Friday, January 30, 2009

Rural paper tackles health and lifestyle issues

After her husband's death from cancer in 1999, Linda Bell Warren of Big Stone Gap, Va., has preached the word about smoking and the health problems that accompany it. A story about her crusade begins a weekly series in The Post, the local weekly newspaper, about health and personal lifestyle decisions.

Editor Ida Holyfield said in a note atop the Warren story, "When it comes to our health, how much of our situation can be linked to lifestyle choices, and what should we be doing to help ourselves and our loved ones? This week, a widow shares her story of the toll cigarette smoking took on her husband. Next week’s story deals with suicide prevention and how loved ones of those who have committed suicide cope."

Tal Warren "said that without question, cigarettes took his life. He smoked two packs a day for 30 years,” Holyfield writes. Although Warren went several years without any major health problems and even quit smoking cold turkey in 1987, his history with cigarettes took a turn in 1998. Only eighteen months later, he passed away in the night, another victim of smoking.

“I’m a retired chemical engineer by training, and I’ve got a very analytical mind," Linda Warren told Holyfield. "Cigarettes cost you a whole lot more than the price of the pack you buy. They can cost you your life.” (Read more; subscription required)

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