Smoking tobacco is recognised as one of the largest preventable causes of death and disease in the world. The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing around 6 million people a year.
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- Tobacco kills up to half of its users.
- Tobacco kills around 6 million people each year. More than 5 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while more than 600 000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
- Nearly 80% of the world’s 1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.
Can you imagine, if 400 passenger aeroplanes crashed in one week, this is how many people die from smoking, that’s approx. 155,000 people every single week.
FACT: Some of the diseases caused by smoking include:
- cancer (in the lung, lip, tongue, mouth, throat, nose, nasal sinus, voice box, oesophagus, pancreas, stomach, kidney, bladder, ureter, cervix, and bone marrow)
- heart disease
- stroke
- emphysema
- asthma
- blindness
Smoking not only affects the health of the individual who smokes, but the health of anyone else who breaths in the smoke around them – known as passive smoking or second-hand smoking.
Second-hand smoke is the smoke that fills restaurants, offices or other enclosed spaces when people burn tobacco products such as cigarettes. There are more than 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, of which at least 250 are known to be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer.
There is no safe level of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.
Smokers only inhale about 15% of the smoke from cigarettes, with the other 85% being absorbed into the atmosphere, or inhaled by other people.
Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemical components and smoking has been associated with more than 50 diseases, many of which are fatal.
About 30% of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking, and other health problems include lung cancer and other lung diseases, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis, heart disease, osteoporosis, infertility, early menopause and strokes.
With all these reasons not to smoke it can be difficult for non-smokers to understand why smokers continue to smoke regardless of all the health warnings; it’s called ‘Cognitive Dissonance’.
About 70% of smokers say they want to quit but don’t believe they are able to. However, around 50% of all smokers do eventually manage to give up once they try.
Smokers become addicted to nicotine, which is a habit forming drug, and soon smoking becomes a habit; the more an individual smoke, the more nicotine they need to become satisfied.
Many smokers also relate smoking to other things such as drinking, driving, eating or talking on the phone. These then become triggers, which make smoking even harder to resist.
It may take more than a few attempts to finally quit smoking, but it is achievable and millions of people have successfully kicked the habit.
If you are a smoker, giving up the habit is the greatest single step you can do to improve your health. Within 10 to 15 years of giving up smoking, an ex-smoker will only be slightly more likely to develop lung cancer than a never-smoker.
It is now against the law to smoke inside pubs, bars, nightclubs, cafes and restaurants, lunch rooms, membership clubs and shopping centres.
There are physical, emotional, social and financial reasons to quit:
Physical:
- Fatal diseases and illnesses
- Lack of energy and poor circulation
- Poor concentration
- Shortness of breath and wheezing
- Reduced fertility
- Dull skin and damaged taste buds
- Premature wrinkling
- Nicotine stained fingers and stained teeth
Emotional:
- Non-smokers thinking of the habit as disgusting
- Not being in control of the habit
- Increasing pressure from society to quit
- A sense of guilt to give up
Social:
- Polluting the air
- Putting others at risk from passive smoking
- Damaged clothes and home
- Increased risk of fire in the home
Financial:
An individual who has smoked 20 a day for the last 10 years will have spent approximately $80,300 on smoking.
Causes:
There are many reasons why individuals may smoke; some of the common ones are likely to be:
- Peer pressure from others
- Boredom
- Self-expression
- The need to experiment
Treatment:
Mindset coaching is extremely helpful for individuals wanting to quit smoking. Mindset coaching usually involved a variety of modalities such as positive psychology, NLP, CBT, hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. This coaching can give you the skills needed to relax and access your unconscious mind to discover the true, root cause of the addiction or compulsion.
Current research using 6000 smokers (published in the Journal of Applied Psychology), showed that mindset coaching, using hypnosis, was three times more effective than NRT.
With the wide publicity smoking has, there’s a lot of help available. Individuals may find different techniques work differently for them so it’s simply a case of finding the best one for you.
Visit the Mynd.Works Smoking Cessation Package.
Visit the Mynd.works contact page if you wish to ask a question or