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Great American quitter |
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
by Abbi Peters
Today the American Cancer Society will celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Great American Smokeout. The American Cancer Society Great American Smokeout grew out of a 1971 event in Randolph, Mass., in which Arthur P. Mullaney asked people to give up cigarettes for a day and donate the money they would have spent on cigarettes to a high school scholarship fund. In 1974, Lynn R. Smith, editor of the Monticello Times in Minnesota, spearheaded the state’s first D-Day, or Don’t Smoke Day. The idea caught on, and on Nov. 18, 1976, the California Division of the American Cancer Society succeeded in getting nearly one million smokers to quit for the day. That California event marked the first Great American Smokeout, which went nationwide the next year.
Locally, Shirl Fredrickson of Kersey, knows quite a bit about smoking and quitting. Fredrickson started smoking cigarettes at age 11, by the time she was 50 she was smoking up to 2 and 1/2 packs a day. There wasn’t a waking moment that Fredrickson wasn’t smoking, saying “I really enjoyed smoking.” Even the diagnosis of emphysema in both lungs at age 43 did not slow her habit. At 50 Fredrickson found herself in the hospital ICU unable to breathe. After being discharged she returned home and immediately lit up another cigarette. As Fredrickson started to cough, she looked at the cigarette and then threw it out the window saying she’d had enough, “I decided my health was more important than those stupid cigarettes.”
After 39 years of chain smoking Fredrickson quit cold turkey and this January will mark her 13th year being smoke free. Fredrickson said the first five months were the hardest, she still wanted to smoke, then she’d remember her close call with death and would resist the urge. During withdrawal she bought long pretzel sticks, snapped them in half and held them in her fingers to satisfy the habitual routine, saying “I had pretzels everywhere, at home in my locker at work, everywhere.” Initially Fredrickson gained weight, eating sweets and other foods to suppress the cigarette cravings. Fredrickson kept a journal to track her eating habits and urges, as the urges came she then directed her thoughts to something other than smoking. The process became easier after those first months and within a year and a half Fredrickson said she felt her health come back and hasn’t had an urge to smoke since. Fredrickson’s life changes have had a positive chain reaction on her family, both her home and car are smoke free and her son quit smoking 12 and a half years ago.
Today, Americans who smoke and want to quit to are urged to call the American Cancer Society’s Quitline®, a clinically proven, free telephone-based counseling program, at 1-800-ACS-2345, or to log on to www.cancer.org/greatamericans, to embark on a personal plan to quit.
Benefits of Quitting Over Time
(courtesy of the American Cancer Society)
• 20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drops.
• 12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
• 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.
• 1 to 9 months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair- like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.
• 1 year after quitting: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker's.
• 5 years after quitting: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker 5 to 15 years
after quitting.
• 10 years after quitting: The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a continuing
smoker's. The risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix, and
pancreas decrease.
• 15 years after quitting: The risk of coronary heart disease is that of a non-smoker's.
Quitsmoking.com lists the following suggestions with success stories for quitting:
Acupuncture, cold turkey, exercise, support from family and friends, give your mouth something else to do, chew gum, hold a cigarette without lighting it, keep a journal, listen to a motivational tape, patches, consider all of the money you’ll save.
Something to think about during your next cigarette break:
• The average pack of cigarettes costs $3.75, using that figure smoking a pack a day costs $26.05 per week, $104.20 per month and $1250.40 per year. Where could you go, or what else could you afford with another $1200 per year in your bank account?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
• Lost productivity and medical care costs for each pack of cigarettes sold in the United States: $7.18 per pack.
• 3,000 Americans die each year due to exposure to Environmental Tobacco
Smoke, or “secondhand smoke.”
• In the U.S., Smoking kills more people in the United States each year than car accidents, alcohol, AIDS,
murders, illegal drugs and suicides combined. Tobacco use is responsible for nearly one in five deaths, amounting to an estimated 438,000 premature deaths each year. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 November 2007 )
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