Smoking
Smoking
My son and daughter complained about my smoking so bitterly 25 years ago that I quit cold turkey. One day I was smoking some three packs a day of unfiltered, king-size cigarettes, and the next day, none. I occasionally still have dreams in which I give in to the temptation to light up again, but that will never happen.
Quitting for Good Reasons
Smoking is estimated to cause one-third of all cancer deaths and one-fourth of the fatal heart attacks in the United States. The American Lung Association estimates that 350,000 Americans die every year from smoking. (My own estimate is 500,000.) Forty percent of smokers die before they reach retirement age.
But all the talk about premature death goes over the heads of the teenagers who start smoking and the young adults who won't quit. The hazards of smoking just seem too far off to them.
That's why I like to remind young smokers I know that the habit hits men in the penis and women in the face. That's right. Smoking damages the blood vessels that supply the penis, so men who smoke have an increased risk of impotence. Smoking also damages the capillaries in women's faces, which is why women smokers develop wrinkles years before nonsmokers. (Smoking develops early wrinkles in men's faces, too, but somehow this particular anti-smoking argument seems to score more points with women than with men.)
Green Pharmacy for Smoking
Years ago, when I kicked the cigarette habit, I didn't know much about herbal medicine. If I were quitting today, I'd use some herbs to help.
Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra). I don't have much science here, just a gut belief to back licorice as an anti-smoking aid. I've also heard a lot of positive stories about people kicking the habit with the help of licorice.
How does this work? Licorice root happens to look just like an old cheroot cigar. You can keep a stick of licorice root handy and suck on it in place of a cigarette. I believe it works by helping to satisfy the oral cravings that people who are addicted to cigarettes seem to have. If I were still a smoker, I'd give this one a try.
It's interesting that most licorice coming to the United States goes into tobacco products--chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco.
You should be aware that while licorice and its extracts are safe for normal use in moderate amounts--up to about three cups of tea a day--long-term use (more than six weeks) or ingestion of excessive amounts can produce headache, lethargy, sodium and water retention, excessive loss of potassium and high blood pressure.
Tommie Bass and his "Yallerroot" Cure
I had the pleasure of meeting with the late A. L. "Tommie" Bass in the late fall of 1994, when he was 87, at his Cherokee County farmette just outside Leesburg, Alabama. Bass was the only herbalist I knew who had a permanent official highway sign honoring his calling. As you approached his home, you encountered a sign that read: Arthur Lee "Tommie" Bass, Herbalist, 0.5 mile.
On the day I visited, Tommie also had a sign set up in front of his shack. It announced yellowroot at $1.25 a bunch and prickly ash bark at $5 a bunch.
It was a genuine pleasure for me to visit Cherokee County, because I was born about a hundred miles away, in Jefferson County, back in 1929. By the time I was born, Tommie was already 21 and had been collecting and selling herbs for 11 years.
I was with some friends from Samford University in Birmingham on this visit to this genuine old-time Alabama folk herbalist. We tried calling him ahead of time, but our phone calls went unanswered. So we just jumped in the car and drove up, about a hundred miles from Birmingham, hoping he'd be around. It was a dank, dark, drizzly day, and we found him in his little shack, a disorganized collection of uneven boards tacked together. Although we arrived unannounced, Tommie came out and greeted us warmly.
I was pleased to see Tommie's bundles of yellowroot (Xanthorrhiza simplicissima), which resembled yellowish switches, as we walked toward his house. He was enthusiastic about it, saying that it was the best tonic herb he knew. He pronounced it "yallerroot."
Tommie claimed that with this herb he'd helped a lot of people with ulcers abandon their Tagamet. He considered it tops for what he called upstairs hernia, by which he probably meant either hiatal hernia or the heartburn associated with it.
Finally, Tommie said, tucking one of the bitter roots in his mouth, yellowroot is a real help in quitting smoking.
At this point, there's no scientific backing whatsoever for using Tommie's "yallerroot" to help kick the smoking habit. But when I hear an old-time herbalist like Tommie endorse it, I sit up and take notice. I have a lot of respect for Tommie's recommendations. After all, he had nothing whatsoever to gain by promoting yellowroot. When he said that he helped many people quit smoking with it, I believed him. And anyway, it probably can't hurt to give it a try. You can brew up yellowroot as a tea or chew on the bitter twig like a licorice root. It might prevent cavities, too.
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Red clover (Trifolium pratense). A few years back, I got a call from an entrepreneur looking for a source of 50 tons of red clover. He wanted it as a major ingredient in a tobacco-free chewing tobacco product he wanted to market, all tinned up just like the real thing.
I got this call right around the time that I learned about why red clover has an age-old reputation as a cancer preventer. For tumors to grow, they need a blood supply, and they send out biochemical signals that coax the body into growing blood vessels right into them, a process called angiogenesis.
Several leading cancer researchers have been working on ways to stop these new blood vessels from forming, thereby starving tumors. It turns out that one compound with an anti-angiogenic effect is genistein, a constituent of red clover.
So I welcomed the call from the man seeking red clover. By replacing chewing tobacco with a nontobacco substitute, he was working to prevent the mouth and tongue cancer that chewing tobacco causes. And by replacing tobacco with red clover, he was unwittingly providing anti-angiogenic benefits as well.
I don't know whatever became of the man's tobacco-free red clover chaw, but I have a tin of red cloverbased snuff. Aspiring ex-smokers can chew on fresh clover flowers (you can add them to salads) or anything else that contains genistein, such as groundnuts, peanuts or soybeans. These munchies would help satisfy some of the oral needs that smokers and ex-smokers seem to have. At the same time, the genistein in these snacks would be attacking any tumors that might be trying to get a start.
If you're having a hard time kicking the smoking habit, you might want to develop another habit--drinking red clover tea daily. It seems as if it would offer a measure of protection.
Red Clover
The flowers of red clover, which were widely used for decades in folk remedies for cancer, have been shown to contain the anti-cancer compound genistein. |
Carrot (Daucus carota). Back when I quit smoking, carrots helped me quite a bit. I used to drive to the office munching on a raw carrot or two instead of puffing on a cigarette.
At the time, I chose carrots because I like them, but now we know that carotenoids, the chemical relatives of vitamin A that give carrots their orange color, also help prevent cancer, especially if the carotenoids come from carrots or other whole foods rather than from capsules. (Generally, if you isolate one beneficial chemical--take it out of context--you're missing out on a whole lot of other chemistry that can also help.)
If cigarettes are cancer sticks, carrots are anti-cancer sticks. In fact, all fruits and vegetables are. The research is consistent and compelling: The more fruits and vegetables people eat, the less likely they are to develop every major cancer, including lung cancer. So even if you don't quit smoking, you should still be munching on carrots.