There's no time like the present to give up the cigarettes, and you can acheive success in weeks.
I know, I know, I spent last week espousing the virtues of not giving stuff up for the new year and adopting instead, new positive resolutions for your life - but forget all that! There's one big exception to that and January is the perfect time to talk about it. And that's smoking. Specifically, giving up smoking.
Smoking is about the worst thing you can do in terms of your health and that is no exaggeration. The worst thing. It would never be legalised if it was invented today. There's no other product you can buy that kills every second person who uses it.
Not only does smoking cause the big two everyone knows about - heart disease and lung cancer - it also causes stroke, vascular disease, miscarriage, stillbirth, COPD, cervical cancer, Alzheimer's, subfertility . . . should I go on? It's implicated as a cause in almost every single human cancer.
Another thing I particularly hate about it, is the cynical way the tobacco industry approaches its trade. They know that smokers are a dying breed, so they need to constantly recruit new people to buy cigarettes, to maintain their market. Plus they know the younger they get you, the stronger the addiction, so they target the youth in developing countries, where restrictions on marketing are weakest. They push their carcinogenic wares on children and young people who are unprotected and destroy their health. Think about that for a moment, think of the ruthless tobacco barons your money's going to, thinking up new ways, to spread the addiction to impoverished kids.
Giving up isn't easy - nicotine's more addictive than alcohol and most recreational drugs. But it can be done. And your older self will never thank you more, for anything you do, to invest in your future. Because you can sometimes get away with smoking in your twenties and thirties. Even into your forties. But come your fifties, the coughing starts. And as you enter your sixties, the chronic shortness of breath. And in your seventies - should you live that long - your life will be very different healthwise than it should have been. There are no older, healthy smokers.
Source: Ciara Kelly, Irish Independent, 05/01/15
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