Sunday, February 27, 2011
New Products coming soon!
Keep an eye on our website as we will be introducing new and exciting products soon. Thank you for your feedback as we continue to grow to meet your needs.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Nearly a year...No problems
It is hard to believe that it has been nearly a year since I gave up tobacco and started using a personal nicotine vaporizer (e-cig). I have really done well with it and have had absolutely no desire to smoke a real cigarette. In fact, I am quickly becoming one of those ex-smokers that can't stand the smell of a cigarette or the smell on the clothing and breath of those that do smoke. I work in a 23-floor office building and I can tell when a smoker has been in the elevator and I think back...that was me last March.
I do vape on my personal vaporizer and use it at my desk as well. I love it and will continue to use it. I am very happy that MystMasters.com provides a great product, it has held up great and believe me, I have put it through the test. I really love the fact that I have not had the urge to smoke despite a multitude of events that would have driven the regular cigarette smoker into a frenzy. Just want to let you know, this really works as a substitute for tobacco and it is a lot less hazardous to you and others around you.
I do vape on my personal vaporizer and use it at my desk as well. I love it and will continue to use it. I am very happy that MystMasters.com provides a great product, it has held up great and believe me, I have put it through the test. I really love the fact that I have not had the urge to smoke despite a multitude of events that would have driven the regular cigarette smoker into a frenzy. Just want to let you know, this really works as a substitute for tobacco and it is a lot less hazardous to you and others around you.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Electronic Cigarettes Show Promise as a Smoking Cessation Tool: New Study Finds Electronic Cigarettes More Effective Than NRT for Quitting Smoking
February 8, 2011
Contact: Dr. Michael Siegel (617-638-5167) mbsiegel@bu.edu)
Electronic Cigarettes Show Promise as a Smoking Cessation Tool:
New Study Finds Electronic Cigarettes More Effective Than NRT for Quitting Smoking
A new study being published online ahead of print today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reports that electronic cigarettes are a promising tool to help smokers quit, producing six-month abstinence rates that are better than those for traditional nicotine replacement products (NRT). In a six-month follow-up survey of 222 first-time purchasers of Blu electronic cigarettes, researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health found that 31.0% of respondents reported having quit smoking. This compares favorably to an average six-month abstinence rate of between 12% and 18% for NRT products. The authors conclude that electronic cigarettes are a promising method for smoking cessation. The study was led by Dr. Michael Siegel, Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.
The authors conducted an internet-based survey of a sample of first-time purchasers of Blu electronic cigarettes six months after the initial purchase. The primary findings were the following:
· 31.0% of the respondents reported having quit smoking at six-month follow-up.
· Of those who had quit smoking, 34.3% had discontinued the use of electronic cigarettes as well.
· 66.8% of respondents reported having reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked after using electronic cigarettes.
· 48.8% of respondents reported having quit smoking for a period of time after using electronic cigarettes.
· Among respondents using electronic cigarettes frequently (more than 20 times per day), the six-month smoking abstinence rate was 70.0%.
The study’s main limitation is the low response rate of 4.5%. It is possible that those who responded to the survey were more likely to have quit smoking than those who did not respond. Nevertheless, despite this limitation, the study authors believe that this is the best evidence to date on the effectiveness of electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation. They point out that this is the first survey which relied upon an unbiased sampling frame. Despite the limitation, the authors conclude that electronic cigarettes “hold promise as a smoking-cessation method and that they are worthy of further study using more rigorous research designs.”
Dr. Siegel suggested that a major reason for electronic cigarettes’ apparent effectiveness as smoking cessation method is the fact that these devices address both the pharmacologic and behavioral aspects of addiction to smoking: “While it is well-recognized that nicotine plays a role in smoking addiction, little attention has been given to the behavioral aspects of the addiction. It is the fact that these devices simulate the smoking experience which appears to make them effective as a smoking cessation tool.”
A number of anti-smoking groups have argued that electronic cigarettes should be removed from the market because they have not been shown to be effective for smoking cessation, and several states – including New York – are considering bans on electronic cigarettes. “This study suggests that electronic cigarettes are helping literally thousands of ex-smokers to remain off cigarettes,” Dr. Siegel stated.
“Banning this product would invariably result in thousands of ex-smokers returning to cigarette smoking. Removing electronic cigarettes from the market would substantially harm the public’s health.”
Co-authors of the study were Kerry L. Tanwar and Kathleen S. Wood, also of the Boston University School of Public Health.
Michael Siegel, MD, MPH
Professor
Department of Community Health Sciences
Boston University School of Public Health
801 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02118
617-638-5167
Electronic Cigarettes Show Promise as a Smoking Cessation Tool (full text of study)
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Survey: E-Cigarettes May Help Smokers Quit
Some E-Cig Smokers Say Devices Helped Them Quit Smoking Cigarettes
By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
Feb. 8, 2011 -- Can puffing electronic cigarettes help smokers quit smoking?
It sounds wrong. E-cigarettes should be banned, says a long list of prestigious anti-tobacco groups including the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. But a federal court has stymied FDA efforts to keep them off the U.S. market.
Meanwhile, more and more Americans are buying e-cigarettes. And many of them say they've used the nicotine vaporizers to quit smoking real cigarettes, according to a new survey by Michael B. Siegel, MD, MPH, of Boston University School of Public Health.
"If you look at the evidence, these are a lot safer than regular cigarettes -- and they are effective for some people in helping them quit smoking cigarettes," Siegel tells WebMD.
Siegel and colleagues emailed surveys to 5,000 first-time buyers of Blu brand e-cigarettes. Replies came back from 222 of them (4.5%), of whom 216 said they were smokers.
Six months after their purchase, 31% of these smokers said they'd quit cigarettes and two-thirds of them said they'd cut back on the number of cigarettes they smoked. A third of those who'd quit smoking also quit using e-cigarettes.
Those are pretty impressive numbers, as only about 18% of smokers who quit actually do so for at least six months. But Siegel notes that a survey like this doesn't prove anything. All it can do is hint that maybe, just maybe, e-cigarettes can do some good.
Tobacco policy expert Michel Eriksen, ScD, director of the Georgia State University institute of public health, agrees with Siegel on this point. Eriksen, who was not involved in the Siegel study, is a former director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health.
It might have value. "The potential for electronic cigarettes in being helpful in smoking cessation is real but unestablished yet," Eriksen says.
What's needed is proof from rigorous studies, Siegel says. Proof that e-cigarettes really do help people quit smoking. And proof that e-cigarettes can safely be used as quit-smoking devices.
That seems simple enough. But e-cigarettes' strange legal limbo clouds both issues.
FDA Frustrated in Banning E-Cigarettes
E-cigarettes use a battery-driven heater to vaporize liquid nicotine and flavoring from a small cartridge. To make the vapor visible, the cartridges also dispense propylene glycol (PEG), commonly used for theatrical "smoke." Users puff or inhale the vapor from a mouthpiece.
To almost everybody, that sounds like a device for delivering nicotine. But because the nicotine is ultimately derived from tobacco plants, a federal court has ruled that e-cigarettes are -- legally speaking -- tobacco products and not nicotine-delivery devices.
Since they are tobacco products, the court ruled, the FDA lacks authority to regulate e-cigarettes as drugs or devices as long as they are marketed without claims of therapeutic effect.
This means that companies distributing e-cigarettes in the U.S. cannot sell their products as smoking-cessation devices, even though that is the only public health reason for their use.
"It is a bizarro world where the potential of e-cigarettes is not being realized for legal reasons," Eriksen says.
"This is a great public health opportunity," Siegel says. "You have companies willing to market the product as a smoking-cessation device. But they are wary of doing it because don't want to run afoul of the FDA."
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the FDA's appeal.
"FDA is currently evaluating the D.C. Circuit's Jan. 24 ruling and considering its legal and regulatory options," FDA spokesman Jeff Ventura tells WebMD.
Are E-Cigarettes Safe for Smoking Cessation?
Are e-cigarettes safe? The FDA thinks not, for several reasons:
- E-cigarettes may get people, especially young people, addicted to nicotine, leading to cigarette use.
- The cartridge may contain toxic ingredients. One FDA study did find a small amount of an antifreeze-like chemical in at least one cartridge, but Siegel points to 16 other studies that find no such contamination. "Based on identified chemicals and quantities, there is basically not anything of alarm," he says.
- E-cigarettes have not been tested for efficacy and safety. Moreover, they are produced overseas with little oversight to ensure good manufacturing practices. "By being unregulated, there is no knowledge of the purity of what is being inhaled," Eriksen says. "It is a concern about the safety of this new behavior.
- E-cigarette cartridges contain varying amounts of nicotine, so users don't know what dosage they are getting.
In a recent article, University of California, Riverside researchers Anna Trichounian and Prue Talbot, PhD, note additional safety concerns, such as leaky cartridges that get nicotine on users' fingers and confusing or absent instructions.
But what if e-cigarettes are used by people who want to quit or to cut back on real cigarettes? Just about the only thing on which all sides agree is that cigarettes are extremely dangerous -- not just because they deliver nicotine, but because they burn and deliver highly toxic combustion by-products.
"Everyone would agree that e-cigarettes are safer than traditional smoking," Eriksen says. "That does not mean they are safe. There may be other risks unknown at this point."
Siegel argues that if e-cigarettes are less harmful than real cigarettes, then people who smoke them instead of real cigarettes are reducing the harm they do to themselves. He points out that nicotine replacement patches and nicotine gum aren't totally safe, but that many people keep on using them even after they've stopped smoking cigarettes.
"If it's a choice between smoking and e-cigarettes, you are much better off with the e-cigs," Siegel says. "Even though this looks like smoking, it is a lot better than using regular cigarettes."
Can E-Cigarettes Help People Quit or Cut Back on Smoking?
Many e-cigarette users say the devices have helped them quit smoking, or at least cut back.
That's what scientists call "anecdotal evidence," i.e., not a proven fact. To remedy the gap in scientific evidence, Siegel is currently studying a group of e-cigarette users to see whether they're quitting or cutting back on real cigarettes.
However, only an expensive clinical trial could really determine how safe and effective e-cigarettes are for smokers who want to quit. U.S. e-cigarette distributors may be making money, but not that kind of money. Perhaps uniquely for this kind of product, they are not linked to tobacco or pharmaceutical companies. If there's going to be a clinical trial, there are no deep pockets to pay for it.
And why e-cigarettes? Why not nicotine gum, nicotine patches, or nicotine inhalers -- all of which have won FDA approval?
"The reason they seem to be so effective is because they simulate the physical act of smoking," Siegel says. "Smoking is a lot more than pharmacologic addition. If you talk to smokers, they will tell you there is more to it. The act of smoking, holding onto it, going through the motions, doing the inhaling -- even the social aspects of it, are all preserved with e-cigarettes."
"The e-cigarette has benefit of offering smoking behavior as well as nicotine delivery," Eriksen agrees.
And here's a compelling hint from Siegel's study. Among smokers who puffed e-cigarettes more than 20 times a day for six months, 70% said they'd quit smoking cigarettes.
"The promise e-cigarettes have needs to be explored objectively, and rational policies need to be developed," Eriksen says. "If they turn out to be helpful in getting people to quit smoking they should be made available for that purpose."
The Siegel article was published Feb. 8 online ahead of print by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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Interest in E-cigarettes Is High, but Safety and Effectiveness Unknown
By Milly Dawson, Contributing Writer
Research Source: American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Health Behavior News Service
February 8, 2011
Electronic cigarettes are drawing heavy media and marketing attention, and while a new study finds that consumer interest also runs high, a companion study underscores that e-cigarettes’ ability to help smokers cut down or quit is unknown.
E-cigarettes run on batteries and look like real cigarettes, cigars or even ballpoint pens. Users inhale doses of nicotine or other toxins found in tobacco in vapor form. Because e-cigarettes do not contain tobacco or create smoke, manufacturers are marketing them both as a safer alternative to smoking and as a cessation aid.
Of the two studies appearing online and in the April issue American Journal of Preventive Medicine, one shows that consumer interest in e-cigarettes currently is much higher than interest in more traditional products.
“Although we don’t know much about the health effects of e-cigarettes, they are by far the most popular smoking alternatives and cessation products on the market,” said lead author John Ayers, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
His group monitored English-language Google searches in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia from January 2008 until September 2010. They compared searches for e-cigarettes with searches for a nicotine lozenge and for cessation products like nicotine patches, nicotine gum and the drug Chantix (varenicline).
Between July 2008 and February 2010, searches about e-cigarettes increased sharply in all nations, especially in the United States. “We found that e-cigarettes were more popular in U.S. states with stronger tobacco control,” Ayers said. This, he said, suggests that consumers are using e-cigarettes to either bypass smoking restrictions or to quit when faced with restrictions.
To see if searches on e-cigarettes led to sales, his group monitored online shopping searches. Shopping search trends mirrored informational search trends, they found.
In the second study, Michael Siegel, M.D., looked at e-cigarettes’ effectiveness as smoking cessation aids using an online survey. Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, obtained 5,000 email addresses of people who had made a first-time purchase in 2009 from an e-cigarette distributor.
Of the 222 consumers replied to the survey, 216 were qualified to participate. Nearly 67 percent of these respondents said they reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked since using e-cigarettes and 49 percent reported that they had quit smoking for an unspecified time after trying e-cigarettes.
Siegel acknowledged and other smoking cessation experts have said that it is possible that smokers who had greater success cutting down or quitting were more likely to respond. This would bias the results, which already relied on a small fraction of those contacted.
“We don’t know anything about the 95 percent of the people who deleted the email,” said Jennifer Unger, Ph.D. “Maybe they’re still smoking the same number of cigarettes. Maybe they are using even more nicotine than before because they’re smoking ordinary cigarettes and e-cigarettes.” Unger, with the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at the University of Southern California, has no affiliation with either study.
“Neither of these two studies provides scientific evidence that e-cigarettes are effective in helping people to quit,” said John Pierce, Ph.D., a professor of cancer prevention at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego. “It’s not clear to me that e-cigarettes aren’t harmful in some way. It’s not clear to the FDA, either.”
In Sept. 2010, the Food and Drug Administration cited five e-cigarette distributors for “unsubstantiated claims and poor manufacturing practices,” according to an agency release. In January 2011, the FDA moved unsuccessfully to block e-cigarette importation.
E-cigarettes run on batteries and look like real cigarettes, cigars or even ballpoint pens. Users inhale doses of nicotine or other toxins found in tobacco in vapor form. Because e-cigarettes do not contain tobacco or create smoke, manufacturers are marketing them both as a safer alternative to smoking and as a cessation aid.
Of the two studies appearing online and in the April issue American Journal of Preventive Medicine, one shows that consumer interest in e-cigarettes currently is much higher than interest in more traditional products.
“Although we don’t know much about the health effects of e-cigarettes, they are by far the most popular smoking alternatives and cessation products on the market,” said lead author John Ayers, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
His group monitored English-language Google searches in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia from January 2008 until September 2010. They compared searches for e-cigarettes with searches for a nicotine lozenge and for cessation products like nicotine patches, nicotine gum and the drug Chantix (varenicline).
Between July 2008 and February 2010, searches about e-cigarettes increased sharply in all nations, especially in the United States. “We found that e-cigarettes were more popular in U.S. states with stronger tobacco control,” Ayers said. This, he said, suggests that consumers are using e-cigarettes to either bypass smoking restrictions or to quit when faced with restrictions.
To see if searches on e-cigarettes led to sales, his group monitored online shopping searches. Shopping search trends mirrored informational search trends, they found.
In the second study, Michael Siegel, M.D., looked at e-cigarettes’ effectiveness as smoking cessation aids using an online survey. Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, obtained 5,000 email addresses of people who had made a first-time purchase in 2009 from an e-cigarette distributor.
Of the 222 consumers replied to the survey, 216 were qualified to participate. Nearly 67 percent of these respondents said they reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked since using e-cigarettes and 49 percent reported that they had quit smoking for an unspecified time after trying e-cigarettes.
Siegel acknowledged and other smoking cessation experts have said that it is possible that smokers who had greater success cutting down or quitting were more likely to respond. This would bias the results, which already relied on a small fraction of those contacted.
“We don’t know anything about the 95 percent of the people who deleted the email,” said Jennifer Unger, Ph.D. “Maybe they’re still smoking the same number of cigarettes. Maybe they are using even more nicotine than before because they’re smoking ordinary cigarettes and e-cigarettes.” Unger, with the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at the University of Southern California, has no affiliation with either study.
“Neither of these two studies provides scientific evidence that e-cigarettes are effective in helping people to quit,” said John Pierce, Ph.D., a professor of cancer prevention at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California at San Diego. “It’s not clear to me that e-cigarettes aren’t harmful in some way. It’s not clear to the FDA, either.”
In Sept. 2010, the Food and Drug Administration cited five e-cigarette distributors for “unsubstantiated claims and poor manufacturing practices,” according to an agency release. In January 2011, the FDA moved unsuccessfully to block e-cigarette importation.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Web video - click to land
Check out this great little video that allows you to click on the item and go directly to the web page for the item details and to purchase. Great little window...
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