Share and enjoy the pleasures of smoking cigarettes

recent news article about lily enjoying her cigarettes at the risk of a fine!

more at http://www.celebrityhealthfitness.com/?p=547

not sure if anyone else has come across this, but i started work in an office about 10 months ago and they have just bought a new office that used to be a bar that had these amazing extraction units for smoking zones. well, i made a suggestion that since nearly all of us smoke in the office that we use the extraction units and continue to work and smoke instead of taking cigarette breaks. the management thought it was a great idea and we are now allowed to smoking at our desks!

the extraction units are amazing, you can see the smoke disappear up into the vents almost instantly. The non smokers, 2 out of 15 of us, said that they were really surprised at how good the system worked and can smell no smoke in their workspace whatsoever.

So an interesting thing came up in conversation the other day, about how the flavour and taste of your smoke can be altered by taking in other complimentary tastes at the same time.
I’ve some experience of this with occasionally sucking a mint or chewing gum whilst having a smoke. Other folk have mentioned that a cigarette goes well with coffee.
So I was wondering what (if any) other people’s experiences with this phenomena are, are certain brands better with a coffee for example.
Another interesting thing I came across was the idea that if you chill or freeze your cigarettes and smoke them whilst chilled you can get a smoother taste – I haven’t tried this out yet so it could be rubbish but I think I may give it a go.

i’ve just been trying some new cigarettes – dunhill’s essence super slims:

i’ve tried both gold and red. gold are lighter and red are a really nice full flavoured cigarette. i really like the taste of both, more so the reds in the morning and golds when i’m out and with friends. i really love how they are super slim and the filters are so different looking than any other cigarette. i think the word essence says heaps about them; dunhill have really captured a great smoke, very sensual and calming at the same time. the pack is such a great size which fits into any pocket.

Suzy Dean talks about why she enjoys smoking and won’t be quitting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8210551.stm

Found this information:

Exercise

Perhaps the best thing that you can do is to exercise regularly. Since smoking is something that is concentrated on the lungs, that is the place that you need to exercise the most. Doctors recommend that by doing aerobic exercises at least twice a week is one of the best things that we can do for ourselves. Its also been concluded that subjects that did 3 ten minute aerobic exercise sessions a day had the same benefit as those who just did one 30 minute session. So, it’s not hard to add a little here, and a little there. Consider taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or walking to a place that isn’t too far and you’d normally drive. Take a walk at lunch, breakfast or after dinner. Sex too is a form of exercise, and who couldn’t stand to add a couple extra sessions a week? (of course, that is if it is something that you regularly do).

I think that a good rule of thumb is to aerobically excursive the number of minutes weekly that you spend smoking in two or three days. The goal is to raise your heart to 80% of its maximum, and keep it there for at least a few minutes. The number of minutes that you do this is cumulative, so it doesn’t matter if you do it for three or thirty minutes.

Keeping active will keep you ahead of the destructive curve that smoking throws at you. As smoking tears down tissue, you’ll be building it up again in exercise. Also, smoking tends to speed up the metabolism, so with additional exercise, you may even loose weight!

Starting Late

If you’re someone who has been smoking for a while and doesn’t exercise, its never too late. You get too winded you say? Nonsense! Just start off slow, adding a few extra minutes (or seconds) to something that you normally wouldn’t do. After a while, it’ll feel fine to you and you can add more. Just remember, raise your heart rate a bit and keep it there for a few minutes, that’s the goal.

Started Smoking Later

If you’re someone who started smoking later in life, it’s important that maintain whatever lifestyle you had before, and add to it aerobic exercise. Remember the rule of thumb: add as many minutes of aerobic exercise weekly as you’d spend smoking in two or three days. If each cigarette lasts five minutes and you’d smoke a pack in two days, then 100 minutes (which sounds like a lot) of aerobic exercise a week should keep you at or above the aerobic level of where you were when you started smoking. That’s only fourteen extra minutes a day. A couple of walks is all it would take, or a half-hour every other day.

Younger Smoker

If you’re someone who is young and smokes, it’s important to stay active, and become more active as a smoker. It really doesn’t take much to stay fit. I stop by my gym almost everyday and put in about 30-45 minutes of aerobic exercise. I heard someone say that you can develop a habit by doing the action every day for 30 days. After that, it’s a habit. You’ve made smoking your habit, and now its time to make exercise your habit. I know many other women who walk out of the health club and light up. Just because you smoke, doesn’t mean that you don’t exercise.

Recently read on wikipedia (as you do – I tend to surf it when bored at work) that the addictive effects of nicotine in tobacco are enhanced by the presence of another chemical called Harmine (also present in tobacco).
Harmine is a reversible MAOI – or to put it another way it increases the length of time that the dopamine hit nicotine delivers stays in the system by inhibiting the normal process of restoring dopamine to normal levels.
MAOI’s are also used for treatment of depression etc. which might explain why a lot of folks who suffer from such also smoke (personal supposition)

Purely science geekery for which I apologise but I found it intriguing

I’d like to read the original study, but I found this article quite interesting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61981-2004Jun22.html

Especially this part:
“The study also found, however, that kicking the cigarette habit had equally dramatic effects. He found, for instance, that someone who stops smoking by age 30 has the same average life expectancy as a nonsmoker, and someone who stops at 50 will lose four, rather than 10, years of life.”

It sounds too good to be true that I can enjoy smoking for 10 years and still be likely to live as long as if I hadn’t smoked at all. I’ll have to wait and see how I feel about quitting when I’m 30.

extract from a website:

Up until fairly recently most people, especially non-smokers, considered smoking to be a personal choice and that if a smoker really wanted to quit, he could easily do so.

Now, it has been medically proven, recognised and more widely accepted that the reason people continue to smoke, despite the severe health risks smoking entails, is because nicotine is a highly addictive drug.

In fact, some doctors have reported that nicotine is just as addictive as heroin or cocaine, which indicates quite clearly as to how people become hooked so rapidly and stay hooked for so long.

Although the amount of nicotine that enters the body is extremely small, it is still enough for smokers to become dependant on nicotine, thus developing a nicotine dependency, which makes it extremely difficult for them to stop smoking.

Nicotine is an organic compound that is found naturally in the tobacco plant. It is composed of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen and belongs to a group of compounds called alkaloids. Plants usually produce these types of chemical poisons so that animals are deterred from eating them.

In high concentrations nicotine acts as a nerve poison and it is used in insecticides. However, in small amounts, nicotine is a stimulant that enhances brain activity and concentration and improves cognitive processing as well as a person’s memory. On the downside, nicotine increases blood pressure and heart rate, causes you to breathe faster and less deeply and it constricts the arteries.

Nicotine also suppresses the appetite, which is one of the main reasons why many women are not keen on giving up smoking. They assume that they will eat more, which will consequently lead to gaining a lot of weight. spr

Once smokers become dependant on nicotine, they may experience strong physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms if they try to give up. These symptoms may include irritability, dizziness, anxiety, headaches, lack of concentration, disturbed sleeping patterns, feelings of anger, depression, tiredness as well as incredible cravings for more nicotine.

These withdrawal symptoms are at their highest during the first 72 hours after giving up, after which they lesson slightly. Generally, after about 6 weeks these symptoms subside, although an ex smoker may still possess a desire to smoke 6 months or even a year after quitting.

When inhaled through cigarette smoking, nicotine is rapidly absorbed into the lungs and enters the blood vessels that are contained in the tissue that line the lungs. From these tiny blood vessels, the nicotine enters the bloodstream and travels directly to the brain. This powerful drug reaches the brain within ten seconds and produces immediate feelings of pleasure or euphoria, amongst other stimulating effects.

Nicotine does not stay in the body for very long and is quickly broken down by various enzymes and chemical reactions. It has a half-life of around 40 minutes, which means that after this amount of time the nicotine loses half of its effect and the smoker will soon feel the need to light up another cigarette.

When you exercise, you actually metabolise the nicotine in your body faster. This means that the level of nicotine in the body and in the brain decreases more quickly. Once the nicotine is metabolised, the body usually rids itself of the drug and the smoker must therefore smoke another cigarette in order to get the levels back up to a satisfying measure.

Some people possess an enzyme in their body that is not as effective as other people’s in breaking down and metabolising the nicotine. As a result the nicotine stays in their brain and bloodstream for longer, meaning that they will smoke less, as the high levels of nicotine needed to give them pleasure are maintained in the body for much longer.

It has been discovered through scientific studies that nicotine increases the levels of dopamine in a smoker’s brain.

Dopamine is linked to the pleasure and reward system of the brain and it releases feelings of enjoyment, as well as motivating a person to repeat certain rewarding activities that are usually vital for the body to survive, such as eating when you are hungry.

Smokers possess 40% less of a crucial enzyme in the brain that breaks down dopamine than non-smokers. As dopamine is not broken down as efficiently in smokers and the pleasurable effects are maintained and due to the release of extra dopamine through the nicotine, the brain therefore tries to reward the behaviour that has produced the increased amounts of dopamine. That behaviour or activity must also be maintained if the levels of dopamine and feelings of pleasure are to be sustained.

This is why smokers have a need to smoke more and try to maintain the levels of nicotine in the body. The absence of nicotine after a short period of time, can lead to intense physical and mental withdrawal symptoms, which are immediately relieved upon smoking another cigarette.

Over time, the body develops a tolerance to nicotine and its pleasurable effects begin to wear off after a while. For this reason the smoker gradually increases the number of cigarettes that he smokes in a day in order to maintain the same feelings of pleasure.

In summary, research has proven that nicotine is a highly addictive substance found in cigarettes, which causes chemical alterations in the brain that lead to a constant need for the drug.

Thus, the reason that so many people continue to smoke becomes somewhat clearer.

anyone tried this?

http://www.smokefreechoice.com/

sounds like it would suit me on my long haul flight coming up.