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My Cigarette, My Friend?

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#101

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12/28/05 07:40

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#102

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01/03/06 01:37

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#103

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01/04/06 07:46

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#104

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01/05/06 07:05

32 year old smoker's artery being squeezed

http://whyquit.com/whyquit/LinksJBlood.html

Each puff of nicotine delivered more fight or flight instant energy fats into the bloodstream, while at the same time shutting down bad cholesterol clean-up (a function seen as non-essential to life saving fight or flight). With toxic carbon monoxide destroying the Teflon like lining (endothelium) coating our vessels -- providing these unused fats a nice sticky surface -- is it any wonder that more smokers die from circulatory disease than lung cancer?

But we could actually hear our lungs wheeze or cough. We each knew that we'd substantially reduced our functional lung capacity as we witnessed it first hand each and every time we tried to engage in sustained vigorous physical activity. It's too bad that we couldn't hear or sense the fact that we had also substantially diminished the capacity of our blood vessels to transport life giving oxygen as it would have likely motived more of us to stop our own senseless self destruction sooner.

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:03. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#105

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01/08/06 08:37

Amy and her mom

"As we were talking with the coroner, the fact that my mom had been smoking about three packs of cigarettes a day came up. She was going to quit several times in her life, but something always came up to make her life "stressful." The latest time she was going to quit was after my grandfather, her dad, just died of lung cancer. However, my sister was having a difficult pregnancy, so there was stress in her life."

"Anyway, she did quit smoking when the stress was gone. She also missed the birth of her second grandchild three days after her death. My mom was only 47 years old when claimed by a massive heart attack, five weeks after the death of her father from lung cancer."

Amy Berkshire

http://whyquit.com/whyquit/Memorial.html

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#106

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01/09/06 08:37

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#107

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01/10/06 08:35

We have never taken a puff off of any cigarette that didn't destroy
more of the roughly 600 million air sacs (alveoli) that we started with.

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:21. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#108

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01/12/06 08:38

According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute aside from smoking causing 87% of all lung cancer deaths it's responsible for most bladder cancers. Fact source: http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_14.htm

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:22. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#109

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01/13/06 08:47

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#110

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01/24/06 05:29

Movies and Clips

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#111

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03/15/06 09:05

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#112

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03/16/06 07:46

Nobody needs this kind of friend....the one that lies and betrays you. I know we are all intelligent folks;; we are here and one big support group. But its amazing that we are all bound together by this common denominator and we believed the lies for so long! Freedom truly is a lifesaver!

aunt valeria---feelin good today (thanks to all of you!) xxoo

I have been quit for 2 Weeks, 6 Days, 2 hours, 15 minutes and 42 seconds (20 days). I have saved $55.25 by not smoking 401 cigarettes. I have saved 1 Day, 9 hours and 25 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 2/23/2006 7:30 PM

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#113

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04/03/06 08:29

I received the below email yesterday and posted it to WhyQuit's The Smoker's Memorial . Merrelyn feels pretty hopeless right now.

04/01/06

I am Merrelyn Hughes 63, widow. I am a widow twice after watching my husbands struggle for every breath. Chester Hughes died of lung cancer at 71 - 3 packs a day for over 50 years. It was a horrible last two years as I watched the man I loved the most die, my friend and lover of 20 years. Then I remarried in April of last year to Claude McDlain and I watched him die of cancer of the lung on January 10.

And then there is me, on my walker with oxygen, struggling for every breath with a cigarette in one hand. Sometimes I feel in my stupidity that I deserve to blow myself up. I would like to put a sign on my walker that says cigarettes caused this and walk thru schools. You can't imagine what it costs Medicare and Champus to keep me alive.

I have grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends. There is a life out there I want to share in but I am afraid it is to late. I also have a 2.25 spot on the lung which I refuse to allow them to biopsy. I also have diabetes, asthma, emphysema, congestive heart failure, and legs that won't hold me up. No breath to walk with, unable to clean my house any longer, I need constant help.

IF ONLY I HAD NEVER SMOKED, IF ONLY I COULD QUIT, I AM SCARED, MY FAMILY HAS BEGGED AND I HAVEN'T LISTENED. PLEASE DON'T SMOKE. IT IS PURE AGONY TO LIVE WITH THE RESULTING DISEASE, AND SO DEPRESSING THAT I COULD HAVE KEPT THIS FROM HAPPENING. PLEASE, DON'T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN TO YOU.

Merrelyn Hughes
Huachuca City, Arizona

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:23. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#114

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04/20/06 07:53

IARC carcinogens reported in cigarette mainstream smoke and their calculated log P values.

Food Chem Toxicol. 2003 June;41(6):807-17.

Smith CJ, Perfetti TA, Garg R, Hansch C.

R&D, Bowman Gray Technical Center, RJRT Company, Winston-Salem, NC 27102-1487, USA. smithc4@rjrt.com

Cigarette smoke is a complex aerosol of minute liquid droplets (termed the particulate phase) suspended within a mixture of gases (CO(2), CO, NO(x), etc.) and semi-volatile compounds. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified a number of the chemical constituents reported in cigarette mainstream smoke (MS) as carcinogens. Previously, we published a series of historical reviews reporting that 11 IARC Group 1 (known human), nine Group 2A (probable human) and 48 Group 2B (possible human) carcinogens have been observed in MS. Here, we expand the list of IARC classified carcinogens from 68 to 81 compounds (11 Group 1, 14 Group 2A and 56 Group 2B) reported in MS. A number of the IARC compounds reported in MS are found in the vapor phase including three Group 1, eight Group 2A and 18 Group 2B constituents. Several IARC MS compounds are found in both the vapor and particulate phases including two in Group 1, one in Group 2A and one in Group 2B. Forty-eight IARC MS carcinogens are found in the particulate phase only. Lipophilicity, as determined by the base 10 logarithm of the calculated octanol-water partition coefficient and denoted as Clog P, is reported for each of the 71 non-metallic MS IARC carcinogens. Clog P correlates with a number of biological activities including in vitro mutagenicity and carcinogenicity in rodents, and in the absence of any additional toxicological or epidemiological data, a high log P compound is more likely to be carcinogenic than a low log P compound.

PMID: 12738186 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12738186

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#115

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05/23/06 05:45

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:45. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#116

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05/30/06 03:07

One is too many, one thousand never enough

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 07/07/09 09:07. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#117

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06/14/06 04:40

FONT color=#000000>On Wednaesday May 31, 2006 my grandmother died of lung cancer. She always knew she had it and she never quit smoking. The day she was admited into the hospital she knew that it was time for her to go, but she kept pulling through. My granmother was in the hospital for a little over six months and it was hard to visit her because I hated seeing her like that.

My grandmother was a very loving and kind women. She was honored and cared about very dearly. She had many friends and was a very memorable women. She had a great personality and had great potential. I loved her so much ....we had the best of times together. We would stay up late and watch t.v. till we couldn't take it anymore.
And that is all gone now just because as she was young, there was a thing called peer pressure and she started smoking. She has smoked ever since. She had to smoke a least one pack every 2 to 3 days, it was horrible. But I just want everyone to know that smoking is horrible because it ruins your life and it takes the ones you care about deeply. My name is Becka, I'm 14 and from the bottom of my heart ......it hurts.

Becka

The Smoker's Memorial

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:28. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#118

[-]

07/22/06 04:28

My Nicotine, My Friend

(The below email is reprinted with permission)

John,

I read with much interest your article of 2002 posted on the Internet regarding the dismal success rate of smokers using the patch or nicotine gum to quit. I stopped smoking myself 20+ years ago and have not had a cigarette since. I went through a hospital-sponsored program.

I have a brother who is not so fortunate, however. He's been on nicotine gum for some ten years or so. He's on disability and receives just $800 per month. With that he spends over $200 a month on the dang gum and he is convinced that he can't live without it. He lives in San Francisco, just about the highest cost-of-living place to be. What can you advice to get him off that stuff? Thanks.

Harry

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:29. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#119

[-]

09/22/06 05:43

A Time/Life Robbing Chemical Friend

Assume a smoker smokes 10 cigarettes per day

Assume five minutes spent smoking each

It translates into ...

5.8 hours per week spent feeding our addiction

25 hours per month

300 hours per year

or

37.5 eight hour work days

or

7.5 entire eight hour work weeks!

Imagine almost two months of work time devoted to the gradual destruction of these innocent bodies. Imagine all the wonderful moments interrupted in order to go find a place to feed a mandatory chemical need.

Last Edited By: FreedomNicotine 02/11/09 05:24. Edited 1 time.

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My Cigarette, My Friend?

#120

[-]

09/30/06 12:40

Smoking and structural brain deficits:
a volumetric MR investigation.

European Journal of Neuroscience, September 2006; Vol. 24(6): Pages 1744-1750

Gallinat J, Meisenzahl E, Jacobsen LK, Kalus P, Bierbrauer J, Kienast T, Witthaus H, Leopold K, Seifert F, Schubert F, Staedtgen M.

Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charite University Medicine, St Hedwig Krankenhaus, Turmstrasse 21, 10559 Berlin, Germany.

Growing evidence from animal studies indicates brain-damaging properties of nicotine exposure. Investigations in humans found a wide range of functional cerebral effects of nicotine and cigarette smoking, but studies focusing on brain damage are sparse. In 22 smokers and 23 never-smokers possible differences of the cerebral structures were investigated using magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry. Significantly smaller grey matter volume and lower grey matter density (P = 0.05, corrected) were observed in the frontal regions (anterior cingulate, prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex), the occipital lobe and the temporal lobe including parahippocampal gyrus, in smokers than in never-smokers. Group differences of either grey matter volume or grey matter density were also found in the thalamus, cerebellum and substantia nigra, among other regions. Smokers did not show greater volumes than never-smokers in any cerebral region. Magnitude of lifetime exposure to tobacco smoke (pack-years) was inversely correlated with volume of frontal and temporal lobes and cerebellum (P = 0.001, uncorrected). The data indicate structural deficits of several cortical and subcortical regions in smokers relative to never-smokers. The topographic profile of the group differences show some similarities to brain networks known to mediate drug reinforcement, attention and working memory processing. The present findings may explain in part the frequently reported cognitive dysfunctions in chronic cigarette consumers.

PMID: 17004938 [PubMed - in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17004938

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