Asthma Handbook

Active Smoking

Numerous studies have shown the deleterious affects of smoking. It kills thousands more people a year than road accidents and in this country alone accounts for some 100,000 premature deaths a year through lung and heart disease. There is no doubt that people with asthma are particularly sensitive to the air they breathe and the pollutants therein - yet we know that some 20 percent of asthma sufferers made.

Asthma is a condition that affects the air passages of the lungs. These airways narrow and become twitchy when an irritant is breathed in. Cigarette smoke is high on the list of irritants. Often the airways of a person with asthma vary daily, being narrow one day and normal the next. A smoker's airways suffer damage and these often remain narrow making the condition chronic - unless, of course, the smoker gives up the habit. The good news with smoking and asthma is that the situation is often reversible. Unfortunately, it can take up to 12 months before you see a really good improvement and the condition can seem to have got woese before it gets better.

According to the National Asthma Campaign: A study of teenagers with asthma who smoked cigarettes showed they had poorer asthma control and worse lung function by the time they reached their twenties and that their asthma had a tendency to persist. If you have asthma and you smoke, you are increasing the risk of an attack and may be permanently damaging your airways.

No one is suggesting that it is easy to give up smoking. If you smoke regularly you are likely to be dependent on, if not addicted to, cigarettes. People are dependent on cigarettes for a wide variety of reasons and some of these are linked quite deeply to emotional needs. This is why it is not particularly helpful to issue blanket statements on the best way of giving up smoking. Nicotine patches will work for some people but not others who may prefer to chew gum, see a hypnotherapist, take a course of acupuncture and so on. A good starting point would be to contact Quitline. They will try and find out what smoking means for you: how long you have smoked, how many cigarettes a day, what are the most important cigarettes of the day and so on. They will probably be interested in whether you have tried giving up before and what happened then. The point is that they try and build up a pattern of your smoking and with that help you to decide what is most likely to work for you. In addition, Quitline can put you in touch with individual counsellors and support groups throughout the country. They are available from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

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