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Sept. 5, 2005 We all, smokers as well as non-smokers, know smoking. Everyone has his own opinion about it and everyone can also speak about this problem aloud. This is why our team decided to explain our attitude to smoking. We think smoking is too wide spread vice and too little things have been told about danger and harm of smoking. It is obviously that SMOKING KILLS or/and it causes several diseases and health problems, which can lead you to early death. Today smoking is the most common addiction. There are more have been more researches done studying social and psychological problems that lead people to consume tobacco. There are also researches about consequences of smoking and addiction to it. We can divide people into two groups, smokers and non-smokers, already at the age of 15, somewhere even earlier, but usually in secondary school, when youngsters start to think they are old enough and mature. This is why some of us take up smoking. But there are a lot of differences between smokers and non-smokers, especially about health and length of life. There are a lot of diseases known which are consequences of long-time smoking. However, everyone lives his own life, so non-smokers should accept smokers and their bad habit. On the other hand, it has been found out, that passive smoking is even more harmful than active. This leads us to the fact that even the most passionate smoker has no right to endanger non-smoker's health and life. It is well known that every ten seconds a person dies of consequences of smoking. In 1990 more than 3 million people died of smoking, but the number is getting higher every day. If there are not any changes in smoking and use of tobacco, probably 10 million people will die of smoking in 2020. Because of this, many countries have passed several laws that limit or even ban smoking. But some countries, on the contrary, try to gain as much as possible by tobacco. Actually, together by factories producing cigarettes also the government earns money by high taxes on cigarettes. Smokers should themselves be aware of the harm of smoking and also how much money they spend on cigarettes. If you smoke 10 cigarettes per day, you spend about $30 (in Slovenia) in a month and about $400 yearly only on cigarettes. But there are few smokers that smoke only 10 cigarettes a day. Also, if you think this is not so much money, you have to know that you spend it only against your health, which is probably worth more than only $30 per month. If we look at smoking from a very rational side, we can say there is nothing good in it except the joy and maybe habit. On the other hand, there are a lot of disadvantages, especially the diseases and other problems that should a smoker persuade to give up smoking. Consequences Smoking is one among many factors that cause death but probably the biggest one that is preventable. On average few thousand people die every day because of tobacco and its bad consequences. Actually, smoking kills more people than the worst epidemic diseases. It doesn't cause only bad smell on clothes, yellow teeth and unpleasant smell in your mouth but also many serious diseases. Smoking might influence 17 different sorts of cancer of which lung cancer is the most obvious and often. Besides this cancer in throat, gullet, mouth cavity, oesophagus, pancreas, stomach, kidney and bladder are also smoking diseases. Smoking also causes chronicle cough, bronchitis and other diseases on lungs. It influences other specific diseases like asthma, angina, fever, shiver,... Inhaling of tobacco smoke is harmful also for the heart and veins, because nicotine is one of the leading causes of heart attack and tobacco smoke itself narrows coronaries. Besides, smoking does harm also to other veins and accelerates sclerosis of arteries, which causes bad circulation in legs. This is why some smokers after the age of 40 feel pain in the calf. They have to stop often, while walking, until the pain similar to a spasm is over. The disease progress is very obvious if the smoker doesn't give up his bad habit. Lately, there are more and more people, whose legs have to be cut because of the total artery obstruction. Nicotine does harm also to digestive organs because it demolishes the balance of acids in stomach. Its consequence is abscess on stomach. This disease can be cured in case that person stops smoking. Long-lasting smoking can also cause impotence by older smokers and is also the cause that the skin gets older and wrinkled earlier. Lately, the cause of smoking on health of new-borns is more and more pointed out. Actually, children whose mothers have been smoking during their pregnancy weigh less when born and they also can be born less developed. Nicotine influences woman's fertility, which is often lowered, but there are also more abortions within mothers - smokers than within non-smokers. It is well known that a smoker who smokes 10-20 cigarettes a day lives on average 5 years less than a non-smoker does. Some smokers even like this statistic, because they do not want to live in this world very long. But they are not aware of dying, which is often very slow and even painful. One of the most important bad consequences is passive smoking. Smoker's organism is usually used to poisonous substances whereas the non-smoker's organism is not. This is why smoking does harm also to non-smokers. It has been found out that a non-smoker living with a smoker who smokes about 20 cigarettes per day inhales the same quantity of tobacco smoke as he himself has smoked 3 cigarettes per day. It's also dangerous when a non-smoker drives car when others in the car smoke. This can really weaken driver's physical ability, he can also get pains in eyes and headache. Passive smokers are especially endangered people with asthma, hearth diseases and other sensible people. Smoking has lots of harmful consequences but they are not all so bad. It has been proved that the organism after giving up smoking starts repairing the damage. Real recovery is seen within about 5 years after giving up smoking. And about 15 years later the mortality of ex-smokers is similar to the one of non-smokers. Smoking - the risks Most people know that smoking is bad for health. Smoking, more than any other factor, cuts people's life expectancy. As well as being the prime cause of cancer and heart disease, it also causes many other fatal conditions and chronic illnesses among adults. The dangers of smoking are clear: *over 120,000 people are killed a year because they smoke half of all who continue to smoke for most of their lives die of the habit; a quarter before the age of 69, and a quarter in old age, at time when average life expectancy is 75 for men and nearly 80 for women *those who smoke regularly and die of a smoking-related disease lose on average 16 years from their life expectancy compared to non-smokers *for every 1000 20-year-old smokers it is estimated that while one will be murdered and six will die in motor accidents, 250 will die in middle age from smoking, and 250 will die in older age from smoking Nicotine and Addiction Properties of nicotine Nicotine is a stimulant drug, but paradoxically effects of both stimulation and relaxation may be felt. The mental and physical state of the smoker, and the situation in which smoking occurs, can influence the way in which a particular cigarette will affect psychological perceptions. The addictive effect of nicotine is linked to its capacity to trigger the release of dopamine - a chemical in the brain that is associated with feelings of pleasure. However, recent research has suggested that in the long term, nicotine depresses the ability of the brain to experience pleasure. Thus, smokers need greater amounts of the drug to achieve the same levels of satisfaction. Smoking is therefore a form of self-medication: further smoking alleviates the withdrawal symptoms which set in soon after the effects of nicotine wear off. Difficulty in quitting Possibly one of the strongest indicators of the effect of nicotine is the discrepancy between the desire to quit and quitting success rates. Surveys have shown that the majority of smokers (around 70 per cent) want to stop smoking yet the successful quit rate remains very low. Twenty per cent or less of those who embark on a course of treatment succeed in abstaining for as long as a year, while only around 3 per cent succeed in quitting using willpower alone. Most smokers take several attempts to quit before they finally succeed. The power of addiction is also demonstrated by the fact that some smokers are reluctant to stop smoking even after undergoing surgery for smoking-induced diseases. Around forty per cent of those who have had a laryngectomy try smoking soon afterwards, while about 50 per cent of lung cancer patients resume smoking after undergoing surgery. Other measures of dependence There are a number of markers which can measure dependence on a substance. A key factor is the degree of compulsion to take the drug experienced by the user. Most smokers smoke on a daily basis. In Britain, the average self-reported consumption of cigarettes is 14 per day. Fewer than 1 in 20 smokers smoke less frequently than daily. Other indicators of dependence include the time from waking to first cigarette. Among smokers of all ages, 15 per cent light up within five minutes of waking, while almost half of all smokers (46 per cent) smoke within the first half hour of the day. Few smokers believe that they could manage to go without smoking for a whole day. Eighty-one percent of smokers who smoke 20 or more cigarettes a day say that they would find it difficult to go a whole day without smoking. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms Another marker for addiction is the occurrence of withdrawal symptoms following cessation of drug use. For smokers, typical physical symptoms following cessation or reduction of nicotine intake include craving for nicotine, irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, restlessness, sleep disturbances, decreased heart rate, and increased appetite or weight gain. The fact that these symptoms can be attributed to nicotine, rather than behavioural aspects of tobacco use is shown by the finding that withdrawal symptoms are relieved by nicotine replacement therapy (gum, patches, etc.) but not by a placebo (i.e. products that do not contain nicotine). Genetic Influence Recent research suggests that certain smokers may be predisposed to nicotine addiction through the effects of a gene responsible for metabolising nicotine. Scientists have found that non-smokers are twice as likely to carry a mutation in a gene that helps to rid the body of nicotine. In addition, smokers who carry mutations in the gene, (known as CYP2A6) are likely to smoke less because nicotine is not rapidly removed from the brain and bloodstream. By contrast, smokers with the efficient version of the gene will tend to smoke more heavily to compensate for nicotine being removed more rapidly. ------------ Email Liz R: Photohappymama@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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