might not expect (like smoking cessation).

Planned Parenthood offers cancer screening and family-planning options for men, as well as an array of services that include cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, and even smoking cessation.

Sexually active people should be screened for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) — even if your partner has negative test results, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear, so you can’t rely on your significant other to provide your STD screening “by proxy.” Especially because so many STDs are asymptomatic, it’s better to get yourself tested. We can screen and treat for STDs, as well as offer preventive vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and human papillomavirus (HPV). Most people associate the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, with females, since HPV is behind 99 percent of cervical cancers. But males can benefit from Gardasil as well. Not only will they be protecting their partners, but they will also be protecting themselves from the viruses that can cause precancerous penile lesions as well as the majority of genital warts and anal cancers.

Men’s services also include life-saving cancer screening — we can check you out for prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, or testicular cancer. We can also evaluate penile lesions, which might lead to penile cancer if left untreated. These might not be the kind of check-ups anyone looks forward to, but they represent the kind of preventive health care that can save your life — or just your money — down the road. Continue reading →