Recent Study: Smoking Employees Cost More

blank

With nerves frayed and a shaking yearning to get out of the constricted workspace, you wait until the clock strikes 12. 

You finger your pockets just to check whether your lighter or pack of Marlboro lights Gold is still there.  

“Just a few more seconds…” you mutter to yourself while watching the red hand of that clock in front of you make its arduous journey to the number 12. 

You automatically swallow and your fingers shake as you discover that the pack inside your pocket is actually empty. You loosen your tie a bit as you think about the nearest place you could buy cigarettes. Read more

Smoke Free Life Step Program Step 7

blank

Smoking is not a habit and it does not exist. The real reason you continue to smoke is to feed the little nicotine monster inside your stomach. The nicotine in your body has to be fed regularly. You the smoker decide when to feed this monster. Normally when you smoke it is on four types of occasions or a combination of occasions. Read more

Second Hand Smoke

blank

In 2012 there were an estimated 58.5 million U.S. residents that were smokers. Second hand smoke kills 53,800 non smokers annually. This makes it the third leading cause of preventable death in America.

Second hand smoke (SHS), contains over 4,000 chemical compounds, two hundred known poisons, and sixty carcinogens, some of which include: Lead, nickel, benzene, formaldehyde, chromium, cyanide, ethylene oxide, arsenic, polonium and carbon monoxide. These dangerous particles can linger in the air for hours, and smoke lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood. Residue left on a smoker's clothing can cause health problems, especially in children.

If a person spends more than two hours in a room with a an individual smoking, the non-smoker inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes. The immediate health effects of SHS are coughing, nausea, headache, eye irritation, sore throat, dizziness, and difficulty in breathing. For those already suffering from asthma or other respitory disorders, this can be dangerous.

In adults, second hand smoke can trigger asthma and bronchitis, and is a known risk factor for lung cancer. It increases the risk of heart attacks, and is also a known risk factor for various  other types of cancer.

Children who live with smokers are more apt to develop middle ear and sinus infections. SHS is associated with 413 SIDS deaths in the US annually.

Exposure to SHS as a child is associated with a increased risk of developing Atopic dermatitis which is a chronic nflammation of the skin. A higher risk of tooth decay has also been associated with passive tobacco smoking.  Children who grow up around smokers have smaller lungs and decreased lung function than that of a child living in a non-smoking home. Children who are consistently exposed to SHS tend to develop childhood asthma.

When children are forced to be in proximity of SHS, such diseases as cystic fibrosis, bronchitis, and even pneumonia are worsened. These conditions are very difficult for small children to tolerate.  Middle ear infections are common in children inhaling second hand smoke. The smoke irritates the Eustachian tube, which connects the back of the nose to the middle ear. This causes fluid retention and can be very painful for the child. If diagnosed right away, these infections can be easily cured, but if treatment is delayed, it can lead to permanent reduction in hearing.

The possibility of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) increases when a mother smokes. Lower birth weight, as well as conditions such as cleft lip and palate are seen in instances of maternal smoking.

300,000 cases of toddlers and infants with respiratory diseases are reported yearly. Much of this could be avoided if parents were to think about the affects of their smoking on children.

 

 

 

 

Revised and updated from original posting @ Knoji.com

Support to Help you Quit

blank

Decided to quite smoking? You've made it through a long way.

Think you can do it all alone? You are not quite right.

Smoking cessation is easier said than done and you need the support of the people around you. Do not feel scared of failure. You'll fail. Again and again. Then one day, you'll succeed.

1) Take support from family and friends: tell them you want to quit. They'll be more than happy to help you out.

2) Get support from therapists and counselors: there are plenty of counselors out there who are there especially to help you kick the habit.

3) Take your physician into confidence: There are ways to quite smoking. Some drugs may help. Or so may a chewing gum in place of the cigar. Your physician can definitely help you out.

There are many different types of support. Someone can help you through their positive words or encouragement. Or maybe through counseling or prescribing medication. But one thing's for sure. You can do it, but you can't do it alone.

Read This if You Hate Yourself

blank

Have you ever walked barefoot on soft and slippery mud, and had the soles of your feet pierced by the wonderfully beautiful bougainvillea thorn?

Have you ever gritted your teeth in pain as a hundred or maybe even a thousand fire ants, crawled inside your clothes, biting you from within with no recourse for you but to lose your mind forcing yourself not to shout at what fate has brought you?

If not, then ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to meet pain.  Read more

Making A List Will Be The Best Thing You Do

blank

I’d like to share one of the most amazing messages I’ve heard. I’ll tell you why this message below is important. It touches on letting you know that ‘yes’ you do have a choice, even though your seeking help nobody is forcing you to change. That your parents aren’t using their parental power to shape your bad habits, but your decisions are your own hardships. Realizing that outside help won’t be the reason you change. Things like support groups, or counseling… Oh they will have crucial impact on your decision, influence, hope, strength; you get all of this from outside help. But what’s inside is stronger than anything imaginable, if you really consider the repercussions and make a conscious decision not to smoke then I believe you will quit sooner than you think. Once you really prioritize the repercussions, you’ve won the battle. We fight for what we stand for, if you are a family man, put family first. If you are an athlete put your body first. See where I am going? It starts by>>>>>>> “MAKING A LIST”

• Putting the people you love at the top

• Next put your legs

Kidney

Heart

Now cross of all the things you’re okay with losing because you’d rather smoke.

Wise wisdom from a man named Billy.

How Autosuggestion Can Help You Stop Smoking

blank

There are many people out there who are addicted to smoking, and you could be one of them. If you know you have to quit for health reasons, you might want to explore autosuggestion as a technique for quitting smoking.

 

The first stage to quitting smoking is to analyze why you smoke in the first place. Do you smoke because you think it makes you look cool and sophisticated? Do you smoke because everyone else you know also smokes? Why do you continue to smoke even though you know it is bad for you? Do you really want to quit?

 

Now that you know why you smoke, you need to figure out why you want to quit. Have you been coming down with respiratory ailments frequently? Does the slightest physical exertion leave you out of breath easily? Maybe you want to quit because you don’t want your kids copying you. Or maybe you want to stop spending money on fags that you can use for other more necessary things. People have different reasons for wanting to stop smoking.

 

Now the autosuggestion part comes to fore. You should look at your reasons for wanting to quit and repeat them to yourself every day. You should set aside an hour daily just to read your reasons for quitting smoking. Keep doing this until you have memorized these autosuggestions. Repeat them to yourself throughout the day, and especially when you feel the urge to return to smoking.

 

Yes, quitting smoking can be a long road to travel by you. So get your friends and family in on it by telling them to stop you when you feel the urge to light a smoke. Your relatives and friends can also text you your autosuggestions throughout the day – this should help bolster your resolve to quit smoking altogether for good.

Smoking Babies

blank

There's no denying it, smoking parents lead to smoking babies. Of course, secondhand smoke is directy harmful, but have you considered the longer-term impacts of smoking in front of your little ones?

Research shows that attitudes and behaviors towards smoking are learned early on. While still in the adolescent stage, children look upon their smoking parents favorably. Be it while chatting with friends, after a big meal, or sprawled out on the living room couch–smoking looks great! It's not until later that kids then realize, the more the merrier. 

Understanding the reasons and setting a good example can eliminate peer pressure as an influencing factor. 

Smoke Free Life Step Program Step 5

blank

In this step we will identify why we carry on smoking. All of you have started smoking for one reason or another. One reason people start smoking is because of social pressures or social occasions. Now you're hooked why do you continue to smoke? That is the problem no smoker knows why they smoke. If a smoker knew the true reasons they smoked they would stop smoking. The true answer why you smoke is the same for all smokers but the variety of replies is infinite.

Smokers realize in their hearts they are mugs. Each smoker realizes they never had to smoke the first time but now they're hooked. Think back to your first cigarette and how horrible it tasted. You had to work hard to learn how to smoke and become hooked. Smokers come to realize that nonsmokers are not missing anything and feel they are laughing at them.

Smokers are intelligent, rational human beings. Each smoker understands the health risks and the money they spend in their lifetime smoking. Understanding these issue smoker find it necessary to have a rational explanation to justify their habit. The real reason you continue to smoke is nicotine addiction and brainwashing.

Nicotine Addiction

Nicotine, a colorless, oily compound, is the drug found in tobacco. Nicotine is why smokers cannot stop smoking and they're addicted to smoking. Nicotine is the fastest addictive drug knows to civilization. It only takes one cigarette to become hooked. Every puff on a cigarette delivers a dose of nicotine to the brain from your lungs. The dose of nicotine your brain receives acts more rapidly than the dose of heroin the addict injects into his veins. Consider there are twenty puffs on each cigarette. You are injecting twenty doses of the drug into your brain for each cigarette you smoke.

Did you realize that nicotine is a quick-acting drug? When smoked the levels in your bloodstream fall quickly. After smoking within thirty minutes the nicotine levels fall quickly to half and within an hour to a quarter. This explains why you smoke an average of twenty cigarettes each day. After you put out your cigarette the nicotine levels rapidly start to leave your body and you begin suffering withdrawal pangs.

Smokers have a common illusion about withdrawal pangs. Smokers believe that withdrawal pangs cause terrible trauma that they must suffer when forced to stop smoking. This is another brainwashing technique by the cigarette companies to keep you smoking. The feeling is not withdrawal pangs but is mental. The smoker only feels deprived of his pleasure or prop.

Withdrawal pangs from nicotine are subtle and most smokers who stop smoking never realize they are drug addicts. When the term "nicotine addicts" is used most smokers think they just "got into the habit". If you talk with smoker they have a horror of drugs and being an addict. But that is what the smoker is a drug addict. Nicotine addiction is an easy drug habit to kick once you accept you're addicted. There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. The true feeling a smoker feels when stopping to smoke is an empty restless feeling and smokers think it is something to do with their hands. If the feelings prolonged, the smoker becomes nervous, insecure, agitated, lacking in confidence and irritable. This feeling is like hunger to a smoker for the poison of nicotine in his body.

In the beginning when you started to smoke the withdrawal pangs were slight and you did not even know they existed. After you start to smoke regularly and think it is because you enjoy smoking or you have gotten into the habit. The truth is after the first cigarette you're hooked and did not realize it. You have smoked one cigarette and now the nicotine monster is inside your stomach and now and then needs to be fed. The reason you continue to smoke is to feed the nicotine monster inside you.

Smoking is a serious countdown and each smoker knows they're trapped by something evil. Once trapped the only pleasure you receive from a cigarette is trying to return to a state of peace, tranquility and confidence you had before you started to smoke. Your body was complete before you started the nicotine chain. Once you have forced nicotine into your body and put out the cigarette the nicotine starts to leave and you suffer from withdrawal pangs. The withdrawal pangs are not physical pains but an empty feeling. You are not aware they exist but the nicotine in your body is a dripping tap.

Your rational mind does not understand this problem all you know is you want a cigarette. Once you light the cigarette and smoke it the craving is gone and you feel content and confident again. The feeling you are feeling is the state of confidence before you ever started smoking. The satisfaction you feel is only temporary because you have to relieve the craving by putting more nicotine into your body. Once you put out the cigarette the craving starts again leading you into an endless chain. You're stuck in the endless chain of life until you break it.

In this step we explore the reasons you started smoking the first time and what keeps us smoking now. Understanding the nicotine monster inside us is important. Once you understand how nicotine works on your body and accept the fact you are a drug addict then you can stop smoking. Nicotine withdrawal is one drug that is easy to break when you understand how it works on your body. Many try to keep you smoking using brainwashing techniques saying how bad the withdrawal pangs can be. When in fact the withdrawal pangs are no more than an empty feeling you have similar to hunger pains. In step 6 we will continue to explore the nicotine addiction and how to identify the problem. We will talk about how it all started and how we can break the cycle of smoking.