Oh, I forgot to mention: the study showed that mother’s nicotine patch causes colic in infants. Well, of course! Mother smoking cigarettes does it, so of course the patch does it. Duh!

Colic is not as trivial as you might think—especially if you are a baby! Colicky babies cry inconsolably for several hours a day (at least three hours a day, more than three days a week, for more than three weeks), and researchers in the Netherlands found that exposure to nicotine — either from cigarettes or nicotine replacement therapy — was associated with a significantly increased risk of colic, ranging from 30 to 60 percent. That’s a BIG effect.

The researchers looked at data on interviews with more than 63,000 mothers included in the Danish National Birth Cohort. Interviews were done during pregnancy and six months after they had their babies.

About 74 percent of the moms didn’t smoke; 24 percent did smoke; 0.3 percent of women used nicotine replacement therapy, which can include patches, inhalers or gum; while 2 percent of women smoked and used nicotine replacement therapy.

The study is published online Feb. 20, 2012 and in the March issue of Pediatrics.

Just for once, US doctors are ahead and reportedly obstetricians don’t often prescribe nicotine replacement in pregnant women. I think it’s a shame that European doctors can’t try harder.

There are other options, such as counseling and behavioral therapy, even hypnosis, to help women overcome their addiction. The PAL device (creative visualization and relaxation) from New Reality, is also a good option, for beating addictions of all kinds.

But there is a new era coming. Concerned investigators are claiming that putting hideous images on the packets, showing real damage caused by the smoking habit, prompts more people to quit. Hopefully it will also stop kids ever starting.

Very few people read the health warnings on cigarette packets, I conclude. But everyone is affected by the power of an image. You can’t escape it: the picture of a rotten mouth, with teeth dropping out, or a disfiguring facial cancer every time you whip out the packet for a light up MUST, surely, cause a smoker to hesitate!

Now new federal regulations are planned in the USA and will be in force within 3 years. That means shocking images will start appearing on cigarette packets here. They appeared today (27th August) for the first time in the UK. Other governments have been enforcing their use for some time.

Over the last decade, countries as varied as Canada, Australia, Chile, Brazil, Iran and Singapore, among others, have adopted graphic warnings on tobacco products. Some are downright disturbing: in Brazil, cigarette packages come with pictures of dead babies and a gangrened foot with blackened toes.

If U.S. regulations are modeled after those already in place in Canada and other countries, the warnings will be hard to look at: blackened lungs, gangrenous feet, bleeding brains and people breathing through tracheotomies.

Though shocking, the more graphic the image, the more effective in discouraging smoking, says Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and director of the university’s Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education.

Doubters have suggested that images which are too stomach-turning may backfire because people eventually ignore them. In fact current research shows this is not the case: the most graphic images pack the most emotional impact and seem to be working.

When I say working; well, Canada, for example, where 13% of the population smoked, has had a gratifying 5% drop since the graphic warnings were adopted in 2000. That’s not a lot, until you translate it into lives saved.

But a measly 5%? Smokers just don’t get it! But then, you have to be dumb to start smoking in the first place…

Check out this site with lots of links and references featuring brain damage and lowering of IQ among smokers (maybe that’s why they won’t quit?)