Avoid tobacco smoke....

Today's post: Thursday, 11-20-2008

I just discovered that today is the Great American Smoke OUT day. It’s a day when the people and health organizations who know how bad smoking is for you suggest everyone who smokes who possibly can, NOT smoke just for today. They do this with the hope that some of the people who don’t smoke today who have been meaning to quit follow up by doing so.

We’re putting together an eBook on how to lower high blood pressure without drugs. So, since smoking is one of the causes of high blood pressure, any of our future buyers who smokes can help lower their blood pressure and/or keep it from getting worse and add to their health protection by quitting and avoiding second hand smoke, we have a chapter on it.

The problem is that most smokers don’t really know how truly horrible smoking really is. Most smokers know it sometimes causes lung cancer but that many smokers seem not to get lung cancer. So since they might not get lung cancer in the future and they might not get lung cancer until later if they do get it, they are not truly worried and don’t quit or try their best to do so.

The reality is that smoking harms all smokers and there are several ways to test even teen smokers that show they are already being harmed.

In addition smoking causes about a third of ALL cancers not just lung cancer. And, as horrible as that is, it’s the LITTLE problem.

For more information on that & what the really BIG health damage problem is, here’s an excerpt from that chapter of our eBook.

“Avoid cigarette smoke.

Hopefully you don’t smoke or live or work in a space where other people smoke. If you do, it both directly produces high blood pressure & makes the harmful diseases such as strokes and heart attacks you lower high blood pressure to avoid -- more likely. And, that’s IN ADDITION TO its tendency to cause cancers. Even worse, it’s a more certain effect.

If you are like me & most other people who are working to get your blood pressure into the ideal range when it’s been too high, you want to get that done; you want it to STAY done; & you want the health protection that gives you. And, you don’t want to hurt your health or die while you are working on it.

Cigarette smoke (& cigar & pipe smoke) do the reverse of each of these things. That’s true whether it’s second hand smoke or you smoke yourself and inhale it directly.

Even worse, not only do you die at a younger age, by over 20 years earlier in many cases, the side effects & horrible impact on your quality of life of tobacco smoke make those of the worst blood pressure drugs look mild by comparison. These include erectile dysfunction, heart attacks, strokes, premature aging, emphysema, and pain while walking and foot amputation from PAD, peripheral artery disease. And, what’s NOT widely known is these things happen to virtually ALL smokers to some degree.

This effect is even worse in women. In nonsmoking men the median age to get a heart attack is 72. It’s 64 for smokers. In nonsmoking women the median age to get a heart attack is 81. It’s 66 for smokers.

The lung cancers & other cancers many smokers get that they would have escaped as nonsmokers are just the extras. But they can also ruin your quality of life & kill you just fine. Smoking alone causes at least one third of all cancers.

When you first inhale tobacco smoke, within a few seconds or a couple of minutes, your blood pressure goes up quite a bit. This IS temporary. But if you are still at a reading of something like 145 over 95 & this surge from smoking of something like 24 over 17 could easily put you at 169 over 112. And, that’s high enough to cause you damage before the effect wears off.

Smoking also causes a near immediate increase in Carbon Monoxide in the blood of smokers when they smoke. And enough of it remains hours later to such an extent that you can do a simple fingertip test & tell if someone smokes or is exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke. This means the cells of smokers are usually partially starved for adequate oxygen.

But the most harmful effect of smoking is that it is a direct & multiple cause of damage to your heart, lungs, & blood vessels.

SOME smokers get cancer. (The cancers many smokers get are just an extra, horribly bad, side effect.)

Unfortunately, most smokers are totally unaware of the main harmful effect that ALL smokers get & only know that some smokers get cancer & think they won’t be one of the unlucky ones.

But ALL smokers get their heart, lungs, & blood vessels damaged. This damage increases plaque build up in your arteries so they are smaller in their inside diameter & resist the flow of blood. And, the more this happens & the longer it goes on, the higher your diastolic & overall blood pressure will be. Even worse, this process stiffens your blood vessels & prevents them from relaxing or responding when you need for them to during sex or exercise or emergencies and to relax afterwards.

Smoke increases your homocysteine levels which damages the inside of your arteries which your body tries to repair with glue-like LDL cholesterol which causes this plaque build up. And, smoke reduces your levels of the HDL cholesterol that cleans up excess LDL cholesterol in your blood vessels; & smoke even keeps the HDL you have left over from working very well. In addition, particulate air pollution tends to trigger heart attacks & strokes and other health problems. In rooms where people smoke the particulate air pollution is extremely high.

The effect on your arteries is like a city street where everyone throws their garbage in the street; most of the garbage men have been fired or laid off; & the ones still on the job have the flu. Imagine how easy it would be to drive down a street like that. This is one of the reasons people with high blood pressure tend to get worse over time. And, smoking puts all the causes of that problem on steroids. That makes them worse & happen more & happen faster.

Many smokers who learn this information simply quit cold turkey & never start up again.

Unfortunately, many other smokers find they are more strongly addicted & have trouble not starting up again.

On Thursday, 1-10-2008, I did a post on my blog, Focus on Your Health, at www.iehealth.blogspot.com on how dramatically dangerous smoking is for cardiovascular & heart health. The post highlighted that smoking is dangerous even for younger people & so powerful a cause of heart disease that it sometimes even kills people in their 40’s.

I then suggested for people trying to quit that they ask their doctor for a drug called Chantix. I had gone by the listed side effects that mild nausea was the main problem. So I passed on that reducing the dose of the drug temporarily has been found to help & that taking ginger has been found to increase the level of your body being able to withstand things without giving you nausea symptoms & that might also be a solution.

However, I found some information since that suggests that taking the antidepressant drug Zyban plus a nicotine substitute might be as effective as Chantix in helping people quit.

And, of more importance, an unlisted side effect of Chantix on many people is that it can induce or worsen depression & that this can be severe in some people.

Ouch !!

For many smokers, they smoke in part because their lives have been extra stressful or because nicotine has some antidepressant effects that help them feel a bit better. To me, this means Chantix is likely NOT a good bet for helping people quit smoking after all.

So I’ve changed my thoughts on this subject.

I now believe that taking the antidepressant drug Zyban plus a nicotine substitute plus some strong support group help is your best & safest way to quit smoking.

Many people do manage to quit cold turkey. So that may be the best thing to try first.

But if you have too many withdrawal side effects or find you have re-started, enlist your doctor’s help & ask for the antidepressant drug Zyban plus a nicotine substitute. In addition, be sure to get into a support group as that has also been found to help. Your doctor may have a program to refer you to -- or your HMO or insurance company may offer one. If not, the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association can help you locate one.

The other thing your doctor can do is help you get your HDL & your homocysteine level tested. If you smoke, there is an excellent to very high chance your HDL is under 50, possibly under 35, & a similar chance your homocysteine level is well over 9.0.

You may well find your HDL is something like 27; & your homocysteine level is 13.0 or higher. That indicates damage is happening now that will result in heart disease.

What does that do for you in helping you quit?

If you get a bad reading on either of these tests or a very bad reading like the 27 & over 13.0 example above, it means that smoking is giving you heart disease RIGHT NOW. And, you then do NOT have to guess if you need to quit smoking to protect yourself. These two measures are quite likely to show that you do need to quit or even that it’s imperative that you do.

The great news is that they give you objective proof that you need to quit. And, even better, they tell you BEFORE you die of a heart attack or stroke caused by smoking.”