When your parents were young,
people could buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere even in
hospitals! Ads for cigarettes were all over the place. Today we're more aware
about how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in
almost all public places and cigarette companies are no longer allowed to
advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines.
Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer,
emphysema, and heart disease; that it can shorten your life by 10 years or
more; and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands of dollars a year. So how
come people are still lighting up? The answer, in a word, is addiction.
Once You Start, It's Hard to Stop
Smoking is a hard habit to break because tobacco contains nicotine,
which is highly addictive. Like heroin or other addictive drugs, the body and
mind quickly become so used to the nicotine in cigarettes that a person needs
to have it just to feel normal.
People start smoking for a variety of different reasons. Some think it
looks cool. Others start because their family members or friends smoke.
Statistics show that about 9 out of 10 tobacco users start before they're 18
years old. Most adults who started smoking in their teens never expected to
become addicted. That's why people say it's just so much easier to not start
smoking at all.
The
Reasons Behind Smoking
There are very many reasons to it but in
this article we will look over the biggest reason in today's world and that is
to release STRESS. So what is stress, can we get rid of it through smoking, if
not then how can we get rid of it, lets look at the reason behind smoking.
Stress - What is it?
Stress is the result of feeling helpless,
incapable to perform, not able to meet the deadlines and pressurized. Stress
could be due to any reason, be it down to pressure at the office, home or even
a bad financial situation, or it could be due to anything your not happy with.
Can smoking get rid of it?
Can we get rid of stress through smoking?
Will smoking make us relax and even feel better about life? Well lets look at
it like this, will smoking get you out of that bad financial situation or do
your work for you at the office or even ease things at home. I don't think so!
Then why carry on smoking, it's not going to cure the problems but just ease it
for a few minutes at the very most.
So what do you do?
Then what should I do in a stressful moment?
The answer is to confront it head on. You need to find a long term solution to
the problem. If you having financial trouble, go to the bank. Trouble at the
office, see your boss. Don't go to the shop and buy more cigarettes, they won't
sort the problem out long term. By confronting it head on you will ease your
stress over time.
Don't Smoke
Smoking is bad
for you. Smoking increases the chances of death due to lungs and breast cancer
by a number of times. It wrecks the lungs during sports. One good way of easing
stress for the short term is to do sport, it can control it way better than
smoking can.
Tobacco the chemical contained in the cigar narrows the blood
vessels and strains our heart. This gives you a larger risk of strokes and
heart disease. If you haven't stopped yet them you need go for a stress free
way of stopping. That way you'll not feel worse off than when you smoked.
List of Diseases Cause by Smoking
Cigarettes
There is no such thing as a safe cigarette. It does not matter if
it is a light or ultra light, the effects are still the same. Smoking causes
cancer and other chronic diseases...period, end of story. Still people continue
to smoke and tobacco companies continue to profit. If you need more reasons to
quit smoking, not that it will be easy by any means, below is a list of
diseases that are cause by smoking cigarettes. These diseases include:
·
Emphysema
·
Bronchitis
·
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary
disease
·
Coronary artery disease
·
Peripheral artery disease
·
Colorectal cancer
·
Liver cancer
·
Prostate cancer
·
Erectile dysfunction in men
·
Stomach cancer
·
Bladder and kidney cancer
·
Abdominal aortic aneurysm
·
Acute myeloid leukemia
·
Cataracts
·
Cervical cancer
·
Kidney cancer
·
Pancreatic cancer
·
Periodontitis
·
Pneumonia
Smoking also
contributes to conditions, such as:
·
Hip fractures due to reduced
bone density
·
Complications from diabetes as
a result of peripheral vascular disease
·
Higher incidence of post
surgical wound infections
·
Reproductive complications, such
as problems conceiving
How will smoking kill you?
For
roughly half of adult smokers it isn't a question of if smoking will kill them
but how. Ask any smoker what smoking’s greatest killer is and they’ll likely
tell you it’s lung cancer. They’re wrong. The correct response would have been
circulatory or cardiovascular disease.
A smoker’s
incorrect response to this basic question is understandable. Early on most
sensed smoking’s impact upon their lungs. Even as teens they knew it was
depriving them of a degree of endurance, stamina and normal lung function.
They could hear
the panting while trying to keep pace with other teens. Eventually the sounds
of a morning cough or wheeze arrive. But smoking induced circulatory disease is
a silent killer.
Smokers need to
imagine damage to normal blood flow being substantially worse than any damage
they sense happening within their lungs. According to the U.S.
It's easy to
appreciate that the 43 cancer causing chemicals in each and every puff are
slowly building an internal time bomb. What few comprehend is that before the
bomb has time to go off that it’s far more likely that smoking will cause some
portion of their body’s blood piping to completely clog, with downstream oxygen
deprived tissues suffocating and dying. But how?
Nicotine’s ability
to dock at millions of acetylcholine receptor sites grant it control over the
flow of a host of neurochemicals including those associated with preparing the
body for fight or flight, our built-in stress response.
Imagine
encountering a sabertooth tiger and having to either flee or fight in order to
survive. The stresses would cause these amazing bodies to release a host of
chemicals and hormones. They’d trigger an increase in our rate of breathing so
that our body could immediately begin taking in more oxygen.
Our heart rate would climb so
that a greater volume of oxygen rich blood could be pumped from our lungs to
our muscles and brain. Our blood pressure would increase. Extremity and skin
surface blood vessels would constrict so as to diminish the risk of bleeding to
death if cut while fighting or fleeing the tiger. Our fingers and toes would
grow noticeably colder.
Our hearing
would perk and our pupils would dilate. Our body would be force-fed an instant
supply of energy as the liver released glucose elevating blood sugars, and
stored fats were pumped into our bloodstream -- fats intended to be burned
while fighting or fleeing the sabertooth tiger.
Bodily functions
not needed during fight or flight would be shut down in order to redirect blood
flow to muscle tissues. Nonessential functions such as digestion would stop.
The liver would suspend bad cholesterol clean-up, while stored cholesterol
would be released helping thicken our blood and aid in clotting if wounded
during fight or flight.
That’s how the
body’s defenses were designed to respond. But instead of a sabertooth tiger
imagine the natural insecticide and teratogen nicotine being able to trigger
the body’s fight or flight responses. Visualize it happening puff after puff,
cigarette after cigarette, pack after pack, year after year.
Picture nicotine’s
control over fight or flight occurring at the exact same time as the smoker is
inhaling large quantities of highly toxic carbon monoxide. Inside our lungs
carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin (the oxygen carrying portion of red blood
cells) with an affinity 200-250 times greater than that of oxygen.
Not only does an
arriving carbon monoxide molecule have a 200 times greater chance than an
oxygen molecule of entering the bloodstream, two to four hours after inhaling a
large puff of carbon monoxide half is still circulating.
It not only robs the body of
life-giving oxygen but its toxic properties act as a Brillo pad in grinding
away the smooth delicate endothelium lining of blood vessel walls. Like eggs
that begin sticking to a worn Teflon frying pan, extra fight or flight fats
begin sticking, accumulating, building and hardening.
Picture the inside
of once smooth coronary arteries whose job it was to feed our heart muscle
oxygen instead gradually becoming narrower and narrower as they slowly fill
with fight or flight fats and cholesterols. Picture the same process occurring
in blood pathways to the brain.
Eventually it
happens. Complete blockage occurs. All downstream tissues serviced with oxygen
by the blood vessel immediately begin to suffocate and die. By far the most
common site of smoker circulatory tissue death is the heart muscle (a heart
attack) followed by the brain (a stroke).
The smoker’s
senseless self destruction need not continue. Nicotine is simply a chemical
with an I.Q. of zero. Knowledge truly is power. The smoker’s greatest weapon is
and always has been their vastly superior intelligence but only if put to work.
.....................................................................................................
You will see the problem of smoking and do you think?
Do you want to quit smoking?
Stop smoking for yourself and your loved ones.
.....................................................................................................
20 Quick Tips to Help You Quit
Smoking
1. Believe in yourself. Believe that you
can quit. Think about some of the most difficult things you have done in your
life and realize that you have the guts and determination to quit
smoking. It's up to you.
2. After reading this list, sit down and
write your own list, customized to your personality and way of doing
things. Create you own plan for quitting.
3. Write down why you want to quit (the
benefits of quitting): live longer, feel better, for your family,
save money, smell better, find a mate more easily, etc. You know
what's bad about smoking and you know what you'll get by quitting. Put it on
paper and read it daily.
4. Ask your family and friends to support
your decision to quit.Ask them to be completely supportive and non-judgmental.
Let them know ahead of time that you will probably be irritable and even
irrational while you withdraw from your smoking habit.
5. Set a quit date. Decide what day you
will extinguish your cigarettes forever. Write it down. Plan for it.
Prepare your mind for the "first day of the rest of your life". You might
even hold a small ceremony when you
smoke you last cigarette, or on the morning of the quit date.
6. Talk with your doctor about quitting.
Support and guidance from a physician is a proven way to better
your chances to quit.
7. Begin an exercise program. Exercise is
simply incompatible with smoking. Exercise relieves stress and
helps your body recover from years of damage from cigarettes. If necessary, start
slow, with a short walk once or twice per day. Build up to
30 to 40 minutes of rigorous
activity, 3 or 4 times per week.Consult your physician before beginning any
exercise program.
8. Do some deep breathing each day for 3
to 5 minutes. Breathe in through your nose very slowly,
hold the breath for a few seconds, and exhale very slowly through your
mouth. Try doing your breathing with your eyes closed and go to step 9.
9. Visualize your way to becoming a
non-smoker. While doing your deep breathing in step 8, you can close your eyes
and begin to imagine yourself as a non-smoker. See yourself enjoying your exercise
in step 7. See yourself turning down a cigarette that someone offers you. See
yourself throwing all your cigarettes away, and winning a gold medal for doing
so. Develop your own creative visualizations. Visualization works.
10. Cut back on cigarettes gradually (if you
cut back gradually, be sure to set a quit date on which you
WILL quit). Ways to cut back gradually include: plan how many cigarettes you
will smoke each day until your quit date, making the number you smoke smaller
each day; buy only one pack at a time; change brands so you don't enjoy smoking
as much; give your cigarettes to someone else, so that you have to ask for them
each time you want to smoke.
11. Quit smoking "cold turkey".
Many smokers find that the only way they can truly quit once and for all is to
just quit abruptly without trying to slowly taper off. Find the method that
works best for you: gradually quitting or cold turkey. If one way doesn't work
do the other.
12. Find another smoker who is trying to
quit, and help each other with positive words and by lending an ear when
quitting becomes difficult. Visit this Bulletin Board and this Chat Room to
find a "quit buddy."
13. Have your teeth cleaned. Enjoy the way
your teeth look and feel and plan to keep them that way.
14. After you quit, plan to celebrate the
milestones in your journey to becoming a non-smoker. After two weeks of being smoke-free,
see a movie. After a month, go to a fancy restaurant (be sure to sit in the
non-smoking section). After three months, go for a long weekend to a favorite
get-away. After six months, buy yourself something frivolous. After a year,
have a party for yourself. Invite your family and friends to your
"birthday" party and celebrate your new chance at a long,
healthy life.
15. Drink lots of water. Water is good for
you anyway, and most people don't get enough. It will help flush the nicotine
and other chemicals out of your body, plus it can help reduce cravings by
fulfilling the "oral desires" that you may have.
16. Learn what triggers your desire for a
cigarette, such as stress, the end of a meal, arrival at work, entering a bar,
etc. Avoid these triggers or if that's impossible, plan alternative ways to
deal with the triggers.
17. Find something to hold in your hand
and mouth, to replace cigarettes. Consider drinking straws or you might try an artificial
cigarette called E-Z.
18. Write yourself an inspirational song
or poem about quitting, cigarettes, and what it means to you to quit. Read it
daily.
19. Keep a picture of your family or
someone very important to you with you at all times. On a piece of paper, write
the words "I'm quitting for myself and for you (or
"them")". Tape your written message to the picture. Whenever you
have the urge to smoke, look at the picture and read the message.
20. Whenever you have a craving for a
cigarette, instead of lighting up, write down your feelings or whatever
is on your mind. Keep this "journal" with you at all times.
Good luck in your efforts to quit
smoking. It's worth it!
