Infertility And Smoking - Is Smoking And Infertility Just A Scare Tactic?

Posted on June 22, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

Conception is such a delicate process that making sure “all your ducks are in a row” is vital when trying for a baby. What this means is cutting out risk factors which may hamper the process.

The issue of smoking and fertility doesn’t seem to be as well promoted as perhaps infertility and alcohol but studies have shown that smoking can affect conception in several ways.

The thing to remember always when your dealing with infertility issues is that it may not be a collection of causes which may be the issue but something more individual.

That’s why when infertility is first suspected people are often told to keep a positive mind because more often than not, the cause can be pinpointed in time and conception can become a reality.

So smoking and infertility could be one of those single causes which could be “upsetting the entire applecart.” If you and your partner smoke then definitely consider putting cigarettes “on the backburner” at least.

How Smoking Can Affect Fertility

So how can smoking affect the reproductive system? It’s not a mystery that tobacco contains several substances which can be considered toxic. Studies conducted on smoking and fertility have found several vital factors including:

- Smoking could affect how the egg matures, ovulation rates and the fertilization rates
- There could also be issues surrounding chromosomal abnormalities in the eggs exposed to nicotine.

- Egg quality could also be an issue and studies have shown in many instances, overall quality and number of eggs are reduced in the women who are smokers.

- When it comes to smoking and infertility, there are numbers of follicles reduced for vitro fertilization and there are fewer eggs retrieved in this process.

- And there is also the issue of a low rate of egg fertilization in treatments with the chance of an increased possibility of miscarriage.

Can Smoking Affect Male Fertility?

It’s also been established that smoking can contribute to male infertility issues. Studies are still a little unclear how smoking affects sperm count but studies have shown that sperm count is usually lower in smokers and there is an increased chance of abnormality.

There isn’t enough evidence supporting second hand smoke and tests are still being done in this area. There also isn’t enough evidence to prove any theories on what happens to an embryo when it ingests second hand smoke.

However, if you can have complications from first hand smoke, you can assume second hand smoke will not be much better. This information should help you to make better decisions about smoking because now you know how smoking and fertility can work together.

In the end, it all depends how serious you and your partner are about conception. While smoking may not be the only issue which can affect fertility it can certainly hamper conception.

When it comes to infertility, having all your bases covered means eliminating all the risk factors and if you and your partner indulge in cigarettes then consider giving them up.

Enroll In Hypnotherapy Home Study Course Online

Posted on June 5, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | 2 Comments

With the advent of the Internet technology, anyone can learn hypnosis free. By making use of online programs, you can enroll to hypnotherapy home study course offered by various websites. There are no restrictions to learning this kind of procedure and the more advantage is, you can learn hypnosis just at your home-of course, if you have Internet connections. Thus, this is a good opportunity for those who want to learn hypnosis but could not afford to enroll outside because of their home tasks. You may find hypnotherapy home study course is a thing that you want to do for yourself.

What Is Your View Could We Stop Smoking Bans In Large Airports

Posted on May 26, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

I know that this idea may be seen as controversial by many people and I await the day that each and every smoker would stop smoking but please hear me out. A couple of weeks ago I was transferring thru London Heathrow International, but I was forced to wait for one night and had to take a hotel for the night. I saw a few cigarette smokers in an outdoor smoking area and being in no hurry to grab a shuttle going to my hotel I thought I may as well ask each of them their stance on smoking laws in airports. The answers provided were surprising plus well thought out.

Each and every one of them stated they saw no problem with the non-smoking laws in their everyday lives, want to quit smoking and see no trouble with stepping out for a smoke at restaurants, bars, or at work, and so on. However something they do take issue with is that there are no facilities in the secure areas at international airports and I started to see their point.

I was advised by most to consider the fact that may possibly been on a long distance flight and then transferring to another plane. Thus if they wished to going out to have a cigarette they were faced with quite a difficulty. First thing leave the departure and arrival gate area as well as they may be required to pass through border control. Then a smoking area needs to be found. Then after finishing their cigarette they need to face airport security and if going international again another round at passport and border control, all the while lugging their cabin baggage with them.

So that got me thinking, why isn’t there an area for smokers in the departure lounge like there were before? There are and were some excellent examples to look at which had well designed ventilation along with a system producing negative air pressure. These systems worked so well that you had to almost be sitting on top of them to take note of the smell of smoke. Or better yet would be to design an outdoor smoking area. Once I transferred through Miami International I saw quite an interesting place to have a smoke in the area past security. It was a little courtyard outside yet still within the secure area of the terminal. Thus couldn’t we make something similar or an outdoor balcony?

Since airports are a different situation and totally unlike run-of the mill, daily life isn’t it possible for us to give the cigarette addicts a little leeway? What do you think, should we quit smoking restrictions in large airports.

Uncover Quit Smoking Aids

Posted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

Nicotine addiction is a reality for tens of thousands of people in our country and in the world. Smoking cessation programs are abundant and exist to help the smoker to quit successfully in a reasonable amount of time, and offer support and advice when it gets tough. It’s so easy to start, but not easy to stop smoking. Most smokers stop more than once before they are finally able to quit for good. They try different good ways to stop smoking until they find one that works for them. It also depends a lot on the length of time the person has been smoking and how motivated they are to quit. Some smokers may find themselves diagnosed with a chronic or deadly disease, like emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or even lung cancer. You would think this would motivate people to quit immediately ‘cold turkey’ but sometimes it just isn’t enough. Smoking is so highly addictive that people choose to feed their nicotine addiction before they address their medical issues.

There are quite a few good ways to stop smoking available to those who want to stop smoking. A health care professional should be consulted first for advice regarding which programs on quitting smoking, or combination thereof, would be most beneficial. If a smoker has enough motivation and support from family and friends to do it on his or her own, then nicotine gum, patches, or pills could be tested at first. Many people choose to join stop smoking programs such as Nicotine Anonymous, which is based on the traditional 12-step philosophy. There is also private and group counseling available to people who need more intensive support. A number of online stop smoking program options are also available consisting of therapy and support forums, herbal supplements, pills, and other things. Be sure to research these stop smoking programs well before you spend a lot of money on something that just isn’t going to work for you.

Whatever programs on quitting smoking you choose can only be as effective as your desire to quit. Without motivation to change your habits and lifestyle, your efforts will be for naught. Plan a stop smoking program ahead of time. Pick a date to quit and get your support system in place. Plan ahead just how you are going to deal with temptation in social settings and times of stress, since this is probably when you have the greatest desire to smoke. A stop smoking program can be very successful if it is planned and adhered to by the person who wants to quit. Mind over matter, right? Next time, maybe go for a brisk walk or call a friend instead of lighting up. Your lungs will thank you. Good Luck!!

Using Self Hypnosis To Quit Smoking

Posted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

Since immemorial time, you have encouraged, urged, and supported a loved one in his desire in quitting smoking. His lungs are almost ready to collapse from being exposed to nicotine for many years. The doctor says there is now a hair line between him and lung cancer.

So you gather up all your ways to help him get off the stick. You almost drained your monies just by trying the various methods, but to no achieve. Well, did you know that you can utilize self hypnosis to stop smoking Yes, hypnotherapy is more widely utilized than most us think. If you are struggling to fight an addiction, try hypnotherapy - you may well achieve a surprising positive result.

Quitting Smoking Again – Week 16: Am I There Yet?

Posted on February 15, 2008
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

Just a brief update for those following along with me on this stopping smoking journey. It’s been 4 months without a cigarette and I remain certain I’ll continue to be a non-smoker. I can honestly say that not only don’t I want to smoke, but I no longer feel the need.

Surprising perhaps, at least to me, is I haven’t used this space to vent during the process, but I can’t say there have been any really, really bad days. There have been a few that were very hard, but nowhere near insurmountable. Change of venue often helped – i.e. I would just do something other than whatever I happened to be doing at the time.

quit smoking journey No doubt success in quitting this time is partly due to the learning experiences of all my previous failures. One of the classic ruses a smoker will use to give themselves permission to start smoking again, is to get someone to tell them to. That way they don’t “fail” at quitting.

Lots of times smokers don’t even realize they’re doing this. The way it works is we (the one trying to quit smoking), being a bit edgy or anxious anyway, start getting short with people, begin provoking arguments, and finally become confrontational over something silly.

That process will eventually get all the participants worked up into a good “mad” generating all sorts of emotional and verbal hostility. With that combination of short tempers, and frayed nerves, sooner or later someone will say something along the lines of, “I liked you better when you were smoking, I wish you’d go have a cigarette”.

Bingo! We’ve been forced into smoking again, because even quitting smoking isn’t worth the price of damaged relationships. This is especially true when it’s friends and family were sparring with.

The rationale taking place in the mind of the smoker is that they didn’t give in, but rather circumstances conspired against him or her and for the “good” of all concerned, they had to smoke.

Things like this no doubt sound absurd to anyone who hasn’t tried to quit, or been close to someone who has. But it’s a real trap the “quitting” smoker can fall into, and just one of a zillion reasons folks who desperately want to stop smoking will fail. continue reading….

Quitting Smoking Again – Week 10: A New Year

Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under Healthy Living, Humor, Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

What’s really cool at this new year is I’ve now got about 10 weeks – 2 ½ months worth of success behind my goal of being a non-smoker by 2008. I can’t say my New Years resolution was to quit smoking, but having blown that resolution so many times before, I’m definitely feeling good at having finally succeeded.

I’m also feeling really good physically. My energy level is way higher, and the chest pains and tightness seem to be a thing of the past. It’s been at least a month since I felt any.

quit smoking At this point I’ve got every expectation of remaining a non-smoker for life. That may sound over-confident after just 10 weeks, but another significant milestone is that I really don’t think about “not smoking” that much anymore.

Oh sure once in a while, but mostly not. And yes I will on occasion be edgy or even irritable, but those times are fewer and less pronounced. Again, my family has been great and most supportive. They’ve figured out what “irrational irritability” looks like and pretty much just ignore me when it happens.

And that’s a good thing – actually the best thing to do with anyone quitting smoking is to be outwardly supportive, but mostly ignore them. When I first quit, these times would happen maybe every other day on average, and now it’s like every other week. They’re always short-lived, and nothing serious, just weird.

On a more philosophical note, I’ve started to wonder if smokers are really just closet grouches who’ve hidden the fact by staying sedated with nicotine. Having smoked since my teens, it’s near impossible to know what’s normal, but I suspect maybe I’ve always been grouchy, and never really knew just how much.

Of course everyone appears grouchy when they quit smoking, it’s a well-documented fact. But suppose that all us smokers are really just curmudgeons who’ve been sedated all this time. Now when we quit, the world will see the real us.

Hmmm….

Next quit smoking post: Week 16
Previous quit smoking post: Week 6

Quitting Smoking Again – Week 6: Getting Cocky

Posted on December 7, 2007
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking | Leave a Comment

The interesting thing now is that I really don’t think about “not smoking” all that much. In fact somewhere around a month in I noticed that smoking isn’t all consuming anymore. I don’t mean quitting has been agonizing or hard, in fact quite the contrary.

One of the things I did was change focus from that of previous attempts. It’s hard to just “quit” anything because quitting leaves a void. It’s easier to “do” something. So instead of “quitting smoking” I reverse the thinking into positive things, like “I’m going to get healthier”, or “saving money”, or even better, “I’m going to breathe deeply again”.

By the way, this was one of the areas covered in the book I mentioned before - The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. Again I have to admit to being skeptical when first seeing it, but having actually made it for 6 weeks thus far, I feel pretty good about recommending it to anyone really wanting some help in quitting.

It’s one of the best stop smoking resources I’ve seen because it teaches that quitting successfully starts and finishes in the mind. The physical part of smoking, including the addiction to nicotine is not where the real difficulty lies in quitting.

I titled this post “getting cocky” because I’m sort of at that point where I’m confident I won’t start smoking again. But as I said before, I’ve quit many times, and one thing that happens is all of a sudden you realize, hey, I did it! At that point is the very real danger of over-confidence.

You either make the mistake of thinking one smoke won’t hurt, or you think that having quit this time, it will be easy enough to do again. Having done both these, I can attest, it’s dangerous thinking. Cigarette smoking is basically drug addiction, and it will absolutely hook you again.

So although I’m feeling cocky, I also know the experience of playing with fire and getting burned every time. Having “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”, I’ll pass.

I’m also feeling a lot better, energy is coming back, and because I’ve got a lot of damage to undo, I’m staying focused. I actually felt a whole lot better after the first couple days being quit, and improvements seem to come in spurts.

Shortness of breath is the big thing. It’s not as pronounced, and I can overcome it even during exercise, but from talking with other long-time ex-smokers, I suspect it could take as much as a year to get to where I no longer ever notice any difficultly breathing.

Next quit smoking post: Week 10
Previous quit smoking post: Day 20

Quitting Smoking Again – Day 20: Making Money

Posted on November 15, 2007
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking, Saving Money | Leave a Comment

Pushing right up against the big 3 week hurdle – it happens tomorrow. According to many stop smoking programs, reaching this point is significant for all sorts of reasons. It’s like if you make it this far, there’s no turning back.

For me, it’s like every day is a milestone. For sure that’s the case during early days. Recalling past attempts, I can remember milestones at the 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, 21, and 30 day, plus the 2, 3, and 6 month points.

The reality is that each day builds on the last, and what seems to happen is confidence increases each day. It’s sort of a double whammy, where in addition to gaining a days confidence, there’s also another days distance from that last smoke which associates a greater sense of failure with the idea of giving in.

stop smoking Something I reminded myself of again was the money-saving aspect of quitting. With the ever-increasing “sin” taxes assessed on things like cigarettes, it’s getting considerably more expensive to indulge the habit.

At an average of a pack a day, at approximately $4 per pack, I was spending around $1460 per year for the privilege of killing myself. Well now that $1460 is “found” money. It’s like getting a pay raise because at the end of the day, it’s not how much you make, but how much you keep.

The icing on the cake is I will not smoke 7,300 cigarettes next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that, and…..

Something not so fun to calculate was that during my lifetime, I’ve already smoked nearly 300,000 cigarettes. And I did it one cigarette at a time.

For me, a big part of quitting is reversing that – by not smoking one at a time. Every day I don’t smoke, I don’t smoke about 20 cigarettes.

If you read my first post about this quit smoking journey, you’ll note that the success I’m having so far, immediately followed a failed attempt 2 weeks earlier that lasted only a day and a half.

But for anyone trying to quit this habit, any start is a good start. The only way to fail for sure is to stop trying. The silver lining of those two weeks is that I smoked significantly less.

I actually tracked it by day during the first week and though I ended up back at a pack a day by week 2, I stayed between a quarter, to a half pack during week one.

In fact, instead of smoking 140 cigarettes during that week, I smoked about 50, which means I didn’t smoke 90. That’s 4 ½ packs, or to put a financial spin on it, a rough savings of $18.

That may not sound like much, but that “failed” attempt curtailed the habit by almost two-thirds. I keep reminding myself, I didn’t smoke 300,000 cigarettes all at once, but one at a time.

Next quit smoking post: Week 6
Previous quit smoking post: Day 6

Quitting Smoking Again – Day 6: On my own

Posted on November 1, 2007
Filed Under Faith, Healthy Living, Quit Smoking | 1 Comment

Okay it’s almost been a week. I can’t say I don’t think about having a smoke, because truth is I think of it a lot. But I believe that’s because its been such an ingrained part of life for so long, that it’s going to take quite some time before it starts receding in conscious thought.

However, it’s interesting that even though I think a lot about smoking, I don’t feel driven to fall off the wagon. Days 3 and 4 were the hardest so far – nothing insurmountable, but did feel a pang or two that a smoke sure would’ve cured fast.

quit smoking There’s been a few times where I found it useful to pull out the book again and re-read certain parts. Have to admit that changing your thinking makes a significant difference. Smoking really is a weird kind of addiction where it’s the mental, not the physical that turns out to be where the battle plays out.

By the way, for those who may be interested, I’m not using any “stop smoking aids”, but it seemed to only make sense to get as much going for me as possible. Since it worked so well that one time in the past, I have definitely kept praying for any divine help along the way.

It’s sort of funny, but this time I get the sense I’m on my own in that regard. What I mean is it’s like the good Lord’s saying “I made it too easy that time – you successfully quit, but chose to start again”. Must admit He’s right. This time I get the sense He’s there and supportive, but I’ve got to do the work.

Admittedly, there’s a lot of truth to the saying that “we often don’t appreciate what comes too easy”.

Next goal is the 3 week mark – that’s supposed to be a significant one.

Next quit smoking post: Day 20
Previous quit smoking post: Day 1

keep looking »