Quit Smoking

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Say – is it of interest for you how much carcinogenic (cancer-causing) compounds are contained in a cigarette? Do you know, that cigarettes of different brands contain different amounts of carcinogenic compounds? Yes, it is.

One of the studies uncovered that in cigarettes from different countries levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines – a main carcinogenic component of tobacco – are not the same. During this study research workers compared these levels in cigarette butts and in smokers from couple of countries.

Dr. Jim Pirkle, who is the deputy director for science at the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health’s Division of Laboratory Sciences have made a statement that all cigarettes are not the same, and cigarettes across countries do not deliver the same amount of carcinogens to people.

But the main thing is – in U.S brands this amount is about three times bigger that in cigarettes from United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (with equal amount of nicotine). The point is that in United States of America cigarettes are made using “American blend” tobacco – these tobacco breeds contain higher levels of TSNAs (tobacco-specific nitrosamines), while in other countries tobacco used in cigarettes is of “bright” kind (with lower levels of TSNA).

To my mind, this research and all researches of this kind must be taken into account not only by scientists, but also by tobacco companies in USA, public associations and smokers themselves.

Now it’s also time to explain why this research is not completely representative. First, TSNA is the main but far not the only carcinogenic compound in tobacco blends. Even reducing it’s amount (which is a great work for manufacturers) will not change the situation much – there are many of these compounds, and it is almost impossible to conduct all necessary researches and correlate amounts of all carcinogenic compounds.

Everyone knows that the main reason of lung cancer is tobacco smoking, though more and more scientists say that smoking also causes other types of cancer that have nothing to do with breathing system (such is prostate cancer within men, breast cancer within women).

One of the ways to minimize chances for cancer is leaving smoking for good, and this is what we will talk about here. Cessation may help also with general state of health, different problems with nervous system, blood pressure etc.

So – how really one can quit smoking?

I’d like to stress that it is better not to take the habit at all costs. Don’t think you will quit easily, after smoking comes to be a system, doses you’ll need will increase as well. Then it will be not so hard to quit yet, but you’ll be already caught on “just one cigarette” fish-hook.

But if you are already a smoker – think about quitting now. The more you smoke the harder it will get, and chances for successful cessation will get smaller, while chances for cancer development will increase.

Here we go with quitting tips.

You can decide to go cold turkey (just stop smoking), or smoke less and less until you will be able to quit.

In order to quit one has got to take in attention such factors like physical addiction, moral and emotional addiction to nicotine and smoking.

Addiction to nicotine is physical one, that has everything to do with your organism and nicotine that came to be essential part of it’s processes. Physical addiction will probably disappear in one-two weeks, maybe a month. But smokers will still feel a desire to make a puff.

Here comes emotional addiction. Smokers love the process of smoking, smoke itself, burning end of the cigarette. You probably have some romantic emotions while smoking. This is hard to compete – I advise you to go for sports, visit gym – this will ease the whole deal.

And moral, or psychological addiction, is one that is in your head. Smoking often helps you when you are nervous, helps to manage tremor of some sort. With psychological factor doctor can probably help you, if you can’t manage things yourself.

So here is from what you can start in your journey for health.

Though it’s an old story, I want to explain you some tips one must follow to avoid cancer or minimize chances of facing such a great disease. There are not so many like you may think, and not to say that cancer can emerge in organism of one, whoever he or she is.

So – let’s think. Here are the tips.

First – go and buy healthy food. End up with all those snacks, other litter you usually take into your mouth. Take a look on vegetable shopboard – can you see anything you would probably like? If not – buy anyhow. Vegetables are nutrilities.

Don’t store your food in plastic containers. Never. And don’t by such food as well.

These are only few tips about healthy eating. Others are diet with lots of fresh fruits, little meat or no meat at all, only natural food to eat. Maybe it sounds too mean to you, but these are things one’s got to follow to minimize chances of cancer.

Try to avoid stresses and negative emotions of different kinds. If you are under stress frequently – go to the gym, try sports – that will cause anti-stress effect.

Healthy lifestyle is the thing always.

Avoid smoking and breathing with secondhand smoke as good as you can. Carcinogens are the main foe of everyone who wants to prevent cancer.

“Smoking is the most significant cancer risk factor that we can reduce. It is responsible for not only lung cancer, but many other types of cancer. One of the best ways to prevent cancer is to quit smoking or never start. As soon as you quit, and it’s never too late, your body reaps the benefits of being tobacco-free”.

”Avoiding secondhand smoke is also a way to prevent cancer. Secondhand smoke is the smoke exhaled from a smoker or a lit cigarette, pipe or cigar. This smoke contains more than 60 known carcinogens. These carcinogens interrupt normal cell development. This interference is what ignites cancer development”.

This is how to avoid cancer or minimize chances of it’s development.

Recently it happened so that secondhand tobacco smoke was describe as a cause of cancer appearence within animal group (smoking and cancer). It was known that cancer is also active not only in human body, but in other animals too. And now medical press allover the world stresses that secondhand smoke is likely to be the reason of animal cancer.

Researches conducted by doctors have shown that among dogs lung cancer and mouth types of cancer are to appear most often, and among cats the most widely exposed is malignant limphoma. Pet’s owners are often no bothered with thinking about consecuences of smoking near their beloved animals.

“While most Americans have been educated about the dangers of smoking to their own bodies and their children’s, it is equally important that pet owners take action to protect their beloved companion animals from the dangers of secondhand smoke,” said Dr. Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH, President and CEO of the Legacy, the national independent public health foundation dedicated to keeping young people from smoking and providing resources to smokers who want to quit.

Widly known that one drop of nicotine will probably kill a horse, and SHS is not an exception. Smoking and cancer is the problem - we can say that certain amount of smoke inhaled by animals – secondhand or not – may cause serious health damages up to cancer development.

“Nicotine—found in cigarettes and other tobacco products—is also highly toxic to animals if ingested,” said Bough. “A dog that accidentally eats tobacco may develop weakness, decreased breathing rate, and could possibly die. The ASPCA strongly recommends keeping your pet away from tobacco as well as secondhand smoke”.

Thus we see that one should think twice before acting like a fool, making own animals suffer from different types of cancer and other deseases. So now you know about smoking and cancer within animals.

Health authorities always were against use of smokeless tobacco instead of common use, but it seems that only few years ago they got their evidence. And only now we have a complete picture due to The British Medical Journal Review. It is of bigger concern because in their research they stressed influence of smokeless tobacco on cancer development in our bodies.

Smokeless tobacco and cancer are connected. There is a significant elevation of the risk to die from fatal heart attacks with the use of smokeless tobacco. Also it creates framework for appearence of oral cancers and other severe health problems.

Review says that an earlier study in 52 countries, published in The Lancet in 2006, looked at smokeless use only, cigarette use only and combined use.

This study found that the risk of both fatal and nonfatal heart attacks with smokeless tobacco use was virtually equal to the risk with cigarette use. Studies are also under way on whether smokeless tobacco increases the risks of diabetes, reproductive problems and pancreatic cancer.

One clear risk of smokeless tobacco — severe nicotine addiction — arises because smokeless tobacco delivers three to four times as much nicotine a dose as smoking, the National Cancer Institute says.

Also it is much harder to give up both smoking and using smokeless tobacco together.

You should know that cancer is not a single disease, even without speaking about different types of cancer. It’s a group of different diseases that are characterized by abnormal growth of non-normal cells (with changed structure). This cells start to spread through the body. We can’t say that there is a big amount of information about this disease. It can be caused by different factors: internal and external. Environmental problems often play a big role in the development of this disease. Genes and immune system are often called reasons of these cells to begin their abnormal growth.

You can prevent chances of cancer development in the body. You should avoid living in polluted cities and areas.

Three NOes for you:

Cigarette smoke

Tobacco

Alcohol

Interesting numbers here:

169,000 – The number of cancer deaths expected to be caused by tobacco use in 2009.

562,340 – Cancer deaths expected to occur in 2009 due to conditions of obesity, physical inactivity, and nutrition issues.

1,000,000 – number of skin cancers diagnosed in 2009 that could have been prevented by protection from the rays of the sun or other ultra violet light (such as indoor tanning beds).

77 – The percent of all cancers that are diagnosed in people that are 55 years old and older.

1, 2, 3 – Men have about a 1 in 2 chance of developing some form of cancer. Women have a 1 in 3 chance.

23 – The number of times a male smoker is likely to get cancer over a non-smoking male.

5 – The percentage of all cancers that are strongly hereditary. Most cancers do not result genetic inheritance, rather from genes that are inherited and have a tendency to be damaged from other internal factors were at external ones.

11,100,000 – the number of Americans that have had or have cancer and were alive in 2005.

1,479,350 – the number of new cancer cases that will be diagnosed in 2009.

562,340 — the number of Americans are expected to die of cancer (this calculates to be more than 1500 people every day).

2 — the ranks a cancer-causing diseases have in the deaths of people in the US. Cancer is second only to heart disease.

25 – the percentage of all deaths in the United States that were caused by cancer.

66 — the percentage five year survival rate for all cancers diagnosed between the years of 1996 and 2004. Please note, this is up from 50% in the mid-1970s.

228,100,000,000 — the overall cost in US dollars of cancer in the year 2008. $93,200,000,000 of that are direct medical costs incurred by individuals with cancer. $18,800,000,000 are the indirect costs due to lost productivity caused by the illness. $116,100,000,000 is the US dollar amount of lost productivity due to premature death.

These statistics were taken from the American Cancer Society.

Want to know what types of lung cancer exist and what is their difference? Here I will share my knowledge and some information taken from different sources on the Internet. Not a top interest theme, but it’s good for self education.

There are two main types of lung cancer outlined by oncologists all over the world. They are:

- non-small cell lung cancer;

- small cell lung cancer;

To understand what type of lung cancer is it, specialists working in labs – pathologists – look on how cancer looks under microscope. Bigger part of lung cancers in the world are non-small cell lung cancer. Different types of cancer are treated differently – this is the point. Knowing what type of cancer is it helped my oncologist to determine base way of treatment. Though all treatment is based on chemical therapy and other common techniques, different chemical therapies exist.

What stage of cancer development is it will also help to consider appropriate way to treat disease, but don’t think specialist won’t help you even on the last stage. You should not only keep hoping, but also keep being sure that doctors will help you make out. Like I am. This is the fact.

Non-small cell lung cancer stands for around 80-85% of all lung cancer in the world. Different types of which include:

- Squamous cell carcinoma (also called epidermoid carcinoma). The most common type of NSCLC. It forms in the lining of the bronchial tubes and is the most common type of lung cancer in men.

- Adenocarcinoma. This cancer is found in the glands of the lungs that produce mucus. This is the most common type of lung cancer in women and also among people who have not smoked.

- Bronchioalveolar carcinoma. This is a rare subset of adenocarcinoma. It forms near the lungs’ air sacs. Recent clinical research has shown that this type of cancer responds more effectively to the newer targeted therapies.

- Large-cell undifferentiated carcinoma. This cancer forms near the surface, or outer edges, of the lungs. It can grow rapidly.

Small cell lung cancer accounts for about 20% of all lung cancers. Although the cells are small, they multiply quickly and form large tumors that can spread throughout the body. Doctors stress, that smoking is almost always the cause of lung cancer, especially it’s small cell lung cancer type.

Decide for yourself – whether to smoke or not.

In the beginning of April it will be my first year with cancer.

One full year has almost passed from the time doctors told me I have cancer. And this is also a year without smoking tobacco, snuffing it or something. I can’t tell you what I feel, cause I don’t know exactly. Smoking was my passion, and now my passion is to keep my life. And – also – this is no date one will celebrate.

Lung cancer made everything in my life different. This was a heavy strike for my family, my relatives and friends. Do you have someone with lung cancer, who have been senior smokers? Have they quitted smoking till now?

Frequently I think how greatly life could change if only I could forbid myself to smoke when I was younger.

These are things I will remember (taken from the Internet):

1. The incidence of lung cancer is strongly correlated with cigarette smoking, with about 90% of lung cancers arising as a result of tobacco use.

2. Passive smoking or the inhalation of tobacco smoke by nonsmokers who share living or working quarters with smokers, also is an established risk factor for the development of lung cancer. Nonsmokers who reside with a smoker have a 24% increase in risk for developing lung cancer when compared with nonsmokers who do not reside with a smoker. Around 3,000 lung cancer deaths that occur each year are attributable to passive smoking.

An this are things I will never do:

1. I will never smoke even a cigarette more.
2. I will never snuff, or chew, or make use of tobacco any other way. Forever.
3. I will never sit near smoker if I can leave. It is my right to be free from tobacco smoke.

And this what I will do: I will fight the disease, I will manage myself, I will help anyone with cancer, or who wants to quit smoking, who needs a word of support. I will tell about smoking causing cancer. So – this is what I promise I will do.

Please, answer me, what do you think makes people kill themselves with smoking?

Doctors warned, that lifestyle men are more likely to carry on is making danger to have cancer and die from it 70% bigger. Unhealthy lifestyles: smoking, big weight; keeping emotions inside are two causes of cancer research workers found to be the biggest. So called ’stiff upper lip’ way of controlling anxiety calls for big emotional powers and often causes stress.

People say “big girls don’t cry”, but it seems that they are, and this even helps women to feel better and have less chances to get cancer. Of course women smoke too and there are also many women with excess weight, but statistic shows that the amount of men who suffer from this things is much bigger.

Overall, men are 16 per cent more likely to develop cancer than women and 40 per cent more likely to die from it. But if we remove prostate and breast cancer that are only of one sex, the percentage will be up to 69-70%.

Men tend to be less health conscious than women and miss out on the routine health checks women are given when prescribed contraception and during pregnancy.

Another researcher, Catherine Thomson, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘We feel there aren’t any obvious biological reasons, so we think it is about lifestyle risk factors, in terms of men being less likely to go to their GP and more likely to ignore the symptoms and bury their heads in the sand.’

Men tend to accumulate fat around their stomach, rather than waist and thighs, which raises the risks of many health problems including cancer.

‘The advice to men is that if you have a problem and it hasn’t gone away when you think it should have, then go and get it checked out,’ he said.

Smoking is even more harmful than excess weight doctors say, and if one wants to keep fit and live longer he’s got to control his lifestyle, leave stresses behind and think about future with positive attitude.

1. Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths in both men and women in the United States.

2. More than 154,000 Americans will die from lung cancer in 2002.

3. Only 12-15% of patients with lung cancer are being cured with today’s treatments.

4. 80% of patients with lung cancer detected by computerized tomographic (CT) screening in the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) achieve long-term survival.

5. More than 90% of lung cancers are preventable.

6. Definition: “A cigarette is a euphemism for a cleverly crafted product that delivers just the right amount of nicotine to keep its user addicted for life before killing the person.” World Health Organization director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland

7. Recent polls indicate that, despite all accumulated knowledge on the subject of diseases caused by tobacco products, a shockingly high percentage of smokers continue to believe that their cigarettes will not cause them harm.

8. A recent National Cancer Institute focus group suggests that many ex-smokers believe that they are no longer at risk for lung cancer. This is a dangerous misperception. Unfortunately, some risk of lung cancer persists for many years following smoking cessation. The good news is that the risk diminishes with the passage of time.

9. The overwhelming majority of lung cancers, greater than 90%, are caused by cigarette smoking. There are currently almost fifty million smokers in the U.S. and another fifty million are ex-smokers.