Some Facts About Tar

You see the thing is, you have a ‘secret stash’ of Tar deep in your lungs while you continue to smoke, which may have built up to truly frightening levels over years of smoking.  It’s down there in the bottom of your lungs, dark brown or black, mixed up with thick phlegm and sticky as sin, full off thousands of toxic chemicals and damaging your body with every day that goes by. Tar makes it hard for you to breathe, hardening your lung tissues to make it more difficult for you to draw breath.  Along with thick heavy phlegm (produced in reaction to irritation of your airways by smoke, known as Chronic Bronchitis), the Tar fills up a lot of the space in the alveoli – air sacks at the edges of your lungs were gas exchange takes place.  Toxins in the Tar leach out into your lung tissue and then into the rest of your body, damaging almost every part of your person and greatly increasing the risk of cancer.
Basically, you have a toxic time bomb in your lungs, and you definitely don’t want that in there!

A Common Experience

Here at lungdetoxification.com we get regular letters from users of our products, concerned when Tar starts coming away from a recent ex-smokers lungs.  Here an example:

Dear William and Mark,
I’ve been using The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide for several weeks now, and I’m concerned with the quantity and color of the mucus I’ve been regularly coughing up.  It’s thick and black, and it’s been coming up for nearly two weeks now.
My questions are, is this normal (I’m not dying, am I?!?), and how much longer will it go on?
On the up side, I am breathing a bit easier, and my chest feels a bit freer after doing the exercises you outline, so things are improving daily.
Regards,
John Coast
Miami, FL

The really important point with this experience, which is shared by most ex-smokers is, you are definitely NOT dying, it’s quite the opposite in fact. You are beginning to LIVE again! That black gunk in the mucus is Tar, the stuff I talked about earlier that you definitely WANT out of your lungs ASAP!  That’s what a good Lung Detox is all about.  Removing those toxins from your lungs, and allowing your body to function properly again.

Speaking Of Functioning Properly Again…

You know why your lungs don’t eject all this trapped mucus and Tar until you quit smoking?  Because toxins in the cigarette smoke paralyze and sometimes destroy small hairs on the inner surface of your lungs which are the lungs natural cleaning system.  Once you quit, they start to regrow and reactivate, sluggishly coming to life to start moving that vile gunk out of your airways.  Problem is, this can take up to 10 (!) years when your body is not fortified or helped in any way with this task.  You don’t want Tar hanging around in your lungs for nearly a decade after you quit; you want to get it out of there as quickly as possible, because each and every day it’s still in there,  your chances of cancer stay up, and a whole bunch of other diseases are continuing to damage your body, even though you’ve quit smoking.

So that’s why a good, well planned and well executed Lung Detoxification Program is vitally important to get you on the road to health as quickly as possible.  You owe it to yourself to give a Lung Detox a try after quitting smoking, as smoking cessation is only half the answer to improving your health.  Try our Complete Lung Detoxification Guide series for the most in depth, comprehensive Lung Detox available today.  Get that Tar out of your lungs fast, and live healthy sooner.

Until next time,

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

William Renolds

For those that have never heard of the Darwin Awards, they are the less than glamorous recognition of bizarre, thoughtless, and downright stupid things that people have done to remove themselves from the gene pool (either by death or removal of the ability to reproduce).

The Smoking Gun

Confirmed by Darwin

11 Feb 2001, New Jersey

Two drunks were goofing around, when one challenged the other to shoot him with cigarette butts “to see what it would feel like.”  His friend obligingly loaded an antique rifle with cigarette butts, place black powder behind the butts to make sure they left the barrel of the gun.  He then shot his friend from a distance of seven feet.  The projectiles penetrate the ribcage of the thirty-one-year-old who had issued the challenge, and he died of three cigarette butts to the heart.

The gene pool is in trouble!

Reference: WMAD 92.1 Madison, Wisconsin, ABC New, The Associated Press.

Ironically, this story happened in a town with the same name as an unfiltered British cigarette, and the shooter was nicknamed ‘Smokey.’  Too weird to believe?  Confirming details www.Darwinawards.com/book/cigarette.html

Reader Comments:

“More ammunition in the antismoking campaign.”

“Cigarettes are bad for your health.”

“It’s true – smoking kills.”

Until next time,

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

William Renolds

As reported in the prestigious American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a newly found type of placental human stem cell (that is, basal human cells that are not yet fixed into a particular role) have been shown to help reduce injury and scarring in the lung, and even generate new lung cells in mice. Associate Professor Yuben Moodley, of the Lung Institute of Western Australia, and the lead researcher on the project, has been quoted as saying that:

“cellular therapies, although in the early stages of development, may form a vital part of future lifesaving treatment. The big advantage is that we can get these cells from placentas that have been delivered and would otherwise be discarded, so there are no ethical issues involved. What we’re trying to do is replace any damaged cells in the lungs so the progression of the disease is arrested and there is also some suggestion that some cells acquire lung-like properties which we’d like to investigate more.”

Good news, but don’t hold your breath (pardon the pun) for this treatment for repairing lungs, as it’s at least five years off, if not more.

So far, they’ve only successfully treated mice.  The humble rodent is a good test subject to ‘get the treatment right’ before testing it on people, but still there are differences between us and mice that may affect how well the treatment works.  Going on what information I’ve been able to gather on the research, it’s very early days yet, and they are still learning about the effects of the stem cell treatment, so it could be a good few years before human trials might begin.  Once that happens, the powers that be will decide if the effects of the treatment make it worthwhile, and then there is the cost of the treatment.  Will it be covered by your countries health service, if you are lucky enough to have one?  Could you afford to pay up-front for it?

So don’t think you’ll be lining up for this sometime next week.  It will be a long time, if at all (some of these research streams don’t pan out, after all).  That said, there are some things you can do to increase your chances of being around for this future lung repair treatment. Quitting smoking if you haven’t, staying smoke-free and then detoxifying your lungs are important steps to your future longevity.

Consider our product, The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide Series, as not only a course of treatment to improve your lung health, but to extend your life, weather you’ve been a smoker for a few years, or a few decades.  At less than the price of a carton of cigarettes, can you afford not to give it a try?

Until next time,

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

William Renolds

Women Are Being Targeted By Tobacco Companies!

According to the WHO, women constitute one of the biggest ‘targets of opportunity’ for cigarette companies today.  The tobacco industry is constantly and aggressively looking to replace lost users – be they lost due to quitting or the half of all smokers alive today who will die from smoking related diseases.  Currently fewer woman than men smoke or chew tobacco.  Of the world’s over 1 billion smokers, only about 200 million are women!  With women, the industry simply has more room to expand.  And while tobacco use amongst men in some countries is slowly decreasing, use amongst women is similarly increasing.

The following are some frightening statistics.  Currently, over five million people a year die from tobacco related illnesses (but that won’t be you, because you’re doing something about it, right?).  Of that five million, currently one and a half million are women. Worldwide, of the roughly 430 000 adult deaths caused yearly by second-hand smoke, about 64% occur in women.   With less than 9% of the world’s population being covered by comprehensive tobacco advertising bans, and only 5.4% covered by comprehensive national smoke-free laws, that leaves a lot of young women to be bombarded by tobacco advertising, without the benefit of equivalent awareness campaigns on the damage and harmful effects of tobacco products.

To quote the WHO:  “World No Tobacco Day 2010 focuses on the harm which tobacco marketing and smoke do to women. At the same time, it seeks to make men more aware of their responsibility to avoid smoking around the women with whom they live and work.”

So what does this mean for you?  Well I make the presumption that if you are reading this blog post, you’re either are smoker, and ex-smoker looking to reverse damage done to your lungs, or perhaps you are a family member or a friend of a smoker or ex-smoker you are wishing to help.  Tobacco and its ills have affected all our lives. World No Tobacco Day seeks to promote a possible future where every day is a no tobacco day. That what we here at lundetoxification.com want for everyone who visits this site with the aim to give up and get their lungs clean; a long, happy lifetime of no tobacco.

Now the WHO suggests that you abstain from smoking on May 31^st.  I think this is a laudable goal.  Even choosing WNTD as your quit day is very symbolic, but seeing it’s less than 24 hrs away for most of us, and as good preparation is key to a successful quit attempt, let me suggest and alternative.  If you are a smoker, wishing to quit and stay free of the ills of tobacco, why not spend a few hours on WNTD looking for ways to support your quit program.  You can abstain from smoking too, but you need to prepare, possibly for weeks before quitting, so keep that in mind before going cold turkey tomorrow.  And for those of you who have quit and are looking to help repair damage to their lungs, do your research on how to help this course of action on WNTD.  Wherever you are on your journey to better health, pass on what you have learned to those that are likewise working towards better health.  By supporting each other on the lung health trail, we’ll all get to where we want to be sooner, and all live longer, healthier lives.

One great resource for not only quitting, but making every day a ‘no tobacco day’ is The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide. We have information on the physical and the psychological sides of tobacco dependence, the importance of stress management, using positive forward projection to keep the goal of optimal lung health in mind at those weak moments, and a plethora of tips and methods to get your lungs free of the ills of tar far quicker than your body can manage on its own.  You owe it to yourself, on World No Tobacco Day, to check it out.

Until next time,

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

oh and happy World No Tobacco Day!

William Renolds

If they find out how to direct these essential defenders to the lungs it is proposed that you have a much greater chance at fending off sickness that starts in the throat and lungs such as the flu. This if course could have serious ramifications to all sorts of other uses if they know how to direct immune traffic to where it is needed most for a variety of injuries, sicknesses and conditions.

It may also help in lung detoxification if you could direct more traffic to help cleanse the lungs faster …. an interesting development. Full story linked below:

Directing Immune Traffic: Signposts to the Lung

In the meantime, just having a strong immune system and healthy body will have to suffice!

Now don’t get me wrong; you need that critical impetus to quit and clean up your health. Sad thing is, most of us react more strongly in avoidance than we do to the draw of things that are good for us. That’s just human thinking. But if you make that negative, avoidance imperative your only motivation to quit, you are most likely doomed to failure. Why? Well it’s pretty obvious when you look at it.

Motivation fuel

When you try to motivate yourself to do something to improve your health, you are trying to enact a positive change. If you feed a positive change with negative fuel – such as all the doom and gloom of Chronic Bronchitis, Emphysema, COPD and Cancer, it’s like putting the wrong sort of fuel in your car. It’ll go for a little while, but then it’ll seize. That’s what happens when you go back to smoking. Your Motivation Engine chokes and dies.

You need the right motivation fuel to keep you motivated, and that’s where Positive Forward Projection and Positive Mental Conditioning come in to play to help you stop smoking cigarettes.

Positive Forward Projection

To really keep the revs up in your Motivation Engine, you need good, positive fuel. One of the best positive fuels there is lies in Positive Forward Projection. You need to think of the goal in what you are doing, in this case giving up cigarettes forever, detoxing your lungs and being healthier, feeling better and living longer. All these outcomes are highly positive, really enjoyable, and what you actually want. These are the fuel you need to put into your motivation engine when you feel your power to stay off the cigarettes flagging – you know, those times when you are stressed, tired, pushed to your limits, and the siren song of the cigarettes is calling. You need to FOCUS on the positive outcomes of staying the course. You need to be AWARE that this is important, and KEEP DOING IT, no matter what. THAT is how you stay clear of the cancer sticks, and THAT is how you don’t fall into the tired/stressed/weak – need the comfort of cigarettes.

It’s sad but true that you actually use a limited form of positive forward projection to push yourself back towards nicotine dependence. When you are feeling tired, stressed and weak, you look at the comforting effects of your nicotine fix, focus on that, and ignore all the good reasons not to start puffing again. DON’T DO THIS. The price of that small puff of comfort is all the stuff you got angry about before you quit! Focus on the long term goal – health and long life. Be there for you kids, your partner – current or future – and stay the course. Something else that will help in this is general and targeted Positive Mental Conditioning.

Positive Mental Conditioning

Did you know that you are Mentally Conditioned every day? No? Well you are. We all are. It’s just those that REALIZE it is happening have the ability to do something about it. Sad thing is, most of it is negative. Advertising especially is guilty of this. They use repetitive mental conditioning to get you to buy stuff. But you can use Positive Mental Conditioning on yourself to improve your chances of staying quit and successfully cleaning your lungs. Positive Mental Conditioning can put you in a far more positive frame of mind. And when you are looking for the positive in your life, you find it. It also make it much easier for you to focus on your Positive Forward Projection.

So, a positive attitude is key to stop smoking cigarettes successfully, and following through on a full lung detox. If you spend the time getting in the right frame of mind before your quit day, you more than quadruple your chances of quitting smoking successfully and successfully detoxing your lungs. This is so important, that it’s one of the first things we say in each and every booklet of the Complete Lung Detoxification Guides series, and we have a whole booklet that gives you techniques to get positive and stay that way. Why don’t you head over to the sales page and check it out? It could be the most positive turning point in your life yet.

Until next time,

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

~William Renolds

Dealing with stress is all about understanding its very nature, and the way you look at it.  At its core, Stress is your reaction to a given situation, in which you are concerned that the outcome will be negative.

The Hypothetical

Have a think about it.  What stresses you?  A classic example is being late for work.  Many bosses like to give their workers hell about being late, even if what caused the problem was out of their control.  So there you are, sitting in gridlock, missing that all important meeting, or even just not being at your desk with that ogre of a boss walks by, checking on you.  Is this something you’d be likely to stress over?  HELL YES!

Now let’s modify this disappointingly common situation.  Say your work had a flexitime arrangement, so it didn’t matter so much if you were late for some reason, as long as you did all your hours.  And your bosses were understanding (it’s unlikely but this is a hypothetical, okay?), so they didn’t schedule meetings til 11 am so everyone had plenty of time to get there.  Now if you had this arrangement, how would you feel about the near future from your car in that traffic snarl?  You wouldn’t be bothered, most likely.

So you can see that Stress is your reaction to what you perceive as an unfavourable outcome to a situation you find yourself in.  And therein lies the secret, and the answer.  If you do not perceive the situation as stressful, that is, you take a more long term, laid back approach to problems, stress won’t be such a devastating factor in your life. If you consider that the boss will do what the boss will do no matter if you stress or not, and just do your best to sort things out anyway, you’ll feel a lot better about things.

This is all explained in much greater detail in our Anti-Stress Section of the Complete Lung Detoxification Guide Series. But why is reducing stress so vitally important to your chances of success in quitting smoking and detoxifying your lungs?

Why Stress Reduction is Important To Lung Health

· when you stress for extended periods (our bodies are actually designed to deal with short-term stress much better than chronic, long-term stress) it has a wide range of detrimental effects on your body.  One major effect in this is Depression of the Immune System.  Not only can this lead to more infections, but a raft of other problems, that can significantly slow down your Lung Detoxification progress.

· Stress can ruin your motivation to stay the course, keep looking after yourself, and get lung toxin free.

· The bodies physical reaction to stress can preferentially use up vitamins and other nutritional factors important to Lung Detoxification and repair, reducing the rate at which your detox your lungs.

· Stress can lead you to seek out comfortable habits, of which Smoking is a big candidate.  When you are feeling down, tired, stressed out, it’s the time that your defences (and resilience) are at their lowest.  This is the time that you are likely to give in and reach for the cigarettes again.

So as Stressing overly is going to put the brakes on your Lung Detoxification progress, you really want to limit negative reactions to your daily trials and tribulations.  Stress at its worst can even drive you back to smoking, something you really, really don’t want to do.

In fact we think Stress reduction is so important that we have devoted one whole guide in the Complete Lung Detoxification Guides series to the subject.  Why don’t you head over to the sales page and check it out?  You’ll be really glad you did.

Until next time,

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

~William Renolds

I’ve decided to drop you a freebee and give you a big hint toward improving your lung health, clearing them of tar, and generally helping your body as a whole recover from the damage done from years of smoking. There is a whole section on this in the Lung Detoxification Guide, but I’ll give you a taste of it here. And that is, your Immune System.

Now if you don’t know what your Immune System is, here’s a quick description. Your Immune System is a complex system of cell types in your body that undertake the task of defending you from the outside world, which far too often these days is going to cause you damage. Think of it as the ‘US defense forces’ of the body.  It will attack any foreign objects, including bacteria, fungi, and parasites, kill off cells that have been subverted by viruses, and help with the defense and repair of damaged organs, like your lungs. As the immune system is essential for accelerated lung detoxification, it makes sense to do as much as you can to boost it, and to get it into shape to help you heal the rest of your body as much as you can.

Focusing on Lung Detoxification, the Immune System is vitally important, and generally, if you’ve smoked for any considerable length of time – say more than a few months – your immune competency (how well your Immune System works) in the area of your lungs will be poor.  Just like your lungs, your bodies’ defense and repair mechanisms in and around your lungs have been poisoned by your habit, and needs all the help it can get to get back to the job of defending your recovering lung cells.

Your lungs have been coated in a thick layer of tar and mucus, depressing your immune system in the lungs, and poisoning the cells that are vital to your breathing.  Once that mucus and tar starts to break up and be removed by our Complete Lung Detoxification Guide step-by-step activities, foreign invaders can now reach those delicate, recovering lung cells.  If your Immune System is not ready to fight when they get there (once the physical barrier of tar and mucus is reduced) you will have an increased chance of developing lung infections.

So it’s clear that a strong Immune System is vitally important to better lung, and overall health.

Why don’t you try this Immune Boosting Smoothie, just one of the many foods recommended in the Complete Lung Detoxification Guide to help improve Immune function.  Try to use the freshest ingredients you can, but if you need to use  frozen fruit, it’s better than not making it at all, right?

Recipe for an Immune-boosting Smoothie

· 2 cups milk or rice or soy beverage

· 1 cup yoghurt (plain, nonfat)

· 1 serving of a multi-nutrient supplement

· one banana, cut up

· 1/2 cup blueberries

· 1/2 cup each of your favorite fruit, (e.g., organic strawberries, papaya, mango)

· 1 tbsp. flax oil or 2 tbsp. flaxseed meal (for additional fiber, if you don’t mind an even grainier texture, add 1 tbsp. or more of oat bran.)

· 3 ounces tofu

· 10 mg. zinc

· 100 mcg. selenium (Brazil Nuts are a good source)

· 50-100 IU vitamin E

· 1 serving soy isolate powder (optional)

Combine all the ingredients and blend until smooth. Serve immediately after blending while the mixture still has a bubbly milkshake-like consistency.

I hope you enjoy the smoothie as it will help your lungs after quitting smoking.

Until next time,

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

~William Renolds

If you are worried about what yoru smoking has doen to you this method when it comes into being may help you or many others get more infromation about the chances of cancer.

Of course, until that time you are simply better off doing a lung detox as fast as possible!

Discovery Of New Approach For Identifying Smokers At Highest Risk For Developing Lung Cancer

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) in collaboration with investigators at the University of Utah, have discovered a new approach for identifying smokers at the highest risk for developing lung cancer. The findings, which appear in the April 7th issue of Science Translational Medicine, will allow the researchers to use a genomic approach to prevent lung cancer in these individuals and to personalize cancer chemoprophylaxis and therapy.

Cigarette smoke is the dominant cause of lung cancer in the United States, accounting for an estimated 90 percent of all cases. While only 10-20 percent of smokers develop lung cancer in their lifetime, there are currently no tools available to identify which of the approximately 90 million current and former smokers in the U.S. are at the highest risk. Unfortunately, diagnosis is most often made at a very advanced stage where treatment is largely ineffective. The damage caused by cigarette smoke, however, is not limited solely to the lung, but rather constitutes a ‘field of injury’ throughout the entire respiratory tract that is exposed to the toxin. Consistent with this idea, study lead author Avrum Spira, MD, MSc, chief of the section of computational biomedicine in the department of medicine at BUSM and his colleagues, previously developed a gene expression-based biomarker measured in the cytologically normal bronchial airway epithelium that reflects an individual’s physiologic response to smoking and distinguishes smokers with and without lung cancer. Although this biomarker is successful at diagnosing lung cancer, it does not identify the signaling pathways underlying these gene expression changes.

Using a novel gene-expression based approach to define oncogenic pathway signatures, the researchers, in collaboration with Dr. Andrea Bild at the University of Utah, have now discovered that the expression of genes belonging to one specific cancer-related pathway, PI3K, are activated in the cells that line the airway of smokers with lung cancer. This gene expression activity in the normal cells of the proximal airway precedes the development of lung cancer and may be reversed with a specific chemopreventive agent (myo-inositol) that targets this pathway.

“This finding is significant as these cells can be obtained in a relatively non-invasive fashion from the airway of smokers at risk for lung cancer, and does not require invasive sampling of lung tissue where lung tumors normally arise,” said Spira, who is also an associate professor medicine and pathology at BUSM.

The BUSM researchers then went on to validate their findings by measuring the biochemical activity of this pathway in the airway epithelial cells from an independent group of smokers with and without lung cancer. “We found that this PI3K pathway gene expression activity is decreased in the airway of high-risk smokers who had regression (or improvement) of their premalignant lesions following treatment with a potential lung cancer chemopreventive agent known as myo-inositol, and demonstrated that myo-inositol inhibits the PI3K pathway in lung cancer cell lines,” he added.

According to the researchers, the data suggests that measuring this airway gene expression activity can help determine which specific cancer pathways have been deregulated within an individual smoker, allowing one to tailor a specific drug that will target the pathway to reduce that individual’s risk of lung cancer. “This represents a critical advance in the field of lung cancer prevention as there are currently no effective strategies for lung cancer prevention among high risk smokers. Our work has the potential to help address the enormous and growing public health burden associated with lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-related death among men and women in the US and the world,” added Spira.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health.

Spira is one of the founders of Allegro Diagnostics Inc., a molecular diagnostics company that plans to market the gene expression biomarker.

Source:
Gina DiGravio
Boston University Medical Center

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/184801.php

As you read through this section, remind yourself:

1. Why you quit or are looking to quit

2. What you have to look forward to if you do go back (damn good motivation to stay clean)

3. Why you are working hard to improve your health!

Please note: Some of the following conditions may not have developed during your smoking ‘career.’  Others, well they are unavoidable, at least to some extent, after your first month of smoking.  If you want to know how you have been effected by your time smoking, please consult your local, qualified medical practitioner.

Damage Done Over Years of Smoking

Tobacco smoke has over 4000 chemicals in it.  These include Ammonia (used in toilet cleaner), Acetone (nail polish remover), Nicotine (insecticide at high doses), Carbon monoxide (a poison found in car exhaust fumes), Arsenic (used in rat poison), Hydrogen cyanide (gas chamber poison), Benzene (petrol additive).

This toxic chemical amalgam that enters the lungs in the form of tobacco smoke is collectively called ‘tar’ when it coats surfaces, like  fingers, teeth and air sacks of the lungs. The tar in tobacco cigarettes is a major cause of lung cancer, emphysema and bronchitis. The toxins from the tar can damage lung cells that keep tumors from forming. Cigarette tar also damages cilia in the lungs, the small, hair-like structures which protect the lining of the lungs. In addition to the discoloring of teeth, tar can cause periodontitis, a gum disease that can result in the loss of teeth.

Lung cancer: your chances of getting lung cancer depend on your genetic susceptibility, the length of time you were a smoker and how much you smoked over that time.  This is referred to as pack-years (the average number of packs per day multiplied by the number of years you’ve smoked).  The greater the pack-years, the greater the risk. When you’re getting up around 50 pack-years and beyond, that’s a lot. If people have a lot of pack-years, the risk of, say, lung cancer never goes back down to the risk of a non-smoker.

Emphysema: a disease caused by the destruction of the alveoli (small, sack like structures at the lower periphery of the lungs) and associated capillaries (tiny blood vessels), where gas exchange takes place (oxygen is taken into the body, and carbon dioxide (a waste product) is released).  Undamaged, adult, human lungs have an internal surface area around 753 sq. ft (70 m²), which is roughly one half of the standard-sized tennis court surface!  The capillaries that surround the alveoli (the other side of the gas exchange equation) run to a length of about 620 miles (nearly 1000 km)!  As gas exchange is all about surface area, you can imagine that this give a healthy person a considerable rate of gas exchange.  This is far more than is needed ‘at rest,’ but as a person’s exertions increase, so does their need for gas exchange. As emphysema progresses, this maximal volume/min of gas exchange decreases, effecting your ability to exert yourself.  So the tiny little air sacs become bigger ones — and they’re less efficient in transporting oxygen. The lung can’t grow new walls for these air sacs. The lung loses tiny blood vessels and can’t grow new ones. So that’s permanent. Anyone who has smoked for more than a few months has at least some level of emphysema.

(Chronic) Bronchitis: a disease caused by inflammation (swelling) of the lining of the bronchial tubes (the larger ‘pipes’ leading down to the alveoli, where gas exchange occurs). Long-term bronchitis, termed ‘chronic,’ is an inflammation and swelling of the lining of the airways that lead to their narrowing and obstruction.  This inflammation stimulates production of mucus (sputum), which can cause further obstruction of the airways. Some of this inflammation can be reversed. But if the inflammation has led to scarring of the walls of the airway, some of that cannot.  Again it depends on how long you’ve been smoking, and how many you smoked each day.  Also, obstruction of the airways, especially with mucus, increases the likelihood of bacterial infections in your lungs after quitting smoking or during your smoking days.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): a collective term for disease effecting the lungs due to smoking (but can also be caused by other factors, such as long-term exposure to high levels of air pollutants and occupational causes), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD): the narrowing and hardening of the arteries resulting in decreased blood flow in parts of the body other than the heart or brain.  This is caused by some of the chemicals in tobacco smoke that are absorbed into the blood stream and transported around the body when you smoke.  These chemicals make the walls of the blood vessels sticky, which allows cholesterol and other dangerous fatty material to build up on the inner walls of the arteries and clogging them.  Combined with the artery walls hardening (becoming less elastic), this all results normal blood flow becoming more difficult, making the heart work harder (which can lead to heart failure, amongst other things).  This reduced blood flow is most critical in the capillaries, which already have very small internal diameters, so you can imagine it doesn’t take a lot to block them completely.  Lack of blood flow to an area can cause that area to die, and gangrene is the result.

Increased Risk of Many Cancers: Besides lung cancer, smoking had been linked to the increased chance of many types of cancer, including breast cancer, throat cancer, some types of colon cancer, cancer of the tongue, cheek or lips, stomach cancer, urinary bladder cancer, and many more.

Many other minor and peripheral health problems such as: Alzheimer’s Disease, Lupus, Impotence, Blindness, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Acid Reflux, Snoring, Depressed Immune System, hair loss, increased face wrinkles, premature aging, halitosis, stained teeth, stomach ulcers, insomnia and more.

Okay, that’s enough of the doom and gloom. If you have quit smoking or are looking to stop smoking for all the above mentioned reasons, and now let’s work on making you healthier and happier. If you haven’t already, jump over to our main page and check out the great deal available on our flagship product, The Complete Lung Detoxification Guide.  With this program, you’ll not only get the best advice available for clearing your lungs after quitting smoking of all that toxic tar, but if you haven’t quit yet, or are having trouble quitting, we’ve got that covered too.  Also, you’ll find out of lot about ‘why’ you’ve smoked, which will help you understand and follow our tried and tested methods for staying quit, and living a healthier, smoking-free life.

Until next time,

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

~William Renolds