ssSmoking - Lemme blog about it

A lot of people say they know many who have smoked all their lives but are still very much alive and kicking. And there are those other people who died of cancer without smoking a single cigarette their entire lives. You might be duped to think smoking has nothing to do with cancer. Although research proved that smoking is most definitely related to cancer, that does not mean that all smokers will get cancer or that non-smokers won’t. It’s only common sense. Smokers are, on average, much more likely to get cancer than non-smokers.

Statistically speaking half of all the smokers die from cancer or other smoking-related diseases. And the painful truth is a quarter of smokers die in their middle age, between 35 and 69.

A smoker thinks that by smoking he will get lung cancer, but that’s just one of the diseases. There are a lot more forms of cancer that are related to smoking: oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, bladder, kidney, pancreas and cervix (and the list is not complete). Smoking harms nearly every major organ of your body.

The cigarette contains a huge number (around six hundred) of allowed additives, which although are approved as additives for food, were not tested by burning them, and it is known that by burning them, their properties change, often for the worse. Over 4.000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette, many of which are at least toxic. In the cigarette smoke there have been found a lot of toxins like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. That’s the reason why second hand smoking is so dangerous.

Cancer is the second cause of death all over the world and the researchers link it to smoking, since lung cancer is the widest form. Smoking is said to damage important genes that control the growth of cells (it damages the DNA) - causing them to grow abnormally or to reproduce too rapidly.

The risk of getting cancer increases with the number of cigarettes smoked and the number of years of smoking, the only good news being that, generally, the risk decreases after quiting. Keep in mind that smoking cigarettes that have a lower yield of tar does not substantially reduce the risk of cancer. Make no mistake about it - there’s no “safe” cigarette.

Nicotine is a drug that is naturally present in the tobacco plant and it is primarily responsible for the addiction. During smoking, nicotine is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and travels to the brain in a matter of seconds. The cigarette addiction is very similar to the addiction produced by heroin and cocaine. It is very hard for a smoker to quit because the addiction is not so much physical as it is with other kind of drugs, but psycho-physical, making it arguably harder. But not impossible!

The truth is there is an overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is bad for your health. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases compared to non-smokers.

Quiting smoking reduces all the risks brought on by smoking. As you can see, there are just too many not to make you at least wonder. The earlier a person quits, the greater the health benefit.

This is not the first time I emphasize on the fact that smoking is bad for you. Everybody knows that. Everybody also knows that hamburgers - fast food - have a very negative impact on one’s heath. Eating food with too much salt in it, or with too much fat. Crossing the street without carefully looking. Drinking too much alcohol. Doing drugs. Walking around naked on a -5 degrees weather. Insulting a police officer. Dancing on a cliff. Trying to commit suicide is also bad for your health! But I want to have the freedom of doing all that.

The point is we all should be free to express ourselves as we wish to, as long as we don’t interfere with others right to do so. We all must weight the benefits and the risks involved in all that we endeavor. Society must not ban but educate. We should all have access to unbiased information. A society that is constantly struggling to remove all the risks is doomed to take away all the individual liberty and ultimately doom itself. The purpose never excuses the means.

A cigarette will NOT kill you. A pack of cigarettes you use to smoke during a week will most definitely NOT make your health any worse than it is. You will NOT live longer just because you never had a cigarette in your entire life. That is all bullshit!

The media and most of the medical literature on smoking have been telling us lately that smoking causes lung cancer. That is, repeat after me, BULLSHIT. There is no proof of that and no matter what they want us to believe, people don’t live by statistics. If you believe them, also believe this: in the near future YOU are going to die in a car accident. ‘Cause there are sooo many car accidents these days. Does that make any sense to you?! Are you so scared that you’re not going to get out of your house anymore? Oh, then be warned: planes are crashing these days, meteors fall all the time, explosions everywhere. Damn!

There are no studies in this world that can show a correlation between a casual smoker (less than a pack a week) and lung cancer. Lung cancer is not even in the top 5 causes of death. All cancers combined account for 15% of all annual deaths and lung cancer only for 2%. Occasional cigarette has NEVER proven to be a risk factor in lung cancer.

Second hand smoking cannot be shown to be a factor that causes lung cancer. There are a lot of types of pollution that people are exposed to each day that are a lot more dangerous compared to second hand smoking. Strictly statistically speaking, passive smokers are not more exposed to lung cancer than regular non-smokers. There are no studies that can claim that second hand smoke exposure during childhood increases their risk of getting lung cancer.

The researchers have been trying to make the mice sick of lung cancer by exposing them to cigarette smoke for years and years. THEY FAILED!

Yes, SMOKING DOES NOT CAUSE LUNG CANCER and it never will. That’s the truth. Smoking is just one of the many risk factors for lung cancer. What smoking does is increase the risk. But even so, the risk of a smoker getting lung cancer compared to a regular non-smoker is much lower than one might suspect. Based upon what you can read on a pack of cigarettes these days, you must think that if you smoke you will surely have lung cancer or, at least, you’re very very likely to.

What would you say if those risks were below .1? That’s below 10 percent!? If you don’t believe me, correlate the statistics for lung cancer deaths, smoker / non-smoker yourself. You’ll find that a smoker has a less than 10% LIFETIME chance of dying from cancer whereas the non-smoker has a 1% chance. Yeah, wouldn’t you know, you’ve got a chance in a hundred to die of lung cancer even you’re not smoking, not being even a passive smoker. I always figured that if I smoked, I’d be like 40-50 times more in danger of dying from lung cancer.

The smoker does indeed have a risk 8x times higher than a non-smoker to get lung cancer. But that’s by no means a certainty. SMOKING DOES NOT CAUSE LUNG CANCER just like NOT SMOKING DOES NOT PREVENT IT! You don’t see this info in the media, what you do see is “if you smoke you die”, when the fact is lung cancer accounts for only 2% of the annual deaths world wide.

Smoking alone is not enough to develop cancer. Any type of cancer. No doctor or scientist in the world could argue with that fact. Cancer needs a series of factors to exist and combine together in order for it to appear. Those factors include cellular disorder, DNA alteration, genetics, immune system disorder, vitamin deficiency, pollution and many more. Even the plain old being lazy is an important factor. The dose and duration of the factors involved is very important. Cancer appears when most of these factors combine to have a synergistic effect. NONE of these alone, independently, can ever be responsible for causing cancer.

Smoking does not cause any type of cancer. Smoking increases your risks to get cancer. Those risks are less than 10 times higher than those that a regular non-smoker has.

Quit smoking for a number of good reasons. Read through the posts on this website to find plenty. Don’t do it because you’re afraid of having cancer someday. You might as well have cancer because of a lot of reasons you cannot fight against, like genetics. If you like to smoke, want to smoke, can’t stop smoking, go ahead… SMOKE! But don’t smoke excessively. THAT will kill you. Most definitely.

Smoking is a very important factor for a lot of diseases out there. That’s real. No one can argue with that. Smoking really gets you closer to your grave. Maybe not that in a hurry as the world wants you to think, but it’s like taking a very small amount of poison each day. Your body could very well cope with it, at least for a while, but then again it is very likely that it can’t.

You see, smoking affects people differently. Because people are different. We have different genetic baggage. And, most important, what really influences what smoking does to your body is your way of living. If you drink a lot of liquids, if you exercise a lot, if you don’t skip meals and if what you eat is good for you, then the effects of smoking are somewhat canceled. You’re not off the hook, but you may very well be living a long life. Or get hit by a car while crossing the street. That’s just fate .

The point is having a healthy life helps you, it helps you a lot. And, also, note that even if you’re NOT smoking, and never had smoked a single cigarette in your entire life, eating junk food and staying all day in front of the TV is far worse than smoking. Ask any doctor. The problem is these days most of us have a very sedentary way of living. We really don’t seem to get that this is what makes us look bad, age earlier and die younger.

Smokers risk developing a dozen different cancer diseases, especially lung, throat and month cancer. Smokers risk suffering from asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema. The smoker’s risk for dying from sudden cardiac death is 4 (four) times greater compared to a non-smoker.

If the fact that smoking is a good accomplice to your killing is not good enough reason to quit smoking (and it’s a common fact that smokers continue their habit although all know this), lets enumerate some other very good reasons:

You really stink!

Did you ever wonder how it is to kiss an ashtray? You must have. No? Well you should have, because that’s the way your partner feels every time you get a kiss. It must be very good since you always provide this “benefit”. But the fact is, he or she is just coping with it for your sake. They willingly put the love for you before their health. And you do too!! Don’t ever forget that second hand smoking also kills. Your child is likely to develop asthma because of your smoking. And a lot other diseases. Now then… considering that your clothes smell all day long and you have a terrible breath which no mint in the world could hide, how’s that compared to death?

Your lungs should go on strike

Smoking causes your lung to get filled with tar so that the transfer of oxygen and all sort of nutrients to the bloodstream is reduced. This affects your entire body but you sense it most in your lungs. Do you have trouble breathing? Do you have a lot of phlegm? That’s why! Know that you’re exposing yourself to a lot of serious diseases if you experience all these symptoms and choose to ignore them! And also be warned that all these are only going to get worst! There’s good news though: if you stop smoking right now, your body will start recovering in only 12 hours. You’ll start feeling the benefits right away. Your lungs and your breathing will be improved in less than 3 months. Isn’t it worth it?

Look at your tan, what do you see?

You can always pick a smoker out of a crowd, just by looking at his face. Really, try it. After ten years of smoking, there’s no escape. You have like 10 fold the number of wrinkles a regular (non-smoker) person your age has. You also look pale, ashen skin and you can define “yellow” just by starring at your teeth in the mirror.

You are depressed

That’s right! Smoking does NOT help cure depression, it helps it stay. It’s a common fact. Just try quiting and see the difference.

It’s a very expensive vice

Do use the reporting feature of the Smoking counters and see how much you’re completely WASTING on this. You lose thousands of dollars / euros / [insert your currency here] each year. In 50 years with that money you could’ve bought a nice house for your family. With that money alone, not considering interest and other things like that. AAAND also NOT considering the doctor’s bill for all you get extra and free from your habit. We all know doctors will take more than smoking does. Can you really afford it? Life will tell you that you can, but do you want to afford something like that? Or would you rather do something useful with your money. Hell, you didn’t earn it that easy, did you?

Do you have sex?

Everybody does. Do you like having sex? Is your sex life a good one? Well, no matter how good or bad your sex life is at the moment, trust me when I say it will definitely go worse. Especially if you’re a man. You as a smoker have less sperm count. Also, know that smoking causes infertility all together. If that doesn’t bother you that much (since you’re a man and all ), know that male smokers experience a much higher risk for erectile dysfunction. So if you just can’t get it up, try quitting smoking. Maybe it will not solve your problem completely, but it will certainly help a lot.

Does your kid smoke?

I personally do not know any smoker in the right mind who would advocate smoking as a good thing. It’s everybody’s business what they do with their body, but I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who would tell a friend that it’s good for them. If you’d tell a stranger to quit or never get into this habit, how would you like your child to behave? He’s most likely to imitate you. Do you smoke in front of him / her?

I remember those glamorous commercials back in the days smoking was… good (!?). Yeah, I keep on wondering… what happened to those ?! Why did they stop? I especially loved the cowboy ones. Guess what I smoke .

Is the world slowly realizing the problems smoking brings with it? Or did it just strike them senseless !? How come it was once OK to smoke, you were considered even cool, all the bad guys were smoking in the movies (oh wait, this is still going on - like this is the final frontier), anyways, why is the new wave so against smoking?

Is it bad for you? Well, we knew that. All the smokers know that smoking is bad for you. But I am free to do whatever I want with my life, ain’t I? Well, not really… You gotta always remember that liberty is the right to do whatever pleases you, as long as it’s not against the law, human principles and old testament rules. Am I forgetting something?

I think this “new world” everybody’s trying so hard to build these days is dead set against smoking and smokers. I also think it is more set on banning smoking than it tries to prevent drugs or (why not?) fast food… Which do you think is more damaging to your health?

We could argue all day which kills you faster… I’d put my money on thousands of hamburgers not on a thousand of cigarettes, but, most definitely dope will get you before a smoker even begins to consider quitting. And before killing him, it gets all his money too. And you tend to have only dope addict friends too. As a smoker I have to admit most of my friends are not smokers. Go figure! Then why doesn’t the “new world” fight ALL the real enemies of health? Drugs, smoking, alcohol, salt, sugar, bad food, POLLUTION?

Why don’t we all STOP the car manufactures that pollute the air with their cars? Why don’t we make them build only cars with no noxes whatsoever? The technology is here. Well, because the companies that build cars are not yet so cartel-like as those in the tobacco industry. And the tobacco industry used to produce way more profit than any other industry. It still brings in many countries. What you cannot control, try to take down. Not to mention that smoking is something that everybody in their right mind (I admit I’m… different ) would fight against. If we all saw the whole tobacco industry go bankrupt, none would care.

Just a few years back, I was allowed to smoke anywhere. Nobody seemed to mind that much. Now, I can smoke only in a few places and those are marked like everybody should keep a hundred miles away from them. In the future, I won’t be allowed to smoke in my own house ’cause it’s so bad for the plants.

I’m a smoker. But I don’t like to be tagged. Why is that in this world it’s worst to be called a smoker than a homosexual?? Why should I understand them and treat them as any other human being? Were they born gay? No, it’s a choice like so many others. Like smoking.

There are a lot of reasons to quit smoking. It ain’t killing you more than an unfulfilled dream. But if you do smoke, you’re no longer popular. You’re no longer part of this world. Better be gay. Happy .

I promoted sssmoking.com on a crowd sourcing ideas website I’m very found of (if you’d like to know which that is, drop me an email) and I got a lot of feedback. Somebody said that we should learn from Mint.com. I wanna share with you what I replied:

Mint.com is like 20 years ahead of sssmoking.com from every perspective - technologically, science (economics),etc. I’m the first one to admit that. I knew about them. They’re on a different level. First thing to notice though is that the market they’re targeting is huge - actually every one of us can be very easily a client.

Enough about them. The most important point here is that they managed to build a community. That’s the hardest thing to do especially without any support. I’ll back up sssmoking.com for as long as I possibly can but there are like 99% chances that I will never reach more than 1k regular users. I don’t have the connections and the knowledge to expose the site. And, I, again, am the first one to admit, sssmoking counters is only at the beginning. There are some more “tools” to come. But I don’t have wallpapers, ring tones or porn, nor will I ever have.

I can see the resemblance and thank you for pointing that out. But I’m still searching for THE idea to be implemented for the regular smoker. I strongly believe smokers out there DON’T get all the support they should. I think a community built on this common goal - to help people quit smoking - is very important. For the moment, the world tries to make them quit by getting them OUT of the community (no smoking there, no smoking here), not really helping them. No more smoking! And yeah, products that you spend money on and get nothing from - like fast food.

Hey guys,

I was planning to write about smoking a lot more often, but (honest here) I’ve been scoping the web for some quality forums… discussion of any sort related to smoking. You might not believe me, but there’s NONE! I ain’t lying! I just wanned to promote this website and I’ve found absolutely no decent page to do this on :)) . If you could point us in a good direction… Please do!

Now, I’d like to say a few words about the ssSmoking Counters… you know, the main page of the site, where the smoker comes to track his cigarettes. Well, it finally got a decent update. I’m not gonna say a lot about it, ’cause most of the improvements are underneath the smoker’s eyes -> bug fixing, faster running, etc. We already have a bunch of smokers using the site regularly. Spread the word, now please, you guys! .

The ssSmoking Counters is beginning to look like a community site for all smokers and I think that is a real good thing - you have your little smoker avatar, your smoker shoutbox, little things like that . Oh, and now we’re sending daily reports by email to raise even more your awareness on smoking. Of course, all the emails are requested. We don’t believe in spam. You as a smoker have enough problems as it is .

I said I’ll be writing about the main site tools. Sorry it took so long. Buuut, I see ppl, smokers , are starting to use it already. That’s nice! .

The thing is it’s so easy to use it as I will probably be boring you. If you’d like to do smth else instead, smoke one for us and track it on Ssmoking counters. .

When you first go to the page, you’ll see how others are doing… how much they smoked and when they last smoked:

Move your mouse over somebody’s name and you’ll see some quick stats . If you find it hard to count the number of cigarettes displayed, don’t do it!! . Just hover the images of the cigarettes and you’ll see it in numbers .

Creating a new account is as simple as 1-2-3. Smoking is what you do so we won’t be trying to teach you how to smoke (actually, we’d prefer to make you stop ). After you smoked, log into the site and you’ll have three buttons available:

Press “I just smoked” if … go figure… you just smoked .
Press “I smoked…” to open a dialog where you can specify how many cigarettes you smoked recently:

Press “Show me reports” to get to see all your smoking tracking, in a nice visual way:

Note that the reporting stuff starts with the current day, but you can click the links on the top of the reporting window to see the status for the current week, current month, even this year, last year, next year (and this enumeration is making me dizzy )… so whatever you like. It’s actually pretty neat and very useful (to me at least).

For example, if you’re wondering how to see how much you smoked yesterday, go to reports, click “Show month” and then you’ll notice that you get how many cigarettes you smoked each day. Want more? Wanna see hours just like for today? Well, just click the day you’re interested in . Of course, you need to have smoked in that day… otherwise there were nothing to be displayed now, would it? :-)) .

Don’t miss out on the what “You lost” section in the reports dialog! Now that’s something which is suppose to make you wonder why the heck are you still smoking! . What it does is calculate … you know… what you’ve lost ’cause of smoking:
-> Time
-> Money
-> LIFE

It is said that it takes the regular smoker 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette and that he loses 7 minutes of his life. Also, a single cigarette costs me 15 cents (yeah, I know, I have a special supplier :-)) - comment my post and you’ll get his phone number :-)) ). What the site does is just a simple math operation. Nothing fancy, but it sure does raise my awareness. For instance, today I’ve just lost an hour and 15 minutes smoking, 2,25 bucks and an hour and 45 minutes of my life. Hey, that ain’t much but it’s just for a single day!!! Wanna really get a sense of reality? Well, do you?! Go ahead, use the site regularly for a couple of months and then click to see all year report. It will make the calculation based on all the cigarettes you smoked this year… you’ll be… amazed, truly!!, of what you’re loosing!

Oh yeah, of course, if you don’t like the average numbers the site is using, you can change’em on the same report page. Just go ahead and enter whatever numbers suit you. The calculations will get updated in a sec right in front of your eyes .

As always, your feedback is more than appreciated.

I recently managed to get affiliated with a service that offers simple “toys” for regular smokers. I liked what they were doing so I asked them if I could host this blog on their machines since we’re targeting the same … “market” .

This is their link (although now it’s straight-forward to find them, it’s harder to find me ) - www.sssmoking.com. I will write a post about them in the next days.

Anyways, what I didn’t like from the starters is the way their site looks. It is damn ugly, no point not to say it out loud :D. Buuuut I soon realized they had a strong point when they explained that it was that ugly… on purpose…:lol: .

So this is the reason I also did the rebranding:

-> smoking is very simple, everybody can do it

-> smoking will make your life darker and then make you think it stops depression :). Did you know the color depression is commonly associated with is red? Could you spread this rumor to make it so? .

-> one cigarette won’t take much of your time

-> smoking brings people together with the same baaad habit (I wonder why we don’t have a forum yet or a chat ).

-> now what we aim for is addiction, but when you’ll start using the toys… you’ll love’em .

Our site stinks, yes, we know, but so do you, smoker!! .

I think I don’t have any talent in writing. You’ll pretty soon find that out . And my English is pretty pour. What can I say…. I’m just happy I don’t need to be talking right about now, just typing. Then why would somebody like me start a blog?

There are a lot of sources of information out there. You can find many fancy ways that arguably make you wanna stop this (bad) habit. Or are there?

I’m a regular smoker. I like it very much. It’s like a daily part time job… considering I spend hours at it . I’m not that worried about cancer or all other things you can get because of smoking. It won’t happen to me. Honest, I’m immune! (and in the next posts I’ll teach you to become immune too - neah!). But what a heck, I wanna be as informed as possible on this. Smoking is bad. Is it all that bad?

I started a blog ’cause I have the time (compared to you?) to scope the net and keep track of all that I consider valuable information. My motivation comes out of the fact that I know there are a lot of smokers out there who’d like to know more about this… including myself!… real information… no medical nonsense, no wonder medicine, no robbers. I’ve learned that some of the information available online is really good, but most is just not worth my time. Mostly just a lot of products to scam a quick buck off of me.

Smoking is like the worst vices. It makes people even start blogs on it. Go figure!