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

So many people think of quitting smoking as a negative experience: dealing with cravings, fighting the habitual smoking action, adjusting your life to a different way to cope with stress, and then there’s the Tar.  It’s not something you think a lot about when you’re still smoking – it’s often no more than an inconvenience.  Brown on your fingers, teeth, and the odd bit of brown stuff in the phlegm you cough up every morning, but other than that, Tar doesn’t seem to bother you so much… or does it?

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

Stress is an almost unavoidable factor of modern living.  We are taught by society and advertising that it’s something that comes in from outside of us and is impossible to avoid… or is it?  I’m going to fill you in on one little secret that will change the way you think about stress forever, and might even give you a handle on dealing with stress, and make it less of an ogre in your life.

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

You gain many day-to-day quitting smoking benefits, some more immediate than others.

Health benefits of quitting smoking

• Your breath smells better (no more partners kissing an ash tray)
• S tained teeth get whiter (don’t be afraid to show teeth when smiling anymore)
• Bad smelling clothes and hair go away (see the 3rd Hand Smoke blog post below)
• Your yellow fingers and fingernails disappear (The yellow, not the fingers of course!)
• Food tastes better (oh what culinary delights await!)
• Your sense of smell returns to normal (hey, those flowers do smell nice!)
• Everyday activities no longer leave you out of breath -such as climbing stairs or light housework (and the more you work at it, following our Guides‘ activities, the better it gets!)
• Improved financial situation (calculate how much you’ve spent on cigarettes over the years you’ve been smoking… enough said)
• Improved social acceptance (smoking is just NOT cool anymore – being healthy is!)
• Improved health of others around you (family and friends)
• 20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drops.
• 12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
• 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting smoking: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.
• 1 to 9 months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.
• 1 year after quitting cigarettes: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.
• 5 years after quitting: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker 5 to 15 years after quitting.
• 10 years after Smoking Cessation: The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a person who continues smoking. The risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix, and pancreas decrease, too.
• 15 years after quitting: The risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a non-smoker’s.

You should note that the time periods quoted above often have an upper and lower limit.  The upper limit is the time it takes when a person has quit, but are not otherwise looking after themselves. THIS IS NOT YOU! The lower limit is for people like YOU, who are proactively looking to improve the time and chances of getting your health back as close to what it would be if you had never smoked. Your success in this effort of detoxifying your lungs is based on three things; the amount of damage you have done in the years you have smoked, the effort you put into following our Complete Lung Detoxification Guide Series will speed up your recovery with a lung cleanse, and improve your chances, and other complicating conditions you might have.

In my next post, we’ll look at what you might have done to yourself, and trust me, it’s not pretty.

Until then,

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

~William Renolds