Stop Smoking Right Now
Perhaps you believe that your smoking habit is just YOUR problem. Did you ever stop to analyze why non-smokers are so outspoken about smoking in public? The secondhand smoke issue is highly charged and still debated. But there’s more to the issue of how your smoking affects other people.
This article is an honest look–a chance for you to evaluate the impact your smoking has on everyone around you. I encourage you to read the articles referenced in the endnotes for additional details.
The evidence continues to mount. Smoking during pregnancy does affect your unborn child. Developmental growth and birth weight in babies of smoking mothers is lower than babies of non-smoking mothers. These same “smoking” babies are more likely to be shorter in height, slower at reading and lower in “social adjustment” than children of nonsmoking mothers.
Statistics show that infant mortality–the death of the baby either at birth or through a miscarriage–is 50 percent higher when the mother smokes. That means nonsmoking parents experience half as many infant mortalities. The good news is that if you stop smoking by the fourth month of pregnancy, you can significantly reduce these dangers.
“Women who smoke while pregnant pass NNK, a very potent carcinogen, to their babies still developing in the womb. Earlier research showed that offspring of animals treated with NNK developed tumors of the lung, trachea, liver, and other organs.”
A recent study even suggests that individuals, whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, were predisposed to take up smoking themselves. If you smoke while pregnant, you may be encouraging your child to smoke, years from now!
Newborn babies exposed to their mother’s smoking through breast feeding and environmental tobacco smoke show significantly higher levels of urinary cotinine. Cotinine is a major metabolite of nicotine, and is used as a marker for recent cigarette smoke exposure. A study examined 507 infants, finding urinary cotinine levels during the first 2 weeks of life were significantly increased in infants whose mothers smoked. Breast-fed infants had higher otinine levels than non-breast-fed infants, but this was statistically significant only if mothers smoked. Urinary cotinine levels were 5 times higher in breast-fed fants whose mothers smoked than in those whose mothers smoked but did not breast-feed. Babies definitely receive the harmful chemicals found in cigarettes through both breast feeding and environmental exposure.
Children of smokers are also 2 1/2 times more likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or crib death. One study found that nearly 60 percent of all SIDS cases could be prevented if smokers stopped smoking around babies and pregnant women.
A meta-analysis of studies conducted after 1965 showed significant risk to children exposed to secondhand smoke of numerous ailments including asthma, tonsillectomy, lower respiratory tract infections, plus many others. Children were also at risk of death due to fires caused by cigarettes.
One study reveals an incredible statistic: Children of smokers are nearly three times as likely to smoke as children of non- smokers. Parents, have you ever thought of yourself as a drug pusher?