Friday, December 28, 2007

Cigarette Smoking is not the Solution for Ex-Smokers

Cigarette Smoking and Stress
Stress is directly proportional to cigarette smoking. All the smokers out there will be in agreement with this fact. It is a general slogan of all the smokers that because they smoke of stress.

But, this is a misunderstanding. Due to their smoking habit, people often get stressed. Even after quitting smoking, smokers often start cigarette smoking. The main causes for taking up cigarette smoking again are stress, social gatherings, alcohol, and parties.

There are several smokers, who want to get rid of this deadly chemical. They even say bye to smoking cigarettes after few failed attempts. But, after a certain period their urge for cigarette smoking begins.

They feel that without cigarette smoking, life is boring. Without cigarette smoking, the ex-smoker becomes nervous, upset and depress. These kinds of depressions are one of the effects of not smoking cigarettes.

We experience stress everywhere in our daily life. It can be job related stress or family stress or friends stress or financial stress. The ex-smoker wants to take the help of cigarette smoking in such stressful situations. He would go for cigarette smoking, as he thinks it to be helpful.

However, this is a complete misunderstanding of him. For example, you are having a lot of work pressure in the office. You would immediately think of having cigarette, if you use to smoke earlier.

Is It Reasonable Of Taking Cigarette Smoking Again
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You are thinking about having cigarette, instead of organizing the schedule of your work. Can you give any cause for having cigarette smoking in this situation? Neither cigarette smoking can help you in easing the work pressure, nor can do the work.

Thus, there is no reason for cigarette smoking in such stressful situation. You are only making a fool of yourself. You are again making a way for the entry of numerous deadly chemicals. These chemicals will result in harmful deadly diseases. Moreover, cigarette smoking will also affect your near and dear ones.

Thus, the job stress is nothing in front of these deadly diseases. The cigarette smoking will make you more anxious. It increases the frustration. You will take another cigarette, when the first one ends.

In this way, you will start cigarette smoking again. After several failed and sincere attempts, you have quitted cigarette smoking. But, due to certain stress you are again taking it up. Remember that smoking will not get the solution for you, even, if you are going through some major crisis period.

Several times, we are unable to handle our circumstances. Such as, death of a near one or getting bankrupt, or major illness and ended up in taking cigarette. But, always remember that cigarette smoking is not going to solve your problem.

Stop Smoking Benefits

Effects of Smoking
Smoking leads to several deadly diseases like lung cancer, heart problems and asthma. Smoking not only affects your health but also affects the health of your near and dear ones around you. Thus, you must stop smoking at least for the sake of health of your loved ones.

If you want to stop smoking that means, you are giving way to healthy and fresh life. Moreover, after you stop smoking, there are certain sudden changes you will experience.

Stop smoking Benefits – Carbon monoxide Level
These are mainly positive changes and you will only benefit from them. The content of carbon monoxide gas in the blood enhances because of excess smoking. But, the moment you stop smoking it becomes normal.

With in 8 hours after you stop smoking, the amount of carbon monoxide gas will be normal. The chances of heart attack also reduce within 24 hours.

Saving Money
Do not forget the money that you were burning while smoking. You can save money after you stop smoking. Make it a routine of keeping the money that you use for buying cigarettes into a jar. After a month, check your jar and enjoy the achievement.

After 2 To 3 Months
After two or three months, you will experience more stop smoking benefits. You will be much healthier. The lung will function much better and its functioning will increment by 30 percent.

After one year, the chances of heart diseases will reduce to half. Moreover, the risk of death due to lung cancer will also decrease.

Other Stop smoking Benefits
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You can enjoy several other stop smoking benefits. You are also saving your children from acquiring deadly diseases. The worst case of smoking is then when a pregnant woman smokes. She should stop smoking as soon as she is pregnant as she is exposing her baby to several deadly chemicals.

These deadly chemicals will harm the baby a lot. Smoking by a pregnant women leads to under weight child, organs will be of smaller size and more chances of taking up tobacco.
Such babies will never be able to lead a healthy and active life. Thus, you must stop smoking for the sake of your baby’s health. She is blessing life to her baby, if a pregnant woman stops smoking by then.

All it need is a decision from you. Your determination to stop smoking guarantees healthy future for you. You will feel active. There will be glow at your face. Earlier you were having pale yellow fingernails. They will appear normally.

9 Reasons Why Exercising Can Help Keep You Smoke-Free
The most important strategy in remaining free from smoking is to put an exercise component into your life. The major benefits of exercise are these:

Exercise brings a true, natural, and sustained high.
Exercise gives relief from tension, a benefit smokers falsely think they get from cigarettes.
Exercise decreases neuromuscular tension and increases relaxation.
Aerobic exercise slows and even reverses the aging process.
The exercised heart pumps more blood with each stroke, so this efficiency saves 20 million superfluous heartbeats per year.
Exercise offers a long-term reduction of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
Exercise dilates blood vessels, allowing blood to circulate freely to the hands, feet, and surface areas of the body. (Most smokers complain of cold hands and feet.)
Exercise can prevent the potential weight gain connected with breaking free of cigarettes.
You can develop a healthy addiction to exercise, which will be manifested in many positive changes in addition to losing interest in cigarettes.

Stop Smoking Plan

As soon as you decided to stop smoking, you have already won half of your battle. However, after the decision to stop smoking comes the much difficult part. Withstanding the temptations and it also needs your willpower.

Whenever you feel the desire to smoke, just remember the dangerous effects of smoking and benefits to stop smoking and you can easily put an end to your temptations. Suppose, your friends are smoking cigarettes and inviting you to smoke then it would be better to leave the place. After leaving that place, remember these things.

Reason to Stop Smoking
Simply start thinking about the various reasons that lead you to stop smoking. If you carry a paper and list all the causes, it would be more beneficial for you. When you feel the carving read this list of causes. You will overcome over the temptation after reading the list.

Keep a Note about Diversions to Temptation
Still, you can meet temptation at any time after you stop smoking. It could be your friends or any particular place. So, you must be ready for such instances. You can divert yourself by doing any other task. Make a cup of tea or read a newspaper. In a blank paper, make two columns in it.

On the first column, write the possible probabilities that can lead you to smoke, such as watching TV or drinking tea. On the second column, write the action that you will perform to divert the craving of smoking. For example, you can read a newspaper if you feel the craving for smoking.

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Water
Chew something if you are feeling a strong urge to smoke. Chewing will definitely consumes a lot of your time. After chewing, start drinking a glass of water with the help of straw. You will forget the desire to smoke while doing all this. It would be healthy if you drink 8 glasses of water. (Stop Smoking - Water Therapy)

Take the Help Of A Friend
Make a call to your close friend or anyone who can talk to you for a while. You will forget the craving for smoking while talking. Get a picture of smoker’s lungs and always keep it with you. See the picture, when you feel the craving for smoking.

After Passing A Non-Smoking Week
Do not forget to praise yourself, whenever you pass a non-smoking week. Always in advance decide to gift yourself, after a non-smoking week. Write name of the gift on the paper, along with the non-smoking phase. This will increase your spirit and help you to withstand the temptations

7 Days Stop Smoking Program

The first thing to do is set a date when you are going to stop smoking. Let’s start one week from today. That will give you plenty of time to practice with the weapons in your arsenal. Eight days from today, it will be the beginning of the end of your smoking habit.

Days 1 and 2
Examine your smoking behavior for the first two days. Every time you light up, ask yourself:

Why am I smoking this cigarette?
Would this be an easy one or a difficult one to do without?
If I did not smoke this cigarette, what would I do instead?
Day 3
Let’s get out and test your weapons today.

At least once today, use your weapons to shoot down the urge to smoke.
During the five minutes that it will take for the urge to pass, try out some of your arsenal. Try one, or all, or find a combination that works for you.

Day 4
Today is the big testing day. If you haven’t already tried it, skip those one or two cigarettes that you feel may be the toughest to give up in your daily routine. Pick the ones that you rated “difficult” during your monitoring period.

Remember, this is a practice period, and you must not get upset if you are unable to give up a difficult cigarette. You must practice and experiment with your different weapons to realize how you can be more effective.

If you found skipping that cigarette very hard or even failed in the end, review any factor that got in the way of your success. The most common causes of difficulty or failure that a potential quitter faces are:

Chemical properties of addiction
When you do not have that cigarette, you feel lousy. If you are a heavy smoker, a nicotine patch may help to relieve your bad feelings.

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Social pressures
You may find yourself in a situation like, card game, party, coffee break during which you would normally smoke. It may help to let others know of your desire to stop smoking, and also your reasons to stop smoking.

Enlisting the aid of a non smoker to confide in may also help. Make sure that he or she is aware of your goals so that they do not say or do anything to instill a negative impact on your desire to stop smoking.

If you feel that you may not resist the social pressures of smoking, consider the option of giving up these social encounters for two or three weeks until the urge passes and you can be comfortable again.

Tension and negative emotion
A crisis occurs during your work or personal day, and one of the main reasons for you to smoke has been tension reduction. Try to deal with your negative emotions and use the tension reducing methods that we talked about earlier.

Get away from the area that the tension is associated with. Take a walk, or go to another room. You may also find that nicotine gum will give you enough tension relief to get through.

Days 5, 6, and 7
You are now heading down the home stretch. In the next three days, your goal is to come out of this week smoking half the cigarettes that you would normally smoke. If you started as a one pack a day smoker, cut back to ten cigarettes per day, or less.

The fewer the better
During days 5 and 6, set your goals toward achieving positive results on day 7. Maintain your smoking record during these three days, and continue to decrease your dependency on nicotine.

What do you do if you still have doubts? This is probably due to your chemical dependency on nicotine. It is a highly powerful drug, and many factors have been working together to make you dependent.

Discuss with your doctor about the feasibility of a patch or nicotine gum. Nicotine is the hook that has gotten you to smoke which carries the harmful effects to your body. With the help from the patch or the gum, you will have all he tools you need to successfully quit.

The nicotine patch or gum will give you a steady influx of nicotine into your system, which will be reduced slowly over a period of several weeks. Do not smoke while on the nicotine patch. You could experience a dangerous overdose of nicotine.

Effects of Smoking during Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a state where one has to be very particular about certain habits, including smoking. You might have your reasons to smoke, but the effects of smoking during pregnancy not only seen on our health but also on your baby to a large extent.

Everybody loves to have a healthy baby. First and foremost thing you should do is that quit smoking if you are planning to have a baby. Do not play around with your and your child’s health.

Dangerous Effects of Smoking during Pregnancy:
You may have a look into the effects of smoking during pregnancy. Nicotine and carbon monoxide are poisonous ingredients of cigarette that can cause a lot of harm inside the body.

Carbon Monoxide and Nicotine
Smoking leads to increase in the levels of carbon monoxide and nicotine in the mother’s bloodstream during pregnancy. Carbon monoxide and nicotine have terrifying effects on the mother’s body, as the blood vessels are constricted and limited, showing an effect on the supply of oxygen and nutrients.

The growth of the baby is hampered as the baby is denied its full share of nutrients and oxygen. The whole situation is like to you are being hungry and being offered an insufficient amount of food with poisonous substances. When you smoke, this is what exactly your baby is going to experience.

Premature Babies
One of the dangerous effects of smoking during pregnancy is that babies are likely to be born premature and is they are born in correct time the baby may be underweight and small. Such babies need special care under medical supervision, which extends their stay in hospital.

Other Dangerous Effects of Smoking during Pregnancy
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Smoking during pregnancy leads to denial proper oxygen supply to baby, which in turn may lead to miscarriages or fetal brain damage. According to certain studies smoking during pregnancy may even lead to Sudden infant death syndrome.

Another effect of smoking during pregnancy is found on the blood pressure of the developing baby. This adversely affects its development and the child’s learning ability, like attention deficit disorder retarded mental growth. When young the child may also develop respiratory problems like asthma.

Effects of Smoking after Pregnancy
Once your baby is born, still there is need to protect the child from smoking. Smoking leads to reduction in milk supply, and can hinder breastfeeding. Moreover, the baby gets a fair dose of nicotine through breast milk.

This can cause diseases in the form of nausea, colic, diarrhea etc. Second hand smoke is not good for the baby, since it affects the lungs through the nicotine it inhales. You would not like your baby to develop breathing disorders.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Experts found babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were born with smaller airways - making them more vulnerable to breathing problems after birth. These breathing problems can put your baby at increased risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Smoking has been linked to various health problems in babies, including prematurity and low birth weight. Mothers who smoke are at increased risk of having a stillbirth, miscarriage or premature infant. Smoking while pregnant will lower the amount of oxygen available to you and your growing baby and increase your baby's heart rate.

These health factors also contribute to raising the SIDS risk for your infant, and in your child’s decreased ability to breathe correctly or take in enough oxygen for a restful, restorative sleep at night.

Babies born to mothers who smoke are significantly lighter and shorter than those born to non smokers. Children who are exposed to tobacco smoke before birth or in the home are far more likely to suffer from respiratory illnesses and infections, which can also contribute to a decrease in quality of nighttime sleep for your baby.

The more cigarettes you or your baby’s caregiver smoke per day, the greater your baby's chances of developing these and other health problems. Studies show that a baby's risk of SIDS rises with each additional smoker in the household, with the number of cigarettes smoked a day, and with the length of exposure to cigarette smoke.

So give your baby and yourself the best chance at a restful night’s sleep and keep your home and your baby’s sleeping environment smoke-free. Your baby will thank you and you’ll sleep better knowing your baby’s risk for SIDS is greatly diminished and that your baby is breathing clean air with each breath he takes at night.