Health Risk of Smoking (No Tobacco Day)

Let us spread and encourage everyone on the health risk of smoking and dangers of using tobacco and what people around the world can do to claim their right to a healthy living. 

On this trying time when COVID-19 pandemic is rampant, smokers are at an even higher risk of developing severe health risk of smoking cigarette.

Dr. Shahla Karami, General Practitioner for over 15 years talks about the effect of how cigarette smoking is harmful to your health.

When I realize I need to talk about smoking, I thought about things I want to say in this video and things I am not talking about. So basically I don’t need to tell you that cigarette leads to early death. Amongst leading causes of death worldwide by WHO statistics and United States; the first five reasons that causes of death are:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Lower respiratory infections
• Diabetes
• Accidents
• Directly or indirectly are related to cigarette smoking.

But we are not talking about that. Also cigarette smoking leads to twice as much as

• Impotence
• Diabetes
• Myocardial infraction
• Early deaths because of heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Other leading causes of death

But we are not talking about that either

Also everybody who ever watched tv or listen to the radio knows that cigarette causes lung cancer and every 5^th person who smokes cigarette in his lifetime will develop cancer cells. It might be a fulminant cancer, or might not be the cause of death but that for sure is happening, but I am not talking about that.

Every 10^th person in UAE has diabetes because we know that diabetes is having a background of ethnicity as well and like I said cigarette smoking doubles the risk of developing type II diabetes in middle age and even younger population nowadays.

But I am not talking about that either, so what I am talking about?

I am talking about cigarette being the only carcinogenic product in the world that is proved by lab causing cancer. That I mean is most factor we are saying causing cancers is as per data. We observe that some cancer is more common in certain population and using mathematic factors and formulas we relate them to the cause and we state that this or that food or chemical might cause cancer. But in cigarette case we invitro means in laboratory, checked and realized we being scientist that cigarette in fact is a certified carcinogenic. By carcinogenic I really mean genitotoxic. How? Cigarette chemicals mainly benzene goes to DNA and changes it functions particularly the mitochondria that destroys the function of DHA and accumulation overtime of these changes leads to cancer. And I be dare enough to say that cancer of lung is not the worst cancer you might develop because of cigarette smoking. Let us not forget that from mouth to larynx  to bronchial to alveoli to stomach to bladder all the way that the cigarette inhale goes down all of these organs even of pancreas can be cancerous because of cigarette smoking.

The second this I want to talk about is the environmental impact of cigarette smoking. So when you chose to smoke, you don’t only waste your youth and health, you do that to everybody else and also the environment that we share. I don’t believe we have the right to do so.

The third thing I want to talk about cancer is I claim that COPD or any lower respiratory tract problems and disease are way more problematic in our population than cancer. Why I said that? Because Not everyone develops cancer because of smoking but 20% of people who smoke even three cigarette / 3 sticks of cigarette a day develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or for abbreviation COPD. This disease doesn’t have a medication, doesn’t have a treatment and irreversible. In plain English, COPD means destruction of structure of lungs to the point of no return that no medicine can fix. It means being breathless when you are on a beach on a very loveliest time of day. You cannot catch your breath while everything else is normal and it is only because of your smoking that this happened to you.

Finally I want to talk about some statistics that might hold some hope in the view. For example we know that recently over last few years consumption of chick peas in the united states of America has gone up by 51%. And why is that? Because farmers in Virginia state being very famous or well-known at famous brands of cigarette now have to plant chickpeas instead of tobacco because people get smarter and prefer hummus over cigarette and that is my final line with the hope of the future.

Book an appointment with Dr. Shahla Karami, General Practitioner at GMCClinics in Dubai. For appointment and enquiries related to smoking cessation and health assessment, call GMCClinics Green Community at 043932983.

 #nosmoking #quitsmoking #stopsmoking #smoking #smokingkills #health #smokefree #notobacco #motivation