Smoking: Good or Bad

Thought I would write some comments about smoking.

Both my parents smoked. My mom recently passed away at age 83. She had her mental faculties intact, but her body was unwilling to continue on. Mom began smoking at the age of 15. Up until recently, she smoked two packs a day, claiming that during the last three years of her life, she did not inhale.

My dad, started smoking at age 13 on the advice of his doctor (M.D.). My dad suffered from asthma and the doctor told him that smoking would help him to breathe better and have less asthma attacks. Apparently this worked for my dad, because he enlisted in WW2 and was stationed overseas for a few years.

The only time my dad had an asthma attack (during his time in the military) was when he was shipped back to the states. I wish that I had questioned him more thoroughly on his smoking, but in our conversations his asthma attacks only occurred when there was some type of acute emotional trauma. All I can say is that this does seem to be true, from our limited conversations.

But, there is a growing body of evidence that smoking, er...nicotine..., may be quite helpful to the human condition. Now I am in no way encouraging smoking, but you cannot wonder why there is such a concerted push to END smoking.

Personally, I think that all the additives that have been added to TOBACCO are the root cause of most of the illness caused from smoking. But, who am I, certainly I am no scientist. Just someone who logically can connect the dots.

If interested, you can read the following article, in part, which I read over here:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/138489-Brain+cells+work+differently+than+previously+thought%3A+Nicotine+helps+to+spark+creativity

Brain cells work differently than previously thought: Nicotine helps to spark creativity
University of California - Irvine
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:38 EDT

Scientists know that information travels between brain cells along hairlike extensions called axons. For the first time, researchers have found that axons don't just transmit information - they can turn the signal up or down with the right stimulation.

This finding may help scientists develop treatments for psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia in which it is thought that different parts of the brain do not communicate correctly with each other.

"Until now, scientists have thought that in the brain's cortex -- where most cognitive processes occur -- information was only processed in the cell body," said Raju Metherate, author of the study, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, and director of the Center for Hearing Research at UC Irvine. "The result of our study suggests that we must consider the axons as sites of information processing - and of potential problems when things go wrong."

This study appears online Aug. 19 in Nature Neuroscience.

Increasingly, studies are beginning to show that complex information processing, and perhaps consciousness itself, may result from coordinated activity among many parts of the brain connected by bundles of long axons. Cognitive problems may occur when these areas don't communicate properly with each other.

Cognitive function occurs when millions of brain cells communicate with each other at the same time. A brain cell has a network of branches called dendrites through which it receives and processes information from other cells. The body of the cell then relays the processed information along an axon to a terminal that links to another cell's dendrites. At the terminal, chemicals called neurotransmitters are released, allowing the information to enter the receiving cell. Until now, scientists believed axons were just the wires between point A and point B.
(...end snip...)

Not being a smoker myself, the article gives pause as to why the Government is demanding that no one smoke EVER. Kinda makes you think that eventually there will be no place where you can legally smoke ~ except in Congress ! !

But wait, there's another article with 'tons' of links about smoking and it's possible benefits with much more to research and read about. If you are a smoker, or think that smokers are getting a bum-rap, just follow your nose:

http://sott.net/articles/show/139304+Let%27s+All+Light+Up%21

~ The Mediator