On March 21, 1923, in Paris, a certain Dr. Roger made a statement that nicotine has antibacterial properties, and therefore smoking is good for health. This was not the first and not the last speech about the benefits of smoking.
With his statement, Dr. Roger “discovered America”: in Peru, long before the arrival of Europeans, tobacco itself and the smoke from it were used as antiseptics. In South America it was one of the most popular medicinal plants. They treated everything with it in every way - they infused it, smoked it, chewed it, even did enemas with tobacco. The oldest enema discovered by archaeologists in Peru is over 2,500 years old. Europe is far behind in this regard - treating constipation with enemas with tobacco infusions was only discovered in England in the Victorian era.
Weed for all diseases
Long before Dr. Roger, the use of tobacco was considered beneficial in many societies. This is how migraines, toothaches, infections, and cancer were treated. And of course, tobacco smoke was used in the treatment of colds and many respiratory diseases. Its inhalation was considered as inhalation. Extracts and extracts were made from tobacco leaves, its infusions were distilled and all this was also used in treatment.
This was the case from the very beginning of the import of tobacco to Europe from America after its discovery by Columbus . They started smoking it later, at first it was just a medicine. And as soon as they started smoking tobacco, he immediately had enemies. They claimed that smoking was harmful and that it was the devil's sport. At the end of the 16th century, the English king James I led the first “crusade” against smoking, writing a treatise called “The Indictment of Tobacco.” In it, he very accurately outlined the medical effects of smoking: “This habit is disgusting to the eyes, unpleasant to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, the black and stinking smoke resembles the Stygian stench of the abyss.”
Tobacco harness. Smoking in Russia began long before Peter the Great Read more
Better late than never
So the history of tobacco as a medicine in the Western world is already about 500 years old, and smoking as a bad habit is already a little over four hundred years old. It's amazing how long humanity refused to believe in the dangers of tobacco smoke. After all, its negative effect on the respiratory system was visible to the naked eye
The real fight against smoking began only in the 1960s. Only then were serious charges brought forward, alleging that tobacco smoke was a powerful carcinogen. Imagine, people in the Old World have been smoking for almost 500 years, but scientific evidence of its harm appeared only 50 years ago.
Day of Judgment
Now heads are not being cut off yet, but, apparently, everything is going that way. Sixteen years ago, the largest US tobacco companies already admitted their obligation to pay 46 states $206,000,000 to cover the cost of health insurance for smokers. Insurance companies have been dancing victory dances for a long time. Of course, most existing diseases were included in the “nicotine amnesty” - it was enough for the patient to indicate that he was a smoker, and bills for his treatment were sent to centers for the distribution of tobacco subsidies. Considering that tobacco products are already subject to enormous taxes, and the companies themselves regularly pay multimillion-dollar sums in claims of private “victims,” it would seem that one can be satisfied with such an indemnity. Not so.
In January 2014, the US Department of Justice and the five largest tobacco companies Philip Morris USA, Reynolds American, British American Tobacco, Liggett Group and Lorillard Tobacco reached an agreement after 15 years of litigation. The Justice Department initially sought $280 billion from cigarette makers on charges that they engaged in a criminal conspiracy fifty years ago to hide from the public that smoking was addictive and that inhaled smoke was dangerous and claimed that “light” cigarettes were less harmful.
As a result, the tobacco companies were found guilty of deceiving consumers, but they were forgiven a fine of a tidy sum, forcing them only to publicly admit what they had done. If the Ministry of Justice had insisted on payment, these industrial giants would simply have gone bankrupt.
Victims of science
But even so, today there are tobacco apologists who claim that smoking has healing properties for certain diseases. They sometimes draw their arguments from scientific articles and then actively share them on the Internet. Indeed, serious scientific journals still publish articles with titles like “Smoking May Be Good for You” or “Beneficial Effects of Nicotine and Cigarette Smoking: Real, Possible and False.” Let's take a closer look at similar publications. Do they really mean that smoking a cigarette is sometimes beneficial? Or do smoking apologists see in such articles only what they want?
Most of all, smokers like to write that cigarettes protect against Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Indeed, there have been several studies showing this effect of smoking. Sometimes he was quite strong. For example, the risk of developing Parkinson's disease was reduced by almost 50 percent. But does this mean that smoking should protect against these diseases?
Passive death. How does cigarette smoke affect non-smokers? More details
Why do people start smoking: reasons for adults
Adults set completely different priorities. It is surprising that despite their age, young people are able to start smoking even in cases where they have been ardent opponents of smoking all their lives before. Without any doubt, we can answer that such a change in life priorities and another breakdown of priorities and principles is possible only in the life of an adult: work, children, mortgages, loans and the lack of light in life.
Against the background of this dullness of everyday life, cigarettes stand out, like alcohol, and then, a moment later, the familiar lines of V. Tsoi’s song “A Pack of Cigarettes” become not so stupid.
The reasons for smoking as an adult are simple: they allow us to at least somehow withstand the entire burden of responsibility that falls on us in adulthood. However, the help provided by a new habit quickly develops into a curse, which is already incredibly difficult to get rid of. Quitting smoking is much more difficult for an adult than for a teenager, because even the redirection method is sometimes not able to cope with what smoking successfully copes with.
What kind of reasons are these that can drive a person into such a state that suddenly “a forever non-smoker becomes a smoker”?
Work, depression and burnout
Adult life is not as eventful as that of a teenager. The famous “Work - Home - Work” lifestyle can break absolutely every person, and if the work is far from pleasant, then it can lead to emotional burnout.
Emotional burnout is very common, and it is not uncommon for this condition to be mistaken for depression. It’s all to blame for the gray, ordinary life in which no bright events occur. A series of bad events, such as the loss of people dear to the heart, leads a person to depression. It should be noted that adult depression is most similar to real depression, which is very difficult to cope with, especially on your own.
An annoying boss, a bitch wife, a husband with signs of a true tyrant, lack of permanent income, lack of money. Such reasons for smoking can bring a person to such a state that, seeing no other way out, he tries to somehow add color to life: he starts smoking, because he thinks that it will help him.
This is what happens. Cigarettes, thanks to nicotine and all the poison they contain, relieve unnecessary stress, help pass the time and give a weak, stupid meaning in life: to smoke. Smoke breaks help a person reduce stress at work, relieve the atmosphere at home, and pass the time on the way home. This is highly valued by a person, but as time passes, the grayness of days returns and smoking becomes part of them.
Hard workers who engage in heavy physical labor are well familiar with this effect. A smoke break to catch your breath and relax altogether is one of the components of the Russian army.
Lack of pleasure and variety in life
This may seem similar to the previous reason. However, lack of pleasure is not always due to work. I have met quite a lot of people for whom the dullness of everyday life is the norm, but they had no idea how to dispel it.
The feeling when life moves slowly and dullly. Nothing changes day after day, endless Groundhog Day. You may spend little time at work, but that won't make your life any brighter. What is the most accessible entertainment for a person or something that will help him add a little variety to life? Alcohol, drugs, smoking.
Each of these dependencies is attractive due to its availability and the effect it imparts to its consumer. A couple of drinks and finally the conversation started. One cigarette, and suddenly the long-awaited drop of relaxation reaches its destination.
People desperately justify such reasons for smoking by the lack of an alternative. They say, what else to do with friends? Drink, smoke, have fun! What to do in your free time? No, I don’t want to develop myself, I want to spend time on... a smoke break. Reduce stress from work? I'll go out to the smoking room and see the men.
Stupid, simple, but so tenacious reasons for smoking. Little things that sink so deeply into our consciousness that they become very significant to us.
Lack of support from friends and parents
Man is a social creature. For us, those who spend our lives fighting death, the support of loved ones is very important. By supporting each other, we can cope with stress, find love, achieve greatness and help our fellow man.
But this is not always possible for a number of reasons that there is no point in writing. When we don’t have support, we try to find it in something else, for example, in faith or smoking, alcohol. Perhaps you, my dear reader, are able to understand the support that just one cigarette provides after a hard day at work.
Smoking can give us many qualities: indifference, determination, purposefulness. That very moment during a smoke break, which gives a new surge of strength, is sometimes more valuable than the words of a friend: “Well, hang in there!” Not to mention if life has turned out in such a way that you have to rely only on yourself.
What about stress? “Smoking helps in the fight against stress!” - this is the slogan of many girls who are already crying with grief. The lack of support at such moments from loved ones and the presence of a pack of cigarettes in your pocket... well, you understand what follows from this.
- I’ll smoke and start getting busy.
- I’ll finish my smoke and let’s go.
“I’ll go have a smoke, gather my strength and continue the work.”
“I’ll take a smoke, calm down, and go apologize to her for what I’ve done.”
And there are many, many other situations where smoking provides significant support for us. Because there is no one else to provide it to.
When you're bored, you can take a smoke break
The reasons for smoking are not limited to what is written above. They can be described for a long time, because they are different for each person. However, the favorite among all, of course, is boredom.
When a person is bored, he will decide on any lazy action, and if it also brings some pleasure... wow! This is great! Smoking, like alcohol, can help a person pass the time and there is no reason for smoking more common among adults than this.
It may seem that where does boredom come from in adult life? Every now and then you run back and forth, same job, same house. However, human consciousness is quite an interesting thing. “You smoke because you are lazy!” my grandmother said when she found out that I had been smoking for many years in a row.
In some ways she was right. Boredom and laziness are inextricably linked, and if a person really lives a rich, albeit gray life, then he will have no time to run for smoke breaks.
But of course, people who started smoking at the age of 25-35 are very rare. The roots of a harmful habit grow from a time that is more susceptible to change.
The main and widespread diseases are from tobacco
Let's try to figure this out. There is no doubt that smoking contributes to the development of many common diseases. Among them:
- heart attacks, strokes and other diseases of the heart and blood vessels (more than half of all deaths are associated with them);
- lung cancer and many other malignant tumors;
— chronic bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory diseases leading to respiratory failure and death;
- a lot of diseases are not so fatal, but very unpleasant and serious.
A woman quit smoking: what will it lead to?
A sharp increase in body weight is a fairly common problem among former smokers. Since the body experiences stress when quitting cigarettes, this leads to the person starting to eat unhealthy foods. In this case, experts advise tidying up your diet by including foods high in vitamins. This will prevent the transition from one bad habit to another.
It must be remembered that the changes characteristic of quitting smoking last about two months. Then all processes in the body return to normal.
You can control your condition by keeping a special diary of sensations. It is necessary to record all the changes occurring in the body, and in detail, by the hour, and not by the day. Then, using these recordings, people will be able to share their experiences with other people who have decided to quit smoking.
What not to do if you quit smoking
If a person has decided to quit smoking, he needs to know what not to do in the process of quitting tobacco:
- You cannot use medications for the first 3 months after quitting cigarettes;
- you cannot eat fried, fatty, spicy and smoked foods;
- You can’t eat as before, you need to include fortified foods in your diet;
- Women are not recommended to quit smoking during menstruation, as this may contribute to weight gain.
The benefits of quitting smoking cannot be denied, because they are obvious. But a person must understand that a lot of unpleasant sensations await him. Of course, the benefits of quitting smoking are enormous. But before they become noticeable, you will have to experience negative changes.
Since nicotine has the ability to be incorporated into metabolism, after it stops entering the body, a restructuring of metabolism begins. For this reason, a significant deterioration in health can be observed in the first month. At this stage, the main thing is to survive these changes. Rest assured that the result is worth it. Every smoker, first of all for himself, must understand that quitting smoking helps normalize the condition of the body.
Parkinson's sclerosis is no better
But let’s imagine that someone began to deliberately smoke in his youth in order to protect himself in old age from Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease. If we look at this situation soberly, then such a person is much more likely to die from a heart attack, stroke, cancer or emphysema before reaching Alzheimer's. After all, this disease, like Parkinson’s, develops at a very old age. Australian scientists estimate that smoking tobacco saves about one life for every 100 deaths it causes. These are the statistics.
But suppose this person has very good heredity and an excellent antioxidant system. Thanks to this, he can live and smoke for a long time. But he has a high risk of developing senile dementia (senile dementia, or, simply put, sclerosis). Its cause is cerebral atherosclerosis, the development of which is actively promoted by smoking. And this disease is no better than Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.
Hay fever: salvation found?
According to some estimates, from 45 to 60% of the population suffers from hay fever or hay fever of varying severity. Some people experience unpleasant symptoms in the spring, others in the summer or autumn (and sometimes throughout the warm season): watery eyes, runny nose, skin irritation. They are accompanied by weakness, irritability, infections easily occur, and chronic diseases become aggravated. All of these are manifestations of an allergic reaction to pollen from flowering or fruiting plants, which occurs during the warm season.
Scientists from Holland have obtained interesting results from their many years of work: mast cells (one of the factors provoking the development of allergy symptoms) respond much weaker to allergens if they are exposed to cigarette smoke. True, the experiment was not conducted on human volunteers, but experiments on mice confirmed this conclusion. This, of course, is not about advising allergy sufferers to smoke, but scientists have another direction for work that may help find a new, effective means of preventing the development of allergic diseases.
In general, there are very, very many reasons for further study of nicotine, and who knows, the truthfulness of the words of Winston Churchill, who lived for 90 years, will suddenly be confirmed: “Five or six cigars a day... and no physical education.”
Medicinal properties of nicotine
But that's not all. Let's look at a cigarette as a medicine that is taken in the form of inhalation. The protective effect of smoking against these diseases is associated with the nicotine contained in tobacco smoke. This substance has both medicinal and toxic effects. By the way, it is registered as a medicine for the treatment of tobacco smoking and is available in the form of a spray, patch and chewing gum. But using nicotine in the form of a cigarette to protect against Alzheimer’s, our hero will receive hundreds of carcinogens and other harmful substances in tobacco smoke. As a medicine and prophylactic, it is very irrational.
An epochal confrontation. Who started the tobacco wars in Rus' Read more
The strangest poison in the world
Nicotine boils at a temperature of 140-145°C, dissolves in water, ether and alcohol, and is a very strong poison. A few centigrams of nicotine will kill a horse. It's true.
But a dog already needs two or three drops, and if you take a goat or sheep, then these animals will calmly drink ten drops without even hesitating.
Amoebas can generally exist perfectly well, frolicking in a one percent solution of nicotine, but for some reason the tuberculosis bacillus instantly casts off its hooves (or whatever else it has) even in the presence of an insignificant amount of this alkaloid in the environment (which is why experienced doctors at tuberculosis sanatoriums secretly suggest to your patients not to rush to quit smoking, but to get cured first).
If a non-smoking person eats twenty cigarettes, he will either die or be forever damaged in his mind, but for schizophrenics, smoking helps block attacks of insanity - nicotine has a beneficial effect on the functioning of their neurons. The leech, which was used to suck the blood of a smoker, lives on average 20% longer than its “non-smoking” peers, but if the person with the leech was planted smokes at this time, the little animal will very quickly die in terrible convulsions.
6 reliable ways to reduce the harm from smoking
Don't smoke more than half a cigarette
It’s better to light the next one right away, throwing away the cigarette butt, the darkened filter of which no longer copes well with absorbing harmful substances.
Don't smoke on an empty stomach
Even if you belong to those creative individuals who, having opened their eyes in the morning, immediately begin to fumble around for smoking accessories on the nightstand with a weak hand, prepare the nightstand in the evening so that the first thing your hand comes across is some yogurt or fruit. Rape yourself - eat them. Now you can smoke with a sense of accomplishment.
eat apples
If you could compensate for every cigarette you smoked by eating half an apple that same day, then the harm from smoking in your case would be minimized - the substances contained in the apple would help your body restore the balance of microelements and reduce the risk of exposure to carcinogens. But, of course, you can’t cram so many apples into yourself. So just eat as much as you can.
Don't put a cigarette in your mouth
The smoke will be inhaled even if you simply press the filter to your almost closed lips. There will just be less of it. At first it will be unusual to smoke this way, but the good thing about being a smoker is that you get used to everything very quickly.
Breathe more fresh air and move
It’s better to smoke twenty cigarettes and take an hour-long run through the park than not to smoke a single one and sit in a stuffy room all day. If remorse makes you spend twenty minutes longer at the gym and sleep with the window open, then your smoking is not so harmful in general.
Don’t bite yourself, don’t torment yourself, don’t scare yourself about oncology and emphysema
If you smoke, do it with pleasure and a pure heart. Fears, nervousness and hypochondria themselves often become the causes of serious diseases, and not only nervous ones. Many experts are confident that always expecting the worst and being tormented by anxiety can provoke the development of cancer.
Pharmacological approach
What do pharmacologists do when they find a bioactive substance in a medicinal plant? Firstly, they try to isolate it in order to free it from harmful accompanying components. And secondly, they will improve it, making it safer. The same should be done with tobacco. Nicotine has already been isolated and studied from it, now we need to modify this molecule to make it less harmful and more effective. This is the path of medicine, and this is the point of articles about the benefits of smoking.
An important detail: in 90% of cases, the protective effect of smoking is associated with nicotine. This happens with depression, schizophrenia and a number of other mental illnesses, with aphthous stomatitis (mouth ulcers) and with such a rare disease as ulcerative colitis. But even in these cases, you should not smoke for prevention. Doctors are looking for ways to activate the beneficial effects of nicotine without its severe side effects and without the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke.
Smoking marijuana
Hemp is known for its medicinal properties, but in most countries there is a ban on the use of cannabis. Marijuana contains a plant antibiotic that is similar in action to penicillin. Hemp extract is a strong analgesic that also has a sedative and relaxing effect. Hashish is used in the treatment of mental disorders: schizophrenia, depression, anorexia.
Smoking cannabis can be very harmful. We are talking about such negative consequences as: tachycardia, hallucinations, memory impairment, hyperhidrosis, decreased immunity, anxiety, loss of orientation in time and space.
It’s even worse when, instead of regular grass, they smoke spice, a synthetic cannabinoid that causes monstrous hallucinations and often leads to death.
Smoking has been and remains a serious social problem.
People ruin the health of not only themselves, but also those around them. There is no need to talk about the benefits of the habit - this is a real addiction that needs to be gotten rid of. In contact with
Women's paradoxes
There are two more paradoxical effects of smoking in women. Reducing the risk of developing endometrial cancer and uterine fibroids, plus preventing eclampsia - this is a threatening increase in blood pressure and toxicosis in pregnant women.
In the first case, the effect is associated with the suppression of female sex hormones due to smoking. This side effect of tobacco smoke is well known and often makes women who smoke less attractive. And probably, it is unlikely that any of them will want to avoid these uterine tumors at such a cost. And at the same time, you will significantly increase the risk of developing other more dangerous types of cancer and other serious diseases.
Protection against eclampsia is even more paradoxical. This effect is caused by CO (carbon monoxide) contained in tobacco smoke. Is it necessary to explain how harmful it is for the fetus and mother? It happens that a toxic substance has a local beneficial effect, but overall its harm is much more significant.
This is the price of the beneficial effects of inhalation using cigarettes.
Video on topic
Are there any benefits to smoking? The categorical position of representatives of medicine and government regarding the harm of smoking is understandable: thousands of people around the world die from lung cancer every year. Oncology of the respiratory tract and many other health problems appear, among other things, due to smoking tobacco, so the public is diligently engaged in prevention among young people, showing what happens to the fetus of a smoking mother and the internal organs of an experienced smoker.
Every medal has a downside. This is confirmed by the presence of funds and organizations that defend the rights of citizens to use tobacco and marijuana.
