Smoking – How Sweet It Is

Tobacco products are one of the few products that are not required to put the ingredients on the packaging. Contrary to popular belief cigarettes, pipe tobacco and cigars do not just contain tobacco. There are many different products in tobacco and one of the biggest is sugar. When tobacco is cured it is cured to achieve the highest possible sugar content as sugar aids in the taste of a cigarette. To increase the sugar content even more sugar is aften added to the tobacco, one of the more popular forms is molasses. Cigarettes contain between 20 – 30 % of sugar […]

Its in Your Values

A lot of people come to me feeling frustrated and beating themselves up because they can’t
quit smoking by themselves. They try willpower, patches, acupuncture, hypnosis
etc but still continue to smoke.

This is often because health is not at the top of their value system and they really do
not want to give up. Let’s look at the value system first:

Everybody has their own unique set of values and we all live our lives trying to fulfil
our values. If something is high in our value system we will do things to try
and fulfil it easily and will be focused. If that something is […]

I’ll Get Fat if I quit

A lot of people are afraid of quitting smoking because they feel that they will gain to
much weight when they quit. Most people who quit smoking gain on an average of
2 to 5 kg in the long term. What is clear is that the health benefits of not
smoking far exceed any health complications with the weight gain.

It is popularly believed that smoking decreases body weight by supressing the appetite. Studies
have shown that smokers do not eat less than non-smokers or ex-smokers and, in
fact they tend to eat slightly more.

Eating consistently increases in the first weeks after stopping smoking, but will […]

Want to Age and go Bald – Smoke

When talking of the dangers of smoking things such as cancer, emphysema and heart
problems are always mentioned but there are some more insidious effects from
smoking. This is primarily around blood circulation and oxygen uptake by the
blood.

Nicotine when smoked causes the blood vessels to constrict and this reduces the amount
of blood to supply nutrients to the cells. This is especially pronounced with
the small blood vessels that nourish the skin. The blood also takes up the
carbon monoxide from smoking rather than oxygen so the blood of smokers has
less oxygen to give to the cells.

The net effect of this is that the cells […]