STOP SMOKING

Hello everyone. It has been a very long time since I last blogged (I think I've said that too many times too). But it was for a good reason (I think). I've been busy with studies and also elective programme where I was working with my dad.

I have quite a lot of things I want to share with you but today I've decided to talk a bit on smoking.

I know some of you smokers might roll up your eyes and ignore this but I'm still going to pin out to you the effects of smoking you are creating not only to yourself but also people around you, especially your loved ones.

Lets see how much of harm have you caused to your lungs since your lungs act as your air filters. Most of the smokers will have occasional cough which may be severe and may prolong and worsen as time past by. Still they refuse to quit smoking because they have an excuse by saying that others who don't smoke gets cough too. That is true but people who doesn't smoke gets cough due to infection that spread from one person to another by air. In case of chronic smokers, they develop cough because of their lungs have undergone desruction and abnormality hence you are more succeptible to infection and other diseases.

Few of the most diseases that affect chronic smokers are : Chronic Obstructive Airway Disease (where the patient frequently gets attacks of breathlessness), Lung cancer, Bronchiectasis. These conditions are most grieved because they are the difficult illnesses to be treated and chances to return to normal is very minimal.

The smokers might even deny that they smoke a lot of cigarettes a day and claim that they only smoke occasionally so they think that they are safe from dangerous illnesses but hear me out, once you have smoked, it takes 6 years to clear your lungs from the harmful toxins you have inhaled and only afterwards your lungs can be healthy again.

The harm done isn't contained only in your lungs, your bad habit also affects your heart and your blood vessels. Your poor over worked heart muscle gets weaken and since you have also caused damage to your heart's artery bringing the blood supply, your heart gets weaker and weaker and it might undergone a disease called 'coronary artery stenosis'. Stenosis means the artery (a vessel bringing blood supply) gets smaller. Coronary artery is the name of the artery bringing blood supply to your heart muscle. When this happen your heart muscle can die and you get something called as Myocardial Infarction or Myocardial Ischemia. These 2 are Malaysian 2nd cause of death compared to other morbid illnesses that kill our population.

So lets do our parts to either stop smoking (to those who smoke) and to those who don't smoke you should play your role by advising people to stop smoking.

There are ways on how you can stop smoking. You can seek medical help where you may be prescibed with nicotine patch, or counseling session but most importantly you should believe in our own ability to make yourself stop smoking. Do not hesitate to seek help or other's supports. And as far as possible, try to stop in just one day and don't try to reduce is because usually you fail to totally quit smoking if you think you should first reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke daily.