Category: Quitting Tobacco

How to help others quit tobacco. Behavioral 7D intervention to help quit tobacco. Articles to help specialists intervention.

Will I Get a Heart Attack from Smoking / Chewing?

Is Your Heart Healthy or Did You Experience a Heart Attack? Write in the Comments Below.

When someone asks you, “What is the health problem of tobacco consumption?” your immediate answer is “It causes Cancer”. Another answer might be “Nothing! I have not experienced anything yet. I have been smoking/chewing since years and I’m still healthy.” However, do you know that tobacco consumption can cause other diseases too? Have you ever got yourself screened to really know the damage tobacco has already caused in your body?

Tobacco consumption causes numerous chronic diseases of which Cardio-Vascular Diseases(CVDs), Stroke, CRD, TB, Asthma, COPD and NCDs are the most frequently caused diseases besides cancer. And, in this blog, I will enumerate on heart diseases caused by smoking/consuming smokeless tobacco products.

Let me tell you a few quick and interesting facts. As per the Factsheet released by WHO in 2018, deaths due to tobacco in India was more than 1 million and 48% of the deaths were due to CVD, 23% due to CRD and only 10% due to cancer. This is extremely alarming that more deaths are caused due to heart related diseases than cancer due to tobacco use. 4,49,844 deaths from CVDs could have been prevented if these people had quit tobacco on time (in 2018).

WHO Fact Sheet 2018

It is true that smoking/chewing can give you a heart attack or any other form of heart disease at some point in time in your life if you continue to consume tobacco regularly and do not quit on time. Smoking increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 200%-400%. I’m sure not many people would be aware about it.

Smoking Increases Risk of Heart Disease by 200%-400%

The question is how does smoking/smokeless tobacco cause a heart attack or disease?

Tobacco smoke contains high levels of carbon monoxide (CO) that affects the heart directly. CO reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. Vital organs like the heart, lungs, brains, kidney, etc. do not always receive the right level of oxygen to perform everyday functions. This implies the heart has to pump more and harder to supply the right oxygen to the organs thereby increasing the heart rate and blood pressure. Over time, this causes constant “wear and tear” on the cardiovascular system thus causing a heart attack, high BP, blood clots, strokes, hemorrhages, aneurysms and other disorders.

Use of smokeless tobacco products increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart rate. However, no study has proven that a severe heart disease can be caused due to smokeless tobacco consumption. This does not imply that a smoker should switch to smokeless form because oral cancer is caused in 98% of the smokeless tobacco consumers.

Smoking increases the risks for the following diseases:

  • Coronary heart disease
  • Rheumatic heart disease
  • Hypertension
  • Ischemic heart disease
  • Pulmonary heart disease
  • Cardiac arrest
  • Cerebrovascular disease
  • Atherosclerosis
  • Aortic aneurysm
  • Chest pain
  • Arrhythmia

What Else Can Smoking Do?

  • Increase the level of triglycerides in your body
  • Lower the “good” cholesterol level (HDL)
  • Make blood sticky and more likely to clot, which can block blood flow to the heart and brain
  • Damage the cells that line the blood vessels, leading to build up of fatty material (atheroma) which narrows the artery which causes angina, heart attack or stroke.
  • Increase the  build-up of plaque (fat, cholesterol, calcium and other substances) in blood vessels
  • Cause thickening and narrowing of blood vessels thereby harming blood circulation
  • It can also cause sudden cardiac death of all types in both men and women

“Beyond its status as an independent risk factor, smoking appears to have a multiplicative interaction with the other major risk factors for CHD—high serum levels of lipids, untreated hypertension, and diabetes mellitus (USDHHS 1983). For instance, if the presence of smoking alone doubles the level of risk, the simultaneous presence of another major risk factor is estimated to quadruple the risk (2 × 2). The presence of two other risk factors with smoking results in approximately eight times the risk (2 × 2 × 2) of persons with no risk factors.” (NCBI, 2010).

There is no doubt that smoking will definitely cause a heart attack or other forms of heart diseases. It is therefore important to quit immediately, if not, then identify the symptoms as soon as possible before it becomes severe and seek help to quit the habit of smoking.

References

Rostron BL, Chang JT, Anic GM, et al Smokeless tobacco use and circulatory disease risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis Open Heart 2018; 5:e000846. doi: 10.1136/openhrt-2018-000846

Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/diseases/heart-disease-stroke.html, accessed in July 2019

Amy Lukowski, PsyD (August 2015), https://www.nationaljewish.org/health-insights/smoking-and-tobacco-use/health/coronary-heart-disease-and-tobacco, accessed in July 2019

British Heart Foundation, https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/smoking, accessed in July 2019

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US); National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US); Office on Smoking and Health (US). How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta (GA): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US); 2010. 6, Cardiovascular Diseases. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53012/

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.