Choose You Blog

We all know that smoking causes a range of health problems, but even though you may fully comprehend that you should quit smoking, having the self-discipline to actually DO IT is another thing.

Your brain may think, “Smokers have an increased risk for lung cancer – and cancer in the mouth, throat, and nose, among other areas.  So I need to quit smoking. In fact, I’ll quit tomorrow! ”

But often, “tomorrow” never comes.

So, here’s a fact that may cajole you into finally taking action … In the U.S. alone, smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths, and about 8.6 million people suffer from smoking-related lung and heart diseases. Those are astronomical and frightening numbers.

But I know that often logic is not what compels us.  So let me try a bribe. If I said to you, “I’ll give you $1,800 if you don’t smoke for 1 year,” would you be tempted to quit?

The brain might say, “Wow, $1,800 is a lot cash.  I could take a killer vacation.  Buy new furniture.  Or pay off bills.”

And your self-discipline might agree.  “Yes, $1,800 is a tangible incentive.  I could quit smoking for $1,800 a year.”

Well, here’s the thing…  If you smoke a pack a day and pay around $5 a pack, $1,800 is what you’ll save each year.

Beyond the savings on cigarettes, quitting smoking could also save you the cost of breath mints, cough drops, and cleaning expenses for your clothes, home, and car. And on top of these savings, you and your family will benefit over time as you avoid the many medical costs from doctor visits and medications associated with the diseases and other health issues caused by smoking or by exposure to secondhand smoke.

If you want to see how much cigarettes are costing you, visit this online calculator developed by the American Cancer Society.

Click and share this blog post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

“Me, without this little tobacco torch attached to my fingers?  Never!”

That’s a quote that could be attributed to me when I was in college.  My 20-something self is someone I’m not today.  I was flippant, unhealthy, and I loved to smoke.  (Okay, I may still be flippant, but over the last couple of decades I’ve been a lot better about being healthy, and I no longer smoke – so that’s some improvement.)

I started smoking when I was 11 and the thing that got me to quit is so ridiculous that I kind of hate to recount the story because I sound so shallow.  But I’ll embarrass myself if the outcome is to make someone else consider putting down tobacco.

It’s hard to know what will motivate you to do something.  I wish I could tell you that understanding the harsh reality of what tobacco does to a body is what made me quit.  After all, for decades the Surgeon General has reported the health risks related to smoking.  In 1990 (which is close to the year I quit smoking), the Surgeon General concluded:

• Ex-smokers live longer than people who keep smoking.
• Quitting smoking lowers the risk of lung cancer, other cancers, heart attack, stroke, and chronic lung disease.
• Quitting smoking has major and immediate health benefits for men and women of all ages and these benefits apply to people who already have a smoking-related disease and to those who don’t.
• Women who stop smoking before pregnancy or during the first trimester reduce their risk of having a low birth-weight baby. In fact, if they quit in the specified timeframe their risk of having a low-birth weight baby becomes the same as it would be for women who never smoked.

But none of those facts persuaded me; instead, the reason I quit smoking is because I started wearing expensive perfume.  Seriously.  I was given a $100 bottle of perfume as a holiday gift (in college $100 was an unfathomable fortune for me) and I was so proud of my present that I kept shoving my wrist under everyone’s nose and instructing them to “smell me.”

But what didn’t occur to me is that my wrist was attached to my hand and that hand held the cigarettes I smoked; so instead of smelling my lovely, light $100 perfume they were smelling Eau de Stink Stick which was the scent formed when the combination of the tobacco haze that had infiltrated my clothes, hair, and skin mixed with my French fragrance.

And I swear to you, that is why I stopped smoking.  Because I wanted to smell good.

Writer David Sedaris seems to be of a like mind on this subject and he quit smoking in January 2007 after his books hit the bestseller list.  He was jaunting around the country on a fancy book tour but his publicist kept reserving rooms for him in cheap motels because he wanted to smoke and most upscale hotels have banned smoking.

So there you have it.  I chose perfume over cigarettes.  He chose high-thread count sheets over cigarettes.  Either way, we are now both non-smokers. Want to join us?

Click and share this blog post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

Lynn Lamousin is a Choose You subscriber from Atlanta, GA who signed up to Eat Right, Get Active, Get Regular Health Checks, and Protect My Skin. (She quit smoking many years ago, but still dreams about cigarettes.) Her mother and brother both lost battles with cancer.

Do you smoke and have children?  If so, please be aware of the dangers of both secondhand smoke and firsthand smoke.

You’ve probably heard of secondhand smoke.  Secondhand smoke is a combination of the smoke from burning tobacco and the smoke exhaled by a person using tobacco. It contains the same nicotine and chemicals that are so harmful to smokers, and it has been shown to increase the risk of cancer and heart disease for individuals who are exposed to it. Worse, it contributes to lung infections, asthma, and other serious health issues in children.

So what’s firsthand smoke?  Well it’s a term that refers to the smoker themselves, but in this context I’m not referring to you – I’m referring to your children.  You see, I started smoking at age 11.  For all you parents reading this, that’s probably pretty scary.  What might be even scarier is learning where I got the cigarettes…  I snatched them from my parents who were both smokers.

My mom smoked long, slender menthols, my dad smoked squat unfiltered sticks.  Obviously it wasn’t the “taste” that I liked since they both tasted terrible.  It was the fact that I could act grown-up simply by lighting a match.  A neighbor who was my age (and whose parents also smoked) would meet me behind a huge oak tree in a vacant lot on our street and we would huddle together and puff on what we had nicked from our parents that day.

So, if you have a family, remember that your kids look up to you and want to be like you.  I know that’s why I started smoking.  And if my parents had ever discovered that I had jeopardized my health because of them, they would have been crushed.

If you have children, you probably want to set a good example, and nearly all smokers say they don’t want their children to smoke. But children whose parents smoke are more likely to start smoking themselves. You can become a good role model for them by quitting now.

Click and share this blog post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

Lynn Lamousin is a Choose You subscriber from Atlanta, GA who signed up to Eat Right, Get Active, Get Regular Health Checks, and Protect My Skin. (She quit smoking many years ago, but still dreams about cigarettes.) Her mother and brother both lost battles with cancer.

I’m registered on several coupon sites that send out daily discount deals, this morning I got a coupon for 35% off “e-cigarettes.”  I was like, “What’s an e-cigarette?”

What came to mind was the e-fireplaces from the 1980’s.  Do you remember those?  It was a videotape of a roaring fire that you would pop in your VCR and play on your television.   (It was pretty hokey!)

So I looked up e-cigarettes and it seems that they are being marketed as a way to help people quit smoking.  E-cigarettes look like regular cigarettes right down to having a glowing tip – but they are comprised of a refillable tube that has a battery and an electronic chip in them. When the smoker puffs on one, it delivers a vapor of liquid, flavorings, and nicotine that looks similar to smoke.

So are they safe to inhale?  It’s hard to say since e-cigarettes aren’t labeled with their ingredients so we don’t know exactly what’s in them.

Plus, it appears that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found problems with e-cigarettes. Testing conducted in 2009 found cancer-causing substances and other dangerous chemicals in some of the samples.  (One even contained a toxic ingredient found in antifreeze!)  The FDA’s testing also revealed that nicotine levels varied a great deal from puff to puff, and another issue was that small amounts of nicotine were found in most of the cartridges labeled nicotine-free.

Regardless of whether e-cigarettes are safe, one thing that’s clear is that there isn’t any data regarding whether they really help people quit smoking.

But, I’m no expert on smoking cessation (I’m just an ex-smoker who is pondering whether this sounds like something I would have tried).  So if you are a smoker who has tried other ways to quit smoking and you haven’t found the solution that’s right for you, you might want to learn more about e-cigarettes from someone who is an expert – the American Cancer Society’s director of Cancer Science and Trends.  Read his well-rounded assessment of the pro and cons of e-cigarettes.

Click and share this post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

Lynn Lamousin is a Choose You subscriber from Atlanta, GA who signed up to Eat Right, Get Active, Get Regular Health Checks, and Protect My Skin. (She quit smoking many years ago, but still dreams about cigarettes.) Her mother and brother both lost battles with cancer.

November is definitely the month of the turkey.  This year on November 24 we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving, and a hot, cooked turkey will be on the center of most dinner tables.  But a week before Thanksgiving, on November 17, many Americans will be focused on cold turkey.  You see, November 17 is the date of the 36th Great American Smokeout.

When it comes to smoking cessation, there is no one right way to quit. But, most smokers prefer to quit cold turkey – they stop completely, all at once, with no medicines or nicotine replacement. They smoke until their quit day and then quit.

But there are other ways to quit.  Some may smoke fewer cigarettes for 1 or 2 weeks before their quit day. Another way involves cutting down on the number of cigarettes you smoke a little bit each day. With this method, you slowly reduce the amount of nicotine in your body. While it makes sense to cut down in order to reduce withdrawal symptoms, in practice this can be hard to do.

Quitting smoking is a lot like losing weight: it takes a strong commitment over a long time. Smokers may wish there was a magic method that would make quitting painless and easy. But there is nothing like that. Nicotine substitutes can help reduce withdrawal symptoms, but they work best when they are used as part of a stop-smoking plan that addresses both the physical and psychological components of quitting smoking.

If you are a smoker and want to quit, research shows that if you pick a quit day and stick to it, you’ll be more likely to stay quit. Here are some other ways to prepare for your quit day:

• Pick the date and mark it on your calendar.
• Tell friends and family about your quit day so they can offer support and encouragement. Also, ask family and friends who smoke not to smoke around you.
• Download the Smokeout Countdown Clock  computer tool. You’ll receive daily tips right on your desktop that will help you prepare to quit. When your quit day arrives the Countdown Clock will continue to provide practical support tips for your first month as a nonsmoker.
• Stock up on oral substitutes – sugarless gum, carrot sticks, hard candy, cinnamon sticks, coffee stirrers, straws, and/or toothpicks.
• If you’ve tried to quit before, think back to your past attempts. Try to figure out what worked and what did not work for you.

November 17th is the Great American Smokeout. If you aren’t ready to stop smoking entirely, take the day to put together a plan for yourself to quit smoking – or take a baby step and just put down the pack for that 24 hour period.

Click and share this post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

Lynn Lamousin is a Choose You subscriber from Atlanta, GA who signed up to Eat Right, Get Active, Get Regular Health Checks, and Protect My Skin. (She quit smoking many years ago, but still dreams about cigarettes.) Her mother and brother both lost battles with cancer.

I haven’t been a smoker for a couple of decades, so I was surprised when I saw the statistic that smokers make up less than 21% of the adult population.  I guess when I think about it, I don’t know many people who smoke – and I used to definitely know many people who smoked.

So it does seem that smoking is waning – which is good, because there’s just no way around the fact that smoking is unhealthy.  I mean, it’s unhealthy for the person smoking, and it’s unhealthy for anyone else who is breathing in the secondhand smoke.

If you’re a smoker and facts about the health risks from smoking haven’t made you quit, consider what it’s doing to your social, professional and romantic relationships.

What am I talking about?  Well, I’m talking about this… Smoking is less socially acceptable now than ever before.

Today, almost all workplaces have smoking rules so you’ll be segregated from other employees when you want to smoke. Even more important, some employers prefer to hire non-smokers because studies show smoking employees cost businesses more because they are out sick more and can raise an employer’s need for costly short-term replacement workers.

When you want to rent a new apartment, you’ll find landlords may choose not to rent to smokers since maintenance costs and insurance rates may rise when smokers live in buildings.

Friends may ask you not to smoke in their homes or cars. Public buildings, concerts, and even sporting events are largely smoke-free. And more and more communities are restricting smoking in all public places, including restaurants and bars. Like it or not, finding a place to smoke can be a hassle.

And finally, smokers may find their prospects for dating are largely limited to other smokers since many non-smokers do not want to date a smoker.  Since smokers make up less than 21% of the adult population you may find your dating pool is only the size of a wading pool.

All jokes aside, November 17th is the Great American Smokeout. If you aren’t ready to stop smoking entirely, take the day to put together a plan for yourself to quit smoking – or take a baby step and just put down the pack for that 24 hour period.

Click and share this post on Facebook. Each time you “share” Choose You with your friends on Facebook, Sprite Zero donates $1 toward cancer prevention awareness – up to $450,000!

Lynn Lamousin is a Choose You subscriber from Atlanta, GA who signed up to Eat Right, Get Active, Get Regular Health Checks, and Protect My Skin. (She quit smoking many years ago, but still dreams about cigarettes.) Her mother and brother both lost battles with cancer.

As tough as it is to overcome a smoking habit or addiction, there’s one more good reason to do so: increased risk of breast cancer. Being in shape and at a healthy weight is not deterrent to this risk. The biggest factors are how long women smoked and how much they smoke. According to HHS HealthBeat:

A study indicates that postmenopausal women who smoke have a higher risk of breast cancer. At West Virginia University, Juhua Luo and colleagues looked at more than 10 years of data on close to 80,000 women ages 50 to 79 in the Women’s Health Initiative.

“The more women smoked, and the longer they smoked, and the earlier they started smoking, the higher the risk.’’ Dr. Luo says the risk fell in women who quit smoking, but it takes up to 20 years to go back to that of a nonsmoker. She says it’s another reason for women not to smoke, or to quit smoking if they smoke currently. The study in the journal BMJ was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

This increased risk was directly related to body weight, although less so for obese women, who showed no increase in risk of cancer. However, that does not mean obesity and smoking are ways to decrease cancer risk.  The National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health explain:

Breast cancer risk was higher than normal among female smokers who were not obese, but this strong association was not evident in obese female smokers, according to a new study.

. . .

“We found an association between smoking and breast cancer risk among non-obese women, which is understandable because tobacco is known carcinogen. However, we did not find the same association between smoking and breast cancer risk among obese women. This result was surprising,” Juhua Luo, an assistant professor in the department of community medicine at West Virginia University, said in an AACR news release.

People should not take the wrong message from these findings, said Luo, who emphasized that previous research has shown that obesity alone is a risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

“This is only the first study to examine the interaction between smoking, obesity and breast cancer risk. The main conclusion from this research is that more studies are needed to confirm these results,” Luo said.

You can read the abstract here for more information.

According to a new study conducted at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, there is a strong link between rheumatoid arthritis and heavy smoking for African-Americans. In fact, the study found that it doubles the risk.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of the joints, and may affect other organs and tissue as well. In RA, the immune system attacks (mistakenly) healthy tissue, causing inflammation, pain, and impairing mobility at affected joints.

The study compared 605 people with RA to 255 healthy, non-RA people. It concluded, and its conclusions were supported by the National Institutes of Health, that:

“Among African Americans, cigarette smoking is associated not only with the risk of autoantibody-positive RA but also with the risk of autoantibody-negative disease. The risk of RA attributable to smoking is limited to African Americans with more than 10 pack-years of exposure and is more pronounced among individuals positive for the HLA–DRB1 SE.”

The chief researcher, Ted R. Mikuls, said this likely applies to other races, as well.

That means smoking increases your risk for autoimmune disorders, specifically rheumatoid arthritis.

In addition to increased cancer risk, this is one more dangerous side-effect of smoking. Smoking is responsible for one in five deaths in the US.

Choose You supports quitting smoking as a crucial part of healthy choices that help decrease cancer risk. You can get help and support for when you choose to quit smoking from  Choose You, including, articles and tools such as Quit for Life. Also, if you pledge before January 31, you’re eligible to enter for a chance to win a fitness trip to Los Angeles with a celebrity trainer, gift cards, and more.

There’s a reason Choose You includes “quit smoking” as one of the pledges. There are a lot of benefits. In fact, the Great American Smokeout lists them in When Smokers Quit — What are the benefits over time?

Here are a few that really caught my attention:

• 20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drop. (Mahmud A, Feely J. Effect of Smoking on Arterial Stiffness and Pulse Pressure Amplification. Hypertension. 2003;41:183.)
• 12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal. (US Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)
• 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases. (US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 193, 194, 196, 285, 323)
• 1 year after quitting: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s. (US Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)

That’s amazing — less than half an hour after quitting you’ve already got the first benefit.

I know you know that smoking is bad for your health, and that every study says you should quit for your own good. You don’t need me telling you or trying to tell you why you should quit smoking.  You have to find your own reasons to quit.

Kids can be a good one. Health. Cancer prevention. Lowered blood pressure. Cost savings. Pick any one. Pick any of the many methods out there to help you quit.

I wish you luck. I wish you well. If you want to quit smoking, tomorrow is a great day for it, and you’ll find a ton of support.

Did you see the Mad Men episode when Don Draper wrote his New York Times op ed about why he’s giving up tobacco…with a cigarette dangling from his lips? The American Cancer Society appeared in a subsequent episode, attracted by Don’s anti-tobacco declaration. They were interested in a campaign to spread the word that cigarettes were a leading cause of cancer, and they desired to create a movement to quit smoking. About a decade later, in 1976, the Society hosted its first Great American Smokeout. At the time, they only asked people to quit for a day.

A generation later, most Americans know they shouldn’t smoke. And the American Cancer Society’s big idea has accomplished a lot:

• Nearly 75 percent of the United States population is covered by 100 percent smoke-free workplace and/or restaurant and/or bar laws, despite aggressive efforts by tobacco companies to defeat such laws.*
• Thirty-five states, the District of Columbia, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico now protect nonsmokers by prohibiting smoking in workplaces, and/or restaurants, and/or bars.*
• Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have increased their cigarette taxes since 2000.*

However, the Great American Smokeout’s work isn’t finished yet. Now, instead of a day, the Smokeout asks people to give up smoking forever. The Choose You program includes “quit smoking” as one of the top five most important pledges we can make towards good health. For good reason.

According to 2010 Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Facts & Figures:

• Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the United States.
• Each year, smoking accounts for an estimated 443,000 premature deaths – including 49,400 deaths among nonsmokers as a result of secondhand smoke – and costs the nation $193 billon in health care expenditures and productivity losses.
• Tobacco use increases the risk of at least 15 types of cancer, and 30 percent of all cancer deaths, including 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, can be attributed to using tobacco.

It’s one thing to know you shouldn’t smoke, but it’s another altogether to quit. Quitting means overcoming not just habit and ingrained compulsion, but also addiction. Shannon, the spectacular writer who also goes by Mr. Lady, quit smoking recently. I asked her about that — why she quit, how she quit, and, more importantly, how it was going.

If you don’t know Shannon, you should, but if you don’t, you may not know that she recently had major surgery. You also may not know that she’s beautifully, refreshingly open and willing to share the easy and the hard. This is the sort of conversation that inspires and enlightens because it is full of truth and integrity; in other words, it is full of humanity. That, I think, is the core of making a good health choice for yourself: acknowledging your humanity and how worthwhile the you within that is. I think thats’ something Shannon manages well, and it is something I heard in her story about quitting smoking this time.

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