Very few know how tobacco smoke kills….

Today's Post, Friday, 5-29-2009

From the GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline) website yesterday I found out that this Sunday, 5-31-2009 is World No Tobacco Day.

“The World Health Organization created the annual World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), first held in 1988, to highlight the tobacco epidemic and the preventable death and disease that tobacco consumption causes.”

They then state that GSK helps support and sponsor the event.

They then report this.:

“Each annual event, held on 31 May, has a theme. The theme of World No Tobacco Day 2009 is "Tobacco Health Warnings", with an emphasis on the picture warnings that have been shown to be particularly effective at making people aware of the health risks of tobacco use and convincing them to quit.”

Today, several health stories covered the WHO emphasis on putting pictures of damage from tobacco use on cigarette packs including the pictures or description. The picture posted of someone with coal black gums and the one described as a picture of a woman with a cancerous tumor growing out of the side of her neck are indeed quite frightening.

But the pictures are even more effective for another reason.

The reason for that is quite simple. Few people and even fewer smokers know how tobacco smoke kills.

Another news story today from AP on the WHO effort to put these pictures on all cigarette packs reported a study in China which showed that “barely a third of smokers knew they were at higher risk of heart disease and only 17 percent knew that smoking causes strokes ….”

That’s actually far higher than I would have guessed. I wonder how many of the people who knew they were at risk also knew that these cardiovascular diseases are the MAIN way that smoking kills?

I wonder if any at all of them knew that every smoker, even first time, young smokers begins to get cardiovascular disease with every single cigarette they smoke?

Did you know these things yet?

And, there’s more. Not only does every smoker begin getting cardiovascular disease, they can get their homocysteine levels checked and see they are being harmed already. (Healthy young people who have not been exposed to cigarette smoke tend to have homocysteine levels in the 6.0 to 7.0 range. People in the best health who tend not to get cardiovascular disease or some form of dementia tend to have homocysteine levels of 8.9 or less. By contrast, smokers tend to have much higher levels of homocysteine. Such homocysteine levels also tend to speed aging in every part of the person who has them. And other research shows that while nonsmokers tend to become older at something like 70, smokers tend to become older at 50.)

Smoking also lowers the amount of the protective HDL that helps keep this process of causing cardiovascular disease from happening and then makes what is left over ineffective.

If they have been smoking for years and can afford it, smokers can also get a test that shows the clogging of the blood vessels to their brain caused by this process of smoking causing cardiovascular disease.

And, this happens to every smoker! My guess is that not one smoker in 50 knows about this.

This is the main way smoking kills and the vast majority of smokers have no clue that this is happening to them.

What do most smokers know about smoking risks? They’ve heard that some people get lung cancer. But since many people who smoke do not get lung cancer, most smokers just assume they will be one of the ones who do not and keep right on smoking.

But there’s a great deal more to tobacco and tobacco smoke causing cancer – in addition to the fact that cancers are the LITTLE risk from smoking.

People who actually enjoy smoking instead of just having it be a stress reliever, tend to smoke more. And recently reported research has found in such people, out of every four of them, one will get lung cancer.

Would you play Russian Roulette with a four shot revolver that has a bullet in one of the chambers? Smokers who enjoy smoking do just exactly that. And just from the risk of lung cancer.

My guess is that so far, less than 5% of smokers who enjoy smoking knows this.

And, then there are all the other kinds of cancer besides lung cancer. I’ve read that about a third of ALL cancers of every kind are caused by smoking. One doctor I met once in a cancer ward in a hospital said he thought it was actually closer to 50 % based on what he saw there.

And, then there is being able to breathe.

One project tested the breath capacity of teen smokers and found they had the breath and lung capacity of middle aged people. Not many of the teens who were shown this quit. BUT it was twice as many as usually quit!



But for older people who get emphysema or COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it’s far worse. They feel like they are drowning even though they have only air around them. And if it gets bad, they have to tow a portable oxygen bottle around with them to stay conscious.

By the time that you add all the parts, smoking is very much like playing Russian Roulette with 5 or 6 of the 6 chambers in a revolver loaded.

One way smokers can load all 6 chambers and double or triple their risk of getting lung and other oral cancers is to use a cigarette lighter. Tobacco smoke is loaded with carcinogenic compounds; but the carcinogenic compounds caused by the high temperature flame of a cigarette lighter are far more numerous and more deadly. The Science Fact article in the magazine Analog once showed two graphs. The number of smokers as related to the number of lung cancers. That one looked like a 40 or 45 % correlation. And, the sales of cigarette lighters as related to the number of lung cancers. That one looked like a 95% or higher correlation, almost the same curve exactly.

Most smokers in the United States light up with cigarette lighters today.

What does that tell you? The health news and implications are NOT good.

Then there is the effect of second hand smoke.

It’s about like smoking what the smokers near them are smoking but only half as bad. That means the health damage of a smoker who smokes often around other people may be ten times as much as that smoker gets because of how many people are exposed to the smoke.

But, what if you avoid smoking but chew tobacco to get your nicotine fix instead? You do get to escape some of the cardiovascular risk and damage to your ability to breathe. But you actually increase your risk of getting oral or head and neck cancers.

Have you ever met someone who had to have their voicebox or larynx removed due to throat cancer? They have to use a sound generator they press to their throat or burp on purpose to talk.

That’s why WHO decided to have their annual event called.: World No Tobacco Day.

People who are not in the group that truly enjoys smoking or who are either less addicted to nicotine or mentally tougher in over-riding their addiction can and do quit cold turkey and have it stick.

But most smokers don’t fit that group. They either enjoy smoking for the dopamine rush we now know powers that which only some smokers get. Or they are seriously addicted to nicotine. Or they desperately need the tiny bit of stress relief they get from smoking.

But we now know ways to get them what they need without having them smoke.

Smokers who get that help from their doctors in the early to middle stages of quitting are dramatically more successful in quitting.

A drug with two names, Wellbutrin and Zyban turns off nicotine addiction and acts as a similar antidepressant to nicotine which is apparently how it works. (Zyban is the trade name for the version sold directly as a smoking cessation drug. But my understanding it that the two names are actually the same drug.)

And, there are several kinds of nicotine replacements available which allow you to get some actual nicotine so you can get it without any smoke or tobacco at all. Many of these are now over the counter.

The most effective system is to use Zyban plus a nicotine replacement just before and for a good bit after you quit.

And, my strong suspicion though I’ve not yet seen a study of it is that the nicotine inhaler that best mimics the on demand feature of smoking is most effective. You can now get nicotine gum and patches over the counter. But for Zyban and the nicotine inhaler, you need a prescription from your doctor.

I’ve not yet seen a program tested to add some form of dopamine booster and help getting another kind of stress relief to these two drugs.

But regular exercise does both to some degree. And people who exercise every week during the quitting process DO have double the success rate of people who do not.

(Full disclosure.: I found out one of the reasons that GSK sponsors this yearly event and has the extremely well done and informative article about the dangers of smoking that it did recently. They are the maker and provider of Wellbutrin and Zyban.)

So in summary, to have the best luck quitting, learn the real dangers of quitting and get tested to see they are already happening to you. Make a list of family members and friends you have smoked near but who you would prefer to protect from the effects of smoking.

See your doctor for the two prescriptions and use them as directed. And be sure to exercise during the quitting process even if it’s just some regular 20 minute walks.

It also has helped some people to attend group stop smoking sessions. The American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association and many hospitals and HMO’s -- possibly including the one in your health plan -- provide such sessions.

Quitting cold turkey does work for many people.

But if it didn’t work for you or you suspect it won’t, try the combination of methods we just described because it is four times or more likely to work for you than quitting cold turkey.


Lastly, quitting smoking for many people is like learning to walk. Even though many don’t succeed the first time, they do learn from the experience of trying -- just like a toddler learning to walk. And if they keep trying using what they learn each time, they do manage to quit.