KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
On a quest to arrest COPD, the nation’s No. 3 mass murderer, we should as a community have zero tolerance for underage vaping.
Don’t get fooled again by smoke and mirrors: Vaping* and smoking e-cigs that vaporize liquid containing nicotine are still smoking. They’re as dangerous as smoking tobacco. You could still wind up in later years with COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
COPD used to be called emphysema. Sufferers gasp for breath because their lungs won’t fill – they’re too damaged by years of tobacco smoking, and too damaged to absorb the proper amount of oxygen into the bloodstream. Eventually, COPD can be fatal.
In fact, most people aren’t aware that COPD is the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S. country.
And there’s no cure.
But COPD is 90 percent avoidable, because it’s usually self-inflicted.
According to the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC), smoking is linked to the TOP FOUR KILLER DISEASES**:
- Heart disease – increased by smoking
- Cancer – increased by smoking
- COPD – 90 percent CAUSED by smoking
- Stroke – increased by smoking
So you can dramatically reduce your risk for the top four killer diseases simply — by not smoking.
COPD No Way To Die
When I was much younger, I smoked cigarettes. We all knew smoking was bad even then. My father used to warn me about smoking, but he didn’t quit until it was too late. He died from complications of COPD.
RELATED: Read more Dr. Polucki Family Health Hour news articles on KHTS’s website
It’s one thing to know something might hurt you in the abstract, the distant, unimaginable future. But it’s quite a different experience to have it happen to you in right now.
I watched my dad lose his immune system because of the steroid inhaler that allowed him to breathe. I saw him fight for every breath, bedridden the last few years of his life, and then watched his legs turn black…I felt horrible because there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could only to try and make him as comfortable as possible.
There’s no way to sugar-coat it: COPD is an ugly way to die. I’m not trying to freak you out. I just don’t wish what my dad went through — and what I went through with him because of it — on anyone. Why would anyone want to bring that pain and suffering on themselves and their loved ones by smoking?
So I quit smoking, and if I can, anyone can. I’ve found many other natural, much better ways to deal with stress than smoking.
I’ve outlined a breathing exercise that really helped me destroy my smoking addiction and boost my energy.
Since I quit smoking I’ve also made it part of my practice to discourage my patients from smoking, and encourage those who do smoke to quit.
When they finally stop with the excuses and actually quit smoking, their overall health improves, just like mine did. They can taste their food again, and their clothing doesn’t reek of tobacco. And they don’t get sick as often. They save money – a smoking habit is expensive aside from being gross.
Vaping Pens, eCigarettes & Minors
The long road to COPD starts early. It can take a few decades or more to present itself and become debilitating. Young people think of it as a problem old people have, without really understanding they’re going to have old people problems someday. Why worry now?
(There’s the famous quote by a certain crazy rock ‘n’ roll star who’s amazingly outlived most of his peers, but barely: “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”)
Somebody has to worry now. A lot of these new vaping products are accessible to people younger than 18, some of whom may be under the mistaken impression that they’re safer than cigarettes.
But those devices are still about smoking and addictive substances. So if you have kids, you must see vaping as smoking, and just as bad, because it is, and tell them.
At just about any local convenience store, have you seen all the different sizes and flavors of cigarettes, cigars, e-cigs, vaping liquids and other accessories at point-of-purchase and behind the counter?
With colorful packaging, candy flavors, cool-looking vaping pens and gadgets, and no age restrictions, who do you think makers of vape pens and e-cigs are marketing to?
Big Tobacco manufacturers and marketers have long targeted young people who want to seem more mature. Get them hooked while they’re young and impressionable. By the time they wise up, they’re addicted – repeat customers for life.
It’s a true scenario we saw play out in the “Mad Men” series set in the 1960s – when cigarettes were still routinely sold to minors at convenience stores.
Government regulations about advertising tobacco finally established back then (after years of push-back from Big Tobacco and its lobbyists) don’t allow targeting minors directly. But 18-24-year-old have been fair game. That’s Big Tobacco’s prime target demographic for half a century.
Younger kids tend to emulate young adults that age. Some of them think still smoking is cool. So the influence on minors filters down, pardon the expression, into the middle school and even upper elementary school ages.
Talk with your kids. Are they aware they’re being targeted directly or indirectly by the makers and marketers of these deadly products? Do they find them attractive?
What do they learn in their health classes about it? What do they think when they see their friends smoking or vaping? Or see those big roadside billboards for chewing tobacco (now marketed as “smokeless tobacco”)? Or when they see a middle-aged or older person out in public dragging around a portable oxygen tank? Do they understand it’s because the person has COPD, and make a bad choice years ago that put them in that condition?
The best way to avoid addiction is to not get started. Personally, I believe in zero tolerance for underage vaping, and I hope parents in your community will join every effort to talk to their kids and warn them of the dangers before they get started.
Get more smoking facts HERE.
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*U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
**Death data 2010, for the U.S. is available from the CDC
About Santa Clarita Chiropractor Dr. Thomas Polucki
Dr. Thomas Polucki is a Board Certified Doctor of Chiropractic, Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, Certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Certified Metabolic Typing Advisor and Certified Upper Cervical Chiropractor.
Dr. Polucki provides Functional Medicine services in most cities via remote labs and Internet consultations. He sees patients by appointment at 25050 Peachland Ave., Suite 105, Newhall, Calif., 91321. Visit http://www.drpolucki.com for more information or call 661-753-9340 to schedule an appointment.
Dr. Polucki also hosts the “Dr. Polucki Family Health Hour” on AM 1220 KHTS radio in Santa Clarita
Mondays from 11 a.m. to noon. Click here to listen to the podcasts.
The information in this article is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease.
I was curious if you could cite the studies and your research for the statements you are making in this article. My condolences to you and your father. But i would prefer to have all of the information to rely on. I understand that vaping is a new wave of nicotine delivery and much is still unknown. I just feel that the last paragraph of this was a sales pitch cloaked by the emotional content proceeding you free consult survey statement. Thanks
“They’re as dangerous as smoking tobacco. You could still wind up in later years with COPD”
If you’re going to make such bold, unproven, outrageous claims as that, state them as fact, and bold them, you could at least provide a source to the research used to arrive at your conclusion.
I assume you didn’t due to the fact that that hasn’t actually been proven, and you’re likely going to contribute to a smoker continuing to smoke issuing such lies like that. As a doctor, you have sworn to do no harm. Looks like you’re risking breaking that oath with your guesswork and assumptions. That’s pretty dangerous, and you may have some blood on your hands. I suggest editing this piece by wither correcting it or providing some peer reviewed evidence supporting your claims.
“I was last, in my class. Barely passed, at the institute. Now I’m trying to avoid, yeah I’m trying to avoid, a malpractice suit….. Like a surgeon, cutting for the very first time.” – Weird Al Yankovic
I can’t say this any more politely: you are LYING through your teeth.
And any smokers that believe you, and keep smoking, will be squarely on YOUR head.
Their have been several studies proving that vaping is far healthier than cigarettes. I do not see any studies or proof in your article that validates your OPINION. A sob story and telling people they’re going to die is not proof.
First off, zero facts about vaping were stated… No research cited. Second, the “Doctor” IS A CHIROPRACTOR!!! Hahaha. All credibility lost… Well if he had any to begin with. Also no one even listens to AM radio anymore except for seniors and people that listen to sports games. The only reason this article has any comments is because the vaping community posted it up to show what utter nonsense is being spouted about vaping.
I think all of us vapers know that breathing nothing but perfectly clean,pure fresh air is the healthiest option. Just as we all know drinking pure unadulterated fresh water and eating fresh, raw untouched by chemicals food is best
The reality is, we have taken steps to make sure that what we inhale it as safe as possible – save way folks use the safest ways possible to ingest their caffeine and daisy nutrients.
Don’t be a fool and make unsupported sweeping statements. Take a reality check
A CHIROPRACTOR!!!! You are NOT an MD! You have NO business making these claims, especially when current research shows them to be LIES.
Airway obstruction in never smokers: results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. BR Celli, RJ Halbert, RJ Nordyke, B Schau. Am J Med 2005 Dec;118(12):1364-1372. “Never smokers represented 42% of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey population aged 30 to 80 years, with obstruction prevalence of 91 per 1000. Never smokers accounted for 4.56 million cases of obstruction, or 23% of the total burden.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16378780
And those CD4+ CD28null T cells that the quacks pretend are caused by smoking, just happen to be absolutely specific for CMV infection. Nothing else causes them. They arise during primary infection, and are found only among the CMV+. Poorer people are more likely to get CMV and at younger ages, and smokers are more likely to be less wealthy, so that’s why smokers have more CMV and thus more COPD.
http://www.smokershistory.com/COPD.html
Vaping is not the same as smoking. You don’t get the carcinogens from the tar or through the fiberglass filters or from the carbon monoxide or formaldehyde or any of the numerous other chemicals associated with smoking a cigarette. You might as well be saying that drinking a can of soda is just as dangerous as smoking, because nicotine is a stimulant, just like caffeine. Know your facts and do the research before publishing an article and making yourself look like an idiot.
Im assuming, Mr. Author, that according to YOUR logic that hookah is bad for you too. Do you even DO any research before you spout off nonsense or is big tobacco paying you alot of money to try to sound intelligent? You have NO reputable sources and your article is a bunch of nonsense. Vaping is not smoking because the ONLY bad ingredient in it is the nicotine where as cigarrettes have at least a dozen or more. I can see from your article that you are unbelievably biased in your writing, so before you spout nonsense how about doing a little research first, hmm?
Your biggest lie is that smoking causes heart disease, which accounts for more supposed “smoking related” deaths than lung cancer. “Surprisingly, even though a majority of subjects with clinical CVD has at least one of the well-established risk factors, in relative terms, only a small fraction of CVD incidence (15−40%) appears to be explained by the conventional risk factors… [T]he most striking finding of Simanek et al.’s study is that the relatively modest OR of CVD associated with CMV infection translates into an estimate of the population attributable risk or attributable fraction of CVD of ∼ 40%… What is striking about this 40% attributable fraction estimate is the implication that eliminating CMV infection would prevent as many CVD cases as the complete removal of smoking and almost twice as many as the elimination of either hypercholesterolaemia or hypertension from the population.”
Commentary: Understanding the pathophysiology of poverty. FJ Nieto. Int J Epidemiol 2009 Jun;38(3):787-790.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/3/787.long
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/3/775.full
Poor people are more likely to be exposed to CMV, and at younger ages, and smokers are more likely to be poorer people. So all those junk studies that ignore CMV are designed to cast false blame.
You, sir, are amazingly uninformed. I hope anyone who comes across this article takes the time to read the comments, and isn’t seared away from something that could save them or someone they love’s life. I’ll just leave you a link to a story about some actual scientific research that was recently released. This report directly disproves everything this quack says. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/raba-atr071415.php
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-14-18.pdf
If it weren’t for e cigarettes and vaping, I would still be a slave to a pack a day cigarette habit. I’ve been vaping for 3 years now and have not smoked a single cigarette since picking up an e cigarette kit. I started using a higher nicotine content liquid and gradually weaned myself off nicotine completely. I currently vape a 0% nicotine liquid and I feel great. I do not smell like stale cigarettes, my car and my home are not smelling like an ashtray anymore either.
I suggest anyone interested in fair information on e-cigarettes look elsewhere, since this chiropractor has no real knowledge on the subject.
You might start with Dr. Peter Hajek, who is an acknowledge expert on the subject, and says, “[Ecigs] pose very small or maybe no health risks.” Here is a short video of Hajek on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?index=32&list=PLA6of3BJ9kcxHW1QSJjvScPr1YibW8wXp&v=SVS0_BGHHjM&app=desktop
The disease profile for tobacco smoking is well recognized and new links being discovered everyday. With vaping, no long term studies are available. It will certainly have a unique disease profile which at this time cannot be compared to tobacco smoking, it may be worst, better or the same. Until vaping has been around for decades, we won’t know the long lasting effects so for right now e-cigarettes are an experiment you try on yourself. Better to stop using nicotine totally. http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-at-Quitting-Smoking/dp/0990862909
What a load of crock.. I’ve taken up cross country mountain biking since I started vaping something I could never have done when I was a smoker