Article #1

I decided to write a few articles on smoking. It is not my intention to give any lectures to all the smokers out there. Most of you know the pros and cons already. My intention is to enlighten and possibly offer information that you do not have or have even thought of. Glen and I are writing articles for a while on Nutrition/Health/Fitness/Diet and we felt that smoking definitely fits into this catagory of issues and needs to be addressed. Smoking robs our bodies of oxygen, vitamins and minerals and there are ongoing damages done to our organs that no one can visabily see. What do they say.. Out of sight out of mind?

I need to tell you that Glen and I were both smokers at one time.  Been there, done that. Glen started smoking at the age of 12, Camels Unfiltered Cigaretts for 10 years. I took up the habit in college, because it was a cool thing to do. If I wanted to be cool and look cool I needed to smoke Kool cigaretts, yep, that's what I needed to do. And, I did  for two years. Glen was more addicted though then I was.

In 1968 Glen and I were on a date at a restaurant and he got up from the table to go buy a pack of Camels. I was a smoker but for some reason I was upset that he did this, so I got up and bought a pack of Kools. (Oh yes, at that time they were 35 cents a pack!) I sat down and proceeded to light up. He said to me, "I really hate seeing a cigarette hanging  of a woman's mouth." My reply was, "Well....I don't especially like seeing one hang from a man's mouth." He said, "I will stop, if you stop". We both agreed to quit that day. He took the cigarettes we had just bought, got up and threw them in the trash, and we  have never went back.

If Glen had not quit smoking when he did he  would not have been able to follow though with his passion of weight lifting and exercise, because you need a very good set of lungs to do this and cigaretts absolutely robs the body of oxygen.

I, on the other hand had developed asthma at the age of 10. I was on medicine daily to help me breath and not become so wheezy. By the time I was in college and had taken up smoking (because it was sooo cool) you could say I had a cigarette in one hand and my inhaler to check the wheezing in another. How utterly stupid. And, I was in the nursing program. Shame on me.

The information I am going to give to you stems a lot from my 44 years of nursing. I will never be able to relate to you everything, however there are a couple of stories to tell you later on that left a life long impression on me, and I can never forget them. My information comes from the many doctors that I have worked with through the years and from visual personal experiences in the hospital and past patients.  Forgive me if some of the information seems a little bit graphic but there is just no other way to tell you what I need to. The rest of my information is from reading and research found in an excellent reference guide, *The Cornell Encycolpedia of Health*. Information taken from this source will be starred (*)

I am hoping that you will follow these articles and will find them helpful in some small way. Here's to your better health and nutrition.

See you in the next article on Smoking in correlation to Health and Fitness.