| 2.5 Packs a Day for 30+
Years
I really do know how hard it is to quit. I
quit after smoking daily for over 30 years. I quit a 2.5 pack a day habit.
Not only did I smoke cigarettes, but I also
smoked a pipe. I have been a non-smoker for over 10 years now. Believe me, if I could
do it, you can too!
Many people are surprised to learn that
they can stop smoking with just one hypnosis session! This is the general
rule in my office, however, some people do need more sessions,
especially if they are dealing with chronic unrelieved pain or serious illness, or
even extreme stress. If these issues are present, we might need to alleviate the stresses
involved before going on to the smoking issue.
I don't use Shock Treatments, Lasers,
Needles-Accupunture, or prescription drugs. I use a very Positive Approach called MMP-
Multi-Phasic Motivational Programming.
Successfully,
Ron L. Abbott, Ph.D., B.C.H.
Ending your smoking habit today provides
the following health benefits:*
Within 12 hours after you have your last cigarette, your body begins to heal itself. The
levels of carbon monoxide and nicotine in your system declines rapidly, and your heart and
lungs begin to repair the damage caused by cigarette smoke.
Within a few days you may begin to notice some remarkable changes in your body. Your sense
of smell and taste may improve. You breath easier, and your smoker's hack begins to
disappear, although you may notice that you might continue to cough for a while. And you
are free of the mess, smell, inconvenience, expense, and dependence of cigarette smoking.
Most nicotine is gone from your body within 2 or 3 days.
It is important to understand that the after-effects of quitting are only temporary and
signal the beginning of a healthier life. Now that you've quit, you've added a number of
healthy, productive days to each year of your life. Most important, you've greatly
improved your chances for a longer life. You've significantly reduced the risk of death
from heart disease, stroke, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and several kinds of cancer-
not just lung cancer. More than 400,000 deaths in the United States each year are from
smoking-related illnesses.
* National Cancer Institute
NIH Publication No. 94-1647
CIGARETTE SMOKING AND CARDIOVASCULAR
DISEASES
AHA Scientific/Medical Position
Cigarette smoking is the most important preventable cause of premature
death in the United States. It accounts for about 417,000 of the more than 2 million
annual deaths. Cigarette smokers have a greater risk of developing chronic disorders such
as atherosclerosis, several types of cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (clogged arteries) is the chief contributor to the
excess deaths from smoking. Many studies detail the evidence that cigarette smoking is a
major cause of coronary heart disease (heart attack).
Risk factors
Cigarette/tobacco smoke, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure and physical
inactivity are the four major independent and modifiable risk factors for coronary heart
disease. Cigarette smoking is so widespread and significant as a risk factor that the
Surgeon General has called it "the most important of the known modifiable risk
factors for coronary heart disease in the United States."
A relationship exists between cigarette smoking and the risk of coronary heart disease.
Cigarette smoking also acts with other risk factors to greatly increase the risk for
coronary heart disease. Cigarette smoking is the most important risk factor for both young
men and women. It produces a greater relative risk in persons under 50 years of age than
in those over 50 years old.
Women who smoke and use oral contraceptives greatly increase their risk of coronary heart
disease compared with women who neither smoke nor use oral contraceptives.
The ratio of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to low-density lipoprotein cholesterol
is lower in cigarette smokers than in non-smokers. Cigarette smoking combined with a
family history of heart disease also seems to greatly increase the risk.
The AHA also believes more study is needed of the effects of passive smoking (also called
secondhand smoke and environmental tobacco smoke) on heart and blood vessel disease in
non-smokers.Several studies already document the health hazards posed by passive smoking.
It's estimated that from 37,000 to 40,000 people die from heart and blood vessel disease
caused by other people's smoke each year.
1996 American Heart Association ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE
In January 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially declared
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) a known human carcinogen, classifying it as an
environmental toxin equivalent to asbestos and other hazardous substances. The EPA's
report "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other
Disorders," calls ETS a serious and substantial health risk for nonsmokers,
particularly children.
AHA Scientific/Medical Position
In 1992 the AHA's Council on Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care concluded that
environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a major preventable cause of cardiovascular disease
and death. The statement urges that environmental smoke be treated as an environmental
toxin, and that ways be found to protect workers and the public from this health hazard.
Interesting?
ETS contains more than 4,000 chemicals and at least 40 known carcinogens. Nicotine, the
addictive drug contained in tobacco, leads to acute increases in heart rate and blood
pressure. Cigarette smoking also increases platelet aggregation, or blood clotting. It
also damages the endothelium, the layer of cells that line all blood vessels, including
the coronary arteries. In addition, nonsmokers who have high blood pressure or high blood
cholesterol are at even greater risk of developing heart diseases from ETS exposure.
The 1986 Report of the Surgeon General, as well as studies by the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), thoroughly document the health hazards posed by passive smoking. Evidence
of the hazards of involuntary tobacco smoking continues to mount. A January 1991 report
published in Circulation, an AHA scientific journal, cited a set of epidemiological
studies linking heart disease with passive exposure to tobacco smoke. The report concluded
that exposure to environmental tobacco smoking causes about 10 times as many deaths from
heart and blood vessel diseases as it does from cancer. The best method for controlling
worker exposure is to eliminate tobacco use from the workplace and to implement a smoking
cessation program.
Smoker's Face
Another Reason to Quit the Habit
The doctor could tell the patient had once been an attractive woman.
But now, though only in her 50s, her face was etched with wrinkles, her features
gaunt-looking with prominent underlying bones and her skin shriveled and gray with
purplish blotches.
Diagnosis: Smoker's Face.
Dr. Douglas Model of Eastbourne, England, added this condition to the medical lexicon in
1985 after surveying 116 patients and correctly identifying roughly half of current
smokers by their facial features alone.
The distinctive characteristics of smoker's face, which makes people look far older than
their years, were present in 19 (46 percent) current smokers, 3 (8 percent) former smokers
and no non-smokers, irrespective of their age, social class, recent weight fluctuations
and exposure to sunlight.
It is hoped that the all too visible and often discomforting damage to skin induced by
smoking will encourage more people to quit, "especially those who may be more
concerned about their outward appearance than the potential internal damage associated
with smoking."
Smoking damages cells and tissues in so many ways that it can have a myriad of effects on
the body.
Among them are these:
WRINKLES: "For some patients the threat of wrinkles may be a more
powerful motivator to help them stop smoking than the more deadly consequences of
smoking," Smith wrote. He explained that, as with skin that is overexposed to
sunlight, smoking causes thickening and fragmentation of elastin, the elastic fibers that
are long and smooth in healthy skin.
CIRCULATION: Smoking also depletes the skin's oxygen supply by reducing
circulation. It decreases the formation of collagen, the skin's main structural component,
and may reduce the water content of the skin, all of which increase wrinkling. Smoking
also interferes with the skin's ability to protect itself against damage by free radicals,
highly reactive substances that are omnipresent in tobacco smoke. In women, smoking
diminishes the level of circulating estrogen, which in turn fosters dryness and
disintegration of skin tissues.
SKIN CANCERS: Two kinds of skin cancers, the more curable squamous cell
carcinomas and the often lethal melanomas, are influenced by smoking. Smith said that
although smoking did not cause melanoma, smokers with melanoma were more likely to die of
their disease. They are twice as likely to have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis
and are more likely to have their cancers spread within two years of diagnosis, probably
because smoking impairs the immune system. As for squamous cell carcinoma, even when
exposure to sunlight was taken into account, smokers were found to be at greater risk of
developing this cancer. In a study of more than 107,000 nurses, for example, the risk of
developing squamous cell carcinoma was 50 percent greater in smokers than in those who had
never smoked. Smokers also tend to get particularly "large, bad" skin cancers,
Smith said.
OTHER CANCERS: Cancers of the lip, mouth, penis, anus and vulva are also
more common in smokers than non-smokers. For example, in one study of 903 female cancer
patients, 60 percent of those with vulvar and anal cancers and 42 percent of those with
cervical and vaginal cancers were smokers as against only 27 percent of comparable women
without cancer. Smoking more than 10 cigarettes a day more than doubles a man's risk of
developing penile cancer.
DELAYED WOUND HEALING: The problem of slow or incomplete healing of
wounds associated with exposure to cigarette smoke was clearly demonstrated in laboratory
animals in the 1970s. Then surgeons began reporting on similar problems in patients who
smoked: larger scars in women undergoing exploratory abdominal surgery, more complications
and skin sloughing after face lifts and a much higher failure rate of skin grafts, for
example. The more and the longer patients had smoked, the greater the likelihood of
impaired wound healing. Even resuming smoking during an uneventful recovery could lead to
adverse effects. Smith linked the slow healing of wounds to known effects of cigarette
smoking, which constricts surface blood vessels, reduces the oxygen level in the blood,
thickens the blood and impedes the laying down of collagen needed for healing.
PSORIASIS AND RELATED DISEASE: Studies of both men and women with this
unsightly and discomforting skin condition have shown that smokers are about two to three
times as likely to develop it as non-smokers. And the more cigarettes smoked, the greater
the risk. Palmoplantar pustulosis, a difficult to treat skin condition that resembles
psoriasis, occurs only on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. The skin blisters,
then forms a scaly rash. It occurs almost exclusively in smokers, and it does not
necessarily go away when the patient quits smoking, Smith said. The condition involves
white blood cells called neutrophils. Smoking causes an increase in neutrophils and also
induces changes in their function and shape.
ORAL LESIONS: In addition to smoker's face, there is also smoker's palate
and smoker's tongue. The tars and heat of tobacco smoke can cause tiny red pimples in the
mouth that result from an inflammation of the openings of salivary glands. Smokers also
often develop depressions on the surface of the tongue. Potentially more serious, however,
are lesions called leukoplakia, which are about six times more common in smokers than in
non-smokers. Although benign, these white patches in the mouth can become cancerous.
BUERGER'S DISEASE: This blood vessel disease results in poor circulation
in the lower legs, causing skin problems like burning, tingling and ulcerations. "It
usually occurs in young men who smoke, men in their 30s," Smith said. "But now
that women are smoking a lot more, we're seeing it in women too."
OTHER SKIN CONDITIONS: Many skin diseases are associated with diabetes,
which impairs circulation to the outer reaches of the body. A study of more than 112,000
female nurses followed for 12 years showed that current smokers faced an increased risk of
developing non-insulin dependent diabetes, and that the risk rose with the number of
cigarettes smoked each day. Another study of nearly 43,000 male health professionals
showed that smoking 25 or more cigarettes a day doubled a man's risk of developing
diabetes. People who smoke are much more likely to develop the bowel disorder Crohn's
disease, which can cause "big, ugly looking ulcerations, most often on the legs, and
painful red nodules, usually on the lower legs," Smith said. Another condition more
common in smokers is systemic lupus erythematosus, an auto-immune disease that can cause
rashes on the face, scalp, hands and elsewhere, ulcerations in the mouth and hair loss.
Studies show that the more cigarettes smoked, the greater the risk of developing lupus.
EXCERPT. Jane Brody, 1996 The New York Times
Pfizer Strengthens Warnings
on Chantix
Friday, Jan. 18, 2008 -- Pfizer on Friday finally
beefed up its warning on its stop-smoking drug, Chantix, to caution users about the
increased potential for depression and suicidal behavior. The pharmaceutical maker has
come under fire over the past year from patient advocacy groups, health bloggers, and the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration as patients have reported erratic behavior and serious
mood symptoms while taking Chantix.
Pfizer said it worked with the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration to update an earlier label change enacted last year for Chantix.
The new label offers a similar recommendation to
monitor patients, but the language is more prominently located to better get the attention
of doctors, Pfizer officials said. The revised section is not a “black box,” a
warning reserved for what the FDA deems the most dangerous potential adverse events.
The new label includes a warning that patients who are
attempting to quit smoking by taking Chantix should be observed by a physician for serious
neuropsychiatric symptoms like changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal
ideation and suicidal behavior. Pfizer noted that a causal relationship between Chantix
and those neuropsychiatric symptoms has not been established. However, in some instances a
relationship could not be ruled out.
“By putting this information in a more prominent
location we’re hoping it will be included in the dialog between patients and
physicians,” said Pfizer Vice President Ponni Subbiah. Pfizer plans to send letters
regarding the updated warning to doctors as well as adding the information to its
advertisements.
Chantix was approved in May of 2006 and has since been
prescribed more than 4.0 million times in the U.S. alone. Jotham Coe, the inventor of
Chantix, was originally assigned to Pfizer’s anti-smoking project in 1995. The goal
was to create a drug that could gently hug nicotinic receptors, easing cravings without
getting the smoker high. After eight years of clinical trials in 5,000 patients, Chantix
hit the market with a bang before reports of serious psychological side effects began
trickling in.
The drug has been prescribed to 4 million people in
the United States since approval in 2006, according to Pfizer.
The FDA is currently also reviewing the drug’s
safety.
Source: News wire
More than 600 additives can legally be added
to tobacco products.
Cigarettes are not just made of tar, tobacco and
nicotine.
These include coffee extract, sugar, vanilla, cocoa, menthol, oil from clove stems,
caramel and chorophyll, the compound that gives plants their green colour.
Many appear to be present simply to add flavour. But they may also have more sinister
effects. For example, cocoa when burned in a cigarette produces bromide gas that dilates
the airways of the lung, and increases the body's ability to absorb nicotine.
Menthol is also suspected of enabling the smoker to inhale more easily by numbing the
throat.
Researchers claim that other additives have been expertly developed by tobacco companies
to manipulate the delivery of nicotine with extreme precision.
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your Weight Loss
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