Monday Quit-day
More than half of the country’s estimated 44 million adult smokers attempt to quit each year.
And, apparently, Mondays are the quit-day of choice.
A global analysis of weekly Google search terms discovered Mondays are when people most often query about quitting smoking, according to research recently published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal.
The analysis looked at search records from 2008 to 2012 in English, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The researchers found the volume of stop-smoking searches was 25 percent higher on Mondays than on the remaining days of the week combined, according to an NBC News article.
The English language searches for terms such as “help quit smoking” were 11 percent higher on Mondays than Wednesdays; about 67 percent higher than on Fridays; and about 145 percent greater on Mondays than on Saturdays, according to the article.
According to the researchers, about 600,000 smoking cessation queries were logged each day, with Mondays being about 150,000 queries higher.
Apparently, some good can come from Mondays.
Marissa Harshman
I'm the health reporter for The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Wash. I started at The Columbian -- my hometown newspaper -- in September 2009. Reach me at marissa.harshman@columbian.com or 360-735-4546.