Breezy with sunshine splashing through an overcast sky this early Tuesday afternoon on California’s north coast — beautiful day, though.
According to the NWS, a ‘strong frontal boundary‘ is expected tomorrow night bringing some decent rain/snow into the region on Friday.
Sunshine for the weekend and supposedly for awhile.

If you drink coffee, trying to quit smoking could be harder…

(Illustration: ‘Last Cigarette,’ by Nancy Lehenbauer Marshall, found here).

Despite all the reported health benefits to caffeine lately, from cancer to energy levels, apparently the combination of coffee and cigarette smoking is not a happy combo.
They go so well together, though, ‘coffee and cigarettes’ is more than just a movie title, it’s a way of life. I’ve been doing the two every morning for decades, and will probably continue, but it’s not easy.

If you’re got the right make-up, drinking coffee while trying to stop smoking will be a bitch.
Via Meta-Science at the end of last month:

Genetic factors thus explain most of the association between smoking and caffeine consumption.
These findings suggest that quitting smoking may be more difficult for heavy caffeine consumers, given their genetic susceptibility.

Cigarettes operate as a stop on caffeine. Trying to quit smoking? Part of the problem is nicotine and caffeine cessation and there-in lies the rub:

Cigarette smokers metabolize caffeine more rapidly than nonsmokers.
This means that smokers have to drink more coffee to get the same level of caffeine in their blood.
It’s this difference that can cause problems for those who have just quit smoking.
Researchers in San Francisco found that when ex-smokers drank their usual amount of coffee, the levels of caffeine in their blood rose 250 percent over previous levels because they were metabolizing it more slowly.
These high levels could cause some ex-smokers to start smoking again.
The higher levels of caffeine can make a person jittery causing an ex-smoker to use a cigarette to calm their nerves.
Nicotine is also part stimulant, and nicotine side effects can cause insomnia and withdrawal symptoms similar to caffeine.
Smoking may also create other sleep disturbances.
Research has shown that smokers spend more time sleeping lightly and less time in deep healthy sleep than non-smokers.

There’s goodness here, too. Smoking with coffee intake, though, can seemingly aid handling cigarette-induced cancer:

When compared with smokers who drank coffee regularly, non-coffee drinkers experienced twice as many cytotoxic (or cell damaging) effects directly associated with using tobacco.
In addition, while coffee-drinking smokers were three times more liable to be diagnosed with bladder cancer as coffee-drinking nonsmokers, smokers who didn’t consume coffee at all were up to seven times more likely to be affected by the same cancer as nonsmokers.

Java and a smoke, a way to stay whatever…