Tea filters help smokers to quit

BEIJING, May 14 (UPI) -- Chinese researchers have developed a tea filter that may help people to quit smoking -- while smoking.

Zhao Baolu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says after 20 years his team has developed a tea filter to treat cigarette addiction that uses theanine to inhibit nicotine addiction.

The first study involved 100 male smokers. The researchers found the participants' average daily cigarette consumption decreased by about 43 percent after one month and 56.5 percent after using the tea filters for two months.

In the second trial, smokers decreased their smoking 48 percent after one month using the tea filters, 83 percent after two months and 91 percent after three months.

In addition, the average number of cigarettes consumed daily by study participants dropped from 24.5 per day to about 3 per day at the end of three months.

When a smoker smokes using the tea filter, the inhibitors of the nicotine receptor in the tea filter are absorbed through the respiratory system and travel to the brain where it produces cessation effects, the researchers say. The smokers get progressively less dependent on nicotine with each smoking cycle and eventually quit, the study says.

The findings are published in the journal Science of China.