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Although most people know that smoking is dangerous, many smokers cannot seem to quit. They defend their habit by saying that they are only affecting themselves if they smoke. However, smoking also has an effect on the health of those who don’t smoke. Family, children, friends, co-workers, and even bystanders may suffer health effects from passive smoking.

What is passive smoking? You probably are familiar with the term “secondhand smoke” to describe the smoke inhaled by someone within close proximity to a smoker. Secondhand smoke is a combination of smoke from a burning cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled by a smoker. It often contains greater amounts of harmful chemicals than inhaled smoke, for instance, double the amount of tar and nicotine. This puts passive smokers at a higher risk of smoking related diseases and health issues.

Studies of the effects of passive smoking on health show increased risks for heart disease, lung disease, and various illnesses for people constantly exposed to secondhand smoke. Statistics on smoking and passive smoking show a link between secondhand smoke and cancer, with people exposed to secondhand smoke having an increased risk of lung cancer and heart disease. Sadly, it is not uncommon for the nonsmoking spouse or child of a smoker to develop illnesses related to smoking because of long-term secondhand smoke inhalation.

Secondhand smoke is especially damaging to infants and children. Young children exposed to secondhand smoke are at a higher risk of respiratory infections and other respiratory health problems. Children who have asthma are at a higher risk of having more frequent attacks. Passive smoking is also responsible for raising a pregnant woman’s risk of having a low birth weight baby or a miscarriage.

Due to the negative health effects of secondhand smoke, smoking has been outlawed in many public areas, such as restaurants and bars. Secondhand smoke can also be an issue in the workplace.

Workers who inhale secondhand smoke have an increased risk of illness and even miss more days of work. This has led many offices to ban smoking on the premises, and some areas have even passed legislation against smoking at work.

Among workplaces with a ban on smoking, employers report more productive employees and fewer absences from work.

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It is a sad fact that so many people try smoking at some point or another in their lives. Although it is often thought to be cool at a glance, it is certainly not good for your health.

Therefore if you currently smoke cigarettes, cigars, or pipes, you should comprehend that there are many benefits to quit smoking. The key is to stop for a moment and take a look at yourself in the mirror. Do you really want to smoke for the rest of your life? Maybe you are just unclear on the countless dangers of smoking. So let’s go over the many reasons not to smoke.

First of all, you must consider your lungs. This is one of the more apparent benefits of quit smoking. When you puff on cigarettes, cigars or a pipe day-in and day-out, this has a terrible affect on your lungs. Just one measly cigarette can take up to a full month to get out of your lungs. What many smokers fail to understand is that your lungs actually have to heal after you smoke a cigarette or cigar. Yes indeed, they are damaged. So one of the major benefits of quit smoking is healing your lungs and making them strong again. Tar and toxins build up in your lungs if you smoke. This in turn causes them to deteriorate over time, and can lead to lung cancer.

There are other benefits of quit smoking. However, many people fail to look at these. One is the damage smoking causes to your heart and colon. It’s not just about your lungs.

Heart disease and countless cancers are much more likely to occur if you smoke. So if you want to stop seeing a physician so regularly due to health issues, try kicking your smoking habit once and for all. Once you stop smoking you will not only feel a lot better, but you will also have a lot more energy. If you are like most people, you certainly want more energy to deal with daily work and running around. Smoking actually draws the energy out of you, making things more difficult.

Your appearance improving is certainly one of the benefits of quit smoking. Think about all of that tar on your teeth. Did you know that smoking causes damage to your teeth enamel? Over time you can end up having to do a lot more dental work, which is never good. But do not forget about the “smoker’s face.” This is a common term used now days for people who smoke regularly. The elastin and collagen in the skin breaks down more quickly and causes severe aging to occur. No one wants this. Especially not with the emphasis placed on youth these days. So, one of the greatest benefit of quit smoking is maintaining a younger and healthier glow. Finally, you don’t have to smell like smoke all the time and you can believe that you will save oodles of money by quitting.

Try to say smoking NO just now!

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Common gene variants affect how much a person smokes, whether one becomes a smoker, how hard it is to quit, and risk of lung cancer from smoking, new studies find.

The studies, based on genetic information collected by an international consortium from more than 140,000 people of European descent, expand on a 2008 report linking a specific region of the genome to smoking behavior.

Overall, the effects of the genetic variations are small:

• A single variation in the part of the genome previously linked to smoking behavior affects how much a person smokes. It increases smoking by one cigarette a day for each gene carrying the variant DNA.

• Two newly found gene variants increase smoking by about half a cigarette a day for each gene carrying the variant.

Although the effects on smoking quantity may be small, gene variants appear to play a very large role in whether a smoker gets lung cancer.

In their 2008 study, Thorgeir E. Thorgeirsson of Iceland’s deCODE Genetics and colleagues calculated that gene variants increase a smoker’s risk of lung cancer by 30%.

Now the Thorgeirsson team, in collaboration with University of North Carolina researcher Helena Furberg, PhD, and colleagues, calculate that the newly found gene variants increase a smoker’s odds of getting lung cancer by 10%.

And these aren’t the only genetic effects:

• A variation in a different part of the genome appears to make it 6% more likely that a person will take up smoking.

• Another gene variant gives a smoker a 12% better chance of quitting smoking than a smoker who doesn’t carry the variation.
  Although the findings are interesting, they don’t give smokers any reason to seek genetic testing.

• At this time, testing for these variants will not tell you anything meaningful about your risk of smoking or nicotine dependence,” Furberg says in a news release.That may change in the future.

• Smoking is bad for anyone’s health. It is even worse for some,” deCODE executive chairman Kari Steffansson says in a news release. “Today’s discoveries continue to strengthen our ability to identify who those people are and give them a compelling additional reason to quit.”

Original article  Smoking Genes Identified

Original article

A recent American research has revealed that smokers who choose to smoke as soon as they wake up early morning display higher nicotine levels than whose who wait till later in the day, and this has nothing to do with the number of cigarettes smoked.

For the sake of research, more than 250 healthy people who were regular smokers were studied, and scientists measured their levels of cotinine, a by-product of nicotine, which has been linked to increased risk of lung cancer.

The team of researchers, from the Penn State College, then went on to conclude that waiting to smoke until after breakfast reduces the amount of the dangerous chemical. Also, the study revealed thatearly morning smokers need more help to kick the habit.

Although exact reasons for the difference in levels of cotinine in those who smoke early morning and those who wait are still unclear, researchers think that early morning smoking might “reflect a more intense way of smoking”, as their need seems to be greater than those who can wait.

The detailed study has been published in the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

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