Cause Your Health Counts

There are plenty of reasons why we should smoke but a lot more why we shouldn’t. If smoking makes us more confident, more relax and concentrated it is worthy. Is it worthy enough if this little piece of pleasure damages our health unmendably? Many scientists say that smoking is the single most preventable cause of death and disease. If this is true, it cannot be so hard to stop smoking.

The most important though we must put into consideration is “Do I need to smoke in order to feel better?”, “Is it so impossible for me to stop this habit? Every single smoker knows that ingredients in each cigarette we can buy and smoke contain so much poison that harms every part of our bodies. Smoking not only can kill us faster than time but it can make us regret for our foolishness.

Recent examinations found out that cigarettes cause more deaths than cocaine, auto accidents, AIDS, alcohol, heroin, fire, suicide and homicide combined. This is not a lie. This is a conclusion. What can we do to stop the man made killer? Is there a power which can stop us take measures? We are dyeing from the moment we were born. Humans are not immortal. Is this truth enough to convince us that we do not need to take care about our longevity?

Statistics say that the cost to our society include over 400 000 lives lost every year in U.S., 1 200 each day. Worldwide, the toll exacted by tobacco use is two to three million deaths each year. The World Health Organization estimates that of the world’s 1.2 billion smokers, 500 million of them will die because of smoking. This means that 9 % of people now alive will die from cigarettes.

Nowadays, after many test and researches, we know that cigarette smoke contains approximately 4 000 chemicals. Many of them are toxic and they affect everything from the internal functioning of organs to the efficiency of the body’s immune system. I hope every smoker realize how destructive and widespread is the effect of cigarette smoking because I don’t really think that this bad habit is enough to make us lose everything.

We know that:

- Toxic ingredients in cigarette smoke travel throughout the body, causing damage in several different ways.

- Nicotine reaches the brain within 10 seconds after smoke is inhaled. It has been found in every part of the body and in breast milk.

- Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin in red blood cells, preventing affected cells from carrying a full load of oxygen.

- Cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) in tobacco smoke damage important genes that control the growth of cells, causing them to grow abnormally or to reproduce too rapidly.

- The carcinogen benzopyrene (benzoapyrene) binds to cells in the airways and major organs of smokers.

- Smoking affects the function of the immune system and may increase the risk for respiratory and other infections.

- There are several likely ways that cigarette smoke does its damage. One is oxidative stress that mutates DNA, promotes atherosclerosis, and leads to chronic lung injury. Oxidative stress is thought to be the general mechanism behind the aging process, contributing to the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and COPD.

- The body produces antioxidants to help repair damaged cells. Smokers have lower levels of antioxidants in their blood than do nonsmokers.

- Smoking is associated with higher levels of chronic inflammation, another damaging process that may result in oxidative stress.

Interesting Facts

a/ China is home to 300 million smokers who consume approximately 1.7 trillion cigarettes a year, or 3 million cigarettes a minute.

b/ It’s estimated that trillions of filters, filled with toxic chemicals from tobacco smoke, make their way into our environment as discarded waste yearly.

c/ While they may look like white cotton, cigarette filters are made of very thin fibers of a plastic called cellulose acetate. A cigarette filter can take between 18 months and 10 years to decompose.

d/ There is enough nicotine in four or five cigarettes to kill an average adult if ingested whole. Most smokers take in only one or two milligrams of nicotine per cigarette however, with the remainder being burned off.

e/ Ambergris, otherwise known as whale vomit is one of the hundreds of possible additives used in manufactured cigarettes.

f/ Benzene is a known cause of acute myeloid leukemia, and cigarette smoke is a major source of benzene exposure. Among U.S. smokers, 90 percent of benzene exposures come from cigarettes.

g/ Worldwide, one in five teens age 13 to 15 smoke cigarettes.

h/ Every eight seconds, a human life is lost to tobacco use somewhere in the world. That translates to approximately 5 million deaths annually.

If you decided to quit smoking, try this.