Upon receiving a short sharp shock
Yesterday evening, on the BBC television’s Six O’Clock News, I caught a report upon some new findings by medical researchers on the effects of smoking upon the human body. It was uncompromising, stark, direct and blunt and – for this viewer – a bit of ‘sit up and take notice’ moment.
I should perhaps add that I write as an average 10-a-day cigarette, plus a Montecristo #4 cigar (£16.24 a pop) after my evening meal, man.
In essence, viewers were informed that new medical evidence was demonstrating conclusively that each and every cigarette – or ‘coffin nail’ as we smokers, with a touch of gallows humour, sometimes cheerfully refer to them – actively and permanently alters up to eighteen different cells of a human’s DNA cells.
Every time one of those eighteen cells is altered in this manner, it increases the risk that (particularly if genetically one has a propensity towards this development) it will cause that cell to ‘trigger’ itself into growing a cancer. And bingo! You’re soon off down the slippery road to lung cancer.
For good measure, the reporter in the piece then asserted that currently in the UK the average life expectancy of someone who contracts lung cancer was just twelve months from confirmed diagnosis.
I presume that this was partly as intended, but I am happy to confess that this less-than-five-minute little report scared the Bejesus out of me.
Overnight I have decided to cut my smoking activities by two cigarettes a day … well, it is a start!