Nov 112009
My older brother started social smoking when he was a senior in high school, and now he smokes a few cigarettes a day (freshman in college). I’ve asked him to quit, but he won’t listen to me.
How long does it take for cigarettes to be potentially harmful to his body? Years, decades? I want to tell him these kind of facts to make him quit. Thanks.
My grandparents are 87 and 83 and have been smoking for over 60 years, with no signs of quitting. They are healthier than most non smokers in their 50′s.
Paranoia is more harmful than someone smoking. Paranoid schizophrenics can seriously injure people at one quick snap.
You can choke to death on a cigarette in about 5 minutes. What your brother is doing will not hurt him. It’s all about moderation and if your brother doesn’t start smoking a lot more than he is now something else will kill him. Just warn him about the choking thing…!
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There isn’t any set time line that tells a person when cigarette’s are dangerous for them, it varies from person to person and by how much they smoke. Smoking a single cigarette brings in toxins into your body, and while they wont kill you (right away) they will probably damage the cells they come into contact with. However the same can be said of standing in the sun without sunscreen, probably wont kill you right away, but it is nonetheless damaging.
As a person who started socially smoking at the end of high school and quit this year (I’m graduating college this week) I can tell you that giving your brother facts is not going to make him want to quit. Everyone, including smokers like your brother, knows that smoking is harmful. Spouting off facts is not going to make him realize this any more than he already does, and he may find it insulting.
It took me seven attempts at quitting before I finally managed to stop for good. What I can tell you is that he is not going to try to stop until he wants to, and it will probably be a while after that when he does (I myself first wanted to quit halfway through my sophomore year.) You aren’t going to be able to get through to him, he has to decide for himself that he wants to stop.
If I could say one thing to him based on my experiences it would be to quit now while you are ahead. Nicotine is far more addictive than you realize, and even though it may not feel like it now, you are destroying your health.
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My Grandmother is in her 80s and she has smoked for 60 years. Her lungs are healthy and she is strong. A dear relative of mine began smoking at 13 and had severe bronchitis and precancerous mouth sores by 26. If he had not quit cold turkey he would have died. My point is that genetics plays a role in getting cancer or other lung-mouth diseases, but who wants to risk it? Not to mention any loved ones that are around could definitely be affected with severe illness. It is time people start thinking about what they do can be harmful to all the people around them and not just their selves.
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life experience
In the short term, it lowers your immunity by paralysis of the cillia that line the lungs which push small particles out of the lung. Those smoke particles keep the white blood cells busy.
It also damages genes in sperm to promote birth defects..
Long term, it increases male risks of prostate cancer, damage the abililty of the lungs to oxygenate the blood, and cause lung cancer..
Tobacco companies have done a good job of hiding the health effects of smoking. If the newspapers would list cause of death and smoker status, it would hurt tobacco sales.
see the Merck Manual account of lung cancer:
http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec05/ch062/ch062b.html?qt=lung%20cancer&alt=sh#sec05-ch062-ch062b-1381
show him the gory details.
From personal experience, when smokers hit fifty, then they start to dissapear. The tobacco companies promoted that idea to European governments as a way to cut down on their public retirement expenses.
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My grandparents are 87 and 83 and have been smoking for over 60 years, with no signs of quitting. They are healthier than most non smokers in their 50′s.
Paranoia is more harmful than someone smoking. Paranoid schizophrenics can seriously injure people at one quick snap.
References :