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SMOKING

Health aspect

Most people, especially the uneducated one imagine the consequences of cigarette smoking as something that harms only the lungs. They believe that the lungs are just some bags in which enters and exits air without regard to the rest of the body. The truth is quite different. The lungs are richly vascularised organs and through them passes the entire blood contained in the body. There via the hemoglobin and iron the blood binds to oxygen which in turn is transferred to each cell. This means that cigarettes harm absolutely every part of the body. They cause clogging of the lungs with tar, of the circulatory system with atherosclerotic plaques, accumulate lead in the bones as well as other toxins and induce severe hypoxia. A violent disease that smoking causes is diabetes. In advanced form this condition leads to a moment of complete lack of blood supply to the extremities as they turn blue (gangrene) and then it is necessary your toes or hands to be amputated. Cigarettes greatly reduce erectile function. This results in infertility. At each "puffing" of the cigarette is released the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which causes secretion of hydrochloric acid in the empty stomach of the smoker and effects chronic erosion of the lining thereof. This leads to stomach cancer.

Reproductive activity and smoking

Every woman is born with a set of about 400 eggs which in mature age she uses to create generation. These "seeds of life" unlike other cells in the body are not updated with new ones and stay in the womb for life ready to serve. Therefore, when the future mother smokes cigarettes she systematically poisons her ova by subjecting them to the toxic effects of nearly 4000 harmful chemicals contained in cigarettes and irreversibly damages their genetic material (DNA structure). So after some time when mothers who smoke give birth in more than half of the cases the child has severe health problems yet from the beginning of its life - cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism and countless others. But this is not enough. The mother continues to smoke and poison her child through her breast milk. She smokes near the pushchair and the fumes fill the soft as silk baby lungs. Ugly and selfish. I've never really thought that these women should be called mothers.

With men the problem related to damage of their genetic material the sperm stands similarly. It also gathers toxins but if a man who is a smoker decides to create a healthy generation he needs to stop smoking for at least 1 month. Then his sperm refreshes and becomes "healthy" and as I said above unlike female sex cells - the eggs in which the damages are irreversible!

Let's talk about setting personal example. Children copy your every behaviour - good and bad. So it is with cigarettes. Statistics show that if both parents are smokers the likelihood their children to become a smoker too is more than 80%. With parents non-smokers the proportion of children who ever lit a cigarette is only 6%!

How did I quit smoking?

It took me six years to quit yet I succeeded. Unlike most smokers who have felt some fear in a certain moment only after undergoing a disease I quit cigarettes because of my conscience. One day many years ago I walked into the local grocery store and bought some essential products like bread, yogurt, butter and one pack of cigarettes. Cigarettes were more expensive than the total amount of the food products. This made me feel bad. I told myself that I'm the perfect egoist as I spend more for disease-causing cigarettes than for the food of my family. I decided to quit this harmful habit. There followed six years during which I tried to smoke one cigarette a day and at the end of this period I was particularly angry to myself because this cigarette determined me in my own eyes as a spineless jellyfish surrendering day after day before а needless crap. Eventually I overcame cigarettes.

Now, many years since I do not smoke I breathe calmly, do not wake up in the morning with lungs fossilized of tar, do no smell to my loved ones of a goat, my taste receptors restored their normal perceptions and now I enjoy the full flavour of the food. Unlike before I started to feel the fragrance of flowers and the freshness of the scent of mown grass. I feel proud of myself and one step ahead of those who are still struggling with this contagion - the habit of smoking. Insist your friends and family who smoke to quit. This way they will be longer in your life.

Social aspect

Let me clarify from the beginning that smoking is rapidly becoming a habit controlled by the brain and the substance dopamine and by neurological mechanism is 100% identical to the addiction caused by "officially" defined as psychotropic (mind-altering) substances such as marijuana, LSD, cocaine. The hypocrisy of governments around the world related to the increase in the price of cigarettes under the pretext of "preserving" public health is spectacular. Cigarettes should not be made more and more expensive rather should be banned by law and smoking must be declared a serious crime. Why? It creates serious social injustice and consequences which the irresponsible behaviour of smokers cannot compensate even if they wanted and they definitely do not want.

When a smoker develops lung or stomach cancer which he has caused himself instead of acting with dignity and deal all alone with the illness he unceremoniously turns for help to state health facilities and uses the extremely expensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy (although they only kill him faster) and for which actually pay the whole society (mostly non-smokers). This is a colossal injustice. Some people are having fun then others have to pay the bill! How come? From a human perspective smokers are the epitome of boundless impudence and curmudgeon. Someone will say: "I poison himself only and do not disturb others". Absolutely false and narrow-minded conception. Within a week the smoker skips a whole working day because he spends it for smoking. Calculate yourself the time spent "for having a smoke" and you will see that this is true! Smoking causes tremendous financial harm to society. It is an expensive pleasure also to the smoker given the fact that smokers worldwide are mostly people with low education and lack of intelligence which are respectively so poor that their budget for cigarettes per month is a two-digit number represented as a percentage of their income. This is not only wasteful but also a form of schizophrenia!

The annual budget for cigarettes of the average smoker who uses a pack of 20 cigarettes per day equals the price of a second hand cheap car and within 30 years of a dwelling. Smokers do not consider the situation that if their wife/husband who is a non-smoker and their children exhibit the same selfishness the whole family income will turn into a cloud of cigarette smoke. This smoke leads to passive smoking in children which in turn has the same terrible consequences for their health as for the smokers themselves. You kill your entire family - financially and healthily.

Personal observations

My parents live in an ordinary apartment block building having 24 apartments in it. Personally I know the families both in their block of flats and these living in next door block. Furthermore, everyone including my father worked at the same company for decades and we know each other as families do. From a total of 48 couples only in two of these men did not smoke and the majority drank a lot every night, puffing cigarettes. Among women there was one smoker. My father decided to quit smoking at the day of his retirement on his 60th anniversary being before that a smoker for over 30 years smoking one pack a day as at dinner time to this day he sits at the table with a glass cup in which he pours not more that 50 ml of homemade brandy. Never in my life I have seen him drunk or otherwise overdo with alcohol. At one point, all the neighbours got retired but the other men continued to drink and smoke. Why am I telling you this story?

My father and my mother are now at the age of 80 having pains here and there but stand firm on their legs and for now do not let old age to stop them from going to the nearby supermarket, to cook and clean their home. Most importantly, they are alive! But lets see what happened to the other families in the two next door entrances? Only three men remained alive - the two non-smokers and my dad and except for two women who died the entrances have turned full of widows. All man, I repeat, all men who drank and smoked until their last breath died either from cirrhosis of the liver or from cancer only 2 to 5 years after their retirement and few of the men even before that. Their wives who lead a life free of tobacco smoke and alcohol are alive and healthy to this day. Make your own conclusions but the simple facts show that smoking and drinking shortened the life of 93.5% of my neighbours with approximately 15 to 18 years.

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CONTENTS OF THE BOOK








HEART


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APPENDIXES