=Towards Living a Healthier Life=

OK, just as I promised in my earlier post "quit smoking by christmast will you be the one?"  Today I will continue to the next step of quitting smoking by christmas time.  Now, if you follow the step I mentioned earlier, then your empty cigarette pack would’ve been full with money by now.  So you are ready to follow these steps below:

After that, you can do one of the following action:

SO quit smoking will not take some joy out of your life.  In fact, quit smoking will bring more joy in to your life.  Of course christmas is not the only event you can use to help you to quit smoking.  Think of any special moment you’ll have in the future.  Make it a motivation for your quit smoking program.  By the end of your program, count how many smile, thanks, hugs,kisses, and joy you get and remember you could’ve trade them all with ashes whenever you are smoking.

Say NO to SMOKING,

Merry christmas every one!

I’ve stated about the smoking stages and give a little explanation on each stages in my earlier post.  Now I would like to explain it in a "story mode" so it would be easier for us to understand about the smoking stages. 

AS a start I would like to introduce my friend, his name is "CIGAR" (heck I don’t know why his parents give him that name ).  He’s 15 years old, he’s not smoking, he doesn’t even know what smoking is.

One day while doing his homework in his room, Cig heard a words "smoking" from the radio.  He stopped his homework and listen more carefully to the radio.   He is very interested with this new word.  He have heard it several times before.  Then he starts to ask to him self what is smoking? is it has something to do with smoke?is it means making smoke or playing with smoke?  So our friend cigar here has entered the first stage of smoking called "Precontemplation".

The next day cigar decided to ask his brother To about what is smoking.  He went up to his brother room and ask " To, what is smoking?".  With a smile o his face To look at his little brother and said "DO you really want to know Cig?".  "Yes!" Cig reply quickly.  Then To took a little box fill with some small stick from his pocket and pull out one of that small stick.  "Okay Cig, this a cigarette" said To, and then he use a matches to burn one end of the stick and put the other end to his lip.  He breathed deeply through his mouth and exhaled some amount of smoke after.  "This is smoking" he said to his brother.  "Hey! I’ve seen that before" said Cig, "dad’s usually do that. My friend Nico do that too.." "wow, I never knew it was smoking, thanks TO".  Then Cig went back to his room, very pleased that now he knew what smoking is.  Never realize that he already step his foot to the next step of smoking, "Contemplation" stage.

                                                               >>>>> to be continued

Breaking news everyone! DO you believe it, W.Bush was thrown with a pair of shoes by an iraqi local reporters.  Although none of the shoes are actually hit him, yet it is such a big insult for W.Bush.  Well, the president of a great and powerful country, strictly guarded and protected, then a pair of shoes flying away freely to his head. I got nothing else to say about it.  Here’s some picture of the incident.  

(Thesun.co.uk)

I found some interesting ads regarding quit smoking in the web.  Have a look and tell me what you think about it.

"smoking or breathing, no a hard choice right"

Smoking affect your respiratory system.  What you get from smoking is a destruction of your breathing apparatus.  It’ll make you hard to breath, it’ll make other people around you hard to breath.  So isn’t it worth to trade all those cigarette with a chance of a free and healthy breathing in the rest of your life.

"Too much smoke will kill you"

With all your money you buy those poisonous bullet and pointed it right to your own lung.

"Don’t wait for cold turkey"

The best way to quit smoking is doing it cold turkey. Period!

Just for reminder about the chemicals contained within a cigarette.  Take a careful look to every chemicals shown in the picture.  You’ll see where else you could find the similar chemicals.  Toilet cleaner,car exhaust, nail varnish remover, batteries, and even rat poison.  So do you see anything that might bring any good to you in that cigrette? If not, why should people keep smoking then?

Say NO to SMOKING !

It’s all starts from each and everyone of us, it’s all start now.

Just like any other habitual action, people go through a series of stages before finally become a smoking person.  It’s interesting thing to learn since each stage is influenced by different factors.  So each stage will require different preventive action to be applied to stop it.  Bear in mind that this is not a one way process but rather the stages are fluid and may reverse and restart several time.

Precontemplation - At this stage a person is not yet smoking.  They don’t even now what smoking is, yet they start to receive massage about it.  This massage can come from many source such as TV, role model, other people, advertisement, and films.

Contemplation - This is the stage where a person already receive enoguh message about smoking and start to receive images and peer influence.  The curiosity and consideration to try smoking is build up at this stage.

Initiation - This is the time when a person does actually smoking.  Many people who was in this stage does not become a regular smoker though those who continue to the next stage and become a regular smoking person  is also in a considerable amount.  Friends are usually the strongest influence in this stage.

Experimentation - Without any counter massage and influence in the initiation stage, people will come into the experimentation stage.  In this stage people will try a serial attempt of smoking. Addiction usually starts in this stage since there’ll be enough nicotine from a series of smoking to start an addiction.  At this stage, peer-bonding is still the strongest influence.

Regular smoking - At this stage smoking has already had enough efficacy to keep people smoking in a regular basis. People will start to have self perception about smoking.  They start to believe that smoking did bring benefits to them.  Societal factors including price and availability, and interpersonal factors such as school policy, will provide a background.

Maintenance - This is the continuation of regular smoking.  In this stage all the self perception about smoking that develop in the regular smoking stage will become a delusion/strong belief.  I mean in this stage smoking person is totally convince that smoking is beneficial to them, and this belief will be hard to break. This is the stage where we will hear smoking person says "smoking makes me vigor", "I can’t concentrate without smoking", "I can’t work without smoking", or "I need smoking to relieve my stress" and many other things like that.

Quitting - Occurs when there’s counter massage to smoking that hardly drive a person’s perception about smoking to a different direction. Also when there are change in situation that restrict the possibility of a smoking person to smoke.  For example a new non-smoking partner, steep price of cigarettes, decreases in spending money, suffered from a disease that is said to be caused by smoking, and beginning to work or study where smoking is strictly prohibited can all trigger a decision to stop smoking.

The higher the stages someone has already in to, the higher the effort and the cost needed to stop the smoking habit.  Also the greater the damage a person would already being suffered because of smoking.  So doing a preventove measure as early as possible is an important way to fight smoking.  It’s not only mean lessening the cost and the effort, but also minimizing the possible damage caused by smoking.

Some quit smoking sites recommend that meditation is an effective way to help people quit smoking.  It is said that meditation will help us to control our mind, thus helping you to fight the temptation of smoking.  I personally agree with this method, since quit smoking is truly are a matter of mind controlling. 

It’s usual for people to feel very sick, helpless, weak, lack of energy, or out of concentration whenever he/she tried to quit from smoking.  These feelings will start to arise at the exact time someone start to quit smoking and keep echoing within his/her mind days after the effort to quit is start.  Those feeling will getting much stronger each and everyday until it reaches the point that makes the person think that they do need to smoke and sure that they can do nothing without it.   That’s why many quit smoking wannabe person giving up their effort.  Meditation does something you have to consider to solve this problem.

The key is to get your mind controlled and turn off all the "false alarm" arise by your mind.  See all that feeling of sick, helpless,lack of energy, and out of concentration are not a true "feeling".  It’s just your thought, yet it is strong enough to make your brain  think that you really feel it in your body. Just like people who suffer from psychosomatic syndrome, they feel sick (although there’s totally nothing wrong with their body) because they keep thinking that they are sick.  So when a quit smoking person feels those feeling of weaknesses, sickness, or hard to concentrate, actually there’s nothing wrong with his/her body.  All parts of their body system are working as much as when they are smoking.

Meditation work out to free yourselves from those thought.  By meditating you will be guided to think clearly an to feel your body in it’s true state.  It will make you realize that actually your body is running just as normal as before.  This way your brain will be protected from all of those "false alarm" that come from your mind.

Interesting article:

Meditation to help quit smoking

A meditation to help you quit smoking 

I would like to give reasons for those who wants to quit smoking.  You see, whenever a smoker try to quit smoking usually they will have hundreds of reason to stop their effort.  While in the same time they would seem to be lacking of reasons to keep going on.  The reasons that I’m going to write here are just the thing that I could think of.  Whenever you have another idea, then feel free to say it in the comment area.  The more reason we can get, the more help we can give. 

I.  Why should I quit smoking: For smoking parents

• Because I love my children.  Smoking associated with learning difficulties, behavioral problems, and language impairment in the children with smoking parent.  Smoking also associated with increase risk of having lower respiratory tract illnesses such as bronchitis and pneumonia in children. 
• I don’t want to see a future smoker.  What would be a better learning method other than setting example.  You are a role figure for your children. If you smoke in front of your children, then  don’t be surprised when one day they smoke in front of their children too.
• I want to give a present to my children.  How much money do you spend for smoking in a month? $8, $10,$15, $20? Wouldn’t it be great if you swap all those cigarette with a surprise gift for your children every end of the month?
• My angels love chocolate.  You’d be surprised to know how much chocolate candy you can afford with all of the cigarette you smoke.
• Ow! they love ice cream too…….
• Hmm..how about hamburgers, pizza, french fries, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese…oh my god,they sure eat a lot
• (…..you can add yours….)

           (picture from other source)

I got this really cool award from Aybi
Now I want to give it to you too.  Since I’m trying to turn my blog to become a health related blogs, Then I will give this only to a health related blogs.
The Rules of this award:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

I nominate the following blogs. You gotta check out their blogs. They are informative and interesting health related blog.  You’ll surely find many useful information there. cheers!

010081 of dermatalk
dratiffarid of Health by dratiffarid
Summerjasmine of life with my pet back
Bryan moris 123of allergy & asthma relief guidelines

aftercancer of after cancer,now what
Kaguvkov of health zone
kab625 of grab some health news
realwealth of health and fitness
healthdomain of acne cure secret
coatlicue of Raw fitness online

We’ve all know that hand washing is an effective and easy to apply technique that can prevent the spread of communicable disease.  Now let’s see when should we actually wash our hands.

According to Rhode Island Health Department, which adapted it from Massachusetts Department of health, there are several occasion where we must wash our hands.  Those occasions are:

As a blogger, I want to add one more thing to the list myself.  Please wash your hands before and after you blogging.  You see, your keyboard or mouse is a potential place for germs to hide. It’s not a common thing for someone  who uses computer to clean the keyboard/mouse after using it.  So everytime you made a contact with the keyboard/mouse, you can transfer germs from your hands to the keyboard or have the germs transferred into your hands.  Even worse if you are a blogger that do not use your own/personal computer, then there might be a chance for you to get germs from other people hands.

Handwashing is a single most effective way to prevent communicable disease.  So do it!

Related articles within the blog:

Washing hands, why not? 

Have you wash your hands properly? 

Happy handwashing time