SMOKING REDUCES 20-25 YEARS OF ONE'S LIFE

According to Dr. Rory Collins of Oxford University, smoking can reduce 20-25 years of one’s life. Speaking on the role of Tobacco and Diabetes in causing Cardiovascular Disease, at the 54th conference of the Cardiological Society of India (CSI) in Kochi recently, Dr. Collins said, “Non-smokers have got greater life expectancy than those who smoke.”

- Shri K. K. Bajaj

Tobacco has been shown to cause about 25 life-threatening diseases including cancer, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, impaired vision, nervousness, arthritis, etc. Many of these can be prevented, through cessation of smoking.

Radioactivity in each cigarette can reduce one’s life by 11 minutes:-Shaw Mitchell and Dorling from the University of Bristol showed that a Cigarette reduces one’s life by 11 minutes (British Medical Journal, January 1, 2000). Dr. Dorling asserted “Cigarette smoke contains radioactive perfumes.” In the New England Journal of Medicine, T.H. Winters and J.R. DiFranza, University of Massachusetts Medical Centre wrote that cigarettes contain radioactivity in the form of Polonium 210 (Po210) and Lead (Pb-210) T.C. Tso, a former researcher at the US Department of Agriculture, discovered that the radioactivity in tobacco came from Phosphatic fertilizers, which contained Uranium and its decay product Radium-226. Scientists found high concentrations of Po-210 in the lungs of 7 out of the 37 smokers in the study. Lung cancers also seem to have developed.

Each puff of smoke contains some 4700 chemicals – Besides Nicotine, each puff of smoke contains some 4700 chemicals. Two among them, Benzopyrene and Benzanthracene, are the most potent cancer-producing substances we’re aware of. Ingested with cigarette smoke, they destroy the DNA’s ability to repair itself. Smoking has been proven to cause cancer of the esophagus, the mouth, the head, and the neck. It is also known to cause bleeding in the brain - the reason why strokes occur.