Quitting smoking-a big resolution for 2011

       
     Are you willing to try quitting smoking? This is one of the most common questions your doctor asks you  for. After this question, your physician will give you some pamphlets and probably he will start preaching you a lesson about how dangerous is to smoke. If you smoke, you must know how bad this habit is for you.

    From head to toes, you can develop cancer of  the mouth, lips, tongue, nose, pharynx,  cancer of the larynx, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, bronchiectasis, COPD, cancer of the lungs, urinary cancer, skin cancer. So many cancers in a phrase!
      Smoking is a risk factor which added to asbestos lead to mesothelioma more easily. Not to mention, the bad breath, discoloration of the skin, yellowing teeth, yellowing nails, bad circulation in the legs but also everywhere in the body, especially in your coronaries.

      From all of these, the most important and deadliest are lung and pancreatic cancers, because they have the shortest survival rates and also not to mention the fact that the medical possibilities are limited. Pregnant women, who smoke, have all the chances to give birth to children with very low weight, with a lot of health issues or to stillbirths.

        In order to continue or discontinue this habit, it is very important to know which are the risks involved. In general, the patients who are eager to renounce to this habit are those who are ill or frequently ill. But even when a doctor stresses the importance of losing this habit, some of the patients take it into consideration. They will pass in the second part of the process named reflexion. This is a period when, they will contemplate the idea, they inform themselves about it and subconsciously, they will choose to give it a try.

      The third part is when they do something about it and look for specialized help. This is where the doctor intervenes and besides the fact they enrolls you in some program similar with AAA meetings or detoxify programs, they work also with medication. You must know all those ads with Nicorette, which came out as chewing gums, tablets, patches to stick or inhalers. Your doctor will choose the right dose for you and this depends how addicted you are. The doses will decrease in time, depending how you react to the medication. The idea is to take the medication when you fell the strong or incontrollable desire to smoke. Another aspect is to announce your doctor if you take another drugs, because it can appears strong interactions.     

      Not take Nicorette if you are pregnant or breast-feeding, if you are allergic on nicotine, if you have circulatory problems, erectile dysfunctions, arrhythmias, angina or stroke. And try to avoid the areas with smoking people. Recently, on the market appear the electronic cigarette. Available in store in different countries, this can be a new solution in the fight against smoking.

Are you now ready to give it a try?

Be proactive! Get vaccinated!

      After a year, when we struggled from epidemic to pandemic swine flu, we are again in the good season to get vaccinated. Winter is here, and if you didn’t know the extreme fluctuation of the temperatures, put the flu virus in the position to multiply, replicate and to spread in the population, especially in the big cities where the population or the traffic are higher.

     Where can we catch the virus? Especially in every means of transportation as planes, metros, buses, in every places which reunite a large number of people , as airports, railway stations, metro stations, but also at festivities or cinema, theater, spectacles, in the workplace etc.  In all these places is enough a person with flu to sneeze or to cough and like this, the virus rapidly will spread from one to another.

The virus needs probably 24-48h to replicate in your body, before the symptoms can be seen. Symptoms like fever, chills, malaise, extreme fatigue, sneeze, cough, runny or stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, muscles pain can be expected.

     Who has more chances to catch the flu? There are some categories as the children less than 5 years old, the pregnant women, every adult after 65 years old, and people with different chronic diseases as: diabetes, chronic lung diseases, cardiac diseases, HIV positives, AIDS, with tuberculosis, cancers, blood diseases and people with a bad immunity.

A  person with a bad lifestyle,  who make a lot of excesses, who doesn’t exercise, who doesn’t eat healthy, doesn’t sleep well,  who has a lot of stress in life, is the most predisposed because his immunity will decrease.

       What to do? Get vaccinated. After the avian and swine flu, I know a lot of people refused to get vaccinated, because they were circumspects regarding the vaccines for these two.

I understand them completely, but they must to know that every year, the prepared vaccine is different, because the researchers have the ability to find the most probable virus which will spread every year and the vaccine is made for this most probable strain of virus.

This year beside the vaccine for H1N1 (swine flu), the most offered vaccine is for the H3N2 and the B-strain of the virus.

It is our choice if we get vaccinated or not, and we have the chance to choose this year between these vaccines. Because this year the chances to reappear the swine flu are so low, I recommend the other vaccine.

       It is in our power to do something, because even if we don’t get sick, we can be just transmitters of the virus and spreading it to your family or to other people.

Not to forget, avoid agglomeration in this period of time, sneeze or cough in your handkerchief, wash your hands regularly, eat healthy and avoid stress, hydrate yourself and finally take zinc and Echinacea supplements to boost your immunity.  
Update: It is confirmed that in Canada , this winter, the predominant strain of virus is H3N2, that's why you can avoid safely the swine flu vaccine, because the pandemia is gone. 
It is not late to get your vaccine!