Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

How to Give up Smoking by Drinking Coffee

1990; Elsevier BV; Volume: 97; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1378/chest.97.1.254b

ISSN

1931-3543

Autores

Darcy Roberto Andrade Lima, Roseane Maria Maia Santos, Amaro Manhaes Crespo Santos, C N David, Geraldo de Noronha Andrade,

Tópico(s)

Coffee research and impacts

Resumo

Cigarette smoking is presently the single most important preventable environmental factor contributing to illness, disability, loss of productivity and death all over the world, and is the main cause of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in both men and women. Giving up the habit is the only way to prevent the major health problems caused by smoking.It has been shown that drinking decaffeinated coffee vs regular coffee leads to an increase in the number of cigarettes smoked by normal volunteers.1Kozlowski LT Effects of caffeine consumption on nicotine consumption.Psychopharmacology. 1976; 47: 165-168Crossref PubMed Scopus (50) Google Scholar In order to test the hypothesis that, when a smoker drinks a strong coffee with high caffeine content, the number of cigarettes smoked daily would decrease, we studied 30 adult voluntary smokers for four weeks, according to the Helsinki Declaration. They were allowed to smoke freely and were given—in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled (decaffeinated coffee) study—three cups of coffee with high and low caffeine content for one week with a two-day wash-out period. Blood caffeine levels were measured weekly by HPLC2Robertson D Frolich JC Carr RK Watson J Hollisfield JW Shand DG Oates JA Effects of caffeine on plasma renin activity, catecholamines and blood pressure.N Engl J Med. 1978; 298: 184-186Crossref Scopus (601) Google Scholar two hours after the informed coffee ingestion in order to evaluate compliance with the protocol.It can be seen in Table 1 that there was a significant decrease (p<0.05, Student's t-test) in the number of total cigarettes smoked during the intake of the strong coffee. It seems that the smoker exchanges—at least in part—nicotine for caffeine, as he is looking for central nervous system stimulation, facilitation of memory and attention, prevention of sadness and depression (effects that both substances have.)3Henningfield JE Miyasato K Jasinki DR Cigarette smokers self-administer intravenous nicotine.Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 1983; 19: 887-890Crossref PubMed Scopus (132) Google Scholar,4Jaffe JH Drug addiction and drug abuse.in: Goodman Gilman Gilman AG The pharmacological basis of therapeutics. 7th ed. MacMillan Pub Co, New York1985: 532-581Google Scholar On the other side, coffee at this dosage seem remarkably safe during chronic consumption,5Curatolo PW Robertson D The health consequences of caffeine.Ann Int Med. 1983; 98: 641-653Crossref Scopus (217) Google Scholar,6Ashton CH Caffeine and health (editorial).Br Med J. 1987; 295: 1293-1994Crossref Scopus (16) Google Scholar at least compared to smoking. This data, however, could be greatly improved by doing thiocyanate and nicotine assays in smokers' blood. That was not done in the preliminary study as we wanted to test only the possible change on the number of cigarettes smoked, which is related to the development of lung cancer.7US Department of Health and Human Services. The health consequences of smoking: cancer. A report of the Surgeon General. Bethesda: DHHS(PHS) 1982; publication no 82-50179Google Scholar Cigarette smoking is presently the single most important preventable environmental factor contributing to illness, disability, loss of productivity and death all over the world, and is the main cause of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in both men and women. Giving up the habit is the only way to prevent the major health problems caused by smoking. It has been shown that drinking decaffeinated coffee vs regular coffee leads to an increase in the number of cigarettes smoked by normal volunteers.1Kozlowski LT Effects of caffeine consumption on nicotine consumption.Psychopharmacology. 1976; 47: 165-168Crossref PubMed Scopus (50) Google Scholar In order to test the hypothesis that, when a smoker drinks a strong coffee with high caffeine content, the number of cigarettes smoked daily would decrease, we studied 30 adult voluntary smokers for four weeks, according to the Helsinki Declaration. They were allowed to smoke freely and were given—in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled (decaffeinated coffee) study—three cups of coffee with high and low caffeine content for one week with a two-day wash-out period. Blood caffeine levels were measured weekly by HPLC2Robertson D Frolich JC Carr RK Watson J Hollisfield JW Shand DG Oates JA Effects of caffeine on plasma renin activity, catecholamines and blood pressure.N Engl J Med. 1978; 298: 184-186Crossref Scopus (601) Google Scholar two hours after the informed coffee ingestion in order to evaluate compliance with the protocol. It can be seen in Table 1 that there was a significant decrease (p<0.05, Student's t-test) in the number of total cigarettes smoked during the intake of the strong coffee. It seems that the smoker exchanges—at least in part—nicotine for caffeine, as he is looking for central nervous system stimulation, facilitation of memory and attention, prevention of sadness and depression (effects that both substances have.)3Henningfield JE Miyasato K Jasinki DR Cigarette smokers self-administer intravenous nicotine.Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 1983; 19: 887-890Crossref PubMed Scopus (132) Google Scholar,4Jaffe JH Drug addiction and drug abuse.in: Goodman Gilman Gilman AG The pharmacological basis of therapeutics. 7th ed. MacMillan Pub Co, New York1985: 532-581Google Scholar On the other side, coffee at this dosage seem remarkably safe during chronic consumption,5Curatolo PW Robertson D The health consequences of caffeine.Ann Int Med. 1983; 98: 641-653Crossref Scopus (217) Google Scholar,6Ashton CH Caffeine and health (editorial).Br Med J. 1987; 295: 1293-1994Crossref Scopus (16) Google Scholar at least compared to smoking. This data, however, could be greatly improved by doing thiocyanate and nicotine assays in smokers' blood. That was not done in the preliminary study as we wanted to test only the possible change on the number of cigarettes smoked, which is related to the development of lung cancer.7US Department of Health and Human Services. The health consequences of smoking: cancer. A report of the Surgeon General. Bethesda: DHHS(PHS) 1982; publication no 82-50179Google Scholar

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