7 easy ways to stop smoking that tobacco companies are hiding from you
When the Black Death or bubonic plague swept Europe in the 14th century, it wiped out no less than 25 million people or a third of the population. So lethal was the disease that it killed two out of three people that it infected in a period of four days.
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| photo credit: www.makeyourbestself.com |
Thanks to advances in modern medicine and the use of antibiotics, the Black Death has been controlled and is no longer a threat. But unknown to many, a new threat has emerged and has taken its place.
New threat in town
This new pestilence has surpassed the Black Death in terms of victims and is responsible for 100 million deaths so far. The World Health Organization said that figure could reach the one billion mark soon. Unlike the Black Death, this new threat is so addicting that many are helpless to stop it until it’s too late.
By now, you probably know that I’m talking about smoking – a dangerous habit that kills many people – rich or poor, young and old alike. In the United States alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that smoking kills one in 5 Americans or 443,000 people yearly. In fact, this deadly vice kills more people every year than the human immunodeficiency virus, illegal drugs, alcohol, vehicular accidents, suicides, and murders combined.
Everyone goes but why go first?
Compared to non-smokers, smokers have shorter life spans. That’s because they’re more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease, stroke, and chronic obstructive lung diseases like chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
Smoking also causes 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women. Almost every organ of the body is harmed by smoking. Every time you light a cigarette, you take away 11 minutes of your life, according to researchers at the University of Bristol in England.
In Australia, cancer caused by smoking has resulted in the removal of several body parts. The Non-Smoker’s Movement of Australia said these include 521 lungs, 71 tongues, 221 voice boxes, 82 stomachs, 68 wombs, 85 bladders, and 115 kidneys.
America: Home of cigarette junkies
But that hasn’t stopped many people from smoking. Currently, America is the home of 45 million smokers. A 2010 survey showed that this includes 22% of men and 17% of women. Cigarette smoking remains the most common form of tobacco use followed by cigars (13.2 million users), smokeless tobacco (8.9 million) and pipes (2.3 million)
Fortunately, there is a way to stop smoking and it’s never too late to quit. This book will tell you everything you need to know about quitting – what works and what doesn’t – and how to do this in 7 easy ways. That’s right – 7 easy ways. In short, you’ll learn how to save yourself from a fate worse than the Black Death.
Unconventional ways to quit
The advice I will be giving you to stop smoking is something you won’t find in most quit smoking sites. These sites often talk about the conventional ways to stop smoking like going cold turkey, avoiding tobacco triggers and quit smoking products like nicotine patches, gum and prescription medications.
These companies don’t care about you or how you or your family will suffer in the long run. All they want is your hard-earned cash and they’ll do anything and everything to convince you to buy their toxic products. In fact, and they spend billions of dollars each year to encourage people to smoke.
Consider these alarming statistics: In 2006, cigarette companies spent $12.4 billion on advertising and promotions. That amounted to about $34 million a day. For smokeless tobacco alone, the amount spent on advertising was $354 million.
Their efforts certainly paid off since Americans spent $90 billion on tobacco products that same year. Of that number, $83.6 billion was spent on cigarettes, $3.2 billion was spent on cigars, and $2.6 billion went to smokeless tobacco.
Billion$ wasted
If you consider the billions of dollars wasted on medical costs, lost manpower due to sickness and deaths caused by smoking, and lost productivity because of this nasty habit, you’ll see that tobacco manufacturers are figuratively and literally making a killing in the market. So you better kill that cigarette now before it kills you!
How can you do that? Before we tell you how can change your life by quitting, let’s take a close look at cigarettes. Why are they harmful in the first place? What makes them deadly? The reason, my friend, is simple. A typical cigarette is made up of about 600 ingredients. When tobacco is burned, the smoke it produces is laced with over 4,800 chemicals – 69 of which can cause cancer.
Poisons in your cigarette
Here’s a rundown of some of the chemicals you inhale every time you smoke: acetone (a flammable solvent that can irritate the throat and eyes) ammonia (commonly used to clean glass, porcelain and stainless steel), arsenic (a potent poison for rats), butane (used as lighter fuel and responsible for many solvent poisonings), cadmium (used in electroplating and rechargeable batteries), carbon monoxide (a colorless gas that is toxic to humans and animals), formaldehyde (used in embalming), naphthalene (used in moth balls), nicotine (an addicting stimulant), and tar (used to seal roofing shingles and pave roads).
In reality, these ingredients are also found in other consumer products but the latter have sufficient warning labels. In contrast, there is no warning whatsoever for the poisons found in tobacco smoke.
Why smoking is dangerous to non-smokers
Smoking, however, is not only dangerous to the smoker. It can also harm the people around him. Secondhand smoke claims the lives of close to 50,000 people every year. When inhaled by non-smokers, secondhand smoke can cause or aggravate numerous diseases like lung cancer, respiratory problems and asthma. Yearly, it causes 3,400 deaths from lung cancer and up to 69,600 deaths from heart disease.
Even short-term exposure to secondhand smoke can trigger heart attacks, according to the Institute of Medicine. As early as the 1980s, Philip Morris knew about this but the company hid this fact from the public for the next two decades. It only goes to show that you can’t trust cigarette companies that often portray smoking as glamorous, exciting and safe.
In infants and young children below 18 months of age, secondhand smoke causes between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections. This sends between 7,500 and 15,000 people to hospitals and causes 430 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in America each year.
Who are you fooling?
Don’t think you can escape from the dangers of smoking by smoking fewer cigarettes. Cutting down won’t help since smoking even one to four cigarettes daily can have serious consequences to your health.
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