Herbal News Magazine

Everyone knows that smoking cigarettes, cigars and other things you inhale hot smoke into your lungs with are dangerous to your health. That has definitely been more than established by the medical community.  As if to drive the point home even further, the Center for Disease Control has released their top death causes list.

And guess what?  The top three causes are related in some way to smoking. That’s not to say there are not other factors involved such as genetics, other lifestyle choices and environmental factors. However, each of them can have a direct relation to the act of smoking. Which makes quitting smoking all that much more important.

3 Smoking-Related Causes of Death

1.)  Emphysema and other lung function disease such as COPD.  This one is one of the most undeniably smoking-related health issues that can lead to death pretty easily.  Aside from lung cancer, it is a definite link to smoking – although, as with everything else, it can also happen on its own without smoking, but that is pretty rare and the link is a well known one.

2.) Cancer.  There are several types of cancer that are related to smoking. Cigarettes are a carcinogen. Not only does the smoke produce toxic by-products, but the cigarettes themselves contain harmful chemicals that permeate not only the lungs and other organs in the body, but also the surfaces of furniture, the walls in homes, the surfaces in cars, and everywhere else the harmful habit is done, making it carcinogenic not only to the smoker, but also to “second hand smokers”.  Basically, cigarette smoke is a cancer causing agent, and for that reason, it has been linked to everything from breast cancer to prostate cancer.

3.) Heart disease.  Heart disease can be partially genetic, true. It can also be greatly attributed to your diet and lack of exercise. However, smoking is also another acknowledged risk factor in determining likelihood of heart disease. Your ticker is affected by smoking because smoking raises heart rate and also increases blood pressure and stress levels, all of which are not heart friendly and cause damage over the years.

Smoking generally makes the smoker feel relaxed in the very moments they are smoking (and gives them a feel-good buzz too, hence the addictiveness). However, this is misleading because in the end smoking really jacks our nervous system up and increases dangerous anxiety and stress hormone levels, none of which is good for the heart.

Related Posts:

• Women Who Smoke Have More Bladder Issues
• Smoking and Prostate Cancer
• Grotesque Cigarette Labels Make You Wanna Quit?
• 500k Dead from Cigarette Smoking a Year
• Would You Quit Smoking After Finding Out You Are Ill?

Have you seen the new pictures that tobacco companies are being forced to put on their labels in a prominent position, even larger than their own brand name by the Federal Government?  Well, if you have, trust me, some of them are graphic images, or very emotionally tugging images that will stick with you long after you’ve seen them.

Some are graphic pictures of cancer patients, while yet another tugs on the heart strings by showing a young child.  Either way, the emotions are definitely played on, and that’s what they are going for – to get people who are buying cigarettes to reconsider their purchase – and their smoking habit.

But has the Federal government gone too far in censoring (essentially) a product that everyone knows is bad for them (like alcohol) and still choosing, of their own free will, to keep on smoking cigarettes?

Well, that may be more of a case for Legal experts to answer, but it is also an increasing concern among others in a lot of other industries. Don’t get me wrong, smoking is bad, and I think everyone who does it should seriously try to quit smoking.

However, I think there is more an issue of big brother trying to force the issue a bit, and forcing companies to even compromise their business by forcing certain labeling. We all know that cigarettes are bad for us. It is pretty much common knowledge these days.

But it didn’t always used to be. Cigarettes were a HUGE industry back in the fifties and even sixties. People sort of knew they weren’t healthy, but the true long term effects and multitude of health issues they contribute to were not fully known yet back then.

Now that we’ve had decades to study their ill effects on human health, it is much easier to say that they are, hands down, just something that has no saving graces as a vice.

However, smoking is still a legal thing that can be engaged in, and they are going almost as far as to ban it in some cases. Second hand smoke has become a huge issue that is often talked about, and the rights of the people standing around smokers.

I myself hate to inhale second hand smoke. However, I do question us completely outlawing it for people who are hooked on the habit. Isn’t that a little bit too “socialist”?

Related Posts:

• Grotesque Cigarette Labels Make You Wanna Quit?
• 3 Top Tier Causes of Death Related to Smoking
• Effort to Reclassify Marijuana Falls Flat – Again
• E-Cigarettes : Government Stepping in to Regulate
• Would You Quit Smoking After Finding Out You Are Ill?