Types of smoking- Tips to quit smoking

Along with determination to break the habit, you need deep motivation to sustain your determination. Think carefully and then write out for yourself a list of reasons why you smoke, and another list of reasons why you should give up cigarettes. 

Another Aid Get to know you-in terms of smoking behavior. You may well be able to place yourself in one of four categories of smoking behavior suggested by Dr. Silvan Tomkins:

1. HABITUAL SMOKING. If you are basically a habitual smoker, you may hardly be aware many times that you even have a cigarette in your mouth. Perhaps you once thought of smoking as a status symbol; now it is automatic.

If you fall into this category, it is important for you to become aware of when you are smoking; and knowledge of your smoking pattern will be a significant first step toward change.

2. POSITIVE EFFECT SMOKING. For this type of smoker, smoking seems to serve as either stimulant or relaxant. He or she may most enjoy handling of a cigarette or the sight of smoke curling out of the mouth. If you fall into this category and can persuade yourself to make the effort, you may find abandoning cigarettes relatively easy.

3. NEGATIVE EFFECT SMOKING. This is smoking to reduce feelings of distress, fear, shame, or disgust.

 If you are this type of smoker, you may not smoke at all when things go well-on vacations, at parties, etc.-but you reach for a cigarette when there are problems and when you are under tension. If you are, indeed, this type of smoker, you may find it relatively easy to give up smoking-only to reach for a cigarette on a tough day. For you, a strong substitute, such as nibbling ginger root, may be helpful. 

RESPIRATORY DISEASES on American Men and Women

RESPIRATORY DISEASES

Chronic bronchitis is an inflammation of the bronchial tubes. As the cells that line the tubes become irritated, they secrete excessive amounts of mucus, whereupon a chronic cough develops as part of the body's effort to get rid of the excess mucus and the irritants. 

The persistent deep coughing and the thick mucus make breathing difficult. Emphysema, which is often, associated with chronic bronchitis, involves loss of lung elasticity. As a result, the lungs are less able to expand and contract in normal fashion. Gradually, with progression of the disease, air sacs in the lungs are destroyed.

The lungs now are less able to obtain adequate amounts of oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide, causing the heart to work harder in the effort to circulate blood so as to get enough oxygen to body tissues. Heart failure is the most common immediate cause of death. Between 1945 and 1965, deaths from chronic bronchitis and emphysema in the United States shot up from 2,038 to 22,686-a more rapid increase than for any other cause of death. Lung cancer patients die relatively quickly. 

Those with chronic bronchitis and emphysema are disabled, partially or completely, for many years.

As one chest specialist has remarked: "I make my living taking care of patients with chest diseases. I agree about the seriousness of lung cancer but I want to add that the person who gets lung cancer from smoking is lucky in comparison to the patient who gets emphysema, because lung cancer is usually of short duration while patients with emphysema spend years of their lives gasping and struggling for breath."

Many factors can be involved in the development of bronchitis and emphysema: repeated infections, asthma, and air pollution. But cigarette smoking is more important, involving intensely polluted air. A 10-year British study shows that the death rate for bronchitis and emphysema is 6.8 times as high for those smoking 1 to 14 cigarettes a day as for those who do not smoke; 12.8 times as high for those smoking 15 to 24 cigarettes; 21.2 times as high for those smoking 25 or more. 

Smoking Cancer and Smoking kills

SMOKING AND CANCER

Smoking today stands indicted as a significant factor in many types of cancer, most notably cancer of the lung. Most researchers believe that there are multiple causes, rather than some single cause, for cancer. 

Many believe that certain human cancers will be proved to be due to viruses which already are known to produce some cancers in animals. No matter what the cause may be, the basic cancer process involves a change in DNA or RNA, chemicals that are part of the reproductive mechanism of cells.

As a result of the change, the cells no longer reproduce in orderly fashion but divide rapidly and, upon dividing, each cell may produce three or more new cells instead of the normal two. Whether a virus is the cause or chemical disturbances are involved, the effect is upon the cell reproductive system. 

And many contributory factors may open the way for cancer by disturbing the balance between viruses and cells or by upsetting chemical processes in cells. Thus, sun- light, soot, and other irritating substances are known to be factors in provoking skin cancer; radiation is known to be involved in leukemia; and cigarette smoke in lung cancer.

Lung cancer today is the leading cause of death from malignancy in the United States. Before World War I, 371 deaths in the United States were attributed to lung cancer. By 1940, there were 7,121; by 1950, 18,313; by 1960, 36,420; and recently the rate has reached 55,300 a year. The increase has been epidemic in its proportions. The association between smoking and lung cancer has been established by many studies. 

One of the largest involved a follow-up of more than one million men and women for a four year period. The study determined that the risk of dying from lung cancer for men aged 35 to 84 who smoke less than a pack a day is 6 times as great, and' for men smoking

Smoking more packs 16 times as great, as for nonsmokers. 

Smoking chemicals- Nicotine- lung cancer - smoking problems

Smoking

Smoke, too, are millions of tiny particles, called particulate matter. It is this matter which, upon condensation, forms of own mass called tar.

Tar contains nicotine and more than a dozen known to trigger cancer when applied to the skin or breathing of laboratory animals. The chemicals are called carcinogenic of their cancer-producing activity. In studies in which one of the chemicals benzpyrene, has been diluted 1,000 times and placed in partition of pellets implanted in the cheek pouches of hamsters, 90 percent of the animals have developed mouth cancer within 25 weeks. 

Nicotine, a colorless oily compound, occurs in cigarettes in a range of 1 to 2 milligrams. In concentrated form, nicotine is a potent poison and 10 milligrams, which form about one drop, will if injected kill an average human. Among the other chemicals in cigarette smoke are phenols, which interfere with the action of the cilia, the hair like projections which line the respiratory tract and have a protective action.

Other chemicals are Irritants contributing to cigarette cough, and some are believed to be involved in the gradual deterioration of the lungs in emphysema. The person just beginning to smoke experiences symptoms of mild nicotine poisoning, such as rapid pulse, faintness, dizziness, nausea, and clammy skin. Sometimes even long-experienced smokers develop one or more of the symptoms. 

Smoking life problems, ageing, breathing problems, cancer, lung cancer etc

By 1967, there was evidence that, including women, there were on any average day 800 deaths in the United States attributable to cigarette smoking: 175 due to cancer, 375 to diseases of heart and circulatory system, 250 to chronic bronchitis, emphysema, peptic ulcers, and other diseases. Cigarette smoking is the major villain, but studies do show some relationship of cigar and pipe smoking to coronary heart disease and circulatory system disease, and to cancers of mouth, pharynx, and larynx. 

The non inhaling mouth smoker, which is what the usual cigar and pipe smoker tends to be, must realize that there is still 25 to 50 percent absorption of nicotine from the mouth (compared to 90 percent from the lungs when smoke is inhaled) and for the heavy mouth smoker this can be a real hazard. But the overall death rate is much less influenced by cigar and pipe smoking. For example, for men smoking only cigars the death rate is 22 percent higher than for nonsmokers between ages 45 and 64, and 5 percent higher after 65. For pipe smokers, it is 11 percent higher than for nonsmokers between 45 and 64, 2 percent higher after 65.

  

THE HARMFUL SUBSTANCES

Tobacco smoke is made up of gases, vapors, and chemical compounds with the proportions varying depending upon the type of tobacco, how it is smoked, and the burning temperature. While a cigarette is being puffed, the burning zone temperature reaches about 1580°F (water boils at 212°F). One of the potentially harmful gases in cigarette smoke is a powerful poison, hydrogen cyanide. Another is carbon monoxide, which is present in a concentration 400 times greater than what is considered a safe level in industry. Carbon monoxide combines with hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying substance in red blood cells.

Studies indicate that as much as 6 percent of the hemoglobin in the blood of an average smoker is taken up and inactivated by carbon monoxide; in a heavy smoker, 8 percent. Taking the place of oxygen, carbon monoxide leads to shortness of breath on exertion. 

Smoking problems and healthcare

No HEALTH problem in our time has commanded more attention than smoking. The issuance of the official Surgeon General's Report in 1964 constituted a major scientific and medical event and began a public and medical concern that continues. Despite the concern, however, one third of the women and half the men in the United States still smoke cigarettes. 

Deaths from diseases associated with cigarette smoking continue. A large proportion of health resources and money must be devoted to trying to treat such diseases. But there are encouraging events. As many as 1.5 million people a year recently have been abandoning smoking.

Among them, fortunately, are young and middle-aged men who are at particularly high risk of premature death from lung cancer and coronary heart disease. Also hopeful is evidence from a Public 

Health Service survey indicating that while 29 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls at age 17 are regular smokers, this represents a significant reduction in the proportion of young people taking up smoking. And school systems across the country are emphasizing educational programs on smoking and health in the hope of creating a "smokeless generation."

The evidence about the dangers of cigarette smoking to health is now overwhelming. In the words of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, smoking "is the greatest preventable cause of illness, disability and premature death in this country."

 A conviction shared by medical and health agencies has been expressed by the New York State Commission of Health: "No other single factor kills so many Americans as cigarette smoking .... Bullets, germs and viruses are killers; but for Americans, cigarettes are more deadly than any of them. No single known lethal agent is as deadly as the cigarette." Smoking is a certain irony in the history of tobacco use. American Indians, early explorers discovered, smoked tobacco in pipes for ceremonial silicoses, and believed it had some medicinal values.