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| MYTHS AND REALITIES AROUND
TOBACCO
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It has been said many things about the effects
of tobacco in our organism and many myths exist in which people
believe. In many cases the truth is other. I have here some
of those cases:
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Tobacco is a habit or an addiction? |
Both
of them. It is a habit, since smoking is an activity that is
repeated over and over again, until becomes an automatic act.
And it is an addiction because organism demands permanent dose
of nicotine, which is the most addictive ingredient of tobacco,
to satisfy its urgent and constant need, the same that happens
with cocaine or any other drug. Because of it that the smoker
is automatically an addict to nicotine.
At the same time it is a socially accepted behavior, permissive,
which generates an attitude of imitation between the children
and adolescents, while there are no laws that forbid finally
its use, although now there are many restrictions to smoke in
certain places as stadiums, airplanes, hotels restricted areas,
restaurants and other public places. Also it is being notified
the smokers using the own cigarette’s publicity several
of the risks and damages of tobacco in the human organism.
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| Tobacco “calms” the
nerves. |
Is
this true? Not really. Inhaling the smoke of tobacco produces
a chain reaction in the human organism. The nicotine enters
the lungs and arrives only in a few seconds the brain. This
causes that the heart start pumping the blood faster than it
usually does, increasing the heart beats and the respiration.
The sensation that calms the nerves is because each time that
the smoke is inhaled it satisfies the addiction of nicotine.
The smoker calms down when he has filled certain dosage of
nicotine, since it is a cycle that is repeated over and over
again.
The sensation of “calm” is not because the nicotine
has the power to calm you down; it is because the nicotine as
drug did the effect to satisfy a need inside your body. After
saying that we agree that what tobacco calms is the anxiety of
receiving a habitual dosage of nicotine.
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| Tobacco “helps you
think”. |
| This isn’t
neither. This is a similar situation just like the previous one.
When the smoker has anxiety, he’s nervous or anguished;
he cannot concentrate, neither think with clarity. He lights
a cigarette and immediately he feels relaxed with the first inhalations,
but this is because of the addictive effect that maintain the
nicotine on the brain. |
| Tobacco “has no affect
on me”. |
| There are some organisms
that resist the damage better than others. There are adult smokers
that have works that require the use of their body; therefore
they are in constant exercise, which means that they are more
actives than the sedentary smokers, the ones that are sited on
a desk all day, and this only does that they eliminate in a faster
way their accumulated nicotine. But the only truth is this: “tobacco
is harmful for everyone”. For all human organs. There is
no one to whom tobacco offers some health benefits. |
| To me it is ”impossible” to
stop smoking. |
| This is also false. Any
person that seeks the appropriate help can stop smoking. Most
of the smokers that refuse to leave habit are because they have
had one or many attempts to stop smoking without help of any
class, or have done it following an incorrect procedure. If someone
that continues the adequate procedure, before, during and after
leaving the habit, will have no problem in abandoning it for
life. |
| Less than “10 cigarettes
do not cause any damage”. |
| False. There are many studies
about the damage of nicotine that show that it is accumulative.
There are people that after 20 or 30 years of smoking even smaller
quantities, between 3 and 6 cigarettes per day, arrive at moment
to face the consequences. The warning of the damages that appears
in the package of cigarettes is REAL. It is verified exhaustively
that sooner or later tobacco makes smokers sick or even kills
them. The pulmonary cancer, the emphysema, the Hearth problems
and other illnesses caused by tobacco are real, doesn’t
matter if they smoke 5, 10 or 40 cigarettes per day. The damage
will always appear sooner or later. It’s only matter of
time. But there is some good news for the smoker: If you stop
smoking once and for all, due to that you suppress the factor
that causes the accumulative damage, you will achieve, in very
little time, to recover a level of mental and corporal welfare,
until back like the one that existed before you became a smoker.
Ask any friend or family former smoker that already has achieved
it: The difference is gigantic.
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| Doing sports “eliminates
the nicotine”. |
| Of course it is eliminated!
But this doesn’t mean that the smoker that also does sports
is free of the damage that tobacco does to his body. Depending
on the daily quantity smoked, the sportsman eliminates only a
small portion of the nicotine that maintains accumulated in his
body. Besides, if he smokes and does sports his performance is
generally smaller than if he didn’t smoked and consequently
he has to do a greater effort that the ones that do not smoke,
to compensate the decrease of physical resistance that tobacco
causes him. |
| “I can stop smoking
whenever I want”. |
| Will this be true? If the
degree of addiction is very strong this is not easy, not a chance.
Of course that if someone decides to quit smoking, he or she
had already fought with her or himself and has won only half
battle. To win the other half, in the great majority of cases
aid is needed, just to not relapse again. It is for that reason
that is indispensable to use an efficient program that allows
the smoker to quit once and for all. Without aid of any class,
there is a very small percentage that would be able to achieve
it only with their own will, but that is the most difficult road
and the one that has generated great number of attempts that
have failed. |
| I am not an addict. “I
smoke only when I want to”. |
This is half-truth, half-false.
If the person does not buy tobacco and only accepts some cigarettes
very occasionally, lets say one or two times every month, for
example only when he is in parties or festivities and begins
to throw smoke like a bat without carrying it into the lungs
then we agree that he is not a habituated smoker. He is not an
addict. But the one that says that smokes only when he wants,
but nevertheless purchases and maintains cigarettes and smokes
with some frequency, and then we can say he is an addict.
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| I need to smoke “to
be emotionally stable”. |
| This is natural. The smoker
turns unstable, nervous and a high percentage of them can get
a very bad temper when they cannot reach their habitual dose
of nicotine. Have you heard of people that wake up in the middle
of the night just to purchase some cigarettes? Or those that
light again a cigarette butt, because he already finished the
package? Or what about those that ask even strangers! For a cigarette?
That false “emotionally stable”, is only another
different state of spirit when the smoker satisfies the urgent
need of nicotine. The good news is that if to stop smoking once
and for all, you’re not going to need tobacco to be stable. |
| Uncle James “he smoked
all his life” and died of another thing. |
| We all know someone that
all his life was addict to tobacco and died of another thing.
Of course now this can happen, but the damage of tobacco in his
organism was always there. If you could have opportunity to see
the lungs autopsy of a smoker and the autopsy of a non smoker,
you will notice a surprising difference: The lungs of the smoker
are black, and they appear to be burned, carbonized. The lungs
of a non smoker are pink, they look clean.
You must not mistake. Tobacco kills thousands and thousands
of people. More deaths than the in the conventional wars.
Only in North America the statistics is of 450,000 people
that die yearly because of tobacco.
There is no justification or excuse to be an addict to tobacco,
there are no excuses. And to save from this whip, the only
solution is to stop smoking once and forever.
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