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News of Hope email. |
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Welcome
to our March, 2005 "News
of Hope" newsletter!
For those
of you still covered in snow,
spring has sprung in Southern
California! (Pack your bags
and come west for a visit!)
As our trees
start to bud, the azalea bushes
are flowering and the impatiens
blooming, our spring theme at
the LEGACY OF HOPE office is
"How to Protect our Teens!"
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February
and March thus far brought rewarding
opportunities to bring LEGACY
OF HOPE to The Betty Ford Center
Alcohol/Addictions Awareness Hour
- a monthly community education
outreach. From teens to grandparents,
a new light of hope flickered
as a deeper appreciation of the
challenges and even torments of
adolescence today were revealed.
Then I returned for a fourth time
to La Vista Continuation High
School to present as well as hold
a support group discussion with
the amazing PALS - Peer Assistance
Leaders. (See center photo)These
young people arrived at La Vista
High School with low to no motivation,
severly low self-esteem, and troubled
pasts from teen parenting to gang
banging. Ms. Gayle Smith, one
of the infinitely dedicated peer
helping advisors in the schools,
pulled a rag-tag band of 30+ high-risk
youth into a tight-knit family
of mutual support and peer educators
that are enthused about themselves,
school, and graduation in the
upcoming months. If you know
little about Peer Helping, it
provides a safe place for teens
to share stressful personal
concerns and refocus on being
of service to peers and younger,
needy kids unique to most school
classroom environments. The
support and positive, gratitude
focus of PAL keeps these kids
in school until they believe
in themselves and strive on
their own newly-acquired hope
and self-worth.
In my time with the La Vista
PALs, we shared the day's "Happy
and Crappy" Report (excuse
my French!). Around the circle
we went as each PAL shared what
made them happy that day and
what had been a bummer. One
PAL gal shared that she had
been woken up at 4am by a phone
call from her mother, drunk
and berating her for a plethora
of past mistakes - real and
imagined.
Knowing she had the PALs to
talk to who understood her circumstance
had gotten her up and to school
where she now had put the incident
behind her and was actively
participating in class. |
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Lastly, the Health Services Association
of Community Colleges invited
Ken to provide a stress management
workshop and me to share LEGACY
OF HOPE with the Directors of
Health Services on our California
Community College campuses. Another
devoted group of professionals,
in this case, highly-degreed nursing
professionals, shared the challenges
of reaching youth including young
adults at community colleges who
are carrying family baggage that
drives them to alcohol, drugs,
tobacco, dangerous sexual choices,
depression and violence.
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As we are all well aware, a
big challenge today is the cutting
of funds to health services,
potentially to Safe and Drug
Free Schools, and vocational
programs. Let's all keep up
our political influence on senators
and representatives to keep
the essential funding flowing.
With that, we invite you to
a TOBACCO FOCUSED NEWSLETTER.
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| Photo
of Patti Smith, Director Health
Services Riverside Community College,
Bob Richards, Susie and Ken Vanderlip |
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Youth Smoking Impairs Thinking
and Memory |
| Nicotine
has been shown to sharpen concentration
among adults, but the opposite
may be true to young smokers,
according to researchers at Yale
University. A
study of 41 adolescent smokers
and 32 nonsmokers found that
the smokers performed worse
in tests of working memory,
used when keeping in mind and
manipulating information.
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| Young
male smokers performed especially
poorly in tests of selective
and divided attention, and memory
was disrupted further when study
subjects stopped smoking.
"Adolescent smokers were
found to have impairments in
accuracy of working performance,"
Jacobsen said. "These findings
underscore the importance of
efforts aimed at preventing
smoking initiation in adolescents.
They also show adolescents who
are trying to quit smoking may
need additional educational
support."
-From the
journal of Biological Psychiatry |
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| Children's
Lower Test Scores Linked to Secondhand
Smoke |
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New
research concludes that children
exposed to secondhand smoke
had lower standardized test
scores in reading, math, and
problem-solving.
The study included 4,400 children.
Exposure to secondhand smoke
was determined by testing for
cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine
in the blood. |
Researchers
determined that children exposed
to the least amount of secondhand
smoke scored an average of seven
points higher in standardized
math and reading tests, compared
to children exposed to high
levels of smoke. Children with
the lowest environmental tobacco
exposure also scored better
on two types of reasoning tests.
The findings
are in line with earlier research
that found that tobacco exposure
seemed to be related to impaired
intellectual development.
-From
USA Today
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| Smoking
Causes 11 Types of Cancer |
| A
50-year study concludes that smoking
causes at least 11 types of cancer
in men, with lung cancer the top
killer. Researchers
looked at mortality data on
30,000 male British doctors,
focusing on the 34,439 who first
identified themselves as smokers
in 1951.The researchers found
that heavy smokers were 25 times
more likely to die of lung cancer
than their nonsmoking peers.
Risk of dying of lung cancer
increased with the number of
cigarettes smoked, with heavy
smokers three times more likely
to get lung cancer than light
smokers (those who smoked fewer
than 15 cigarettes per day).
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Other
cancers linked to smoking included
malignancies of the esophagus,
bladder, larynx, pancreas, and
rectal, nasal, and nasopharyngeal
cancers. However, colon and
prostate cancer appeared to
be unrelated to smoking.
-From
the British Journal of Cancer |
| Reduce
Smoking by Reducing Stress - Consider
DE-STRESS FOR SUCCESS |
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Fewer
Kids Would Smoke if States Spent
More on Prevention
Youth
smoking rates in the U.S. would
be up to 14 percent lower today
if states had followed federal
recommendations on spending for
tobacco prevention and cessation,
researchers say. "If
states had spent just the minimum
amount recommended by [the federal
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention], youth smoking
nationally would have been between
3 and 14 percent lower than
was observed during the 10-year
period that we examined,"
said University of Illinois
at Chicago economist John Tauras.
"Furthermore, with so many
states now making big cuts in
tobacco control as a way of
dealing with budget shortfalls,
what our study predicts is that
a substantial decrease in funding
will lead to a significant increase
in adolescent smoking." |
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The
authors pointed out that the
tobacco industry spends 14 times
more marketing tobacco than
states do to try to curb consumption.
Only three states have spent
the minimum amounts recommended
to CDC for tobacco prevention.
In 2005, states will receive
nearly $20 billion from the
1998 nationwide tobacco settlement
and cigarette taxes, but spend
just $1.6 billion on tobacco
control.
-From the American Journal
of Public Health |
| VALUABLE
RESOURCES FOR HELP, PREVENTION,
INFO |
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LEGACY
ACCEPTS ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
Making room for new book 52
WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR TEEN:
On Sale this
month -- TEEN POWER AND BEYOND
book!
Retail - $16.95 *** March Special:
$10.00 ***
plus tax (in CA), shipping and
handling
Full
LEGACY OF HOPE Show on DVD -
$25.00
|
| ORDER
YOUR PRODUCTS NOW!! |
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| Smoking
Near Kids Triples Cancer Risk |
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Parents
who smoke around their young children
more than triple their kids' risk
of getting cancer later in life,
a new study concludes. The
study found that children exposed
to their parents secondhand
smoke on a daily basis also
have an elevated risk of developing
other respiratory problems compared
to kids growing up in a smoke-free
home. |
| The
study looked at 123,000 people
in 10 European nations, tracking
them for an average of seven years.
Cancer
risk was highest among former
smokers, as opposed to those
who never smoked. Researchers
suggested that cumulative exposure
to cigarette smoke-regardless
of the source-raised the risk
of getting cancer.
-From
the British Medical Journal
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| Sexual
Abuse in Women Related to Smoking,
Smoking More Deadly For Women |
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new
Mayo Clinic study finds that women
who were sexually abused as children
are far more likely to smoke as
adolescents and adults.
While fewer
women overall are smoking, the
study found that women with
a history of sexual abuse were
four times more likely to smoke
than those who were not abused,
and were twice as likely to
have started smoking prior to
age 14.
Researchers
gathered anonymous surveys from
296 women ages 18 to 74 for
the study. Childhood sexual
abuse was defined as sexual
fondling, attempted rape, or
rape before age 17.
The authors
said that a history of sexual
abuse was a better predictor
of future smoking than more
common variables like income,
age, and ethnicity, and said
victims may start smoking as
a coping mechanism. |
| In
addition, smoking cigarettes cuts
an average of 11 years off the
life expectancy of women, compared
to three years for men, according
to a new study from the Netherlands.
Lung-cancer
cases among women have risen
over the past few decades in
step with an increase in female
smoking. "Women who died
from long cancer were younger
than men who died from the same
cause. This means the harmful
effects of smoking are more
serious for women than for men,"
the study concluded.
-From
the journal Addictive Behaviors
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| Secondhand
Smoke Harm Babies' Lungs, Parents
Overlook Smoking in Protecting
Asthmatic Children |
| New
research finds that the lung health
of babies is compromised before
birth from exposure from air pollution,
and after birth through exposure
to secondhand smoke. "Pollutants
in our cities can affect children
very early, prenatally, and
at age one or age two, even
before a child has asthma,"
said lead study author Dr. Rachel
Miller. |
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The
pollutants stem from several sources,
including automobile exhaust,
home heating systems, and tobacco.
The researchers speculated that
pollutants and tobacco smoke stimulate
the developing immune system.
While
parents of children with asthma
take many steps to change environmental
factors to improve their child's
breathing, a study shows that
they often overlook cigarette
smoking in the house.
The study
found that 25 percent of the
parents surveyed had a smoker
who lived in the same house
as the child with asthma, but
did nothing to ban smoking inside
the house.
-From Health
Day News and the Journal of
Allergy and Clinical Immunology |
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| If
you would like to know more about
how LEGACY OF HOPE impacts positive
change in teens and adults, please
contact us with the link below.
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information useful. Help us
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with subject subscribe. |
| CONTACT
SUSIE NOW!! |
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| "Always
bear in mind that your own resolution
to success is more important than
any other one thing."
-Abraham
Lincoln
Wishing you well,
All of us at LEGACY
Susie Vanderlip - Ken Vanderlip
- Veronica Garcia
800-707-1977
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