Adverse human habits: smoking. Smoking: bad habit or addiction? Smoking is not just a bad habit
Consequences of tobacco use
Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 chemical elements and substances that come into direct contact with various tissues in our body. First, the resin covers the teeth and gums, damaging tooth enamel and the mucous membrane of the nasopharynx. Over time, the smoke affects the nerve endings in the nose, causing the smoker to partially lose their sense of smell.
Smoke also adversely affects the respiratory system, resulting in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), called “smoker's disease” by doctors, which damages the ciliated epithelium in the nose, which acts as a filter. The smoke then fills the alveoli, tiny air sacs that are responsible for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide between the lungs and the blood. Carbon monoxide crosses the membrane and enters the blood, displacing oxygen due to its greater biological affinity with hemoglobin. This is just one of the reasons why smoking leads to a lack of oxygen and shortness of breath over time.
Within 10 seconds of inhaling, nicotine enters the bloodstream, which releases dopamine, endorphin and other neurotransmitters that create pleasant sensations, which is why addiction develops. The carbon monoxide contained in a cigarette causes constriction of blood vessels and damages their thin lining, impairing blood flow. These effects lead to blood clots and cholesterol plaques that cause heart attacks and strokes.
Cigarettes contain at least 60 carcinogens that increase the risk of developing various diseases, and the arsenic and nickel present in the mixture can interfere with DNA repair in areas responsible for cell growth, thereby negatively affecting the body's ability to fight many types of cancer . Yes, smoking can cause not only lung cancer: this addiction increases the chance of developing a malignant tumor in other tissues and organs. For example, smoking affects vision and causes brittle bones, and is strictly contraindicated for pregnant women, as it can cause irreversible malformations of the fetus. Finally, in men, prolonged smoking of tobacco can cause impotence.
What happens to your body when you give up cigarettes
The body of a person who decides to quit smoking once and for all begins to recover almost immediately.
20 minutes after the last cigarette smoked, your heart rate and blood pressure begin to normalize.
After 12 hours, hemoglobin levels normalize, which increases the oxygen carrying capacity in the blood.
After a day, blood pressure and the strength of heart contractions normalize.
After two days, the olfactory and taste buds begin to recover.
The lungs feel better after about a month.
The ciliated epithelium of the respiratory tract is completely regenerated after 9 months, and the body becomes more resistant to infections.
After one year, the risk of developing heart disease drops by 50%.
After five years, the likelihood of developing blood clots and plaques decreases sharply, thereby continuing to reduce the risk of stroke.
After 10 years, the chances of developing lung cancer are reduced by 50%.
After 15 years, the probability of developing coronary heart disease is the same as a non-smoker.
There is no point in saying that quitting smoking is not easy. Instantly quitting a bad habit can lead to anxiety, depression and insomnia. Often, a smoker may also experience pain in the heart: this is due to the removal of nicotine from the body, as a result of which a sharp dilation of blood vessels occurs. Blood pressure decreases, the load on blood vessels increases, and as a result, pain appears in the heart area. But fortunately, such effects are usually temporary, and the need for nicotine decreases over time.
Nicotine replacement therapy through gum, patches and sprays can help smokers quit cigarettes. They saturate the body with nicotine, but without the use of other harmful chemicals. Don't forget about sports. Moderate intensity exercise can also help you quit smoking.
Usually on cigarette packs today you can only find information about the content of tar and nicotine, supplemented by standard warning labels about the dangers of smoking, as well as scary pictures that should discourage the smoker from any desire to smoke another pack of cigarettes. This, according to cigarette manufacturers and according to existing laws, is a completely sufficient way of informing the consumer about the actual composition of cigarettes, as well as their effect on the body of the consumer (smoker). According to data obtained as a result of many studies around the world, tobacco can contain up to 4 thousand different harmful, that is, toxic chemical components, substances, and impurities.
Quite common today are various horror stories about the excessive harm of tobacco smoke, which allegedly turns out to be several times more dangerous than car exhaust gases. Therapists, clinicians and oncologists say that smoking causes the greatest harm to a person’s lungs. According to medical statistics, up to 90 percent of lung cancer cases today are caused by smoking. Even the paper in which tobacco is wrapped, the tobacco mixture, in other words, the raw materials in tobacco factories, is important in the smoking process, based on its consequences for the human body.
Myths about smoking that you believe
Are cigarettes really a good way to calm down, allowing you to put your nervous system in order at least for a while? Is it possible not to consider nicotine a drug? Does a cigarette in the hands of a person really make a person more mature, more respectable? Is smoking really a bad habit? And why? Are electronic cigarettes a safer alternative to the usual, traditional ones, that is, paper ones?
A cigarette calms the smoker. Seriously?
All excuses aside, it should be noted that nicotine, based on its molecular structure, according to modern medical classification, is a psychostimulant. Accordingly, we can safely say that smoking a cigarette does not calm a person at all, but has the exact opposite effect. In addition to this, during the process of smoking a person’s attention inevitably becomes unfocused, and the carbon monoxide released during smoking can cause weakness, headaches and even a short loss of consciousness, supplemented by mild convulsions.
In the process of smoking a regular cigarette, the ritual itself with all its nuances and attributes is very important for most smokers. And if tobacco could really calm a person by normalizing the functioning of his nervous system, then it would have long been used in general medical practice, doing it absolutely legally, and at the same time promoting in every possible way the use of such a sedative. But for some reason this is still not happening. Today, nicotine addiction is classified in international medical practice as a disease.
Thin cigarettes are less harmful to the body - a lie
The only difference between the so-called light or lightweight cigarettes and regular ones is proper PR and other techniques and methods of work of marketers. Thin cigarettes are also capable of forming the human body’s dependence on nicotine.
In any case, thinner cigarettes are smoked much faster, which reduces the usual dose, the portion of pleasure a smoker receives from smoking one cigarette. Therefore, he has to smoke much more often, smoking a significantly larger number of cigarettes. That is, the savings and less harm caused by lightweight or thin cigarettes are an illusion that arose thanks to the efforts of the same marketers working for tobacco companies.
According to general medical statistics, smokers of both regular and lite cigarettes inevitably shorten their lives by 10 to 16 years.
Vaping: myths and reality
Vaping has long been a popular way of replacing traditional cigarettes as a means of delivering nicotine to the human body. And today, this type of smoking confidently continues to gain popularity among the younger generation, as well as among older people (up to 45 years old). Although the composition of vaping mixtures includes glycerin, the same nicotine, as well as a huge list of various synthetic additives that give these mixtures a pleasant aroma during their use. All these components turn into vapor during the operation of vaping devices. This is what makes vaping supporters think that they do not smoke at all, and therefore they do not harm their health at all.
The real composition of vape mixtures, which includes many impurities, is known only to their manufacturers. For this reason, it is extremely conditional to consider electronic cigarettes safer and less harmful. Today, vaping is completely banned in about thirty countries around the world due to its real impact on the human body.
Manufacturers of vaping devices and mixtures do not bear any responsibility to consumers for the safety and quality of their products.
Can you quit smoking by reducing the number of cigarettes? Hardly.
Is it possible to quit smoking by gradually reducing the dose of nicotine (the number of cigarettes smoked)? This is the opinion of many smokers who want to get rid of their bad habit. But there is another point of view on this issue. By minimizing the number of cigarettes smoked at one moment, in another situation associated, for example, with stress, a person can smoke much more of them, which makes this method of getting rid of a bad habit extremely ineffective.
Because reducing the number of cigarettes smoked by a smoker with many years of experience does not reduce the physiological needs of his body for nicotine, which is objectively a narcotic substance.
How does cigarette smoke affect a person?
One of the most dangerous substances contained in cigarette smoke is carbon monoxide, which has no color, taste, or smell.
A distinctive feature of the effects of carbon monoxide is the ability to almost instantly block oxygen in the human blood. This leads to oxygen starvation, which has an extremely negative effect on the general condition of the body, on attentiveness, on the speed of reaction, on motor activity, on the possibility of normal coordination of movements, on the adequacy of perception of the surrounding world. All these indicators under the influence of carbon monoxide are sharply reduced due to its effect on the human brain. As a result, the smoker and the people around him gradually develop increasing weakness, which in rare cases can even develop into a fainting state associated with convulsions.
Regular intake of even small portions of carbon monoxide into the human body can provoke the development of coronary heart disease. In addition to the negative effects of carbon monoxide on the heart, the brain suffers from not receiving the required amount of oxygen.
Carbon monoxide is completely eliminated from the smoker’s body 12, 16 hours after the last cigarette smoked. Therefore, even after eight hours, that is, a full sleep, a sufficient amount of carbon monoxide remains in the smoker’s body so that it can poison his body, tissues, and organs.
Noticeable changes in the health of a smoker with many years of experience who wants to quit smoking will occur only after two or three months. This will manifest itself in the normalization of the pulse and cardiogram. In addition to this, the night cough and constant coughing will stop.
Complete cleansing of the respiratory system from tobacco smoke in such a person will occur only after 8, 10 months. It is during this period of time that the bronchi in the human body manage to completely clear themselves of cigarette smoke.
An increase in appetite and associated weight gain that occurs during the process of quitting smoking is normal for 98 percent of people. In the process of quitting cigarettes, a smoker with many years of experience is able to gain from 2 to 5 kilograms.
The number of kilograms gained in the process of quitting cigarettes greatly depends on the smoking experience. Returning to the original weight in this situation occurs in approximately 6.8 months.
What happens if you quit smoking
Let's look at the nuances of getting rid of nicotine addiction.
Painful symptoms of gradual recovery from nicotine addiction, which can be called nicotine withdrawal, manifested in the form of periodic headaches, are the norm, even inevitable, that arise in the process of quitting smoking. Because the body itself begins to gradually adjust its metabolic processes, which determine its physiological needs, to give up nicotine. Attacks of acute and aching headaches that occur during such withdrawal usually disappear within 72 hours.
Nicotine as a substance can reduce the feeling of hunger, simultaneously speeding up metabolism, which naturally increases the feeling of hunger, forcing a person to eat much more. It is for this reason that many people who try to quit smoking gain excess weight quite quickly.
Consequences of passive smoking
Researchers who conducted their experiments in different countries counted about 7 thousand harmful substances in cigarette smoke. These terrible figures are designed to cause attacks of fear, panic and horror among smokers, or rather, among a small part of them. But such horror stories are not able to convince and influence everyone.
Very often you can hear the opinions of different people, including both advocates for a healthy lifestyle and even doctors, who say that passive smoking in reality turns out, given its consequences, to be almost as harmful as active smoking.
Expensive and cheap cigarettes - what's the difference?
Numerous medical studies have allowed specialists to establish that both cheap and expensive cigarettes have a high content of 25, 26 toxic, carcinogenic chemical compounds. The cheapest cigarettes, both with and without a filter, have a high content of arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and lead.
Roll-up tobacco even contains various barium compounds, which have an extremely negative effect on the functioning of the intestines, as well as on the entire musculoskeletal system, blood, and heart muscle tissue. It is the concentration of barium compounds in absolutely all tobacco products that significantly exceeds the content of other toxic compounds.
Roll-your-own tobacco is also a leader in its nickel content, which significantly increases the risk of cancer. In addition, nickel interferes with conception and normal gestation. At the same time, the least nickel is contained in the cheapest cigarettes. Expensive cigarettes can also “boast” of a high chromium content, which is twice as high as that of cheap cigarettes. Chromium has an extremely negative effect on the condition and functioning of the liver and kidneys. The cadmium content, which is twice as high compared to expensive types of cigarettes, is typical for cheap cigarettes, both with and without a filter. Cadmium affects the blood and causes disruptions; it provokes the development of various pathologies of the nervous system.
But electronic cigarettes and vaping devices that are popular today can boast of an almost complete absence of carbon monoxide emissions during their operation. Due to the lack of direct combustion, e-cigarette sticks also contain lower levels of toxic chemical compounds that are typical for regular cigarettes, both with and without a filter. In such electronic cigarettes, the cadmium content is also reduced by seven times.
The concentration of various lead compounds in electronic cigarettes has been reduced by almost half. But all these advantages of electronic cigarettes, sticks, and vape mixtures are initially due to the reduced content of tobacco in them. But when smoking electronic cigarettes, the negative effects of nicotine, which is added to them intentionally and artificially, do not disappear anywhere, which most quickly affects the condition and functioning of the cardiovascular system.
As the cost of cigarettes increases, the content of harmful substances in them actually decreases. But such a decrease can be considered insignificant, insignificant, that is, very conditional. Today, newfangled electronic cigarettes can truly boast the lowest content of harmful substances.
Restoring the body after smoking
How does the body actually recover after quitting smoking?
Restoring the normal (natural, natural) state occurs in several stages:
- Within twenty minutes after the last cigarette smoked, the body, trying to establish its natural metabolic processes, strives in every possible way to stabilize normal blood pressure.
- Within 72 hours, that is, after three days, most of the nicotine is naturally eliminated from the body.
- A few months after quitting smoking, a person begins to perceive taste and smell much better.
- After two or three months, the smoker gradually begins to restore normal lung volume due to the natural regeneration (restoration) of cells and tissues in the lungs. During this period, the cough goes away to a large extent, and shortness of breath, which previously occurred even with minor physical exertion, disappears.
At the same time, you need to understand that a strong desire to smoke again will regularly arise in a person quitting smoking during the first two months after completely quitting cigarettes.
Smoking is a social problem in society, both for smokers and non-smokers. For the first, the problem is to quit smoking, for the second, to avoid the influence of a smoking society and not to “get infected” with their habit, and also to maintain your health from smoking products, since the substances included in the smoke exhaled by smokers are not much safer than if a person I myself smoked and ingested nicotine and much else that is included in a lit cigarette.
Smoking is a type of household drug addiction. For many smokers, smoking becomes part of their “I”, and this internal perception of oneself is sometimes very difficult to change.
However, smoking is more than a habit. All those forms of tobacco consumption that have become popular among the population contribute to the release of nicotine into the blood.
After cigarette smoke enters the lungs, nicotine reaches the brain within seven seconds.
The inability to quit smoking is due to the body’s already developed dependence on the daily dose of nicotine. The body waits for this dose and requires it, like the required proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Smokers have a different metabolism, and a certain “nicotine addiction” has developed.
Trying to quit smoking, heavy smokers very often at first begin to feel not better, but much worse: coughing, weakness, irritability, tendency to overeat worsen, women are drawn to sweets, and in excessive quantities.
Public ignorance about this problem has led to the idea of smoking as a “bad habit”, in which the smoker is blamed because he cannot stop smoking. However, the habit of smoking develops only in 7-10% of people who systematically smoke tobacco. The remaining 90% are diagnosed with tobacco addiction.
Persons with the habit of smoking tobacco stop smoking on their own and do not need specialized medical care.
Harm of smoking
When a person touches a cigarette for the first time, he does not think about the serious consequences that smoking can lead to. Taking his health lightly, a smoker considers himself invulnerable, especially since the consequences of smoking do not appear immediately, but after a number of years and depend on its intensity, the number of cigarettes smoked, the depth of inhalation of tobacco smoke, the period of smoking, etc.
Most people are optimistic. Being healthy, they usually believe that they will always feel good, and all sorts of diseases are the lot of other, weaker, susceptible people. But, alas, such optimism cannot be considered justified if disease prevention measures are not taken and bad habits are not given up.
Cigarette smoke slowly undermines the health of the smoker. Scientists provide the following data: if tobacco tar is isolated from a thousand cigarettes, then up to 2 milligrams of a strong carcinogenic substance are found in it, which is quite enough to cause a malignant tumor in a rat or rabbit. If we take into account that a number of people smoke up to 40 cigarettes a day or even more, then in order to smoke a thousand cigarettes, they will need only 25 days.
It cannot be said that the human body has a large margin of safety due to the presence of protective mechanisms in it that resist the influence of foreign substances. However, some of these substances can still cause irreparable harm to health. When do people start smoking? Mostly at school age. The peaks are at 14, 17 and 19 years. A slight decrease in the number of smokers is observed after 25 years. However, if men begin to sharply limit their consumption of cigarettes from 40 to 44 years of age, and after 45 years of age they often abandon them altogether, then for women this happens 5 years later.
Quitting smoking is not that difficult. Exercising, traveling, and not having contact with smokers will help get rid of tobacco and the threat of cancer, chronic bronchitis, and other diseases.
Composition of tobacco smoke. At the moment of inhaling smoke from a cigarette, the temperature at its end reaches 60 degrees and above. Under such thermal conditions, tobacco and tissue paper sublimate, resulting in the formation of about 200 harmful substances, including carbon monoxide, soot, benzopyrene, formic acid, hydrocyanic acid, arsenic, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, acetylene, and radioactive elements. Smoking one cigarette is equivalent to being on a busy motorway for 36 hours. A cigarette usually contains several milligrams of nicotine. Only a quarter of this charge enters the smoke that the smoker inhales. And what’s interesting: when there is little nicotine in a cigarette, the frequency and depth of puffs is greater, and vice versa. Smokers seem to strive to saturate the body with a certain dose of nicotine. Which one? Yes, the one that achieves the desired psychological effect: a feeling of a surge of strength, some calm. Carbon monoxide, or carbon monoxide, has the property of binding the respiratory pigment of the blood - hemoglobin. The resulting carboxyhemoglobin is not capable of carrying oxygen; as a result, tissue respiration processes are disrupted. It has been established that when smoking a pack of cigarettes, a person introduces over 400 milliliters of carbon monoxide into the body, as a result, the concentration of carboxyhemoglobin in the blood increases to 7-10 percent. Thus, all organs and systems of the smoker are constantly starved of oxygen.
The effect of smoking on the human body
Nicotine appears in brain tissue 7 seconds after the first puff. What is the secret of nicotine's effect on brain function? Nicotine seems to improve communication between brain cells, facilitating the conduction of nerve impulses. Thanks to nicotine, brain processes are temporarily stimulated, but then inhibited for a long time. After all, the brain needs rest. Having shifted the pendulum of mental activity that is familiar to him, the smoker then inevitably feels its reverse swing.
But this is not the only insidiousness of nicotine. It appears with prolonged smoking. The brain gets used to constant nicotine supplies, which to some extent facilitate its work. And so he begins to demand them, not wanting to overwork himself too much. The law of biological laziness comes into its own. Like an alcoholic, who, in order to maintain normal well-being, has to “feed” his brain with alcohol, and a smoker has to “pamper” it with nicotine. Otherwise, anxiety, irritability, and nervousness appear. Immediately, willy-nilly, you’ll start smoking again.
The respiratory organs are the first to take on the tobacco attack. And they suffer the most often. Passing through the respiratory tract, tobacco smoke causes irritation and inflammation of the mucous membranes of the pharynx, nasopharynx, trachea, bronchi, and pulmonary alveoli. Constant irritation of the bronchial mucosa can trigger the development of bronchial asthma. And chronic inflammation of the upper respiratory tract, chronic bronchitis, accompanied by a debilitating cough, is the lot of all smokers. Undoubtedly, a connection has also been established between smoking and the incidence of cancer of the lip, tongue, larynx, and trachea.
In the last decade, scientists and practitioners have become increasingly concerned about the harmful effects that tobacco smoke components have on the cardiovascular system. Damage to the heart and blood vessels in people who smoke heavily and regularly is usually a consequence of a violation of the nervous and humoral regulation of the cardiovascular system.
Numerous experiments have shown that after smoking a cigarette, the amount of corticosteroids, as well as adrenaline and norepinephrine, sharply increases compared to the norm. These biologically active substances encourage the heart muscle to work at a faster pace; the volume of the heart increases, blood pressure rises, and the rate of myocardial contractions increases.
It is estimated that the heart of a smoker makes 12-15 thousand more contractions per day than the heart of a non-smoker. In itself, this mode is uneconomical, since excessive constant load leads to premature wear of the heart muscle. But the situation is aggravated by the fact that the myocardium does not receive the amount of oxygen that it needs during such intense work. This is due to two reasons.
Firstly, the coronary vessels of a smoker are spasmed, narrowed, and, consequently, the flow of blood through them is very difficult. And secondly, the blood circulating in the smoker’s body is poor in oxygen. For, as we remember, 10% of hemoglobin is excluded from the respiratory process: they are forced to carry “dead weight” - carbon monoxide molecules.
All this contributes to the early development of coronary heart disease and angina in smokers. And quite rightly, among the risk factors for myocardial infarction, experts cite smoking as one of the first. This is confirmed by statistics from industrialized countries: heart attacks at a relatively young age - 40 - 50 years old - occur almost exclusively in smokers.
Tobacco lovers have a much more severe course of hypertension than non-smokers: it is more often complicated by hypertensive crises and impaired cerebral circulation - stroke.
Smoking is one of the main reasons for the development of such a serious disease as obliterating endarteritis. With this disease, the vascular system of the legs is affected, sometimes to the point of complete obliteration (closing of the lumen) of the vessels and the occurrence of gangrene. In people who do not poison themselves with tobacco, this disease is extremely rare. Compare 14% of cases in smokers to only 0.3% in non-smokers. These figures were obtained from a study of a large group of patients.
Nicotine and other components of tobacco also affect the digestive organs. Scientific research and clinical observations indisputably indicate that long-term smoking contributes to the occurrence of gastric and duodenal ulcers.
In a person who smokes a lot and for a long time, the vessels of the stomach are in a state of constant spasm. As a result, the tissues are poorly supplied with oxygen and nutrients, and the secretion of gastric juice is disrupted. And as a result - gastritis or peptic ulcer. A survey was conducted in one of the Moscow clinics, which showed that in 69% of patients with peptic ulcer disease, the development of the disease was directly related to smoking. Of those operated on in this clinic for such a dangerous complication as perforation of an ulcer, about 90% were heavy smokers.
Middle-aged women could have much better teeth if they avoided smoking in their youth. According to research results, only 26% of non-smoking women over the age of 50 needed dental prosthetics. And among smokers, 48% experienced such a need.
Smoking has a detrimental effect on a pregnant woman. Inhalation of smoke from cigarettes and cigarettes is accompanied by its active effect on the vascular system, especially at the level of small vessels and capillaries that supply internal organs with oxygen and essential nutrients. Generalized vasospasm and deterioration in the functions of the lungs, brain, heart, and kidneys occur. An adult who is accustomed to smoking does not notice any unpleasant sensations, but the negative effect on the vascular system, gradually accumulating, will certainly manifest itself in the form of hypertension, angina pectoris, and a tendency to thrombosis. During pregnancy, the negative effects of smoking appear much faster, and especially in relation to the developing child. It has been shown that if the mother smoked during pregnancy, the weight of the newborn is 150-200 grams less than normal.
Trisomy, that is, the presence of an “extra” chromosome in a person’s genetic makeup, often leads to serious hereditary diseases. Scientists have been studying the causes of this phenomenon for a long time. Doctors from Columbia University in New York have discovered a clear connection between smoking and trisomy in pregnant women. Statistical calculations have shown that the risk of this phenomenon occurring in women who smoke is significantly higher than in non-smokers.
smoking body addiction nicotine
Conclusion
In conclusion, it must be said that nicotine is a slow-acting poison; it destroys the body from the inside, over many years. Moreover, a smoker destroys not only himself, but also the people who surround him, because tobacco smoke contains about 200 harmful substances that poison people and the environment.
Smoking greatly undermines human health. Everyone needs to understand and realize this as deeply as possible. No one should voluntarily destroy their body.
It is the most common cause of premature death and disability
Globally, smoking kills more than 3 million people a year, and if this trend continues, by 2020 this number could reach 10 million. Recent international studies have shown that this bad habit shortens life by an average of 20-25 years.
Today in Russia, 67% of men, 40% of women and 50% of teenagers smoke. 500,000 people die every year from the consequences of smoking in Russia. Every 10th person dying from smoking in the world is Russian.
Nicotine and its antidote
If a person smokes, he has a constant need to fuel himself with nicotine and periodically inhale tobacco smoke. But this period is not the same for smokers; it depends on the length of smoking and on the physiological state of the body. There are several interpretations on this matter. Some doctors argue that smoking is simply a bad habit, comparable to a child’s desire to use a pacifier. Others believe that not everything is so simple: when nicotine is reduced in the body, nerve receptors are irritated, and you want to smoke again.
Nicotine is essentially a strong poison. From a pharmacological point of view, poison in small doses has healing properties for some diseases. Thus, mercuric chloride was used to treat venereal diseases, tuberculosis, arsenic was used to stimulate the red bone marrow in case of exhaustion, and bee and snake venom was also used for medicinal purposes. From this point of view, there is an opinion that when smoking nicotine, entering the body, enriches it with nicotinic acid, doing a good deed. However, an excess of this acid begins to cause harm instead of benefit. Therefore, tobacco addiction is sometimes accompanied by drug addiction. Agree, there is practically nothing new in all these statements; all this is well known. But there are hypotheses that provide a different explanation for tobacco addiction.
They say a drop of nicotine kills a horse. Why doesn’t a person who smokes die after consuming a pack of cigarettes a day, and not just any cigarettes, but strong ones, such as, for example, “Pamir” or “Prima”? After all, if this dose of nicotine is consumed by a non-smoker, then the matter can end in death. There is a version that the body of a person who smokes produces an antidote, let’s call it antitine - an antidote that neutralizes nicotine that has entered the body. Moreover, this antidote, which is constantly produced by heavy smokers, must, in turn, be neutralized by nicotine. In this case, the body requires a certain dose of nicotine contained in a cigarette, cigarette, etc.
A smoking person is agitated, mentally unbalanced, and almost physiologically ill. With what deep pleasure he takes a saving puff of tobacco smoke! And as soon as nicotine enters the body, the antitine level begins to decrease due to the neutralization of the poison. The body enters a phase of physiological balance, the person calms down, and an imaginary feeling of euphoria sets in. This feeling doesn't last long. Why? There is a simple explanation for this. If you eat at approximately the same time, then by this time inflammatory gastric juice is produced. You feel hungry and in order to extinguish this feeling, you start eating. When smoking, everything is much more complicated: the body knows that by a certain time a poison will enter the body - nicotine, which must be neutralized, even if not completely, with antitine. And as anictin accumulates in the body, a craving arises to get a nicotine dose from a cigarette or cigarette. This process is endless, because there is a struggle for life.
Why hasn’t the antidote anictin been discovered yet, you ask? Let's digress a little to better understand the question posed. For example, a beekeeper in an apiary during the honey harvest period is exposed to countless amounts of bee stings, but does not die from it or even swell. This triggers immunity, although there are no special antibodies in the body and no antidote (antidote) has been found for bee venom. But this antidote exists in principle, otherwise during the beekeeping season we would not have counted many beekeepers! You may ask: why is there no antidote in the body, say, against snake venom? But have mercy, because the snake injects such a dose of poison that the body simply does not have time to react to it, in the sense of developing an antidote. And yet, even without medical assistance, if you suck out the poison from the bite, the body can deal with some of the remaining poison on its own.
Continuing this thought and answering the question posed, I dare to suggest that the antidote anictin has not been identified in the body for the same reason as the antidote for bee venom - modern medicine has not yet matured. It is characteristic that if a person once quit smoking, and after a while started again, the process of producing anictin does not disappear! It lies dormant in the body like a volcano. And this pathological “explosion” stimulates tobacco addiction with even greater force.
Time cannot be stopped, science moves forward. Perhaps someday an antidote will be discovered, its composition will be named, and this will give a new impetus to the treatment of an acquired disease called “smoking.”
Photo from go2load.com
Fighting addiction on your own
How to rid your relatives and family members of an addiction? First of all, remind the smoker about the dangers of smoking for his health and for the health of people close to him (children, women). Do not create comfortable conditions for smoking, do not give pleasant “smoking” accessories - expensive cigarettes, lighters, ashtrays. And in every possible way promote the person’s desire to quit smoking.
If you yourself start smoking or are just “dabbling” in smoking, you need to be aware that this quickly forms a nicotine addiction, which later, when you want to quit smoking, will make it very difficult.
When you decide to quit smoking, think about what exactly you are gaining instead: health - yours and that of your loved ones, as well as saving money. Giving up after just 6 months will have a positive impact on your well-being.
Here are a few points that will help in this difficult matter:
* Schedule a day in advance to quit smoking.
* Stop smoking immediately, without first trying to reduce the number of cigarettes, or switch to “light” or filter cigarettes. It has been proven that this is only a fiction of reducing the harm of smoking, which prevents us from decisively putting an end to it.
* Try to avoid situations that provoke smoking, including the company of people who smoke.
* Reward yourself for each completed stage with something pleasant.
* Engaging in an interesting and useful activity, chewing gum, helps overcome the desire to smoke.
* After refusal, an improvement in taste sensitivity occurs, an increase in appetite is possible, which leads to an increase in body weight in the first 2-3 months. Therefore, try to eat low-calorie foods and increase your physical activity. Usually within a year after refusal, body weight returns to its original level.
* Don't despair if a breakdown occurs. With repeated attempts, the chances of success increase.
* Consult your doctor for help in fulfilling your desire to prescribe medication support and reduce withdrawal symptoms, follow his advice.
Official medicine
If you decide to resort to remedies and advice from doctors, you will have to go through several stages on the path to health.
1. Preparatory stage. The task is to develop a convincing motivation to quit smoking. Write down the reasons why you should give it up on paper, hang it up in a visible place, and read it daily. The day of refusal and the next couple of days should be calm, not requiring emotional stress at home and at work. It is better for women to start quitting smoking immediately after menstruation, before ovulation.
2. Main stage. The task is to overcome the strong desire to smoke. It usually lasts 5-10 minutes. To do this, it is suggested to do what you love, read a book, play a computer game, do something with your hands, for example, knitting, reading a few matches in a box, brush your teeth, do some physical exercises. Avoid places where they smoke!
3. Additional measures. There are several ways to help you quit smoking. The most common is to replace smoking with the use of nicotine-containing products: nicotine patches, chewing gum, inhalers.
4. Alternative methods.
These include acupuncture and hypnosis.
A new anti-smoking medicine, Champix (varenicline), has also been developed, which does not contain nicotine but gives good treatment results.
Voice of the people
Traditional medicine in the treatment of nicotine addiction recommends the following methods:
* Dry the crayfish in the shade, grind it into powder and a small amount of this powder with regular powder. Having smoked such a potion, any most hopeless smoker will forget about smoking for a long time.
* Infusions and decoctions of Calamus herb (1 tablespoon of dry herb per 500 ml of water) drink 1/3 cup 3 times a day for a month. The composition helps overcome addiction to both smoking and alcohol.
* One of the most proven folk remedies is oats. Rinse the glass of oats well. Fill it with 3 liters of boiling water and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes. Before removing from heat, add a teaspoon of calendula flower to the broth. Leave for 1 hour. Strain. Drink 100 milliliters as soon as you want to smoke. If you last 3 days, quit smoking.