by Dr. Abdul Wadud

Although smoking does not come under the category of () yet it produces an intense habit formation which produces the most disastrous effects on human health.  It is said that yearly, 35,000 people die prematurely in Canada alone from the effects of smoking.   The universal (global) figure may be calculated from it.  Yet many more live on with crippled lungs and overstrained hearts.  Cigarette smoking is a major cause of emphysema in which the air cells in the lungs expand, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease.  Thousands of careful studies have documented them.  No major medical or health agency questions them.  The longer you smoke, the deadlier it is.  But it does not take years for smoking to affect you.  Just a few puffs can hurt.  Just one cigarette speeds up your heartbeat, increases your blood pressure, and upsets the flow of blood and air in your lungs.  It also causes a drop in the skin temperature of your fingers and toes. 

            A few puffs also slow down the action of the cilia inside your bronchial tubes.  These tiny hairs like bodies normally work like brooms to sweep out germs, mucus, and dirt from your lungs.   It is a common experience that if you remain in a dusty atmosphere for some time, you discharge dusty sputum for the rest of the day, possibly even until the next day.  That is the result of the action of cilia.  You stand on one side of a field with adult wheat plantation, when the wind blows, the heads of the wheat plants move uniformly in one direction.  Similarly, the cilia inside the bronchial tubes move outwards in one direction only and thus sweep away gradually the filth inside the bronchi.

One cigarette makes the cilia sluggish.  Inhaling cigarette smoke for long periods, paralyses the cilia completely.  Then your lungs become devoid of the protective mechanism of cilia and are exposed to all kinds of infections.  That is one reason why smokers often use healthcare facilities, particularly hospitals.

              But after sustained period of non-smoking, the cilia begin working again and help sweep out the filth laden sputum from inside the bronchial tubes.

 Hot smoke and harmful compounds  

            When you inhale on a cigarette, the hot smoke assaults delicate tissue in your mouth, throat, breathing tubes and lungs.  After the smoke passes your mouth, your lungs retain from 85 to 95 % of almost all the compounds you inhale.  There are hundreds of chemical substances in cigarette smoke.  Three of the most damaging are Nicotine, tars and Carbon Monoxide. 

            Nicotine makes your blood vessels constrict.  It cuts down the flow of blood and oxygen through your body.  Your heart has to pump harder.  Tars damage delicate lung tissues.  There are billions of tiny particles in cigarette smoke.  When they cool inside your lungs, some form a brown sticky mass, containing chemicals that produce cancer in tests with animals. 

            Carbon Monoxide literally drives the oxygen out of your red blood cells.   Levels of gas in the blood of smokers if four times higher; for heavy smokers some times fifteen times higher than the non-smokers: Carbon Monoxide stays in the blood stream, robbing the body of oxygen, as log as six hours after the person stops smoking. 

Men, Women and Teen-agers  

            So many teenagers take up smoking every year.  Friends have a strong influence on teen-age smoking.  So do parents.  A recent study showed that the children with non-smoking parents were less likely to become regular smokers than those with one or two parents who smoke.  Also, children who do not smoke are likely to have very few friends who do smoke.  In children who do smoke, it is likely that the majority (66 to 73%) of their friends are regular smokers. 

            School aged boys tend to experiment with cigarettes earlier than girls.   But girls begin regular smoking earlier than boys.  The percentage of teenaged girls who smoke is now the same as boys who smoke.  These are the statistics of the western countries.

Fortunately, smoking by the school-aged girls is rare in Pakistan, for the time being. 

            Women smokers find it harder to quit smoking than do men.  One of their fears is that they will gain weight if they quit smoking.  But gaining weight is not inevitable with quitting smoking.  There is no overall correlation between the two. 

            Smoking is a double hazard for women and for the children they bear.

Cigarette smoke in the mother’s blood stream alters the heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen supply and acid balance of the unborn infant.  A pregnant woman who smokes two packs a day, blocks off the equivalent of 40 % of the oxygen supply to the fetus.  Pregnant women who smoke have more stillbirths, spontaneous abortions and low weight bodies than do non-smoking mothers.

  How to quit smoking? 

            The cigarette companies have spent millions of dollars and half a century, trying to link smoking with beautiful things in life.  Their advertisements have been banned from radio and television but they are trying hard everywhere else to keep up the brainwash.  Seeing through this barrage is a major requirement for quitting.   What smoking is really liked to is disability and death.  Quitting is not deprivation but an advantage.

              To begin with, you can record how many cigarettes you smoke; and then can try to smoke half as many.  You can make it a pact to quit with a friend.  You can go to a withdrawal clinic.  You can find a way that works for you.  But first you have to make up your mind to quit.  Once you really want to quit, you will find a way to do it.  The minute you stop smoking, your body will go to work to repair some of the damage the cigarettes have inflicted.

 Facts for room smokers    

1)      Banishing cigarette use in the presence of non-smokers should be considered a minimum level of protection.

2)      Second hand tobacco smoke is a dangerous substance – there is a significant correlation between exposure to passive smoke and an increased incidence of lung cancer.  Smokers should refrain from smoking in the presence of non-smokers.

3)      Sidestream smoke, which wafts from a smoker’s cigarette to an involuntary smoker, puts into the surrounding air 50 times the amount of cancer-causing substances, inhaled by the user.

4)      Non-smokers have the right to breathe clear air, free from harmful and irritating tobacco smoke.   This right supercedes the choice or right to smoke, when the two conflict.

5)      The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that second hand smoke is to blame for up to 5000 lung cancer deaths among non-smoking Americans every year.

6)      No longer is smoking simply a nuisance to non-smokers.  Today the evidence proves that the effects of second hand or involuntary smoking are severe enough to make smoking every body’s concern.

7)      Lung researchers have found that lung disease is twice as common in young children, whose parents smoke at home, compared to those whose parents do not smoke. 

What is Lung cancer?  

            Lung cancer is a disease, due to the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the lungs.  The abnormal cells no longer do the work of normal cells.  Instead the cancer cells crowd out and destroy healthy tissues in the lungs.  

What causes Lung cancer?             

            Tobacco smoke, especially cigarette smoke is the most important cause of lung cancer.  About one in ten heavy smokers eventually get lung cancer.  When cigarette smoking is combined with on the job exposure to other harmful substances, the chances for lung cancer skyrocket.  For example, asbestos and uranium workers who smoke cigarettes have almost 100 times the risk for lung cancer as compared with someone not exposed to either substance. 

            Research shows that the close relatives of lung cancer patients have a slightly higher risk for developing lung cancer than does the general population.   When these relatives are cigarette smokers, the risks are even greater.  Most lung cancer could be prevented by avoiding exposure to the known cause.  Some experts have estimated that about 80% of cases could be prevented. 

            The risk for lung cancer changes if a person stops smoking.  Tests done on animals show that abnormal cells produced by exposure to tobacco smoke can recover and revert to normal, when the exposure to tobacco smoke is discontinued and sufficient time passes from the last exposure to tobacco.  It is estimated that the smoker’s high risk is lowered gradually to almost that of the non-smoker’s after 10 years abstinence from smoking.   The lungs begin to adjust in some ways almost immediately after quitting and substantial overall benefit begins during the first year of cessation. 

            Smoking is totally prohibited in Sikh religion.  It is a praiseworthy act and speaks highly of the founder of this religion.  It is the outcome of this prohibition that Sikhs may be said to be one of the healthiest communities of the world. 

            Before the introduction of cigarettes, ‘Hukka’ was used and is still used in Punjab, especially by the villiage population.  It is used both by men, as well as by women.  It is supposed to be less injurious than cigarettes because nicotine and other injurious chemicals originating from the tobacco are retained in the bottom pot of the Hukka.  Yet the cancer producing effects of Hukka smoking have not been studied nor properly evaluated.