According to a US research recently published on The Lancet, a person out of ten dies due to smoke-related damages. “We have to keep fighting against tobacco smoking, speaking about smoke-related damages and being alert”, as Doctor Licia Siracusano, oncologist and spokesperson for the Stop Smoking Center at Humanitas, says.
“In Italy, the situation has been stable for over five years. There are slightly less male smokers, but female ones are constantly increasing. There has been a significant drop in smokers after the Sirchia Law in 2003 (“Protection of non-smokers’ health and measures to fight passive smoking in workplaces and inside public spaces”), but now nothing is changing.
Thus, it is important to keep saying that quitting tobacco smoking is paramount for our own health, for the health of those who are near us, for the environment and for society in general”, Doctor Siracusano explains.
False myths notwithstanding, quitting smoking is always worth it.
You Should quit Smoking, even if you don’t Smoke a lot
“The important factor is not the number of cigarettes you smoke, but the duration of your smoking habit. A single cigarette is a concentrate of harmful substances. At least 100 carcinogens, 4000 harmful substanced released by combustion, as well as radioactive substances such as Polonium 910”.
Quit Smoking, even if you have Always Smoked
“Smoke-related damages are most severe after thirty years of tobacco smoking. Quit smoking before this threshold could do a great damage control. It is never too late to quit. On the contrary, our body will also benefit from it”.
What About Vaping?
“At this moment, we can’t compare vaping-related damages to traditional tobacco smoking-related damages. We don’t have scientific evidence yet about vaping-related damages. Maybe we could do so in twenty years from now. Vaping may be less harmful than traditional smoking, but it surely is not healthy. We have to reiterate that vaping does not mean “smoking the right way”. In some cases, patients that are highly motivated to quit smoking may benefit from vaping, in their path towards the defeat of this addiction. However, vaping is not a valid technique to quit smoking. Moreover, we should pay attention to adolescents. Recent data show that 6% of the teenagers, started smoking tobacco after trying vaping”, the doctor points out.
Stop Smoking Center at Humanitas
“At the Stop Smoking Center of Humanitas we help people fight their cigarette-induced multi-factorial addiction, by working on physical and psychological aspects. Therefore, we employ an integrated approach that is both pharmacological and psychological. In our experience, 30% of the people who tried this method, did not resume smoking after two years, according to the follow up study”, Doctor Siracusano says.
