Quitting Smoking

Quitting Smoking

QUITTING SMOKING

For years now, there has been a regular barrage

of documents, studies, and publications telling you not to smoke, especially if you have

diabetes. You know you should stop—but do you know why?

One of the complications of diabetes, especially

type 2, non-insulin-dependent diabetes, is circulatory damage: stiffening, constricting,

and blockage of small blood vessels. This can lead to all manner of problems, in the feet,

the eyes, the heart and elsewhere. But nicotine, the addictive narcotic active ingredient

in tobacco, also causes circulatory damage: stiffening, constricting, even blockage of

small blood vessels. The diabetic who smokes is more than doubling his odds of trouble,

just as the non-diabetic smoker is more than doubling the odds of developing diabetes.

Most smokers have already heard these statistics.

Some respond with "It'll never happen to me" (but it can and probably will) and

others declare, even believe, that the trauma of quitting would be worse for them than the

damage from continuing to smoke.

Smoking has been described as the number one

cause of preventable illness and death in the United States. If you have diabetes, it is

perhaps the number one bad lifestyle choice, with obesity and inactivity following close

behind.

The choice to "follow a healthy

lifestyle" cannot come from your doctor. No medication can take its place. The

decision has to be yours. If you smoke, the decision to stop is one of the most important

steps you can take. It can be very hard, very stressful, to "kick the habit,"

but the stresses of quitting do less harm than the stresses of continuing to smoke. Talk

to your doctor about quitting tobacco; there are many strategies, and a number of

pharmaceutical products, to help you quit.