Health Hazard: Parents Smoking Tobacco

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This dreaded topic just pushes so many buttons in people.  We all know it has enormously damaging qualities.  There’s always someone who has a good excuse for smoking saying that at least they’ll know what killed them, and a cigarette is probably their best friend.  Twenty percent more people will die due to smoking.  Even if you cannot even slow down, keep in mind that 150,000 women now die of cancer related diseases every year.  It’s a terrible death.  Mothers and fathers who smoke in the home are contributing to their child’s health issues such as bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia.  It is a terrible abuse to your family.

Every person has a way that they want to quit.  There is so much literature available if you are interested.  For example, change the way you think about smoking.  Think about where you like to smoke especially – is it before bed, after dinner, first thing in the morning?  When you acknowledge when you smoke, light up and really feel that cigarette.  Each puff causes a little wheeze, a bad taste, a bad smell and people don’t want to be with you.  Don’t think because you are standing somewhere and not smoking you don’t smell.  Non-smokers can smell a smoker a mile away, despite what tricks your mind might be delivering to you.

Oh, yes!  The cost.  Wow, focus on what you could do with all of the money that you pay to buy smoking products. It appears that smokers now make friends with people who smoke.  It is like a little clique of people standing out in the freezing cold while they talk about how much weight they would gain if they even thought of stopping.  It is all so pathetic.

Think how happy you would be making your family if you quit.  There’s  hypnosis, which does quite well, there are all kinds of tablets to cut the craving, do not go where you usually go to smoke.  Try not to be around people who smoke.  They will get into your head because they are so ashamed and misery loves company.

Smoking has so many little routines involved with it.  Holding the cigarette, picking up partially smoked butts and lighting up, getting up and brush your teeth so the first drag will be sensational.  If you can sit through a movie or take a plane ride, or lie in the hospital you have already stopped smoking.  You have broken the chain and you CAN continue to keep it going.  The hardest part is the last smoke, and then it’s over and downhill from there.

There are little tricks.  Eat more protein, get some exercise, take deep breaths.  Try chewing gum, or eating little crackers.

There are 12 step programs if you would like that comradery.  Nicotine is just such monster, it’s good to have support.  Depending on how heavily you smoke, your quitting may be accompanied by withdrawal symptoms of a racing heart or trembling hands.  You can use the nicotine patch along with an anti-depressant to ease some of those side effects.  Tell everyone that you quit.  That way you’ll have to really “face the music” if you begin again.  Do fun things or sleep your way through your first week or just go places where if you smoked you would be a pariah.

If you have tried to quit before and failed, examine what happened and be particularly aware of the pattern that you formed, and change it.

Keep talking to yourself.  Pat yourself on the back.  Go get a massage.  Eat at a nice restaurant.  Be kind to yourself at every turn because you are going to win at the hardest competition you’ve ever be in.

Related posts:

1. Health Hazard for Parents: Abusing Alcohol or Drugs
2. Women’s Health: Bladder and Kidneys
3. Women’s Health Screening – Part 1
4. Women’s Health: Your Doctor’s Examination – Part 4
5. Nutritional Health Tips for Moms – Carbohydrates
6. Women’s Health Screening – Menopause
7. Nutritional Health Tips for Moms – Glycemic Index
8. How to Get What You Want from the Doctor – Getting Prepped
9. Women’s Health Screening – Part 2
10. How to Get What You Want from the Doctor