Teens who start smoking could smoke more over their lifetimes– which may be made shorter as a result. It’s a good reason to quit.

But teen smoking expert Dr.Yvonne Hunt of the National Institutes of Health says quit programs are often designed for adults, and teens are not little adults – they think and talk differently, and have different smoking patterns.

So Hunt and her coworkers developed a tool to help teens quit. Teens spend a lot of time texting, so SmokefreeTXT sends six weeks of teen-friendly texts to their cellphones. Teens can register at teen.smokefree.gov.

A recent blog talked about the importance of support women in the STEM fields.    A good example is the new partnership between our University and the U of Chicago:

Northwestern University and the University of Chicago have launched the Chicago Collaboration for Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, a three-year effort to enhance the recruitment and advancement of women faculty members in those fields.

National Science Foundation (NSF) —which is the leading source of Federal grants for many fields of basic research crucial to US technology development and job creation—is also calling upon universities and research institutes to adopt similar policies for their employees and grantees.

Women typically find it harder to lose weight and inches than men.  This, in part, is due to the fact that  men have more lean muscle mass and a higher resting metabolic rate. Another issue that makes weigh loss challenging for females:   women store fat differently from men–more of it goes to their thighs, buttocks, and hips, where it can be harder to shed.  Finally, female hormones promote the storage of calories as fat, and fat takes up more space than muscle.

As the obesity rate keeps rising, especially among teenage girls, we need to press for more sex based research on exercise, diet, hormones and metabolism!