Girls and Smoking Are Horror

Smoking kills more than half a million girls each year and is the most important preventable cause of premature death in several developed countries.

Girls and smoking, gender perspective

Девушки и курение, гендерная перспектива

Smoking is a serious health and social problem worldwide. It is also the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality. More than 8 million people die from tobacco use worldwide each year. Half of people who smoke die from tobacco-related diseases, and half of those deaths occur in middle age. Even though smoking prevalence has historically been higher among men, in many countries there has been an increase in smoking among young women compared to young men.

An important body of evidence shows that women may be more sensitive than men to some of the harmful effects of smoking. Moreover, smoking in women carries the risk of gender-specific conditions such as premature menopause, fertility disorders, and pregnancy and newborn complications. Smoking prevention and cessation strategies must take a gender perspective into account in order to reduce the impact of tobacco use on women.

Epidemiology

Globally, 942 million men and 175 million girls aged 15 years and older are current smokers. Nearly three quarters of men who smoke daily live in countries with medium or high human development index (HDI), while half of women who smoke daily live in countries with very high HDI

Table. Number of tobacco smokers by WHO region, current and projected.

Число курильщиков табака по регионам ВОЗ

There is a 30-year gap between peak tobacco use and peak tobacco-related mortality. Because women started smoking later in the tobacco epidemic, a spike in female tobacco-related deaths also occurred later than that of men.
Советы курящей девушке

By the way, no one, I guess, is questioning the axiom of "Is smoking bad for your health?" A catchy, battered phrase. But she's right.

Such wonderful people as Alexander Abdulov, Andrey Tarkovsky, Rolan Bykov, Dmitry Shostakovich, Boris Pasternak, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Venedict Yerofeev died from various diseases caused by smoking... Does anyone know how many positive emotions they would give people if they were still alive?

And in general, it is one thing when a cockroach is poisoned by some "Raptor". It's completely free for a cockroach. But it's quite another to voluntarily inject poison into your body, and also to pay money for it.

I want to quote an excerpt of "Letters to a Smoking and Non-Smoking Girl".

F.Uglov is a world-famous and the oldest practicing surgeon, academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, professor of the Department of Hospital Surgery of the St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician I.P.Pavlov, doctor of medical sciences, chairman of the "St. Petersburg Society of Surgeons" and the "Union for the struggle for national sobriety". In 2004, F.Uglov celebrated the 75th anniversary of his surgical activity, and on October 5, 2005, he turned 101.

I meet hundreds of your smoking girls on the streets. Hundreds of people have had surgery for lung cancer. And hundreds — I didn’t say it — hundreds had to refuse, because nothing could be done anymore... There is nothing more difficult for a surgeon than refusing to help a patient because of his own powerlessness. And I've had to admit my powerlessness more than once when it comes to saving broken lungs and the lives of perennial smokers.

In recent years, a large number of female smokers have been admitted to operating desks. I won't scare you. Smoking is a "voluntary" matter. Just as you've started reading my letter, let me express my opinion so that later your despair doesn't break my heart. The opinion of not only a surgeon (unfortunately unable to show you clearly on these pages a cancer that strangled the lungs), but also a person who knows the cost of suffering.

Hundreds of people have passed through my hands and my heart, suffering precisely from the failure to break their addiction in time. The complaints are the same and begin with the phrase: "Something with my lungs..." Somehow a good friend of mine addressed me with the same words. They agreed to meet him, but he did not come until a few months later. When his chest was opened on the operating table, it turned out that everything was already metastasized and there was nothing to help him. It's hard to know that a patient is dying. It's even harder that this is your close comrade...

These lines to you will contain the facts and figures found by my associates. But I, the surgeon, have a very clear idea of what is behind these numbers and percentages.

No, I'm not going to scare you with the now-commonplace examples of a drop of nicotine killing a horse — you're not a horse, you're a human, or 20 cigarettes smoked every day shortening your life by eight to 12 years; you're young, and life seems endless to you. Every cigarette smoked costs a smoker 15 minutes of life, according to British doctors. It's nothing if you're only twenty. What do you think about the fact that heavy smokers get lung cancer 30 times more often than non-smokers, and the cause of this terrible disease in 95-98 cases out of 100 is smoking. American cardiologists cite the average age of those who died of heart attacks as 67 years, and of smokers as 47 years. You're only 20, and you're still up to 47... Of course it won't scare you. And yet...

It is with great sorrow that I see girls smoking outside the school with a cigarette in their fist (in what they call "pioneer style"), so they won't be seen from the windows. I'm sorry to find out that they learned to smoke by taking a caregiver as a model.

The pain grips my soul from the fact that in the student dormitory girls are going to smoke and talk about future marriage. I can assume your plans don't yet see marriage. So I'm going to tell you something else.

Social scientists conducted an anonymous questionnaire, in which they asked: why do you smoke? 60 percent of girls answered: it is beautiful and fashionable. And 40 percent smoke because they want boys to like them. Let's say. And even in some ways, we will "justify" them. Because the desire to like you is inherent in nature. But we will justify it temporarily: it is necessary to know and opinions of boys.

256 young people were interviewed. They were given three questions and three options respectively: yes, indifferent, negative.

Question one: "In your company, girls smoke. How do you feel about it?" - 4% positive, 54% indifferent, 42% negative.

Question two: "The girl you're friends with smokes. How do you feel about it?" - 1% positive, 15% indifferent, 84% negative.

Question three: "Would you like your wife to smoke?" - Storm of protests! Of the 256, only two said they didn't care. Others strongly objected.

And now we'll think together. You're a long way from lung surgery. You're not getting married. Everything's fine, and you smoke. Where did it come from? In my opinion, they smoke in those companies where they gather for fun. The cigarette in your hands is like a signal: you're modern. That means you treat love and friendship with a lot of frivolity.

Boys with smoking girls are more relaxed, and girls, by their naiveté, believe that they are successful, hardly thinking that they are a temporary fun. Yeah, yeah, you, the smoking girl, are a temporary fun. It seems to me that by lighting up, you make yourself cheaper, you humiliate yourself, making yourself less modern in the true sense of the word, but rather frivolous and more accessible. Who gave you the "fashionability" of this terrible habit? Who programmed you to do something that your youth doesn't let you see the whole disaster that awaits you?

Don't be angry, but I'll try to draw your future as it appears to me. And if you doubt it, look around at women who smoke older than you.

Smoking makes your voice hoarse, your teeth turn black and dirty. The skin of the face is earthy. Your sense of smell and taste will be severely impaired. You must have noticed how often smokers spit. I don't know if you've noticed the smell coming from the smoker's mouth... This smell is so bad that don't be surprised if any of your guys you know will avoid you. You're gonna wake up bitter in your mouth and headache from coughing all night. Very early, your face will become wrinkled and dry. Female smokers at age 25 look much older than their non-smokers. That's the real price of your smoking! You're not gonna attract, but you're gonna alienate any serious guy.

Try to imagine yourself next to a non-smoker. And if that comparison doesn't scare you or you don't see the difference between you, let me tell you that your appearance isn't the main indicator.

The sooner you start smoking, the more dangerous you are to exposure to tobacco smoke venom. And if you're addicted to smoking long before you're old enough, you're going to have a slower growth rate. Under the influence of nicotine, blood vessels become permanently narrowed (the oxygen content in the blood is reduced by combining hemoglobin with carbon monoxide, one of the components of tobacco smoke). Smoking under the influence of high temperature releases 30 harmful substances from tobacco: nicotine, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and various essential oils. Among them, benzopyrene, a 100% carcinogen (cancer in Latin), is particularly dangerous.

If you're curious, you might be interested in the data from American researchers. They found a significant amount of polonium-210 in tobacco smoke, which emits alpha particles. If you smoke one pack of cigarettes personally, you will receive a dose of radiation seven times the established international agreement on protection from radiation.

Nicotine is a drug. This is the name of the world's highest organ of medicine, the World Health Organization. And that means it's going to get harder every year. Tobacco, by narrowing the vessels, not only causes the increased work of the heart, but also worsens and destroys the activity of many systems of the body.

You smoked... Then everything goes according to a long-known scheme. Nicotine briefly causes blood vessels to dilate, increasing the blood supply to brain cells. This is followed by severe vasospasm, resulting in various brain disorders. Next. Nicotine disturbs the nervous system, lungs, liver, digestive organs, gonads.

It is proven beyond any doubt that you will be sick three to four times more often than your non-smoking friends. There will inevitably come a time when you will feel ill and constant malaise will turn your life into a burden.

But let's talk about something else. Maybe you'd be interested to know that women are hard hit by smoking because of the gentler structure of the body, which nature is designed to procreate. It has long been known that persistent smokers cannot bear children because of profound changes in the germline apparatus. The most common complication caused by smoking is premature termination of pregnancy—before 36 weeks. It is twice as common among smokers. It doesn't bother you to know that smokers are much more likely to have premature fetuses and less weight than their newborn (yes, the newborn, your baby, which you probably don't think of, but your smoking will affect their viability). Smokers have higher rates of stillbirths and higher rates of birth defects. And the fact is that smoking has a very negative effect on the development of a child that has been born. Knowing this, it makes sense to think about marriage, about a husband who will wait for a son, and may not be a son... And there may come a day when the doctors will say to you, "Unfortunately, you can never give birth again."

It's hard for you to understand now. But my experience suggests hundreds of such cases. A woman who smokes is imperceptibly approaching a critical moment, after which she can no longer give birth, although for this she is ready for anything, for any surgery, for any sacrifice. And believe me, you're not going to be an exception: nature made you to be a mother. And no matter how good you are today, it will make you live in the interests of children.

Believe me, a cigarette can cripple your life. Yours first. And when they prove to you that smoking is to blame, you're gonna curse yourself and your whole life. Think about not having kids. And your husband can leave you. He's going to be less worthy than you, just because of the right to be called a father. Believe me, he can do that, because fatherly feelings are just as strong as motherly feelings.

And if you smoke when you're pregnant, then know that the experiment has established: it is worth smoking a pregnant woman, as in a few minutes nicotine enters (through the placenta) into the heart and brain of the unborn child. And with that poison, you unwittingly poison him. Scientists have traced the development of children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy. These children, who were seen before the age of 5-6 years, were severely handicapped in their physical and mental development. By the way, among children whose fathers are heavy smokers, malformations are twice as common.

And your child will be sick all the time. Pneumonia and bronchitis await him. In despair, you'll look for reasons, not knowing they're in you. Even if you were smoking in the hallway, on the landing, even a tiny fraction of the smoke that entered the room would be enough for your child to suddenly get a fever.

100 percent of children who smoke are mothers. And your child, who honors you for being the smartest, the most affectionate, the kindest, seeing you with a cigarette, will also start to smoke. And that means you programmed it in advance for the same torment that awaits you.

My experience suggests a terrible case involving smoking a teenager. In one of the boarding schools in the morning, they could not wake the boy. He died at night. The autopsy revealed that he had a heart condition - because he learned to smoke early, smoked a lot, and on the eve of his death, as the guys said, he was "fed up".

In households where parents smoked but then stopped, 67 per cent of boys and 78 per cent of girls nonetheless started smoking.

According to WHO, 80 per cent of children who smoke maintain this harmful habit as adults. It is already established: if a teenager smoked at least two cigarettes, then in 70 cases out of 100 he will smoke all his life. Think!

Now I'd like to know why you smoke. You think you look prettier, don't you? For nothing. It's a minute's pleasure to see oneself with a cigarette between your fingers. You're one of those people who doesn't know what they're doing, and when you tell them, they say, "I can't quit." And please don't refer to the artists you see on the screens with a cigarette. I'd classify your hobby not as youthful stupidity, but as a crime to yourself. Yes, yes, you can write yourself a three-word memo: "Smoking is slow suicide."

And in the near future you will be able to see that it is. It's a pity that at your most difficult stage in life, you're gonna need my help as a surgeon... In the meantime, I can warn you that smoking will condemn you to frequent illnesses. This includes angina, infarction at a young age, and gastric ulcer. In a study of 205 people who died of heart attacks at the age of 44, only two were found not to have smoked. Among people with stomach cancer, 95 per cent smoke. And if a smoker has not yet developed lung cancer, in the absolute majority of cases, he already has a pre-cancerous condition. Smokers are three to four times more likely to die from a stomach ulcer.

According to the WHO, which has studied smoking extensively, one in five people die from tobacco-related causes. If we apply this to our conditions, we lose 500,000 people every year! You, your husband, your children, your friends and acquaintances may be among them.

One last thing. I understand that in looking for reasons to justify your lack of will, you can say, "If it's so bad, why sell tobacco in such abundance?" Tobacco industry organizations believe that they are benefiting. However, these are illusions. The country and people lose more from tobacco than they gain. Today, WHO is launching a slogan: "Smoking or health? Choose for yourself!"

I'm a doctor and I have to offer you the same.