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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
7 Pinoys die due to smoking
By Henrylito D. Tacio
TOBACCO smoking is one of the world's top killers. Here, in the Philippines, over 2,600 Filipinos die from diseases related to smoking. That's seven deaths everyday, or one every three to four hours.
Tobacco, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is expected to become the world's leading cause of death in 2030.
"Few people now dispute that smoking is damaging to health," said Dr. Rowena van der Merwe in a report during the WHO-organized conference on tobacco and women in Asia a couple of years back. It is also damaging to a country's economic well-being, she added.
The time is now ripe to "harness economic tools and logic to ultimately reduce the toll of tobacco." Prevention is the "most effective and cost-effective policy" and will have the most dramatic effect on future trends. However, comprehensive measures to promote cessation are also needed.
The Philippine government is doing its best. Recently, it signed a tough law on Monday prohibiting smoking in public places and banning all tobacco advertising within five years. The new law will make it difficult for tobacco companies to promote their products.
Advertising that is now widespread on television, radio and billboards will be phased out starting on January 1, 2007. A complete ban on ads -- as well as sponsorship by tobacco companies of sports, cultural or educational events -- will take effect on July 1, 2008.
Some groups lauded this initiative of the government. Berna Romulo Puyat, chair of the Bayanihan Tungo sa Reporma at Pagunlad, said there should be a sustained information campaign on the hazards of smoking that must "target children, students and young people if we are to create in the future a non-smoking society."
The campaign includes encouraging parents to stop smoking. "By quitting, smoking parents can save as much as 900 pesos a month, which may be enough for a cavan of rice for a family," she said.
"I have always said that if you want to get sick, then you smoke," said Dr. Percival Punzal, director of the pulmonary rehabilitation unit of the Philippine Heart Center. "Smoking is pleasurable but it always leads to many health complications later on."
At risk are, naturally, smokers but also secondhand or passive smokers. And they are in graver danger of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other diseases because the smoke they breathe in is unfiltered. It has been known for women who do not smoke but whose husbands do to develop COPD.
"COPD is a term used to describe airflow obstruction associated mainly with two types of lung ailments: emphysema and chronic bronchitis," explains Dr. Rafael R. Castillo, a cardiologist at Manila Doctors' Hospital. "It is often tagged a 'smoker's disease' since majority of COPD patients are smokers."
Quit Smoking
"Smoking is a chronic disease," says Dr. Michael C. Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention in Madison, Wisconsin. "Once you quit, you're always at risk of smoking again. But each time you try, you develop better stop-smoking skills."
But quitting is no easy task. Listen to the words of newspaper columnist Michael L. Tan: "Quitting is the easy part; staying off cigarettes is much harder and that's where you need friends and relatives who can encourage you to stay off. It helps to have other people point out how much better you look now that you've quit. Or having friends who understand why you're avoiding parties and bar-hopping until you're sure you can avoid the temptation to smoke."
According to the American Cancer Society, once a smoker stops smoking, his body gradually recovers from tobacco damage:
* 20 minutes after his last cigarette, his blood pressure drops and his heart slows down.
* 24 hours later, his chances of having a heart attack begin to decrease.
* 48 hours later, his blood level of carbon monoxide -- yes, the stuff that comes out of the car's tailpipe -- drops to normal and his oxygen level rises to normal, so he feels less winded.
* 2 weeks to 3 months later, his circulation improves and his lungs receive up to 30 percent more oxygen. He can exercise much more easily.
* 1 year later, his risk of having a heart attack is half of what was when he was smoking.
* 5 years later, his chances of getting lung cancer are half what they were when he smoked. And his heart attack risk is back to normal.
* 15 years later, his lung cancer risk is the same as it was before he started smoking cancer sticks.
Dr. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel prize-winning chemist, once told the students of the University of Toronto in Canada that should everyone quit smoking, "the overall life expectancy would rise by four years."
He based this on the fact that a person who smokes a pack a day from twenty years of age on has his life expectancy reduced by eight years.
Studies also reveal that a 50-year-old person who has never smoke will live an average eight and a half years longer than a person who smokes a pack a day, and seventeen years longer than one who smokes two packs a day.
Perhaps people who want to quit smoking can learn something from U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower. In 1952, a book was published under the title of Eisenhower, in which the author reveals that 38th American president had been a heavy smoker but because of failing health had been ordered to give up the habit. His health immediately improved, and he never went back to the habit.
The author related a conversation he had with the President shortly before publication of the book, in which he asked him if when in the company of others who were smoking he felt he was missing something, if it was difficult to refrain from smoking. To this, the American president replied: "No, I just think, 'I had the will power to quit, and they haven't.'"
(December 10, 2003 issue)
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