Before I go further, I need to give some background information. Specifically to what a free radical is. Maybe you have or have not heard of a free radical, and I'm not going to go in depth here. Free radicals are all around us. They come from the food we eat and the air we breathe. Even exercise causes some free radicals.
So what is a free radical? Very simply, it is an electron within your body who has "gone rogue". Not to go to deep into "high school chemistry" with you, cells in your body are made up of neutrons, protons, and electrons. When a free radical is formed, it steals an electron from a healthy cell, thus making that cell "unstable" and creating other free radicals. And the process just cascades from there.
Sounds scary, but normally your body can handle this issue via anti-oxidants and the body's natural immune system. That's the good news. The bad news? It can't ALWAYS handle the issue.
The best example I've heard comes from Dr. Ray Strand. Imagine you have a fireplace with a nice rug in front of it. Normally, you would have some type of a screen on the fireplace to protect from embers being spit out from the fire. I remember as a kid watching my grandfathers fireplace and would love seeing the fire spit out embers...hearing that crackling sound. Luckily, there was a screen between the fire and myself.
Now, let's say you didn't have a screen in front of the fireplace...allowing the fire to spit out embers. Imagine those embers coming out of the fire and landing on your rug. One ember might cause a spot on the rug, but nothing major. However, over continued use more embers may hit on or near that spot on the rug. Eventually, that spot on the rug gets larger and larger. Well, the same thing happens in your body.
These free radicals are the embers of the fireplace. The screen would be the anti-oxidants and immune system in your body. But what happens if the screen breaks down? That rug starts to get burned. Perhaps the "rug" is affecting your cardiovascular system causing cardiovascular disease. Or maybe it is affecting your eyes causing macular degeneration.
In any case, sometimes it is necessary to repair that screen. Or sometimes, to put a screen up. And to do that, you need to increase your intake of anti-oxidants to combat the affect.
So what on EARTH does this have to do with cigarettes? Just this. 1 puff of a cigarette causes up to 1 quadrillion free radicals (Free Radical Study - Pg 877). 1 quadrillion. Is that even a number? Sounds like something you made up as a kid in grade school. A quadrillion comes right after a trillion. Look it up. But now that we've established that it is, in fact, a real number....just how BIG of a number is it? Put it this way. If you spent 1 Million dollars every DAY, every YEAR, from the year 0 until today (Monday, August 23,2010), you would have spent $733,520,000,000. Not even 1 trillion dollars.
Now, generally a person does not take 1 puff of a cigarette before tossing it away. Let's assume someone takes an average of 10 puffs before the cigarette is used up. So, let's spend $10 million dollars every day. That would get us up to over $7 trillion. We're STILL not even up to 1 quadrillion...the amount you get from just 1 puff.
Suffice to say, goal number 1 is to stop smoking if you are a smoker. Or if you know someone who is a smoker, share this article with them because odds are, they really don't know the full affect it is having on their body. And goal number 2 is to start taking a high-quality anti-oxidant to help combat the affects of free radical damage.
If you can relate to this post, or have anything to add, please post a comment. But no spam. This is simply a discussion forum.
To Your Health
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