Ian Wright is using everything in his arsenal to make Stoptober a success

If you have been paying close attention to the Medical Specialists Pharmacy website, you will be aware that yesterday saw the start of The Department of Health’s national anti-smoking campaign ‘Stoptober’, of which Medical Specialists is a proud supporter of. It will be running for 28 days, finishing on 28 October. This specific time period was chosen as it is believed that you are five times more likely to quit for good after abstaining for 28 days.

The campaign is the first mass attempt at getting the nation’s 8 million smokers to kick the habit for good, mainly for the benefit of their health and those around them, and also to save the NHS millions of pounds each year. New Year’s Resolutions may be the only reason why many people try (and fail) to stop smoking, however why not get involved with Stoptober and join millions of people around the country in the fight against harmful cigarettes, improving your appearance, health and cash.

However, you don’t need to just listen to us. The campaign is being backed by a whole host of celebrities including former Arsenal and England footballer Ian Wright, former Apprentice contestant Kate Walsh and leading makeup artist Gary Cockerill. Using their area of expertise, the trio will be providing motivation and support in helping smokers to quit. Other famous faces who are backing the campaign are Gordon Ramsay, Sharron Davies and Jeff Brazier.

As well as expert advice from the celebrities, those looking to quit will also receive support via a Stoptober support pack, an app on their smartphone, and there has been a dedicated Facebook page setup for people to connect to each other and share their experiences.

Stoptober mentor Ian Wright, like Medical Specialists, seems to understand the huge dangers of cigarettes and why smokers need to get on board with the campaign. He says, “Smoking is one of those habits that’s so easy to fall into but takes real focus and perseverance to get out of. Anyone who makes the effort to quit has my total respect. Stoptober is a great campaign because for many, willpower isn’t enough. Most people need that additional support to avoid slipping into bad habits or kidding themselves that having one won’t hurt. Soon they’re off again. The worst thing is that smoking gives you nothing and it is, literally, killing you, which is why I feel so strongly in backing those who are trying to quit. We all know people who’ve been smoking for 20 years and the damage this can cause to their health is huge. Who wouldn’t want to be able to run up the stairs, play more easily with their children or even put in a man of the match performance every week at football? I tried smoking myself when I was younger. Everybody did it. But I stopped after a few years. I was asthmatic so I knew it wasn’t for me. Loads of people smoked back then and it can’t have helped me. I found it hard to breathe in rooms full of smoke.”

One very interesting point we note is that Wright mentions he suffers from asthma, joining other former and currently footballers who also suffer from the lung condition; including David Beckham and Paul Scholes. Hopefully if more asthmatic celebrities speak up about their asthma struggles, this may go some way to dispelling the stigma and feeling of embarrassment that is present in some people who suffer with the airway-constricting lung condition. Not only can smoking trigger asthma attacks, babies and children who are exposed to cigarette smoke are at a high risk of then developing asthma, a subject we covered way back in March.

Adding to Wright’s comments about Stoptober was fellow anti-smoking advocate and mentor Gary Cockerill, who commented on just how smoking can ruin a person’s looks. He said, “Not many people realise how damaging smoking is for skin, hair and teeth. It causes premature aging, yellowing of the teeth and brittle and smelly hair. I’ll be providing some top insider beauty tips and advice on how to improve ‘smoker’s skin’ and minimise the harmful effects smoking has to our looks.”

For part of his involvement with the Stoptober challenge, Wright has agreed to mentor and provide support for one of three ‘superquitters’, together with Walsh and Cockerill who are also doing the same for two other superquitters. Wright is backing 29-year-old Emergy Godden from Liverpool, who remarkably has been smoking ever since she was 14-years of age. Emergy wastes £40 every week on her smoking habit, which could be better spent on more important times in the midst of a double-dip recession. She says, “I want to stop smoking before I turn 30 next year. I’m well aware of the damage I’m doing to my body and know that making just this one change alone will make me much healthier.”

For smokers out there who require some extra support in quitting, allow Medical Specialists to help you. We realise it may be asking a little too much for some people to completely go cold turkey for 28 days. However, we do have the smoking cessation medication Champix, which many argue is better at helping you to stop lighting up in comparison to nicotine patches.

Champix is a prescription medication that works out from as little as just £75.00 per pack, an incredibly small price when it comes to your long-term health. Champix mimics the effect of nicotine on the body, reducing the urge to smoke and relieving withdrawal symptoms. It can also decrease the enjoyment you experience of smoking if you are still smoking whilst on the treatment.

David Beckham didn’t let asthma hold him back, why should you?

We are now in the 21^st century and we as humans have particularly made drastic forward strides over the previous 100 years in regards to social and technological development. For instance, our ever-increasing knowledge and understanding about ‘embarrassing’, yet genuine medical conditions such as erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation and sexually transmitted infections, has enabled better advice and treatment to be available for patients with these problems.

One health problem that you could be forgiven for assuming is not too ‘embarrassing’ is the lung condition asthma. Affecting an incredible 5.4 million people in the UK alone, it is more prevalent than you may first realise and worryingly it can strike anybody, at any age. Despite the fact that 1 in 12 adults and 1 in 11 children are suffering from asthma, to this day there is still a stigma and feeling of shame/embarrassment that is closely linked to the airway-constricting lung condition.

 By Regular Daddy (Own work)
 [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL],
via Wikimedia Commons

Why is this? One possible reason could be the strong desire to fit in with family members and friends. However this can lead to a lax attitude from sufferers who then do not properly manage their asthma and ignore symptoms of an imminent attack. There could also be the feeling of embarrassment of using their preventer or reliever inhaler in a public arena, after all nobody wants to draw attention to themselves do they? However, consider this – what is more important, one 5 second moment of ‘embarrassment’, or your health and being able to properly breathe? Surely a member of the public being forced to call an ambulance for you would heap a whole lot more attention on you than simply using that important asthma inhaler. Not only this, the chances are that nobody will be even paying attention to you! We live in an age whereby most adults are occupied with the social media and music facilities on their smartphones, and are too busy to pay attention to much else around them.

Alternatively, perhaps the embarrassment factor of asthma can be attributed to a lack of understanding of the problem from those who do not actually have asthma themselves. Medical Specialists advise sufferers to take control of their asthma today. Educate those around you about what it is like to live with the lung condition, share your experiences and how it impacts your life.

Bestowing this knowledge onto family, friends and co-workers will benefit both you and them. They will have more empathy and will be able to even help you in the event of a serious asthma attack. Showing people that you are not ashamed of having asthma and are fully in control of it means you do not need to feel self-conscious about having asthma or needing to use an inhaler in public.

After all, there are an increasing number of celebrities who are speaking out about their experiences with asthma.  More and more celebs are using their position of being a powerful role model to hammer home the clear message that asthma is absolutely nothing to feel humiliated about and that you should definitely not let it stop you enjoying your life. Why should you hide away at home and be miserable when some of your favourite heroes are still doing what they are passionate about and are not letting it hold them back. Here we look at some of the most famous asthma sufferers from the world of entertainment:

• David Beckham

Somewhat surprisingly given his high-profile image, football superstar David Beckham’s asthma was only first revealed to the public during half-time of a LA Galaxy match in November 2009. Beckham was snapped puffing on his preventative inhaler for the first time ever since he burst into Manchester United’s first team in the 1990s. It was later revealed he has suffered from asthma since childhood but never felt the need to publicly speak about it. His agent Simon Oliveira said at the time, “David has suffered with this since he was a young boy. He has never sought to make it public, but if it does inspire any sufferer to think they can achieve great things like many other sportsmen have done then so much the better.”

• Martin Scorsese

Oscar winning veteran film director Martin Scorsese has enjoyed a widely acclaimed career, spanning several decades. He is responsible for many films that are constantly being voted as some of the greatest films of all time including Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Departed. However, his glittering directorial career may not have come to fruition without asthma. Scorsese suffered from severe asthma whilst a young boy growing up in Queens, New York. The young Scorsese was therefore encouraged by his parents to spend more time in movie theatres instead of the sports field. It was here he developed his fierce passion for film-making, and the rest is history as they say!

• Alice Cooper

Known as ‘Vincent Damon Furnier’ when he is not on stage screaming down his microphone, 64-year-old US heavy metal singer Alice Cooper has never let his asthma hold him back from becoming one of the most idolised rock gods in the world, in a career that has lasted for over four decades and counting.  Cooper first suffered from asthma as a young child when growing up in Detroit, Michigan. To try and help his condition, Alice’s family made the decision to relocate to Phoenix, Arizona. These days, the rocker has his asthma firmly under control and has certainly not allowed the condition to prevent him from ‘rocking out!’

There are many more famous asthmatics than the three mentioned though, and many whom you are probably not aware even have the lung condition. Here are just a few more examples:

. Paul Scholes (Manchester United footballer)
. Frank Lampard (Chelsea FC & England footballer)
. Paula Radcliffe (English long distance runner)
. Rebecca Adlington (Team GB Olympic swimmer)
. Darren Gough (Former England cricketer)
. Charles Dickens (English writer during the Victorian period)
. John F. Kennedy (35^th President of the United States)
. Bill Clinton (42^nd President of the United States)
. Ricki Lake (American chat show host)
. Billy Joel (Singer)

As you can see, there have been many successful athletes, film directors, presidents and novelists who have all followed their heart and fulfilled their dreams. Do not let your asthma force you into living a reclusive day to day life. In fact, previous research has found that people living with a chronic illness such as asthma that have formed an extended social network, tend to be happier and successful in comparison to those who decide to retreat from social events. Reach out to others, do not be embarrassed to use that potentially life-saving inhaler, and most importantly – relax and enjoy life!

Olympian’s heavy training regimes could be causing asthma

With the London Summer Olympic Games now in full swing, an Australian study has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, investigating the impact of the training involved on the athletes and any connections to chronic lung conditions.

In a country such as Australia, whereby more than 2 million people suffer from the lung condition  asthma (about 1 in 10 adults and about 1 in 9 or 10 children),  clearly the study author based at the University of Western Australia realised it was a serious subject matter than warranted some analysis.

Sole author of the study, researcher Kenneth D. Fitch, underwent the painstaking task of pinpointing every single Olympic athlete suffering from asthma and airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) who had competed during the previous five Olympic Games (2002 to 2010), and who had been using an inhaled beta-2 agonist (IBA) such as Ventolin Evohaler.

Hyper-responsiveness occurs usually between 15 to 30 minutes after exposure to an allergen and is the beginning stage of an asthma attack. Together, asthma and AHR are the most prevailing of chronic conditions seen in Olympians, with a prevalence rate of around 8%. Because of this, the researchers wondered if it was down to the intense, rigorous physical training the athletes undergo to get into peak condition for the events.

In both the summer and winter Olympics, it was noted there are a high number of athletes suffering from asthma and AHR in those who are involved in endurance events. These are usually aerobic sports that demand quite an extended period of output for the athlete and include events such as triathlon, decathlon, rowing, cross-country skiing, running and bicycle races. In addition, it was discovered that lung problems are quite late onset in a high number of older competitors. This led the study author to believe that the gruelling years of training have played a part.

Fitch offered his thoughts on the study he had carried out, saying, “Inhaling polluted or cold air is considered an important factor which might explain the cause in some sports, but not in all.”
Clearly with two Olympic events occurring in contrasting seasons such as the summer and winter games, Fitch then considered the prospect that the two differing temperatures, environments, etc, involved in both the training and games themselves, could affect the athletes.

He commented, “The quality of inhaled air could be harmful to the airways, but does not cause the same effect in all sports.” Fitch highlighted that the prevalence of asthma and AHR is greater in the summer Olympics in those athletes who are training for endurance events. He also said that if there are a larger total of winter athletes suffering with asthma in comparison to their summer counterparts, this could be due to the fact there are a lower number of individual medals available in the endurance events.
One interesting point touched upon in Fitch’s study, was the fact that there are a good proportion of asthmatic competitors who are routinely beating their ‘healthier’ counterparts to medals. There are currently no links to asthma inhalers being directly responsible for increased performance levels, but Fitch suggests that further studies could be done to further analyse a potential correlation. His point could be valid as the hugely successful and acclaimed Manchester United footballer Paul Scholes is a notorious asthmatic, and is regularly seen puffing on his Salbutamol inhaler on the Old Trafford pitch.

Asthma is not just a condition that affects athletes however; in the UK alone there are 5.4 million people currently receiving treatment for asthma. This equates to 1 in every 12 adults and 1 in every 11 children.

Medical Specialists Pharmacy is at hand to help you with your asthma. We have great prices on all asthma treatment, including blue reliever inhalers such as Ventolin Evohaler and Sandoz Salbutamol. These inhalers are taken immediately to relieve asthma symptoms. They quickly relax the muscles surrounding the narrowed airways. This allows the airways to open wider, making it easier to breathe again. Relievers are essential in treating asthma attacks.

We also have brown preventer inhalers such as Qvar beclometasone and Qvar Easi-Breathe, both at low prices. Brown inhalers are used for asthma prevention and should not be used to relief shortness of breath or sudden asthma attacks. These inhalers control the swelling and inflammation in the airways and reduce the risk of severe asthma attacks. The preventers need to be used daily (usually in the morning and at night) and even when you are feeling well. As the protective effect of the steroid builds up, you will be less likely to be breathless or have asthma attacks.