Smoking: Harmful to non smokers too

Warning! Cigarette smoking is harmful to your life is a label plastered or use elders term, ’encasted’ on cigarette packets whenever Hamisi, Ngonyani, Kulthum, Chacha, Asumpta or Mwanahamisi buys Sweet Menthol, Sportsman, Embassy or any other industrial cigar seemed not aware of it.

Countries have been banning Cigar smoking in public places to ’’save’’ second rate smokers from inhaling smoke and maybe nicotine puked out by these smokers in confined places.

But, what beats many people including the sight of leading health professionals and consultants burning their lungs with the stuff, before they start facing the un-ending fire that is awaiting the son and daughters of man as pictured in the religious circles.

In very rare cases, almost none to be precise, if am not far from the truth, has the medical authorities declared their stand on cigar smoking.

Industrialists have been promoting the sale of the stuff, in the recent months when the Jamaican Shaggy was in the country; a certain cigarette company was in the press for rewarding its smokers for preferring a particular brand of cigar.

Old habit, it’s said, die-hard. But sometimes it takes a change of such habits to improve one’s health and thus living longer. Smoking is one of them.

The UK government, for example three-year one-billion-pound proposals on public health was once designed to promote ’’informed choice’’ on individual health.

The paper proposed a ban on smoking in public enclosed places and television adverts on junk food and alcoholic drinks targeting children. Further it proposed to cajole patients into healthier behavior.

Analysts, especially smokers claim the money saved will be ”many times that spent on the campaign’’. This is because the world has finally realized the strong link between behaviour and health.

For example, I know just as you know that a decline in smoking in developed countries has significantly reduced deaths resulting from lung cancer and coronary heart disease over the past few decades.

To veer of a bit, talking to a Britton John Ford, an Economist: ”Britons are becoming fatter and fatter everyday.

In 1980s, 8 percent of the women were obese compared to 24 per cent in 2001. It is a very worrying trend in children in 1996, 9.6 per cent of them, between 2-10 years, were obese compared to15.5 percent in 2002,’’

I came to a conclusion that there will be an increase in expenditure on health and disease and a decrease in life expectancy if remedial action is not taken, and urgently so worldwide.

And Tanzanians appear headed in the direction of the Britons.
By changing diet toward reducing fat, salt, sugar and roast meat to suitable lavas, Tanzanians will forestall expenditure on health in the present and future lives.

Surprisingly, it is in the lower social classes that inequality is clearly visible. It is in this group that smoking is concentrated.

It is not surprising to find a significant proportion of obese urban women among the bottom social classes.

Smoking is the most important preventable cause of illness and premature death in Western Europe and North America, according to studies. Our case is no different if we eliminate HIV/Aids and Malaria.

Evidence that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer has been solid and unequivocal. Nicotine, a psychoactive drug that occurs naturally in tobacco, accounts for 95 per cent of the addiction causing content of each cigarette smoked.

The most disastrous effect of nicotine is its addictive impact. Susceptibility of teenagers to perceived peer pressure and their tendency to experiment lures them into this unhealthy habit.

Adults smoke for relaxation or enhancing energy, depending on their emotional needs. Some do so for pleasure and as a way of dealing with anger or anxiety.

Smokers should take advantage of available professional help and ubiquitous anti-smoking campaigns and cession clinics to beat the habit.

For those who must continue smoking, it is important to use diet to beat some of its long-term effect on health.

A smoker’s diet should be able to eliminate nicotine and other poison from the body, repair the damage this causes as well as reduce the desire to smoke.

Water, abundantly consumed, can facilitate the elimination of nicotine and other toxins in the body through urine.

Fruits provide important phytochemicals (plant-based substances) and anti-oxidant vitamins that neutralize some of the poisons in tobacco. They also increase urine production and eliminate waste product and toxins.

Vegetables are rich in minerals and vitamins. Carotenoids protect cells of the bronchial walls, while garlic and onions, which are rich in sulfurated essences, reduce the desire to smoke.

Article SOURCE: Guardian