Lung Detoxification

It’s hard to believe that it has nearly been a whole year since we last blogged about World No Tobacco Day (WNTD).  So many things have happened since then, and yet it feels like just a few weeks ago, and I’m sure that your lives have been busy in the past year too.  But have you taken the plunge and begun a new, healthier way of life?  If not, May 31^st might just be the perfect time to quit smoking cigarettes for good!

Ash trays with fresh flowers are a common symbol of World No Tobacco Day

When The Whole World Says No

One thing that can help you in taking on a major change in your life (such as quitting smoking and cleaning up your lungs), is knowing that you are not alone.  Knowing that there are thousands of people all over the world doing the same thing you are.  That is the beauty and the benefit of WNTD for the individual; that it can give you that final kick of motivation that gets you exchanging a destructive, dangerous habit for healthier, better ones.

World No Tobacco Day was created in 1987 by the World Health Organization (WHO), and 2011 is WNTD’s 23^rd year (actual observance of WNTD began in 1988).  Each year has a theme that follows through press releases, to promotional flyers, pamphlets and other media materials.  In 2011, the theme is “The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).” Now you might just be saying ‘wha?’ to this.  This year’s theme is not a particularly personal one (as it has been in past years), but rather, an important WHO agreement that attempts to persuade governments and corporations to agree on reducing the production of tobacco, and tobacco products, and to replace tobacco farming with other, healthier crops.  To quote the WHO:

“The world needs the WHO FCTC as much as, if not more than, it did in 1996 when the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an international framework convention on tobacco control. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death. This year, more than 5 million people will die from a tobacco-related heart attack, stroke, cancer, lung ailment or other disease. That does not include the more than 600,000 people – more than a quarter of them children – who will die from exposure to second-hand smoke. The annual death toll from the global epidemic of tobacco use could rise to 8 million by 2030. Having killed 100 million people during the 20th century, tobacco use could kill 1 billion during the 21st century.”

If you’d like to know more about this years WHO World No Tobacco Day theme, please follow this link.

World No Tobacco Day Can Be YOUR No Tobacco Day Too!

On a more personal level, WNTD is, at its core, a day where people that have a tobacco habit can forgo tobacco and tobacco related products for a whole day (Tuesday, 31^st May), knowing that tens of thousands of others all round the world are doing the same thing.  It is in this sharing that you gain power and motivation to do something positive for yourself, just as the WHO is working for positive change in the world.  By observing World No Tobacco Day, you are being a part of that, and if you can do it for one day, perhaps you can go for longer… and make not smoking a part of a new, healthier life for yourself and for your lungs.

And don’t feel left out if you are a reformed smoker, now living healthy and free of nicotine!  This is your day to celebrate the effort you have gone to in making your life healthier. One way to really celebrate this is to start something designed to improve your health even further.  I can think of nothing better than building on a day of no tobacco by consider our flagship product, ‘The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide’ Series.  Whether you have already quit, or in the planning stage of saying goodbye to nicotine for good, our Lung Cleansing Guide has all the advice you need to turn one day free of nicotine into a lifetime of better health, and to speeding up the removal of tar and mucus that clogs up a recently reformed smoker’s lungs.  Trust me; you want this stuff out of your lungs, and your life.

So consider quitting smoking on World No Tobacco Day 2012, you could be feeling a whole lot better and having a cleaner set of lungs as well!

Until next time,

stay well, stay quit, and lung-toxin free.

William Renolds

day, there are news reports and journal articles about discoveries and developments in the fields of quitting smoking and lung detoxification.

Here are a just a few:

You Think Smoking Doesn’t Affect Your Life Expectancy – Think Again!

According to a paper in the latest edition of Journal of Tobacco Control, smoking is responsible for up to 60% of the longevity gap between men and women in most European countries.  That is, smoking is the main reason why men die sooner than women.  Recent World Health Organization figures on death rates were the source of the discovery.

In the UK, women live and average of four years longer than men – although, in recent years, the gap has been closing.  Second to smoking, alcohol accounts for 20% of the disparity.

So guys, quit now, clean yourself up, and have a better chance of living as long as your woman!

Science Finds Quit Gene

According to a very recent study, scientists have pinpointed a source of nicotine craving in the brain, opening up a new path toward drug treatments to kick the habit.  This is highly desirable, given that tobacco kills more than five MILLION people every year, and accounts for nearly one in EVERY 10 adult deaths, 90% of them involving lung cancer.

In experiments with mice and rats, researchers have mapped the functioning of a gene called CHRNA5, previously linked with nicotine addiction.  The gene controls a receptor – an entry point on the surface of brain cells – which responds to nicotine molecules.  With a normal version of this gene, anything more than a tiny dose of nicotine triggers a message to the brain which says in effect “stop consuming,” the scientists found.  Larger doses [of nicotine] unleash a sense of repulsion, similar to ‘bad tasting food or drink,” said Paul Kenny, lead researcher at the Scripps research Institute in Florida.  But the effect was quite different in mice in which a tiny sub-unit of the receptor, known as alpha5, had been knocked out.  The negative message was never sent, and as a result the rodents couldn’t get enough of the potent drug [being nicotine].

Researchers believe a similar scenario occurs natural in some humans, genome-wide screening studies have identified genetic alterations which impair alpha5 unit functioning.

So there you go.  Your genes effect how easily you get addicted to nicotine, and likewise make it harder for some to quit.

Nicotine Patch Prices To Be Slashed

It appears that the Government in Australia has decided that nicotine patches are effective enough to be added to that country’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.  Before this sensible move, the smallest pack of patches cost nearly three times what a pack of cigarettes cost.  With a doctor’s prescription, the price drops from between Au$100 – 140 down to Au$34.20, or $5.60 with a concession card.  Australian residents are eligible for up to 12 weeks supply of the quit smoking patches per year.  This is indeed good news.

If you don’t have the good fortune to live in Australia, our product, ‘The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide’ Series, has other, more cost effective ways to help you quit, stay quit, and detoxify your lungs as quickly as possible, saving you years of tar lung that increases your chances of cancer, emphysema and other related diseases.  Give it a try, you won’t regret it!

Until next time,

Happy New Year, stay well, stay quit, and lung-toxin free.

William Renolds

Shake A Tail Feather, And Feel Better

I’ve spoken on the importance of exercise in a successful Lung Detox before, but it’s worth repeating myself at this time, being the New Year period, when we all at least consider either starting, or ramping up and exercise program to help burn the holiday calories before they preeminently lodge themselves around our middles. But besides being important for general health, exercise is doubly important for your Quit Attempt/Lung Detox.

Work The Body, Work The Mind

Your body and your mind are intrinsically linked, and as things that negatively affect one have the same sort of effects on the other (e.g. smoking), positive things, like exercising the body, can help the mind as well.  During a Quit Attempt and Lung Detox, regular exercise improves your overall circulation, blood pressure, immune competence, reduce feelings of stress, and mildly taxing exercise will prompt the brain to produce endorphins, the body’s natural ‘feel good’ hormones.  As an ex-smoker doing a Lung Detox, endorphins are your friends, as they can take the place of any ‘good feeling’ you got from your previous, and oh so destructive, habit.  And if you get your exercise by participating in a sport that you like, you an even have fun while exercising!

Exercise has so many benefits, it amazes me that so many people actually WANT to sit in front of the TV and avoid it.  Sure, if you overdo it you can get aches, but here’s a tip; if you have a good dose of protein after your exercise, and again the next day (such as a big glass of grass fed milk, or a protein bar/shake etc, or a good serve of meat), then you will reduce those aches considerably.  Exercise can help you feel better about yourself, help you lose weight (best if you exercise in the morning), and help you sleep better (if you exercise in the late afternoon/early evening).

Then there are exercises that are specifically designed to open up your chest, working your poor, battered lungs to improve their function.  Our product, ‘The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide’ Series gives you a heap of good tips, and exercises to do, both to improve your general health (which helps your body clean your lungs) and breathing exercises to help open your chest and improve your lung function.

Tomorrow Is The Day!

Tomorrow we release the updated Guides for 2011!  We’re really pleased with how they’ve turned out, and we think you’ll get so much out of them, you’ll never look back.  So check back tomorrow for the release blog post, where I’ll give you an outline of the updated product, which will see you happily smoke free in 2011!

Until tomorrow,

Happy New Year, stay well, stay quit, and lung-toxin free.

William Renolds

Smoking – The Habit That’s Trendy To Hate

Many smokers, before they quit, have related to me that while they were sitting outside having a puff, rather self-righteous people often came up to them telling them how bad their habit was for them.  Now despite the fact that this is accurate, there are quite a number of other societal ‘dependencies’ that don’t cop the same sort of vocal putdown. Take overweight people when they are eating a muffin while destroying their bodies with excess calories, or parents with more than two children for overpopulating the earth.  All these things are intrinsically bad for society as a whole, but only smoking is ‘fair game.’  And the only difference would be the 2^nd hand smoke issue.

It’s just as hard for a smoker to quit as it is for a food addict to do so, but one is considered discrimination, and the other a valid target.

Now you might be wondering, ‘what the? - are you actually defending smokers?’ Well not exactly … I’m raising the ‘finger pointing’ attitude that society is developing in this day and age, and how some people’s weakness is targeted while other’s is conscientiously avoided.

Outside the bar or pub or workplace, the ‘designated smoking area’ is becoming the last bastion of the smoking holdout.  Smokers are herded together like social outcasts, sharing this chastised habit, and maybe even making new friends through a shared experience.  Thus a smoker can end up with more smoking friends than non-smoking, and this can make it very hard to quit, when you take into consideration the social effect of peer pressure (ironically the same pressure that probably got them to take up smoking in the first place).

But if you go all out and make the jump from smoker to lung health advocate, what then?

New Opportunities Await

So you took the plunge and quit.  That’s great, but now not only your chemical, but your social world is changing.  Sure you can hang out with your smoking friends, but you’d better not go outside with them when they go.  The temptation will be high, and the Situational Smoking Effect (see yesterday’s post) may well come into play.  But just like you made friends with smokers when you smoked, you can now make friends with those that used to indulge, but now are on their way to healthier lungs!  Just like you shared the lows of dependence, you can now share the burgeoning highs of those discovering life after dependence on nicotine.

And let’s face facts, it’s becoming a non-smoking world.  And after quitting, you’ll no longer need to slink off during a dinner for a puff, it will spell and end to those sideways glares from people in the street, and there will be no more comments from supposedly well-meaning individuals, who are sure their telling you what you were doing to yourself made all the difference!  Smoking was once hip, and you joined the hip crowd, but the world has woken up to the cigarette company’s poisons, attitudes have changed, and you’ve moved with the times.  Right?

Your Willpower Is Like A Muscle

I’ve been informed there is a new Quit Smoking advertisement on Australian television (I will post a video if it pops up online later).  It has the distinction of being the first POSITIVE add I believe they’ve EVER produced.

“Your willpower is like a muscle; every cigarette you don’t smoke makes your willpower stronger.”

It IS a good message.  It’s something that all those who have moved beyond smoking must do to stay clean, but the good news is, the more you resist, the easier it gets, and this is basically true.

But for most of us, it takes a little more than just willpower to make a successful Quit Attempt.  Our product, ‘The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide’ Series is designed to give you all the information, tools and tips you need to make your next Quit Attempt your last, and if you’ve already quit, great, we provide some really pertinent tips to keep you healthy and avoid relapse, and – as the title suggests- all the best information on all the best ways to get toxins and tar out of your lungs – fast.

1 More Day!

We are getting really close now to the release of the updated Guides for 2011!  Over the first six days of the New Year, we’ll have a series of New Year’s Resolution Lung Detox posts, all related to the new release and to starting the adventure to a healthier new you.  Check back tomorrow for the sixth and final topic in the series; Exercise In The New Year – Vital To A Successful Lung Detox.

Until tomorrow,

Happy New Year, stay well, stay quit, and lung-toxin free.

William Renolds

Quit One Day, Smoking Again The Next?

The siren song of Nicotine, the chemical in cigarette smoke that makes your quit attempts more difficult, doesn’t just go away the day after you take your last puff.  As many a Quitting ex-smoker knows, it can take weeks for the cravings to subside, and then you still get the occasional pang from time to time, in places and situations where you used to smoke.  These cravings, considered by many doctors to be wholly caused by the absence of Nicotine in the subjects system, are now treated by NRT – or Nicotine Replacement Therapy, and other medicines that block the receptor sites that Nicotine attaches to in the brain.

But if NRT or other chemical treatments is all it takes, why are there still people who fail at a Quit Attempt?  Shouldn’t they all be successful, the first time they use these quit smoking aids?

Well it turns out that there is a lot more to it than just the chemical side of things, and that is an oft missed angle that our product, ‘The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide’ Series aims to cover.  In our product we cover NRT and other therapies – some of which may surprise you – to combat the chemical side of the equation, but we also cover the psychological dependence side as well.  This is something that many other products simply do not do.

The following is a taste of the sort of tips available in Book 2 – The Complete Quit Smoking Guide.

Being Ready For The Siren Call

So you’ve got your NRT or equivalent chemical substitute happening for you, you’ve passed your Quit Day, and you ARE doing it, you HAVE quit! But the itch is still there.  Why do you still feel like a smoke?  We cover this is great detail in our Guides Series, but it has to do with the way your mental ‘habit’ of smoking has effected your mind.  Here is one example:

It’s a pressure called the Situational Smoking Effect (SSE) – where you mind actually down-regulates your neurochemicals when you are in a situation or place where you regularly smoked in the past.  It works like this – when you first started smoking, you got a buzz out of it, but after a while, you had to smoke just to feel OK.  No more buzz, yeah?  Well that is your brain becoming ‘used’ to having a regular nicotine supply.  That is why you feel bad when you don’t smoke, and why it is not a simple thing to quit – until you train your brain to go back to the way it was originally.  But after you have ‘trained’ your brain to expect a nicotine hit in a certain place or situation, it gets ready for it by down-regulating your neurochemicals (it’s actually a throwback from a system to prevent a dose of a chemical from hurting you– nicotine is a poison in high does after all).  So there you are, having gone through the ‘tough times’ of nicotine withdrawal, and you’re feeling better, over the ‘worst of it,’ and on your way to healthy lungs.  And then you go to that place or are in that situation, and BANG, you get a pang, and it can sometimes be strong enough to break your resolve.  THAT is the SSE, and if you are not ready for it, it can beat you.

But Knowledge is Power, and our product contains effective tips to combat the SSE, and many other pitfalls of the Quit Journey.

2 More Days!

We are getting really close now to the release of the updated Guides for 2011!  Over the first six days of the New Year, we’ll have a series of New Year’s Resolution Lung Detox posts, all related to the new release and to starting the adventure to a healthier new you.  Check back tomorrow for the fifth topic in the series; Life After Cigarettes – The Social Impacts Of Quitting.

Until tomorrow,

Happy New Year, stay well, stay quit, and lung-toxin free.

William Renolds