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.
Does anyone know why smoking isn’t good for
our health? Because smoking is responsible for several diseases, such as
cancer, long-term respiratory diseases, and heart disease as well as premature
death.
Over 440,000 people in the USA and 100,000 in
the UK die because of smoking each year. The effects of smoking are serious. It
can harm nearly every organ of the body. 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.
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.
There are no physical reasons to start
smoking. The body doesn't need tobacco the way it needs food, water, sleep, and
exercise. And many of the chemicals in cigarettes, like nicotine and cyanide,
are actually poisons that can kill in high enough doses. The consequences of
this poisoning happen gradually. Over the long term, smoking leads people to
develop health problems like heart disease, stroke, emphysema 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. In the United States, smoking is
responsible for about 1 out of 5 deaths. 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, there are, bad skin, bad breath, bad smelling of clothes and hair,
reduced athletic performance, greater risk of injury and slower healing time,
and increased risk of illness.
Now I would like to give you some
recommendation how to stop smoking. Make sure that you get as much support as
you can from family, friends and work colleagues. Let them know you are
planning to quit, and ask smokers not to smoke around you or offer you
cigarettes. Quitting with a friend can also be an excellent idea, you can share
your feelings and encourage each other. And you are also should remove all
things that can make remind you about smoking. Throw out all cigarettes,
ashtrays and lighters and anything else that might remind you of smoking. Wash
your clothes and clean your car to remove the smell of smoke.
So ladies and gentleman, being a smoker is not
your destination, it’s your choice. For example, I have a short story of a
woman that lives in the New York, her names is Beatrice, now she is 40 years old, she is the mother of two boys.
She tried her first cigarette at age 7, her second at 11, and then began smoking
regularly when she was 13. She had friends who smoked, and she wanted to be
"cool" like them. More than 25 years later, Beatrice still smoked.
She was not a heavy smoker and had not been diagnosed with any smoking, related
health problems, but she wanted to quit. Her family also wanted her to quit.
Although she had tried many times before, in 2010, Beatrice quit for good. She
encourages anyone who wants to quit smoking to do it, but to get help if they
need it.
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.
Danger of Smoking, There are many ways to take tobacco. You
can chew it, inhale it through the nose, and smoke it in the form of cigars or
cigarettes. No matter how it’s taken it is dangerous, but because smoking is
the most popular way to consume tobacco it has also received the greatest
attention from the medical field and the media.
When a smoker inhales a puff of cigarette
smoke the large surface area of the lungs allows nicotine to pass into the
blood stream almost immediately. It is this nicotine “hit” that smokers crave,
but there is a lot more to smoke than just nicotine. In fact, there are more
than 4000 chemical substances that make up cigarette smoke and many of them are
toxic.
Cigarette smoke is composed of 43 carcinogenic
substances and more than 400 other toxins that can also be found in wood
varnish, nail polish remover, and rat poison. All of these substances
accumulate in the body and can cause serious problems to the heart and lungs.
Cancer is the most common disease associated
with smoking. Smoking is the cause of 90% of lung cancer cases and is related
to 30% of all cancer fatalities. Other smoking-related cancers include cancers
of the mouth, pancreas, urinary bladder, kidney, stomach, esophagus, and
larynx.
Besides cancer, smoking is also related to
several other diseases of the lungs. Emphysema and bronchitis can be fatal and
75% of all deaths from these diseases are linked to smoking.
Smokers have shorter lives than non-smokers.
On average, smoking takes 15 years off your life span. This can be explained by
the high rate of exposure to toxic substances which are found in cigarette
smoke.
Smokers also put others at risk. The dangers
of breathing in second-hand smoke are well known. Smokers harm their loved ones
by exposing them to the smoke they exhale. All sorts of health problems are
related to breathing in second-hand smoke. Children are especially susceptible
to the dangers of second-hand smoke because their internal organs are still developing.
Children exposed to second-hand smoke are more vulnerable to asthma, sudden
infant death syndrome, bronchitis, pneumonia, and ear infections.
Smoking can also be dangerous for unborn
children. Mothers who smoke are more likely to suffer from miscarriages,
bleeding and nausea, and babies of smoking mothers have reduced birth weights
or may be premature. These babies are more susceptible to sudden infant death
syndrome and may also have lifelong health complications due to chest
infections and asthma.
It is never too late to give up smoking, even
those who have smoked for 20 years or more can realize tremendous health
benefits from giving up the habit.
Smoking in the morning, especially accompanied by a cup of coffee,
has become a ritual that hard to break. However, these habits seem to need to
be stopped from smoking at the beginning of the day is more dangerous than
smoking on the day or night.
Research shows that smoking after waking up
would increase the risk of lung cancer, neck and head. “Morning smokers have
high levels of nicotine and other toxins from tobacco in his body. They are
also more addicted than smokers who refrained from smoking a half hour or so
after waking up,” said researcher Joshua Muscat of Penn State College of
Medicine.
To find out why some smokers get cancer and
not, Muscat and his team examined the link between cancer risk is there with
the habit of first cigarette in the morning. The first study involved
4775 patients with lung cancer and 2835 of other smokers without lung cancer.
Those who smoke 30 minutes after waking up 1.79 times higher risk of suffering
from lung cancer than those who waited more than 60 minutes. Meanwhile, those
who smoked 31-60 minutes after waking up had 1.31 times the risk compared to
those who wait at least an hour.
The second study involved 1055 people with
brain and neck cancer and 795 people who smoked but did not suffer brain and
neck cancer. Those who smoked within 30 minutes when you wake up 1.59 times the
risk of brain and neck cancer compared with those who waited an hour. The
risk of smokers who smoked 31-60 minutes after waking up 1.42 times
than those who wait at least an hour.
Sumber:
