Smoke-free house
Parents who smoke should seriously think about the harm of nicotine to their children and quit smoking. However, this is a very difficult task, because in most cases, smoking addiction is more psychological than physiological. To make sure of this, you need to figure out why you smoke. Let's try to do this with the help of a "smoker's diary".
Preparation
Be patient for two weeks: note in your diary every cigarette you smoke and describe the circumstances under which it happened. Also write down your small victories there when you wanted to light up, but you didn't.
Very important! During the entire preparatory period, do not limit yourself in smoking, but carefully keep a diary. It will be easier for you to correctly answer the question "Why do I smoke?" if you have facts at your disposal, and not memories that often deceive us.
Analysis
After two weeks, re-read your diary. Most likely, you will find that there are only a few situations in which you light up. Let's look at the most typical examples.
1. A smoke break at work - a cigarette helps you feel part of the team.
2. Waiting - smoking calms you down, relieves anxiety.
3. A quarrel - a cigarette in a trembling hand as a way to blame everything on your husband (wife, parents, etc.).
4. A habitual ritual - enjoying coffee with a cigarette in good company.
Developing a strategy
Consider which situations you can avoid. For example:
Situation 1. Replace a cigarette with a cup of coffee or a good joke.
Situation 2. Do not arrange to meet on the street with unpunctual friends, let them come to your home or work.
Situation 3. You can calm down with knitting, card solitaire or a cup of fresh tea.
Situation 4. Change the ritual, for example, by giving up coffee in favor of hot chocolate.
Traditional lollipops or chewing gum are not suitable - they simply occupy your mouth. You need to come up with something that will perform the same function as a cigarette in this situation. Food for many is the most obvious replacement for smoking. Be careful: this way you can quickly get fat. More often return to those pages of the diary where your victories are described - they will prompt new solutions.
Cigarettes - a fight!
Having started to implement your program, continue to keep a diary. The main thing is not to lose confidence in your abilities. And soon you yourself will feel that the need for a diary has disappeared.
Why do children smoke?
Our country occupies one of the first places in the world in the number of smoking citizens. At the same time, they all know that nicotine is extremely dangerous to health. But adults themselves are responsible for the consequences of the dubious pleasure they get from cigarettes. Another thing is small children. They lose their health through our fault.
Three-year-old Katya M. was brought to the pulmonology department of the Ukrainian Clinical Children's Hospital in an extremely serious condition. The girl could not clear her throat, was wheezing and suffocating, her skin had acquired a bluish tint. The diagnosis was clear: a typical attack of bronchial asthma.
Katya was immediately put on a drip and prescribed two intravenous infusions. Thanks to this, shortness of breath soon disappeared, sputum began to come out. A few days later, the girl was happily running around the department. But, unfortunately, bronchial asthma is extremely difficult to cure. To prevent repeated attacks, doctors began to look for the cause of the disease.
Oleg Samylin, head of the pulmonology department:
- Skin tests performed on Katya M. did not reveal any allergies to house dust or pollen, which is the most common cause of bronchial asthma. The picture became clearer after a detailed conversation with the girl's parents. It turned out that they smoke a lot, sometimes up to one and a half to two packs of cigarettes a day. And since the family lives with the husband's non-smoking parents, they only have to smoke in their room. At first, Katya's parents went out into the stairwell, but the girl grew up, and they decided that it was completely unnecessary to do this. According to them, a smoke curtain constantly hangs in the small room, which disappears only after good ventilation. Experts call inhaling other people's tobacco smoke passive smoking, and little Katya smoked to the fullest! It is not surprising that this affected her health. The girl constantly coughed, her temperature often rose. And chronic bronchitis often leads to bronchial asthma. The lungs and bronchi are especially badly affected by tobacco smoke. In the USA alone, 200 thousand passively smoking children fall ill with bronchitis and 15 thousand with bronchial asthma every year. 10 thousand of them end up in hospitals, and 150 die. Little "smokers" often get sick (reduced immunity), are capricious and irritable, suffer from gastritis, complain of heart pain, and have high cholesterol levels in the blood. In addition, the poisoned air in the apartment is a kind of slow-motion bomb: malignant tumors are detected in children twice as often. After all, a young body is still very vulnerable, and even passive smoking is extremely dangerous for it. Unfortunately, we do not have figures on the state of affairs in Ukraine, but we can be sure that they are not much different from the American ones. Parents are simply obliged to think about the future of their children.
Smoking by a pregnant woman is extremely dangerous for the child - nicotine easily penetrates the placenta. Its concentration in the fetal blood can be even higher than in the mother's blood. As a result, the unborn child suffers from chronic oxygen deficiency, which is fraught with a delay in the intrauterine development of the child. Children who have been exposed to it are born prematurely or with low weight, have defects in the nervous system, and are more susceptible to infections. Recent studies by scientists have shown that the harmful habit significantly increases the risk of miscarriage, the birth of a child with a cleft lip and cleft palate, as well as sudden death of the child.
Cigarette addiction is a disease that must be treated.
Methods of combating smoking that can be used.
1. Treatment with disgust. Before taking a cigarette in your mouth, lubricate your gums with a 20 percent tincture of ink nuts or rinse your mouth with a 5 percent decoction of snakeroot. After such treatment, tobacco smoke causes nausea, and an aversion to tobacco appears.
2. Replacement therapy. Some substances are similar in their mechanism of action to nicotine. And the body, not understanding it, does not require the usual portion of smoke. For example, pilocarpine - it is taken 10 - 15 drops 5 times a day. The same substance can also be taken in the form of Tabex tablets. Treatment begins with 6 - 7 tablets a day, gradually reducing the dose to 1 tablet in 2 days.
3. Auxiliary treatment. Helps normalize the work of internal organs. Here are some useful recipes.
Take 2 parts of wormwood and one part each of yarrow and licorice root. Brew 1 tablespoon of this collection with a glass of boiling water, insist for 30 minutes and strain. Rinse your mouth when you want to light up.
Take 2 parts of hawthorn flowers and 1 part each of motherwort, field mint and valerian root. Brew a tablespoon of the collection with a glass of boiling water, insist for 30 minutes and strain. Two or three sips relieve the irritability caused by quitting smoking.
These tips will only help those who really want it. Otherwise, all efforts are in vain.