A piece about the dangers of smoking must form the first page in this section about self hypnosis for smoking, and if you’re a smoker, I’m sure this won’t surprise you! I’m sure you’ve been told innumerable times about the dangers of smoking, all the smoking health risks – ranging from bad breath to a quick and painful death from lung cancer, and you have a reminder each time you take a cigarette out of its packet, when you read the warning: ‘Smoking Kills’!
But you still smoke! Despite all that you have been told about the serious effects of smoking, you still smoke! Despite all you know about the smoking health risks, you still smoke! You continue to poison yourself even though you know (and it doesn’t matter how often you try to convince yourself that none of the bed effects of smoking will ever happen to you – deep down you know) that smoking is doing serious harm to you.
It may be that you have landed on this page because you are trying to stop smoking, in which case I recommend that you continue to read through this entire page to reinforce all the reasons you have given yourself for deciding to quit smoking.
All tobacco is bad
Just in case you have the thought that smoking cigars or smoking a pipe is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, (“I don’t inhale, so I’m safe from all the dangers of smoking”) I’m going to be as tough and clear in telling you of the smoking dangers associated with pipes and cigars. The dangers of smoking don’t just relate to cigarettes. The smoking health risks actually apply to all tobacco use.
Alongside this section is an old photograph of Sigmund Freud. You will note the cigar in his right hand. You may know a bit about Freud and his work and theories. What you probably don’t know is that he died of cancer of the mouth caused by his heavy cigar smoking. (If I’m honest, that’s not strictly correct! Freud was helped to commit suicide, being given repeated injections of the morphine that had been prescribed to control the pain from his mouth cancer, and dying on 23rd September 1939 after a 17 year battle with mouth cancer.)
So-called ‘smokeless tobacco’ (chewing tobacco and snuff) are also responsible for some serious health problems: oral cancer (mouth cancer, which includes cancer of the salivary glands); oesophageal cancer (cancer of the gullet); cancer of the pancreas. The former baseball player, Rick Bender had surgery to remove part of his tongue and jaw to treat the oral cancer caused by his chewing tobacco habit (diagnosed when he was only 26 years old!).
So don’t run away with the idea that your personal tobacco habit is less harmful than other people’s habit, that the dangers of smoking only apply to other people:
all tobacco use is harmful
Tobacco smoke is known to contain more than 4,000 different chemicals. More than 400 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, and more than 50 of them are known to cause cancer in humans. Here are a few examples of the most dangerous chemicals you take into your body when you use tobacco:
Ammonia – used also as a toilet cleaner and dry-cleaning agent;
Benzene – used as a petrol additive, and known to cause cancer;
Formaldehyde (formalin) – used as an embalming fluid to preserve dead bodies (but not to preserve living bodies!);
Carbon monoxide – the same gas that comes out of car exhausts;
Arsenic;
Hydrogen cyanide (the same gas that’s used in execution gas chambers).
When you smoke, initially the smoke passes through your mouth and then down into your lungs. In the mouth, some of the chemicals get mixed with saliva and pass down your gullet into your stomach, and then into your small intestine, and then into your large intestine. Some of the chemicals are absorbed in the mouth and stomach and pass to the liver, where they are metabolised and passed back into the blood stream for removal by the kidneys, where they pass into the bladder before being finally being passed out of your body in your urine. That’s quite a journey through your body, and many parts of your body are exposed to the harmful chemicals in tobacco.
Smoking has also been shown to increase cholesterol levels. Smoking decreases the amount of oxygen getting into the lungs and into the blood, thus sparking a physical reaction that leads to an increase in blood pressure and heart rate, which damages small blood vessels (especially in the brain and kidneys). The tar in tobacco gets deposited in the lungs, blocking the air passages, making breathing increasingly difficult.
So, as you can see, the physical dangers of smoking affect many different parts of your body, and all are very good reasons for you to stop smoking.
What diseases are caused by tobacco use?
In view of the journey through your body that tobacco’s harmful chemicals take, it should come as no surprise that tobacco use causes a number of serious illnesses affecting many parts of the body. It’s true that the most serious dangers of smoking are the dangers posed to your health.
Here is a list of the illnesses that have tobacco as a cause:
Lung cancer;
Mouth cancers;
Oesophageal cancer;
Stomach cancer;
Liver cancer;
Bladder cancer;
Coronary heart disease;
Stroke (cerebrovascular disease);
Damage to the smaller arteries in the legs (peripheral vascular disease, such as ‘intermittent claudication’ and Buerger’s disease, which often leads to leg amputation);
Chronic lung diseases such as emphysema, obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Smoking also makes asthma much worse;
Gum disease in the mouth, and halitosis (bad breath);
Impotence (due to damage to the small blood vessels that supply the penis with blood).
This is a long and scary list of disease that can be caused by smoking – all very good reasons to stop smoking!
Harm to others
The dangers of smoking are not just confined to people who use tobacco, but are also experienced by people second-hand – by those who are near smokers, or who live or work with smokers.
Second-hand smoke (passive smoking) happens in two ways: the smoke released from the burning end of a cigarette; the smoke exhaled by the smoker. So the dangers of smoking are experienced by those people who are near smokers as they smoke.
A 2007 report by the Office of the Surgeon General in the USA showed that there are over 250 chemicals in second-hand smoke that are known to be toxic or carcinogenic including: hydrogen cyanide; carbon monoxide; butane; benzene; ammonia; toluene; arsenic; cadmium; chromium; lead; polonium 201.
These chemicals can cause harm to the passive smoker in exactly the same way as they do to the active smoker. As a result, the effects of smoking can be as harmful to the passive smoker as they are to the active smoker. (The British entertainer, Roy Castle, who never smoked in his life died of lung cancer in 1994, having contracted his illness through years of playing trumpet in smoky jazz clubs.)
Clearly, these smoking dangers are more reasons for you to quit smoking!
Health problems are not the only smoking dangers
Your health is not the only thing that suffers from your smoking habit – there are two other important dangers of smoking: damage to your money; damage to your relationships.
I’d like you to stop reading this section for a few moments in order to carry out the following task:
Take a pen and a piece of paper;
Write down how often you purchase tobacco;
Write down how much you spend each time you purchase tobacco;
Multiply that number to work out how much money you spend on tobacco each year.
Remember, if you add any elicit substances to the tobacco (e.g. cannabis), then you must add the cost of the drug to the tobacco to find the overall financial cost of your smoking.
Now think of some of the things you could do with that money. Take your time – try to imagine those things being real – try to imagine your pleasure in experiencing them.
There are other problems that are cause by your smoking: your breath smells very bad; your clothes smell very bad; your hair and skin smell very bad. Your home also suffers from your smoking: the furnishings smell of stale tobacco; the walls and ceilings become stained by the tobacco smoke.
Your relationships may also suffer from your smoking habit. I’m sure you know that many people find smoking a truly disgusting and offensive habit. So, if you are trying to find a partner, it’s worth bearing in mind that many potential partners will be put off by the smell of tobacco on your breath, on your hair, and on your clothes, and in your car, and in your home. (You wouldn’t try to eat the contents of an ashtray, so why should you expect anyone to kiss you when you stink of tobacco?)
So, the dangers of smoking are more than physical. When you think of the harm that your smoking habit is doing to you, remember the damage it is doing to your finances, and your relationships.
The big lesson from this page is that the dangers of smoking are many and extreme! If you didn’t already know, or if you still believe that your tobacco habit is not harmful, let me put it clearly:
TOBACCO IS BAD FOR YOU AND EVERYONE AROUND YOU
If you smoke, it is time for you to quit smoking! There are a number of stop smoking programs. I would recommend hypnosis and self hypnosis as the most effective way.
