If smoking was only an act of inhaling smoke into the lungs, doing little or no harm to the human body, then probably we would have justified the smoke through our logical interpretations. Being a Tobacco Cessation Specialist, I interact with all types of tobacco victims, on a daily basis. Everyday I see people suffering from terminal illnesses, such as cancers, heart diseases and respiratory diseases. I cannot, even in my wildest dreams, think of justifying this act of inhaling poison into your lungs, and crippling your body, making your mind so weak and paralysed that it accepts the tyranny of a cigarette for life.

Appetite for nicotine

A cigarette ‘hits’ you very quickly, more quickly than any other drug taken via mouth or inhaled through smoke, for that matter. It acts more quickly than marijuana, which usually takes as long as alcohol—15 to 20 minutes. The smoker knows the hit comes within five seconds of the first puff. “Within seven seconds, nicotine reaches the brain and stimulates the release of neuro-chemicals [dopamine and noradrenalin] leading to a pleasurable feeling and enhanced energy and alertness”. The appetite of smoking increases with every cigarette smoked; and one becomes an established smoker in the nurturance of these dopamine surges.

A burning cigarette is like a chemical factory. Cigarettes contain cancer causing, tumour initiator and toxic agents such as tar, arsenic, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, asbestos, PO210, cyanide, lead, DDT and acetaldehyde. The combination of an addictive substance [nicotine] with Polonium 210 and other mutagens has made tobacco the foremost human poison of the 20th century. “Within seconds after tobacco smoke is inhaled, some 4,400 chemical [many hundreds of which are toxic] by products are absorbed into the bloodstream and transported to every cell of the smoker’s body”. The chronic inhalation of tobacco smoke exposes the entire body, every tissue and cell, to powerful mutagens and carcinogens, thus hastening the malignant cellular evolutionary process and resulting in the accelerated occurrence of the broad spectrum of cancers, degenerative diseases, and other diseases constituting tobaccosis.

Tobaccosis, described as a 20th century catastrophe, denotes collectively, all those diseases resulting from the smoking, chewing and snuffing of tobacco and the breathing of tobacco smoke. These include nicotine addiction; cancers of the mouth, nasopharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchi, lungs, oesophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, bladder, prostrate, cervix and brain; colorectal cancer; leukaemia; atherosclerosis of the cardiovascular system, including coronary heart disease [with ischemia and infarction], cardiomyopathy, aortic and other aneurysms, cerebrovascular haemorrhages and blockages, renal failure and peripheral vascular disease; emphysema; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; pneumonia; childhood asthma; peptic ulcer disease and regional ileitis; cirrhosis of the liver; immunological deficiencies and failures of endocrine and metabolic functions; cataract; osteoporosis; optic neuropathy; infertility; foetal and neonatal deaths, child disabilities; and much more.

“Four million unnecessary deaths per year. 11,000 every day. It is rare—if not impossible—to find examples in history to match tobacco’s programmed trail of death and destruction. I use the word programmed, carefully. A cigarette is the only consumer product, which when used as directed kills its consumer”, says Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General Emeritus, World Health Organization.

Quit the butt

Ask a confirmed smoker if he or she enjoys smoking and chances are the answer will be ‘yes.’ Ask the same person if he or she would like to quit. You’ll probably get the same answer— ‘yes.’ Smokers usually have a love-hate relationship with the cigarettes they smoke; they smoke and yet they hate to smoke!

As a Tobacco Cessationist, I did learn that extremely dependent smokers are really unhappy to smoke. Researchers say, majority of smokers [70 per cent] want to quit smoking. But what stops them from making an attempt of quitting? Most smokers are entangled in a fear that they will never be able to quit, and that nicotine is very addictive. Smokers adopt the learned helplessness very early in life, and continue to smoke all their life.

Tobacco dependence is a chronic condition that requires professional intervention. Tobacco products are highly addictive. They are designed to undermine efforts to quit using them, which is not simply a matter of choice for the majority of tobacco users. Instead, it involves a struggle to overcome an addiction. Tobacco use is typically woven into everyday life, and can be physiologically, psychologically and socially reinforcing. Nicotine dependence makes quitting difficult; and most attempts fail without treatment. 97 per cent of quitting attempts end in failure.

Smoking cessation requires a structured intervention by a comprehensive tobacco cessation programme. It addresses both the physiology and psychology of tobacco addiction and the smoker is provided with step-by-step assistance during the attempt to quit. It is essentially a ‘Lifestyle Treatment Program’, comprising of seven to eight intensive counselling sessions, to help the smoker quit the habit successfully and to maintain abstinence for life.

Psychotherapeutic intervention

The psychotherapeutic interventions include a harmonious mix of motivation enhancement therapy, cognitive therapy, behavioural skills training and relapse prevention. The behavioural interventions are based on the theory that learning process operates in the fields of development, maintenance and cessation and smoking. Major goals of the therapy are to change the antecedents to smoking, to reinforce non-smoking and to teach skills to avoid smoking in high-risk situations.

Medicinal Nicotine

Nicotine replacement therapy [NRT]: It describes a group of products delivering nicotine that are licensed for the relief from withdrawal symptoms and as an aid to smoking cessation. Nicotine replacement products provide an alternative source of nicotine. Nicotine replacement is provided through the skin [nicotine patches]; buccal absorption [nicotine gums], nasal membranes [nicotine nasal spray] and nicotine inhalers.

Buproprion HCl therapy

Works on the biology of nicotine addiction. It is a non-nicotinic oral pill that leads to reducing the urges and withdrawal symptoms.

Varenicline Tartrate therapy [Champix]

It is the first non-nicotine drug developed specifically for smoking cessation. It was developed to work as the same receptor in the brain as nicotine [the ?4?2 receptor] to help relieve the craving and withdrawal symptoms while at the same time blocking the reinforcing effects of nicotine. So the smoker experiences reduced craving and withdrawal symptoms when he/she stops smoking; and they also experience less pleasure in smoking when the patient relapses.

A future free of tobacco

Tobacco is pandemic which cripples humans, making them physiologically, psychologically and socially addictive. We need to break this vicious cycle of death and destruction. Quitting is the first step towards a tobacco-free world. A time has come when we need to synergise our efforts and fight united to uproot this scourge. Only then can we give our future generations a ‘Future Free of Tobacco’.

The post Say NO to smoking! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

How often have you heard the silence of your one-year-old darling daughter? “Yes, I do care doctor, that’s why I smoke outside in the balcony when my child is in the bedroom. I avoid smoking in front of my kids”. This is the usual explanation I get from my well-educated patients. Sometimes I realise how less observant we are to our own behaviours. We smoke outside, agreed; but how many of us wash our hands and clean our teeth before we hold our little children. How many of us still hear voices murmuring, “Dad, please do not touch and kiss me with these stinking hands and smoke-filled lips.”

But are we justified in smoking inside our homes, and exposing our wife and innocent children to thousands of poisons with every puff that we inhale. Certainly not. We all work in “Smoke-free offices”, and have learnt to go out and smoke. Fortunately, the government has also taken disciplinary actions for “smoking in public places”, which has further led to an awakening among smokers to be cautious in public places and workplaces while lighting up their stick. The government has, unfortunately, not touched the situations prevailing at homes, which needs to be addressed seriously.

What is second hand smoking?

First of all, let’s understand what is passive smoking? Passive smoke or environmental tobacco smoke [ETS] is a mixture of exhaled mainstream smoke [smoke exhaled by smokers]; and side stream smoke [smoke freshly generated from a passively lit cigarette]; as well as contaminants that diffuse through the cigarette paper and mouth end of the cigarette between puffs. ETS contains more than 4000 chemical compounds, and is even more carcinogenic than active smoking. Second hand smoke is a major source of indoor air pollution.

Immediate effects of passive smoke

Tobacco smoke is an irritant and causes eye irritation, headache, cough, sore throat, dizziness and nausea. Adults with asthma can experience a significant decline in lung function when exposed, while new cases of asthma may be induced in children whose parents smoke. Short-term exposure to tobacco smoke also has a measurable effect on the heart in non-smokers. Even 30 minutes exposure is enough to reduce coronary blood flow.

Passive smoking and adults

In the long run, passive smokers suffer an increased risk of a range of smoking-related diseases. Breathing second hand smoke for even a short time can have immediate adverse effects on normal functioning of the heart, blood, and vascular systems in ways that increase the risk of a heart attack. Non-smokers, who are exposed to passive smoking in the home, have a 25 per cent increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer. A major review by the Government-appointed Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health [SCOTH] concluded that passive smoking is a cause of lung cancer and ischemic heart disease in adult non-smokers.

Passive smoking and children

Almost half of all children worldwide live in the home of a smoker. Infants of mothers who smoke have five times the risk of sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS]. They also suffer from reduced birth weight and reduced lung functioning. Passive smoking increases the risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis, pneumonia and bronchiolitis in children. Passive smoking is also associated with middle ear infection in children as well as possible cardiovascular impairment and behavioural problems. A US study found deficits in mental development, reading and reasoning skills among children even at low levels of smoke exposure.

Protect your loved ones from second hand smoke

The UN Surgeon General says that the only way to fully protect yourself and your loved ones from the dangers of second hand smoke is through 100 per cent smoke-free environments.

You can protect yourself and your loved ones by:

• Making your home and car smoke-free
• Asking people not to smoke around you and your children
• Making sure that your children’s day care centre or school is smoke-free
• Choosing restaurants and other businesses that are smoke-free. Thanking businesses for being smoke-free. Letting owners of businesses that are not smoke-free know that second hand smoke is harmful to your family’s health
• Teaching children to stay away from smoke
• Avoiding second hand smoke exposure especially if you or your children have respiratory conditions, if you have a heart disease and /or are pregnant
• Talking to your doctor or healthcare provider more about the dangers of second hand smoke.

Quit smoking

We cannot draw compartments as to where to smoke, and where not to. Believe me; humans have a tendency to stretch their own rules, to their convenience. The single best way for giving you and your family a smoke-free environment is to Quit Smoking. Quitting requires planning, and a strong intention to quit the habit. Also, there are effective support systems to help you in your quitting process. A tobacco cessation clinic will definitely help you in your treatment of tobacco dependence. A structured tobacco cessation intervention needs to combine intensive psycho-therapeutic interventions, along with pharmacotherapy to reduce the withdrawals/urges of quitting. Nicotine replacement therapy and pharmacotherapy is also available to make the quitting process easier. Also, new drugs such as Varenicline are promising greater success in managing the cravings/withdrawals effectively.

We all know smoking is bad for us and our family. With every puff that we inhale, we are actually dumping more than 4000 chemicals into our body. We all understand that cigarettes are smoking us to disease and death very fast. Still we all abuse our body with that poison stick; and strangely, we all also want to quit!

Your quitting can give you and your loved ones a “Smoke-Free World”. Quit smoking today!

The post Passive Smoking: Injurious to my health appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.