Natural Medicine Clinic Publications

The Tobacco Ghost: Smoking Cigarettes, Cigars Too

By Nancy Aagenes, ND

My neighbor friend asked me to write about smoking and I've been thinking about this article ever since. Recently in the IR was a photo of Native American people making a demonstrative statement about restoring tobacco to the sacred. It is my understanding that when those more indigenous to our part of the world smoked, they did nothing else. They weren't reading the paper, drinking coffee, chatting with a friend, driving the car or talking on the phone. It wasn't an unconscious, secondary or social thing. Tobacco was for a solitary intentional moment.

That overlaps with thinking from Aruveydic doctors who suggest that a way to quit smoking is to disconnect it from all other things. Hold the cigarette for a moment, asking the questions: Why am I smoking this? How will it make me feel? And then doing nothing else but smoking and noticing the physical response. They claim that the habit will eventually break down as the smoker reconnects with how it feels to smoke-how it feels with no distraction from any other source. They suggest this reaction is amplified by always smoking in only one place.

Do you remember your reaction to the very first cigarette you ever inhaled? Asked in the treatment room, 90% of the smokers I talk with remember a dizzy, coughing, unpleasant experience. Right away the body announces the toxicity. Our bodies are so incredibly adaptable that if we continue to smoke, the body can adapt and we become addicted smokers. Like with alcohol, the alcoholic actually feels sick without the poison, so adapted are their bodies.

I often tell patients that if I could give only one piece of advice as a physician it would be to stop smoking tobacco. Here's an only partial list of the damages of smoking tobacco. I haven't even included the affects in the respiratory system-like cancer, asthma, sinusitis etc.

• Smoking hastens aging by rapidly and powerfully accelerating free radical damage. That's like making rust happen faster.
• Smoking more than doubles the risk of cardio vascular disease.
• Smoking increases the risk of female reproductive system cancers by two to three times. One study showed that women in their 20s had a 17 fold increase in cervical cancer.
• Smoking decreases immune system function, in one way, by inducing a Vitamin C deficiency and causing some tissues to concentrate carcinogenic compounds in cigarettes.
• Smoking may be a significant factor in depression. It increases cortisol production (a hormone that makes us feel stressed), decreases tryptophan (an amino acid that converts to relaxing neurotransmitters) to the brain, down regulates the reception of those neurotransmitters.

Smoking, according the Surgeon General, is the number one health risk factor in our country. Cancer risk is increased by three to five times. Smokers on the average die 7 to 8 years sooner. Tobacco smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals, and 50 of them have already been identified as carcinogens.

My contractor friend down the street smokes Camel straights. Why? Well, I haven't asked him directly, but for many smoking makes them feel a little more relaxed, gives them a defined break, not to mention feeding the addiction.

I write now partly in acknowledgement and appreciation to Dr. Shepard and others who have led the effort to clean up our personal air here in Helena. I write to motivate even one of you to stop smoking again and again until you hit the golden time when cigarettes are actually gone. I write because my husband smokes cigars and while I flat out refuse to make it an issue in our marriage, it worries me some.

Decades ago, I smoked for a couple of years. It was very hard to quit. My 8-year-old daughter one day exploded in terror with her fear that I would die. That finally motivated me to quit. Since then I smoke about a cigarette a year, just to remind myself that something about it is pleasurable. Just last week I had a Camel straight with my contractor friend. And I guess that's it for another couple of years.

In normal human metabolism we spend about 4% of our daily-expended energy to breathe. Those with end stage pulmonary disease are spending about 90% of their daily energy just to get the next breath. It's awful for them and painful for those who love them. Those you love won't have to watch you slowly suffocate.

If you stop smoking right now your health risk will basically return to the risk of a non-smoker in about 14 years, but most of the benefit occurs in the first two years. There are so many aids to smoking cessation, but the principle thing is the desire to quit. If you want to smoke, there's not much anyone else can do. If you want to quit, get help.