In this and the next column we will devote time on one other important lifestyle change to adopt. It is: stop tobacco use. 

Quitting cigarettes must go hand in hand with following the whole food plant based nutrition, and adopting the other healthy lifestyles we’ve talked about to be successful, in controlling or reversing non-communicable diseases (NCD) like Type 2 diabetes or heart disease. 

The dangers of smoking are well known to the public and have been extensively broadcast over the past six decades since the first report of the US Surgeon General, released in 1964, drew attention to the health hazards of smoking. Since then, the rates of tobacco use in the United States and the rest of the world have significantly decreased but there is still work to be done. 

At present, Nauru seems to have the highest smoking rates in the world at 52.1 per cent. Oddly, women smoke slightly more than men in Nauru (52.6 per cent to 51.7 per cent), which is not the norm. The second-highest rate belongs to Kiribati, whose (52.0 per cent) total consists of 68.6 per cent of males and 35.5 per cent of females, which is a more typical sex distribution. 

At present, in Samoa, 29 per cent of the adults still smoke, with 14.5 per cent among ladies. There is no ‘safe’ level of smoking: the more you smoke, the higher you are at risk of a heart attack. People who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day have more than twice the risk of heart attack that non-smokers do. 

The good thing about smoking to remember is that only after three years of quitting smoking, your risk of having a heart attack is almost as low as if you had never smoked before. Tobacco smoke contains over 5,000 chemicals, including nicotine. People who smoke become addicted because of the nicotine, and addiction sets in even only having smoked a few cigarettes. 

But the physical harm of smoking is caused by the tar and the other chemicals. Many of the chemicals can cause cancer. Others are poisonous, such as hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide and ammonia. When you smoke, these chemicals can not only damage your lungs, but also pass into your blood and spread through your body, affecting all the organs. 

Smoking can affect every part of the body - from your skin to your brain. A gruesome statistic quoted by Dr Dean Ornish is that in the USA, 350,000 people die prematurely every year from smoking-related deaths, more than the total number of American soldiers killed in World War I, Korea and Vietnam combined.  

Here are a few more worrying statistics: Diabetics who smoke are eight times more likely to develop complications than non-smoking diabetics.  About 30 per cent of all cancer deaths are due to smoking; between 80 and 85 per cent of deaths from lung cancer are due to smoking, and lung cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. 

People who smoke have higher rates of chronic cough, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. Non-smoking spouses of smokers face a 25 per cent greater risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smoking spouses of non-smokers. Nicotine is not only addictive but also causes your arteries to constrict, so blood flow is reduced. Should we go on…? 

And yet, despite this information, and the warning that one finds on every packet of cigarettes, many men and women still smoke as the above statistics show. At the same time, smoking has become less socially acceptable: many places now ban smoking and some countries are even considering a complete ban in the years to come. But still, it is hard to quit smoking unless you have something else you can fall back on that can provide the perceived benefits of nicotine.  

Voluminous scientific research findings have now been accumulated over the years. They help to provide greater opportunities for counselling to quit smoking and offer proven methods that allow one to enjoy the perceived benefits of smoking without facing the risks. As an example: one of the most frequently quoted reasons why people find it hard to quit smoking is that ‘smoking helps me to relax and cope with stress’.  

As we discussed in recent columns there are now effective stress reduction techniques like guided meditation that help one to manage stress without having to use cigarettes. More importantly, ‘these (techniques) can help you address the more fundamental causes of stress without simply using a cigarette to ‘bypass’ them.’ In the meantime, we invite you to visit METI’s Healthy Living Clinic at House No. 51 at Motootua (across from the Kokobanana Restaurant) and become acquainted with METI’s whole food plant based diet and Lifestyle Change program. Or call us at 30550. Learning how to follow these Programs might be your ‘game changer’!