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.”
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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?
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Misconceptions of smokers
Many people are sure that the harm of smoking is significantly exaggerated by doctors and biologists. They have turned the habit into a scapegoat and associate it with any disease while failing to fight certain diseases. Smokers themselves give the following arguments when explaining what this addiction gives them:
- improves mood, helps in the fight against stress;
- improves mental activity;
- has a fat burning effect;
- helps to establish contacts and join the team;
- With a cigarette, people consider themselves fashionable, modern and cool.
In novice smokers, nicotine causes euphoria, heightened senses, and affects intellectual activity. But this substance quickly becomes addictive. As addiction develops, a person begins to need to smoke in order to feel not better than usual, but to get rid of the state of nicotine deficiency.
A smoker cannot concentrate on solving a problem or fully reason without artificial stimulation. Regarding the ability to relieve stress, the point is not in nicotine, but in the ritual; it is preferable to come up with another ritual for relieving stress.
Smoking also helps you lose weight, but at a considerable cost. Nicotine stimulates more efficient calorie burning and the release of glucose into the blood, as a result of which the feeling of hunger is inhibited. But together with other components of cigarette smoke, it interferes with the complete absorption of beneficial substances and harms the gastrointestinal tract.
For many insecure people, a cigarette gives them the opportunity to liberate themselves and join the team. But it is more useful to engage in self-education, increase self-esteem and look for other people with similar interests.
Read also: Smoking during pregnancy: effects on fetal development, ways to quit
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.
How to quit smoking
Many smokers have tried to give up cigarettes more than once, but to no avail. There is no miracle pill. But it's possible. The main thing is that the person himself wants to quit smoking, and not someone putting pressure on him.
The first thing you should do:
- Remove all ashtrays.
- Cigarettes.
- Lighters.
- You must ban smoking in your home and car.
We must first arrange such conditions for ourselves. The main thing is that there are no smokers or reminders of smoking in sight. Set a date when you definitely quit smoking - this will help psychologically.
Nicotine addiction (like other types of addiction) is a mental disorder.
It is very difficult to overcome addiction to tobacco, so it is better to seek help from a doctor. If you go to the doctor and follow his recommendations, your chance of quitting smoking will increase. Doctors have many tools at their disposal. Physiological dependence can be overcome with medications that replace nicotine. And psychotherapy methods allow you to get rid of psychological dependence.
One of the reasons to quit smoking can be the cost of cigarettes. Have you ever wondered how much money the average smoker spends per year, and where the savings could be spent. The infographic below will help you figure it out.
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.
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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.
Combination with alcohol
It is widely believed that a smoker who combines this habit with drinking alcoholic beverages (beer plus a cigarette, tobacco plus whiskey, tobacco plus wine, etc.) causes double harm to the body. However, scientists have provided evidence that the combination of red wine and tobacco smoking is quite beneficial for health, as it can significantly reduce the risk of bowel cancer. It has been proven that smoking men who prefer good wines among other drinks are 20% less likely to encounter problems with cancer of the digestive system compared to those who drink beer or strong alcohol. This trend was not found among women.
