Category: Tobacco

Articles on harmful effects and impact of Tobacco in our lifestyle. Remedies to Quit Tobacco easily and much more. Keep Reading.

Self-Care – A Need of the Hour

#knowtobacco
How Do You Self-Care? Write Your Comments Below.

When World Health Organization (WHO) released its first guidelines on “Self-Care Interventions for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Right”, there was an immediate realization of the gravity of self-care interventions. As per estimates, WHO mentioned that the world will fall short of 13 million healthcare providers by 2035 leaving at least 400 million people devoid of necessary healthcare services.

It is imperative to adopt self-care in different facets of healthcare to fill this gap and ensure that people have access to essential services as required for adequate treatment and support. Self-Care implies that a person or their family “promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health-care provider” (WHO). This means that one should adopt the following habits in their routine with immediate effect to ensure that they are able to care for themselves and get the right treatment on time without delay:

IDENTIFY ANY CHANGE IN THE BODY

  • One must identify any sign or change occurring in one’s body. It may be a small change or a major one, which does not occur routinely.
  • Search for references on the internet for the cause of the sign and symptoms and self-detect through available kits to identify the cause of the symptom
  • If one is unable to find out the source of the symptoms, then report it to the concerned physician immediately and get it diagnosed to seek proper treatment

STOP LIVING WITH THE DISEASE

In India, it is a normal practice to procrastinate visiting a doctor and people get used to the symptoms occurring in their body. They start living with those symptoms and after sometime it becomes so severe that visiting a doctor become inevitable. There the patient gets to know about the severity of the disease and that they should have visited earlier when the first signs occurred. Make it a habit to not neglect your own health, for not only will you suffer your entire family will suffer and experience a lot of stress and trauma.

GO FOR YEARLY FULL BODY CHECK-UP

Doctors recommend to have a full body check-up once a year to know the current health status and compare it with the previous record. This helps the person to know what they should be doing to keep them healthy.

ADOPT HEALTHY HABITS

Every healthcare professional will tell you to eat healthy and exercise regularly. These are the 2 most important aspects of keeping healthy habits. But there are a few more which are as critically important as eating healthy and exercising.

  • Maintaining hygiene in everyday life both personally and socially
  • Teaching kids to maintain personal hygiene and keeping surrounding clean
  • Not spitting anywhere and everywhere
  • Avoiding smoking in public places, hospitals, children, etc.
  • Not reusing disposables of family members
  • Adopting preventive care

The list is endless. It is upto us how well we adopt the healthy habits, practice, preach and propagate them to the community to make our place greener and healthier to live.

EXTEND SUPPORT

There are many instances that a particular disease is looked upon as social stigma in our society and those suffering from them are completed neglected or socially ignored. HIV AIDS is one such disease. In such instances, the patient becomes morally depressed and loses self-confidence. This impacts their psychological behavior and they give up on their treatment easily leading to their death. We need to become more supportive and prevent the community from inflicting such taboos. We must support the patient emotionally and financially so that they are able to cope with the disease and get themselves treated.

This reminds me of people who want to quit smoking or chewing. They face similar problems while quitting – LACK OF SUPPORT! If we care for them and extend support during their withdrawal symptoms and cravings, they can quit with ease and determination and will require minimum physician’s intervention.

Remember one simple mantra:
जब भी देखो छोटा दाना,
उसकी पहचान जल्द ही करना,
कैंसर को ना बनने दो नासूर,
शिग्रह करो इसे दूर!

#knowtobacco
Get the “Chota Daana” screened and diagnosed asap

Self-Care from tobacco use is the need of the hour. India needs the non-tobacco consumers to adopt a tobacco user and help them quit by acting as a buddy to them. Cessation experts are available for help in case of failing to quit by self. They make the quit process easy and simple. Identifying the early signs, late signs, advanced signs and co-morbidity of the harms of tobacco use will help the individual get themselves treated on time and prevent oral cancer, lung cancer, CVD, Stroke, COPD< Astham, TB, and other NCDs from happening. This is the best and immediate self-care one can do for themselves.

It should be noted here that smoking releases carcinogens and those inhaling it are also at a risk of chronic diseases from this Second-Hand Smoke (SHS). Detection kits are available to let you know the impact of SHS on your body. This makes it necessary for non-smokers to take care of themselves too for they might be exposed to SHS without them realizing it.

In all, Self-Care is extremely essential for everyone for early realization, detection, diagnosis and treatment of the diseases occurring in their body. This is my appeal to everyone to have your own guidelines for self-caring your body. This will help you live longer and disease free. It is also an appeal to all the tobacco users, both smokers and chewers, to start self-caring for themselves as tobacco use will definitely cause them some chronic disease at some point in their lives.

How Can I Quit Smoking?

This question is one of the most frequently asked questions by urban smokers on Google and forums like Quora. Google answers back with lot of rich experiences from ex-smokers; products that can help quit or websites that help you plan your quit journey. In this blog I’m going to narrate a practical experience from a friend who quit successfully by self. This is my gift to all the tobacco users on this World’s No Tobacco Day to start practicing the tips below with immediate effect.

Last week I met an old friend of mine, named Raj (name changed), a chain smoker for 11 years, and I was astounded to see him not smoking! I could see the transformation in him when he decided to quit and adapt a healthy living for himself. He had experienced a stroke, anxiety and breathlessness because of smoking. He had grown obese and lazy and was failing badly at his work and family life.

It was good for him to realize in time and take steps towards becoming healthy. I’m writing his story because he practiced the 4D strategy (Delay, Drink Water, Distract and Deep Breathe) of quitting and stopped smoking within a year without even realizing that he was practicing the 4D technique! He did not undergo any intervention or seek physician’s help. It was his strong willpower and self-determination to become healthy which led to his transformation. This blog describes his effort in detail and I hope you can find some tips to quitting by self.

4D Strategy - Drink Water, Delay, Deep Breathe and Distract

Change Brand and Flavour

Switch to new brand and flavour every time you buy a cigarette. Raj used to buy a different flavour of different brand every time he went for a smoke. He said that his sense of taste and smell for his favourite was fading over a period of time and his cravings to smoke were reducing. This happened in about 3-4 months of his quitting smoking. His urge reduced by 80%.

Take a Small Puff

Raj used to throw his cigarette after taking a couple of puffs. Similar process was practiced by late CM Shri Biju Pattnaik of Odisha. He used to smoke a puff and cut off the cigarette from the butt. This satiates the cravings and helps to manage the withdrawal symptoms. This way the “need to smoke” is satisfied and the body is not harmed too much. Slowly the urges become manageable and are easy to control. Let me also mention that after the puff was thrown away, Raj used to take a walk to DISTRACT himself from the thought of smoking the full cigarette.

Delaying the Urge and Drinking Water

Raj used to smoke as soon as he used to wake up. So, he changed his habit to having 4 glasses of water every morning after waking up. He then used to walk down to a distant kirana store for a cigarette. He used to climb down the stairs from the 3rd floor of his apartment and walked on foot to buy a different brand for smoking.

For the first few days, it was very tough for him to drink water. He wanted to smoke first. He also bought cigarette from the nearest kirana store. However, over a few months, he started having 2-3 glasses of water daily with practice and was finding it tedious and difficult to go to a kirana store to buy cigarette every time. This made him procrastinate buying cigarette every morning and a major factor that changed his habit of smoking in the morning forever.

This is a wonderful way of delaying the urge and getting into the habit of procrastinating smoking by making it very tiresome and tedious.

Buy Less

Buying 1-2 sticks instead of a pack will have a very strong impact and help you quit faster. When you have limited sticks you tend to smoke either when desperately required or you make the process of smoking tedious, tiresome and time consuming– first buying cigarette every time when you want to smoke and then smoking! With the latter, you delay the urge to smoke and that’s how the tendency to smoke lessens. If you have a pack, you tend to smoke whenever you please and it will not help in quitting.

So the crux is that you keep changing brands and flavours till you lose the sense of smell and taste for smoking your favourite brand; buy only 1-2 sticks; delay urge by buying cigarette every time; you cut off the butt after 2 puffs; drink water and deep breathe to relax. Distract yourself from thoughts like completing the full cigarette by either walking or making your environment tough so that you start procrastinating buying a cigarette to smoke.

Raj started exercising and running regularly. This way he turned himself into a fit, handsome and active man. It has been 5-years now that Raj is a successful ex-smoker. He has not experienced any relapse and I’m sure he will not give into smoking anymore.

All these will practically help you to quit over a period of 6-10 months. However, to be successful in quitting, you must ensure that you need to have self-confidence and determination to quit!

Raj not only quit smoking but also helped his various friends to quit smoking by the same method. I hope help you too. If you fail to quit by yourself, do not take medications by self. Ensure that you consult a doctor before you use any kind of Nicotine Replacement Therapy.

Post your experiences and stories of quitting in the comment box below. I would love to learn more from your experiences.

Relapse is just not Will Power, but Environment As well

LEWINS EQUATION TO MAKE YOU A TOBACCO WINNER!

Kurt Lewin in 1936 gave a very simple formula an equation which said behaviour is a function of the person in the environment. What it means is – the habit or behaviour of a person is just not dependent on a person’s character but it also depends on the environment one is exposed to.

This is very much true with tobacco also whether it is smoking or chewing.

Both your personality and environment determines the good habits you would build, bad habits you would break and the way you would progress in life.

A person who is into the action phase of quit cycle, relapses not just because he is born with low will power but mostly because of the environment.

Tobacco addiction has three important components – PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL.

Determining the level of Physical addiction and controlling it with medication when necessary is the first step. But a major component is also the Psychological and Social environment. Psychological or mental strength is a must but at the same time you need to be surrounded with a healthy environment and motivational materials to keep you strong and constantly remind you and strengthen your will power.

Your social environment is one major determinant of your long journey of tobacco cessation – your friend circle, the party time, office colleagues, the pan shop etc. may trigger you to try once again. One slip will take you back to the bottom of the stairs you have climbed so far in your quit cycle. Keep track of your triggers, it is important. I will talk about triggers in subsequent blogs.

Anyone who is into a wrong habit we should help before the early signs of tobacco harm sets in. The advance harms are really dangerous.

The book WIN OVER TOBACCO MADE EASY would be of help.

A word of caution – the teachers, school counsellors, parents should be aware how to deal with such situation. I will talk about it in my subsequent blogs.