Different Reasons Why We Smoke

I have personally quit a total of nine separate times for at least 3 months each time. This is not counting the numerous attempts of a day here or a day there. Each time I have quit, I have learned something else about how I was connected to my cigarette. The first time I quit, it seemed easy, too easy and I thought I could control my smoking. But I was wrong, I needed to learn about relapsing and how just one cigarette can lead to a whole pack.
Another time it was important to learn what to do with my hands and the hand to mouth motion. Chewing on coffee stirrers worked for me. Other times, it was learning how to handle social situations without smoking and having a cocktail. I used to run a social club and often smokers would come up to me with a cigarette in their hand and want to talk. I would excuse myself and say that I would be right back. As soon as they put out their cigarette, I would return and them tell them that I had recently quit and it was difficult for me to be around a lit cigarette. That put the emphasis on me changing, not on changing or making them wrong.
The last time I quit, I needed to learn to control my strong emotions. I had started again because I was so angry at someone else that I had no outlet to vent and I saw no option except to smoke. Each time I quit, I develop another tool for my toolbox in dealing with my addiction to nicotine. Just like a carpenter needs many different tools for different jobs, a smokers needs different tools to handle the many different way they are connected to their cigarettes.
Since I've quit at least 9 times, this also means that I relapsed 8 times before I was finally successful. Most smokers would have given up before that because we want to make it easy to quit, we just want it over with but for some people like me who are truly addicted to nicotine, we need all the help we can get--which is developing more tools for your toolbox.

Link Between Lung Cancer and Smoking

For years the tobacco companies said that smoking did not cause lung cancer. We now know that smokers are at a much higher risk of developing lung cancer and about 10% of all smokers will develop the disease. About 90% of all lung cancers are in smokers. This article tells of several genetic studies that are showing certain genetic traits that may make a person more likely to become addicted to smoking and also more likely to develop lung cancer. So reality might be that lung cancer is a relationship between heredity and environment. Lung cancer has been so fatal because it is usually found late after it has already spread but a new type of CAT scan, a spiral CAT Scan can find tumors that are small enough to be treatable. This test is not covered by insurance because it hasn't been proved that the survival rate of finding a lung cancer tumor when it is smaller increases life expectancy but it only makes sense to find it as early as you can.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/576699?src=mp&spon=17&uac=103794FK

Smokers Age Faster and Wrinkle More than Non-Smokers

It used to be thought that smokers developed smokers lines above their lip because of the way they dragged on the cigarette but now we know that smoking causes more wrinkles because of the lack of oxygen to the skin. Carbon Monoxide is a main component of smoke (yes the same gas coming out the tailpipe of your car-the next smoker you see, just think that they are sucking on that tailpipe and sending that poisonous gas to their heart). Carbon monoxide binds to the red blood cells faster than oxygen, so the body believes it is not getting enough oxygen. It does two things. 1. It conserves oxygen and closes down the small blood vessels to non-essential organs, which is largely the skin. That is why smokers have a gray cast to their skin color and develop wrinkles and also why the color of their skin improves dramatically when they stop smoking. 2. The body adjusts to the lack of oxygen by creating more red blood cells. A simple blood test will show a high red blood cell count. This affects smokers when they quit because without the carbon monoxide to bind with the excess of red blood cells, the quitter can experience too much oxygen and have headaches, tingling in the fingers and toes from the blood vessels opening up. A tip to quitting is to go give blood when you stop. If not, the body will even itself out after a few weeks. Just another good reason to quit.