Posted on 01/26/2005 3:06:33 PM PST by Rennes Templar
There are two kinds of conversations about Johnny Carson. One kind is the one most of you are having. It is light and interesting, about showbiz, TV, popular culture. Then there is the other conversation many of us have been avoiding.
-snip-
A part of it (the conversation)landed on my desk with a little thump. It was a package, about the size of your palm, with a brown camel on it, two pyramids and three palm trees.
"You can have them," said a friend who tossed them, casual in voice, though there was no missing the symbolism of it, his casting away of the Camels.
"I'm done with them," he said. "I quit."
-snip-
Carson's death could have been due to pneumonia, to infection, or it could have been respiratory failure. Either way it was private, and ugly.
I thought of him suffering amidst tubes.
"You can quit," Dr. Gross said. "You can have a life. You can quit."
I've failed before. And I'm afraid of failing. But Johnny Carson convinced me.
If you're interested in doing the same, you can call the American Lung Association at 312-243-2000.
jskass@tribune.com
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Thats why those patches don't work.
True. My point is, that saying "Well, we're all gonna die of something" is a bit broad. I mean, I choose not to die of COPD. I also choose not to die of a Nascar accident, since I don't race cars. I can guarantee I won't die of a self inflicted gun shot wound to the head.
I have chosen not to die of high cholesterol by lowering mine over 100 points when I found out it was high. At least when I found out it was high, I tried to do my best to lower it.
:-)
We may not be able to choose how we die...but we can choose what we won't die of in many cases.
Health effects of polonium
Polonium is studied in a few nuclear research laboratories where its high radioactivity as an alpha-emitter requires special handling techniques and precautions.
Polonium -210 is the only component of cigarette smoke that has produced cancers by itself in laboratory animals by inhalation - tumors appear at a level five times lower than the dose to a heavy smoker.
Lung cancer rates among men kept climbing from a rarity in 1930 (4/100,000 per year) to the No. 1 cancer killer in 1980 (72/100,000) in spite of an almost 20 percent reduction in smoking. But during the same period, the level of polonium -210 in American tobacco had tripled. This coincided with the increase in the use of phosphate fertilizers by tobacco growers - calcium phosphate ore accumulates uranium and slowly releases radon gas.
As radon decays, its electrically charged daughter products attach themselves to dust particles, which adhere to the sticky hairs on the underside of tobacco leaves. This leaves a deposit of radioactive polonium and lead on the leaves. Then, the intense localized heat in the burning tip of a cigarette volatilizes the radioactive metals. While cigarette filters can trap chemical carcinogens, they are ineffective against radioactive vapors.
The lungs of a chronic smoker end up with a radioactive lining in a concentration much higher than from residential radon. These particles emit radiation. Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day imparts a radiation dose by alpha particles of about 1,300 millirem per year. For comparison, the annual radiation dose to the average American from inhaled radon is 200 mrem. However, the radiation dose at the radon "action level" of 4 pCi/L is roughly equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day.
In addition, polunium-210 is soluble and is circulated through the body to every tissue and cell in levels much higher than from residential radon. The proof is that it can be found in the blood and urine of smokers. The circulating polonium -210 causes genetic damage and early death from diseases reminiscent of early radiological pioneers: liver and bladder cancer, stomach ulcer, leukemia, cirrhosis of liver, and cardiovascular diseases.
The Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated that radioactivity, rather than tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking-related lung cancers. The Center for Disease Control concluded "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source."
Cigarette smoking accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths. Only poor diet rivals tobacco smoke as a cause of cancer in the U.S., causing a comparable number of fatalities each year. However, the National Cancer Institute, with an annual budget of $500 million, has no active funding for research of radiation from smoking or residential radon as a cause of lung cancer, presumably, to protect the public from undue fears of radiation.
http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-elements/Po-en.htm
I agree- cold turkey is the best way- if you get past the first week you are SET!!
The first week you will not sleep, and THIS IS A SYMPTOM!!
When you wake up and you want that cigarette so bad dont do it!!!
Sleeping pills help- ask your doctor
Well, it feels like I've been smoking forever, but it's really only been 3 years. I started when I was 15.
(from a confidential P-M memo)
That phosphate fertilizer contains natural radioactivity is a well established fact. Natural uranium accumulates in the phosphate rock...Uranium and its daughters are thus carried through the mining and manufacturing process and appear in the commercial product [the fertilizer used on tobacco plants]. Soils to which these products are applied show an increase in radioactivity over that naturally present and this increase is a function of the rate of application and the number of years that the fertilizers have been used....Thus, the smaller particles [of the fertilizer] which would be more likely to be made airborne by normal farming practices, would be expected to settle out on the tobacco leaves during the growing season and/or be more readily taken up by the plant root system.
210-Pb [radioactive lead] and 210-Po [radioactive polonium] are present in tobacco and smoke....For alpha particles from 210-Po to be the cause of lung cancers is unlikely due to the amount of radioactivity of a particular energy necessary for induction. Evidence to date, however, does not allow one to state that this is an impossibility.
The recommendation of using ammonium phosphate instead of calcium phosphate as fertilizer is probably a valid but expensive point....
...The soluble 210-Po is that which one would expect to be cleared by normal physiological processes...A study carried out by us has shown an increase in the soluble 210-Po with time after harvest....
I want to quit, but not 100 %. That's the problem. What would I do with all the spare time? And all my friends smoke.
So it is true. Good info.
Post on FR!
I'm not a smoker, but there is something I have often been curious about. Why do more people seem to smoke when it rains? These days when smokers are often exiled to stand outside buildings when they smoke, I often see these people standing out in the rain. You would think that fewer people would want to smoke when it was raining if they had to stand outside.
That's exactly how I lost my weight. I didn't "plan" to go on a diet. I didn't say "Starting next week, I'll give up ice cream and donuts." No! It wasn't like that at all.
I can still remember clearly how it happened. It was April 1, 2003 and I had just returned from a trip to Florida. I went to put on my pants for work and I couldn't get them to button. Now these were size 48 pants which meant that I now had to get size 50 pants! It was then and there that I stopped eating junk. That day at lunch, instead of getting my usual steak & cheese sub, I went for a long walk.
I never looked back. Went from 304 pounds to 197 pounds in nine months and I now wear size 34 pants.
You just have to decide you are going to quit and then do it.
Fascinating, your chicken pets! Some questions:
Can you keep them in the house - do they make messes?
Are they "affectinate"?
Do they respond to commands?
I really don't know. People smoke when they're depressed right? The rain is pretty depressing.
Yeah its odd, since I moved to NV (Which is much more smoker friendly) I see LOADS of older people and seniors smoking away at the casinos.
If you listen to the "antis" these days, by rights all those people should have died long ago.
Yes it is true. Most smokers are so brainwashed that they didn't even realize that just switching to 'home-grown' would improve their odds against cancer many fold.
Thanks for your concern! Carson outlived the average life expectancy while still being a smoker..........How could that be?
The first time I quit I made sure to carry a pack of cigarettes on me just as I always did.
I figured by carrying them I could not use the excuse to smoke a cigarette the minute I was around people who smoked, using the proximity of cigarettes to bum as an excuse to smoke one.
Two days later a friend noticed I had not smoked a cigarette in all the time he saw me that day.
I told him I had quit.
He asked how I managed to quit, and I told him.
But here's the funny part: As I was telling him how I did it, my hand reached into my shirt pocket, removed a cigarette from the pack I carried and stuck it in my mouth.
I was about to light it when I noticed the strang look on his face--only then did I realize what I was about to do.
Pretty funny--all the while I was explaining how I managed to quit smoking!
That was the first time I quit--I was off them for three years.
I since quit again, and this time I've been off them more than a decade. And no problem.
I do miss tobacco, though--the same way I miss choclate pudding pie, for example. But not from an addiction.
I loved smoking. And if someone invented safe tobacco, I'd smoke again in a minute.
Thanks for a comment from the the pro-smoking lobby on FR.
Just guestimating, theyre running about 5 to 1 anti. Personally, I'm not concerned. Just like good discussions.
and I got trashed for bringing up Carson's contribution to his emphysema.
My Mama smoked for over 40 years, finally quitting in 1978. She developed Alzheimer's and no one knows why, but I can guarantee you she died more peacefully 6 years after that diagnosis from congestive heart failure than she would have done strangling to death from the results of emphysema!
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