Happy New Year everyone!
Hope 2015 brings health, happiness and peace to you.
New Year’s resolutions….yes, we all have them.
How many people try to quit smoking? I’m sure it’s up there with starting to exercise and eating better. The role of smoking in causing lung and cardiovascular (heart) disease is well known. In the next series of blogs, we will look at the effects of smoking on your oral health.
I’m not a smoker, so I don’t really know what the addiction is like. But I can imagine that it’s like any other addiction, i.e., overeating (binge), drugs, etc…
What I can appreciate however is that smoking like the other addictions mentioned, are just that…addictions: Behaviors that are not easy to get away from and are ways of coping with stresses and anxiety that arise in our day to day lives.
From what I hear, most people start smoking around the age of 14-15, some earlier, at a time where peer pressure is high.
When you’ve been smoking for decades, it can’t be easy to stop. The minute that one has a stressor in their life, they go straight for the cigarette…Let’s face it, as you get older, the stresses in life increase i.e., work, bills, children, interpersonal relationships, to name a few.
I know that it isn’t easy for one to quit smoking, so I try my best to be sensitive to this. I don’t go on campaigns or preach to people to stop smoking. I really try not to overdo it; smokers know what they need to do.
However, as a health professional I do have an obligation to advise people of the harmful effects that smoking can have on their oral health.
In the next blog, we’ll look at some alarming facts concerning smoking and your oral health…until then.
Dr. F. Keshavarz Dentistry
