Smoking does more than hurt your health; it does a number on your wallet, as well. A pack of cigarettes now costs more than $5 on average—with some states tacking on additional taxes that raise the price even more. In New York City, local taxes have pushed the cost of a pack to about $10. Even if you don’t smoke yourself, cigarettes may affect your finances: Between 1997 and 2001, smoking was responsible for $167 billion in annual health-care costs and lost productivity in the U.S. alone. Sure, quitting can also be costly, depending on which route you take. But once you kick your daily...

Millions of patients face losing NHS care as bosses prepare to axe treatments to make £20billion of savings by 2014, a top doctor has warned. Among procedures being targeted by health trusts are hernias, joint replacements, ear and nose procedures, varicose veins and cataract surgery. Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, warned NHS bosses wanted ‘wholesale reductions in budgets’. He said primary care trusts – which commission care – are already compiling lists of ‘low value’ operations that would no longer...

By Fiona Macrae Forgetting an unhappy love affair or a traumatic accident could soon be as easy as popping a pill. At the risk of being accused of developing a pill for everything, scientists have discovered a drug that helps numb the pain of bad memories by flooding the mind with feelings of security and safety. And the technique could one day be used to cure phobia sufferers of their fears, help soldiers recover from the horrors of battle or allow accident victims to put their trauma behind them. To test the effectiveness of the drug, researchers created bad memories by giving mice electric shocks...

By Daily Mail Reporter Health chiefs have wasted £26million paying a private firm for operations that never took place. The NHS signed a £70million contract with South African company Netcare to carry out 9,000 operations a year at the Greater Manchester Surgical Centre in Trafford. However, fewer than two thirds of the operations ever took place. But under the terms of the deal with Netcare – which ended last month – the NHS had to pay for the lot. The amount of money wasted is enough to pay the salaries of 1,000 nurses for a year. Paul Mainwaring, from Greater Manchester patients’...

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2010) — Cancer patients who’ve been told to rest and avoid exercise can — and should — find ways to be physically active both during and after treatment, according to new national guidelines. Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a member of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, will present these guidelines at an educational session at the 2010 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, aimed at making cancer exercise rehabilitation programs as common...

By Melinda Dodd The Cleveland Clinic announced a possible breakthrough—but is a breast cancer vaccine too good to be true? It’s something generations of women could only dream about: a cancer vaccine that keeps malignant cells from taking hold in the breast, and stops tumors in their tracks. Announced earlier this week by the Cleveland Clinic, the proposed breast-cancer vaccine contains a small amount of alpha-lactalbumin, a protein that researchers say is present in the majority of breast tumors. The vaccine is intended to create an immune response in your body that should help you beat...

Many people depend on a morning cup of coffee as a wake-up call for the brain. But the effect could be all in the mind, according to new research. Tests show the mental stimulation for which caffeine is famous may be nothing more than an illusion – with the body simply compensating for overnight withdrawal symptoms. A new study suggests coffee drinkers may actually be better off without their habitual morning mug as it raises the risk of anxiety and high blood pressure. Altogether 379 people who abstained from caffeine for 16 hours before drinking either caffeine or a placebo (dummy drink)...

Sam Lister, Health Editor A simple blood test that can detect a cancer before a tumour has taken shape has been developed by British scientists. Due to be introduced in Britain by early next year, it is described as offering a “paradigm shift” in cancer diagnosis. The test is the first to identify accurately the signals sent out by a person’s immune system as a cancer germinates. Research suggests that such signals can be detected up to five years before a tumour is spotted, priming doctors to intervene at the earliest moment when a solid cancer appears. Scientists described the test, devised...

Forceps, needles, fragments of a bone drill and swabs are among the objects left inside Scottish patients during operations, it has emerged. Some patients also had organs punctured accidentally while in operating theatres, the Press Association found. Scotland’s largest health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said six patients left hospital with swabs inside their body since January 2008. The NHS board said the checks system it has in place failed on those occasions. The hospitals involved are Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Southern General Hospital, Stobhill Hospital, Victoria Infirmary...

“Eating lots of nuts and olive oil may be harmful for some people,” reported the Daily Mirror. The Daily Telegraph said that some heart attack patients may have genetic mutations that mean “the diet increases their risk of suffering further cardiac problems”. The newspapers’ emphasis on the relevance of the Mediterranean diet here is misleading. The study did not look at diet and HDL levels, but attempted to define groups of people who are at higher risk of having a heart attack. Researchers analysed the risk of heart-attack patients having a second heart attack. Those...