Smoking is a hard habit to kick, but take solace in the fact that millions of other people are in the same cigarette boat as you, so there's always help. Learn about the best strategies for quitting and helping other quit.
Also called: Cigar smoking, Cigarette smoking, Pipe smoking, Tobacco smoking
COMMENT - There's no way around it. Smoking is bad for your health. Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Cigarette smoking causes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths. It is also responsible for many other cancers and health problems. These include lung disease, heart and blood vessel disease, stroke and cataracts. Women who smoke have a greater chance of certain pregnancy problems or having a baby die from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Your smoke is also bad for other people - they breathe in your smoke secondhand and can get many of the same problems as smokers do.
Why do people smoke?
Smoking is a pastime which involves the inhaling of smoke from burning. The tobacco is usually in the form of a cigarette.
COMMENT - 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.
How Smoking Affects Your Health
There are no physical reasons to start smoking. The body doesn't need tobacco the way it needs food, water, sleep, and exercise. In fact, many of the chemicals in cigarettes, like nicotine and cyanide, are actually poisons that can kill in high enough doses.
The body is smart. It goes on the defense when it's being poisoned. For this reason, many people find it takes several tries to get started smoking: First-time smokers often feel pain or burning in the throat and lungs, and some people feel sick or even throw up the first few times they try tobacco.
The consequences of this poisoning happen gradually. Over the long term, smoking leads people to develop health problems like heart disease, stroke, emphysema (breakdown of lung tissue), and many types of cancer — including lung, throat, stomach, and bladder cancer. People who smoke also have an increased risk of infections like bronchitis and pneumonia.
These diseases limit a person's ability to be normally active, and they can be fatal. Each time a smoker lights up, that single cigarette takes about 5 to 20 minutes off the person's life.
Smokers not only develop wrinkles and yellow teeth, they also lose bone density, which increases their risk of osteoporosis (pronounced: ahs-tee-o-puh-row-sus), a condition that causes older people to become bent over and their bones to break more easily. Smokers also tend to be less active than nonsmokers because smoking affects lung power.
Smoking can also cause fertility problems and can impact sexual health in both men and women. Girls who are on the pill or other hormone-based methods of birth control (like the patch or the ring) increase their risk of serious health problems, such as heart attacks, if they smoke.
The consequences of smoking may seem very far off, but long-term health problems aren't the only hazard of smoking. Nicotine and the other toxins in cigarettes, cigars, and pipes can affect a person's body quickly, which means that teen
smokers experience many of these problems:
* Bad skin.
Because smoking restricts blood vessels, it can prevent oxygen and nutrients from getting to the skin — which is why smokers often appear pale and unhealthy. An Italian study also linked smoking to an increased risk of getting a type of skin rash called psoriasis.
* Bad breath.
Cigarettes leave smokers with a condition called halitosis, or persistent bad breath.
* Bad-smelling clothes and hair.
The smell of stale smoke tends to linger — not just on people's clothing, but on their hair, furniture, and cars. And it's often hard to get the smell of smoke out.
* Reduced athletic performance.
People who smoke usually can't compete with nonsmoking peers because the physical effects of smoking (like rapid heartbeat, decreased circulation, and shortness of breath) impair sports performance.
* Greater risk of injury and slower healing time.
Smoking affects the body's ability to produce collagen, so common sports injuries, such as damage to tendons and ligaments, will heal more slowly in smokers than nonsmokers.
* Increased risk of illness.
Studies show that smokers get more colds, flu, bronchitis, and pneumonia than nonsmokers. And people with certain health conditions, like asthma, become more sick if they smoke (and often if they're just around people who smoke). Because teens who smoke as a way to manage weight often light up instead of eating, their bodies lack the nutrients they need to grow, develop, and fight off illness properly.
Facts Regarding Cigarette Smoking
If you thought that nicotine is the only harmful component of cigarettes, you aresadly mistaken. Apart from the usual stimulant nicotine, cigarette smoke containstar, which is made up of more than 4000 chemicals including around 60 known carcinogenicchemicals, nearly all of them are deadly. Some are also the cause of lung & heartdisease and emphysema. Some are known for their adverse effects on bones and skins.You might be surprised to find the names of some of the deadly chemicals in yourcigarette smoke. Some of them are as follows: Cyanide, Benzene, Formaldehyde, Acetylene(thefuel used in welding torches) and Ammonia
The cost of smoking is substantial, both financially and physically. As soon as you quit, you'll experience benefits in your pocket and your physical performance.
Kicking Butts and Staying Smoke Free
All forms of tobacco — cigarettes, pipes, cigars, and smokeless tobacco — are hazardous. It doesn't help to substitute products that seem like they're better for you than regular cigarettes, such as filtered or low-tar cigarettes.
The only thing that really helps a person avoid the problems associated with smoking is staying smoke free. This isn't always easy, especially if everyone around you is smoking and offering you cigarettes. It may help to have your reasons for not smoking ready for times you may feel the pressure, such as "I just don't like it" or "I want to stay in shape for soccer" (or football, basketball, or other sport).
The good news for people who don't smoke or who want to quit is that studies show that the number of teens who smoke has dropped dramatically. Today, about 23% of high school students smoke.
If you do smoke and want to quit, you have lots of information and support available. Different approaches to quitting work for different people. For some, quitting cold turkey is best. Others find that a slower approach is the way to go. Some people find that it helps to go to a support group especially for teens. These are sometimes sponsored by local hospitals or organizations like the American Cancer Society. The Internet offers a number of good resources to help people quit smoking.
When quitting, it can be helpful to realize that the first few days are the hardest. So don’t give up. Some people find they have a few relapses before they manage to quit for good.
Staying smoke free will give you a whole lot more of everything — more energy, better performance, better looks, more money in your pocket, and, in the long run, more life to live!
Want to become old much faster? - Then smoke!
You see, as you become old naturally, your arteries that carry the blood all around your body become “hard” and “narrow”. Because of this, blood starts to clot in them and there will be blockages caused in your arteries, which leads to all sorts of different problems.
For example:
* If the blood clots in the arteries that supply blood to the heart, you will get a heart attack.
* If the blood clots in the arteries that supply blood to the brain, you will get a stroke, you can become paralyzed for life etc.
* If the blood clots in the arteries that supply blood to the kidney, you will have kidney failure.
* If the blood clots in the arteries that supply blood to the legs, you might have to amputate your leg.
All this is generally caused with age. As people become old, their arteries start to harden and their blood starts to clot. But, you if you are smoking, you can make all this happen much earlier. If you are smoking you can become much older, much faster!
Your blood will start to clot 10 years before that of non-smokers (on an average)! While you are still young and providing for a family, who depend on you, one day, suddenly you will have heart attack and die.
It’s one thing to die when you are old. It’s a completely other thing to die when you have a family that depends on you. We are not telling you to quit smoking because it is bad for your health. It is bad for your health! But so what? We are telling you to stop smoking because you CANNOT AFFORD TO DIE when you have a family dependent on you.
Okay, maybe you do not have a family who is dependent on you. Then why should you quit smoking? Tell us, do you have around Rs.1 lakh to throw into a fire and burn. If I took Rs.1 lakh from you and threw it into a fire and let it burn, will you allow me? Obviously not! Well that would be the cost of hospitalization, if you actually were to survive a heart attack, stoke etc. But most likely you will just die. So the question is, do you want to die?
If you are young and think that you will quit smoking later on in life, then you can forget about it. You are never going to quit smoking. The chemicals involved in smoking, like nicotine, have severe effects on your brain such that quitting smoking becomes very very difficult if you have been addicted for too long. So, even if you are young and intend to have a family at some in the future, we suggest you quit now!
But, the effects stated above are just some of the effects that smoking can cause. Here are some other things that smoking can do to you.
* Do you want to go blind?
* Do you want to die of cancer?
* Do you want to your teeth to fall off?
* Do you want your gums to swell up?
* Do you want to look older with a lot more wrinkles?
If nothing else till now has appealed to you, then maybe this point will:
For Men
Do you want to have kids? Well if you continue smoking there is a pretty good possibility that you will not be able to. Smoking increases the risk of erectile dysfunction (ED) by about 50 per cent.
Erection can't occur unless blood can flow freely into the penis, so these blood vessels have to be in good condition. As we said earlier, smoking can damage the blood vessels and cause them to degenerate reducing blood flow and the pressure of blood in the penis.
This effect increases over time, so if you haven't got problems now, things could change later.
For women
Do you want to have kids? If you continue to smoke, there is a pretty good possibility that you will not be able to have a healthy child. Babies born to mothers that smoke are generally underweight. Smoking is also known to cause many pregnancy complications, rupture of membranes that can lead to heavy bleeding and cause the deaths of both the mother and the baby.
So, do you believe us that it is a good idea to quit smoking? You do! Great. Then let us get right to it. But first, let us get to understand why it becomes so hard for someone to quit smoking…
Quit Smoking Advice
How important is it to stop smoking?
It is very important. Tobacco use remains the single most preventable cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smoking accounts for nearly one-third of all cancer deaths in this country each year.
Smoking is the most common risk factor for the development of lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer death. It is also associated with many other types of cancer, including cancers of the esophagus, larynx, kidney, pancreas, and cervix. Smoking also increases the risk of other health problems, such as chronic lung disease and heart disease. Smoking during pregnancy can have adverse effects on the unborn child, such as premature delivery and low birth weight.
What are the immediate benefits of stopping smoking?
The health benefits when you quit smoking are immediate and substantial. Almost immediately, a person's circulation begins to improve and the level of carbon monoxide in the blood begins to decline. (Carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless gas found in cigarette smoke, reduces the blood's ability to carry oxygen.) A person's pulse rate and blood pressure, which may be abnormally high while smoking, begin to return to normal. Within a few days of quitting, a person's sense of taste and smell return, and breathing becomes increasingly easier.
What are the long-term benefits of stopping smoking?
People who quit smoking live longer than those who continue to smoke. After 10 to 15 years, a previous tobacco user's risk of premature death approaches that of a person who has never smoked. About 10 years after quitting, an ex-smoker's risk of dying from lung cancer is 30 percent to 50 percent less than the risk for those who continue to smoke. Women who stop smoking before becoming pregnant or who quit in the first 3 months of pregnancy can reverse the risk of low birth weight for the baby and reduce other pregnancy-associated risks. Quitting also reduces the risk of other smoking-related diseases, including heart disease and chronic lung disease.
There are also many benefits to smoking cessation for people who are sick or who have already developed cancer. Smoking cessation reduces the risk for developing infections, such as pneumonia, which often causes death in patients with other existing diseases.
Does cancer risk change after quitting smoking?
Quitting smoking reduces the risk for developing cancer, and this benefit increases the longer a person remains "smoke free." People who quit smoking reduce their risk of developing and dying from lung cancer. They also reduce their risk of other types of cancer (see question 1). The risk of premature death and the chance of developing cancer due to cigarettes depends on the number of years of smoking, the number of cigarettes smoked per day, the age at which smoking began, and the presence or absence of illness at the time of quitting. For people who have already developed cancer, quitting smoking reduces the risk of developing another primary cancer.
At what age is smoking cessation the most beneficial?
Smoking cessation benefits men and women at any age. Some older adults may not perceive the benefits of quitting smoking; however, smokers who quit before age 50 have half the risk of dying in the next 16 years compared with people who continue to smoke. By age 64, their overall chance of dying is similar to that of people the same age who have never smoked. Older adults who quit smoking also have a reduced risk of dying from coronary heart disease and lung cancer. Additional, immediate benefits (such as improved circulation, and increased energy and breathing capacity) are other good reasons for older adults to become smoke free.
What are some of the difficulties associated with quitting smoking?
Quitting smoking may cause short-term after-effects, especially for those who have smoked a large number of cigarettes for a long period of time. People who quit smoking are likely to feel anxious, irritable, hungry, more tired, and have difficulty sleeping. They may also have difficulty concentrating. Many tobacco users gain weight when they quit, but usually less than 10 pounds. These changes do subside. People who kick the habit have the opportunity for a healthier future.
How can health care providers help their patients to stop smoking?
Doctors and dentists can be good sources of information about the health risks of smoking and about quitting. They can tell their patients about the proper use and potential side effects of nicotine replacement therapy (see question 8), and help them find local smoking cessation programs.
Doctors and dentists can also play an important role by asking patients about smoking at every office visit; advising patients to stop; assisting patients by setting a quit date, providing self-help materials, and suggesting nicotine replacement therapies (when appropriate); and arranging for followup visits.
