Archive for the 'health' Category

This Wednesday: Butt Out, Buddy

February 20th, 2008 by Progressive Wednesday

Problem:

I’m not going write this Wednesday without making a confession: there have been two times in my life when I regularly smoked cigarettes (between 1/2 a pack and 1 1/2 packs a day). Each time was brief (don’t worry, Mom), and both times I quit, quickly and cold, though not without struggles.

My buddy Pete, a former 15-year smoker, put it to me this way: “After a couple of days the nicotine is out of your body, then it’s just whether or not you’re a pansy.”

Even though it was mainly easy (but not-so breezy) for me to put out my last butt, I can see how people get hooked and hold onto the habit: it ain’t just chemical. It gets hard-wired in our brains in association with food, work, sex, travel, socializing, and escape. And those are six pretty damned good things.

But (you knew there was one coming, right?) none of those are a good enough reason to start or continue. Is there a good one? Of course not. Every smoker and non-smoker knows this. Should you be allowed to smoke? Probably Maybe. But should you? No $%&@*!^ way.

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Make Progress:

There are three ways to make progress this week: stop smoking; help someone else stop smoking (just email the post to your pals); educate yourself on smoking for your own sake and the sake of others.

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Quit:

In case you or yours actually need to know why quitting would be a good idea, here goes:

  1. According to the American Cancer Society, “smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the United States.”
  2. And it ain’t just lung, larynx, and mouth cancer staring us down, my people. Smoking is directly linked to cancers of the pancreas, cervix, kidney, stomach, pharynx, esophagus, and bladder.
  3. Of course, cigarettes don’t only bring about cancer. Smoking is a major or contributing cause of (in alphabetical order): aneurysms, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease, pneumonia, and stroke.
  4. There’s more: smoking increases your odds of bone thinning, hip fractures, peptic ulcers, and (get this) cataracts.
  5. In the year 2000, 8.6 million Americans were suffering from “at least one chronic disease due to current or former smoking.” Says who? Says the Centers for Disease Control. Just for comparison’s sake, let me just mention that there are 8.1 million people living in New York City.
  6. How many known carcinogens are in cigarette smoke? 43.
  7. And as if we needed to know another reason why the tobacco behemoths dump nicotine in cigs, there’s this: “nicotine, when inhaled in cigarette smoke, reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously.” We’re all about sticking it to these companies whose goal it is, quite literally, to addict us and destroy us.
  8. And on top of all that, cigarettes are freaking expensive.
  9. Oh, and they make your breath stink like a burning tire.

But quitting, as I know, is easier typed than done. And why is it so damned difficult? Because, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, “the pharmacologic and behavioral processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine.” You read that right: cigarettes are like heroin and cocaine.

Look, I’ve quit myself, and I’ve fired up again. I’ve watched my friends struggle through this addiction. There ain’t nothing wrong with asking for some help, so here’s some from:

Or just call this number: 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

 

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Watch:

Need more umph for you or a pal? Give these pair of thetruth.com videos a whirl.

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Look:

Look, friends, we were going to post three or four or five pictures here of diseased lungs, gangrenous legs, cases of mouth cancer, and laryngectomies, but… well, two things:

  1. These photos are so peel-your-eyelids-back gruesome, we didn’t think it would be appropriate for a place we consider to be rather PG, maybe PG-13.
  2. These photos made us want to power-puke.

So, our advice to you is this: check it out for yourselves if you want to. If you smoke, it’s a must. I’ll wager dollars to donuts (and I really dig donuts) that you’ll seriously consider a self-imposed cease and desist order for cigarettes (or your tobacco product of choice). And if you don’t smoke, well, hell, these photos will do two things: keep you from ever, ever, ever, ever smoking; convince you to get your friends who stink like old ashtrays to kick the habit before they kick ye old can.

And where might you find some of these not-so-fun photos? Here, here, here, here, and here. Please, please, please don’t say we didn’t warn you. We did. In fact, we’ll warn you one more time: this stuff is messed up, kids.

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Protect:

This sucker is threefold, but we’ll focus on the most unusual of the three:

  1. Do yourself a favor and steer clear of bars and restaurants that still allow smoking. (There are only 22 states that allow the former and 20 the latter.) Secondhand smoke kills ya. You’ve made it to adulthood and still need proof? Just click here.
  2. Try to keep your kids away from secondhand smoke. Wanna know why? Read this, baby.
  3. Protect your pets.

If you’re not worried about yourself and you don’t have kids, at least consider your furry and feathered friends, because besides saving your own hide from cancer, emphysema, and breath that smells like a cadaver, here’s another reason to leave Marlboro country:

“There have been a number of scientific papers recently that have reported the significant health threat secondhand smoke poses to pets,” said veterinarian Carolynn MacAllister of Oklahoma State University. “Secondhand smoke has been associated with oral cancer and lymphoma in cats, lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as lung cancer in birds.”

Cats living with smokers are also twice as likely to develop malignant lymphoma, a cancer that occurs in the lymph nodes and that is fatal to three out of four cats within 12 months of developing it.

Studies have also shown that dogs living in a smoking household are susceptible to cancers of the nose and sinus area, particularly if they are a long-nosed breed, because their noses have a greater surface area that is exposed to carcinogens and a greater area for them to accumulate. Dogs affected with nasal cancer normally don’t survive for more than one year.

Birds are also at risk for lung cancer, as well as pneumonia, because their respiratory systems are hypersensitive to any type of air pollutant.

While I’ve heard some interesting arguments for banning smoking outright, I still fall on the libertarian side: as long as you’re not harming me (which means no smoking in public places, thank you), you should be allowed to do, for the most part, whatever you please. This study, though, complicates things: where does a person’s right to harm themselves end and the rights of an animal begin? The same goes, even more so, for kids.

So, will I smoke a cigar the next time one of my buddies gets hitched? Despite my better judgment, I probably will. But ask me this: Will you smoke that stogy in front of Weasley, Eric’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel? No sir, I won’t. Why? Not just because I don’t want to harm the poor thing, but because what in the hell is his puppy doing at a wedding reception? That’s just not right.


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