Cigarettes Help Us to Relax

One shortcoming of our modern culture is the universal lack of adequate relaxation. Many of us not only do not know how to relax, but do not take time to learn. Smoking helps us to relax because, like music, it is rhythmic. Smoking gives us a legitimate excuse to linger a little longer after meals, to stop work for a few minutes, to sit at home without doing anything that requires effort. Here is a nostalgic comment contributed by a strong defender of smoking: "After a long day's work, to get home and sit in a chair and stretch my legs 'way out, and then to sit back and just smoke a cigarette and think of nothing, just blow the smoke in the air - that's what I like to do when I've had a pretty tough day." The restful effect of moderate smoking explains why people working under great stress use more tobacco.

Smoking

Smoking is bad for man’s  health. Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Cigarette smoking causes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths. It is also responsible for many other cancers and health problems. These include lung diseases , heart and blood vessel disease, stroke and cataracts. Women who smoke have a greater chance of certain pregnancy problems or having a baby die from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).  smoking is also bad for other people - they breathe  other smoke.

what is the full extent of the effects of smoking on your body?

The effects of smoking varies from person

 to person as it will

depend on the person's vulnerability to the chemical in

cigarette or tobacco smoke. It will also depend on the

 number of cigarette sticks a person smokes per day, the

age when the person first started to smoke, and the number

of years the person has been smoking.

Here are some of the different effects of smoking:

Immediate effects upon smoking a cigarette stick:

• Dizziness.
• Nausea.
• Watery eyes.
• Hyperacidity.
• Weakened sense of taste and smell.
• Loss of appetite.

How can we quit?

There's no one way to quit that works for everyone. To quit smoking, you must be  ready emotionally and mentally. You must also want to quit smoking for yourself, and not to please your friends or family .

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

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.

 

.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.

Christie Kane and Dan Perley, Victoria, BC

..story’s by people who quit smoking together.. 

We both made a commitment to stop abuse in our communities and decided to start with ourselves by stopping smoking.

We want to inspire others in our community of Sooke, B.C. to quit, which is especially critical given the high smoking rate in the First Nations population. It makes us very sad to see youth and pregnant mothers smoking, not because they enjoy it, but because they can’t give it up. We are determined to let everyone know that if we can quit – anybody can!

Last year, I (Christie) was one of the winners of the Quit Now & Win contest (co-sponsored by BC Lung Association). What motivated me to quit smoking was to imagine the feeling of being healthier, stronger, and free from our addiction.

We both also highly recommend the book "The Easy Way" by Allen Carr as a helpful tool in quitting smoking.

Gail Francis

Quitting together is very powerful. If it weren’t for my partner Louise, I would have smoked one thousand times. That’s because when you give someone your word, you’d better stick to it. I kept at it because it would have been harder for me to see Louise disappointed in me if I didn’t quit. I started quitting gradually. I had just got a new car and so I promised that I wouldn’t smoke in the car. Then, I stopped smoking in the house. For me, it was easier to chunk it out like that. I had tried to quit smoking in the past about five times. But this is the first time that I quit together with someone. I think it made a difference. When you make a statement that you’re going to quit, you’ve got a real-life conscience living with you. I knew that I couldn’t smoke in front of Louise. She would say, if you do that, then I’ll be tempted. So, I felt responsible for her. I’d been diagnosed with early COPD, so since quitting, I’ve noticed that I’m breathing better and coughing much less. We just celebrated our one-year anniversary of quitting on November 11th.

How come people are still lighting up?

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.