Tag: Health

A Letter To My MP About E-cigarettes

Posted on by Neal Asher
Dear Sir,
A number of months back my wife was diagnosed with a serious complaint that requires major surgery and, this tending to focus one on matters of health, we both decided it was time to give up smoking. However, having made numerous attempts in the past and simply failing, we weren’t optimistic.
Some friends, who had given up a few years before, handed over their stash of NRT including patches, gum, microtabs, inhalators and some electronic cigarettes. All of these worked to some degree but the e-cig was the most effective, even though the ones we had were a few years old and malfunctioning. We then, to our surprise, found them for sale in Tesco and bought a Vapestick each. These, with their ‘cartomizers’ and more modern design were even better. Better still, thereafter, was an e-cig with a small glass tank that can take various flavours of e-liquid. It was the moment I started using one of these that I had an epiphany, realising that I would never ever again smoke a cigarette.
Incidentally, since I’m a known SF writer (ask David Davis) who also blogs a lot, this has led to six of my fans finally taking the plunge and giving up smoking using the same method.
It is now the case that even if I cannot give up ‘vaping’ my chances of dying from all those smoking-related maladies have just dropped through the floor. These devices are massively harm-reducing. Ignore all this mealy-mouthed nonsense that starts with ‘but we don’t know enough’. We know that a ‘vaper’ breathes in nicotine, a vaporising substance found in asthma inhalers, and water. Nicotine is certainly addictive, but is no more harmful than caffeine. Yes, some further supposedly harmful substances have been found, but no more than are found in conventional NRT – trace amounts – and of course the merest fraction of a per cent of two or three of the thousands of chemicals and 60 or so known carcinogens in real cigarettes.  
So, imagine my surprise and horror to learn that there are people who want to ban these devices, and that bans have in fact already been introduced on some trains and in some pub chains. Imagine how annoying it is for me to discover that legislation is being introduced, much to the delight of drug and cigarette companies, that will kill innovation in this new industry, make these devices difficult to sell, impose limits on the strength and flavours of e-liquids and, in essence will drive many ‘vapers’ back to smoking; many of the 1.3 million people now using e-cigs in Britain today.
This is madness. This reveals that activists at the likes of ASH are more concerned with activism itself rather than the purported reason for it. This reveals that such is the hatred of anti-smokers that they would rather people died than use something that looks like a cigarette.  This leads to complete Twilight Zone situations like one recently, when an NHS quit-smoking manager was complaining about a lack clients, because they were using e-cigs.
Now, as my MP, what are you going to do about this? Here is something you can get behind that will actually save lives.

Yours Sincerely,
Neal Asher

Ban It!

Posted on by Neal Asher
Something I’d been thinking about, and considering writing a blog post about, was nicely summed up by Rich Daniels on Facebook:
Anti-smoking activists remind me more and more of the AGW crowd. They have a principled goal of saving lives/the planet. They posit a solution, don’t smoke/don’t emit so much CO2. Then some smart arse comes along and solves these problems in such a way as to give them their solutions without really altering our lives, and they fucking hate it. We are doing what they demanded without doing what they told us. The seething must be awful to behold.
So so true. Fracking has drastically reduced America’s CO2 levels:
The reduction is even more impressive when one considers that 57 million additional energy consumers were added to the U.S. population over the past two decades. Indeed, U.S. carbon emissions have dropped about 20 per cent per capita, and are now at their lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in 1961.

Yet activists don’t want us to do that here. We have to build windmills and pay double or treble for the energy. We must ready ourselves for power cuts every time the wind stops blowing. WE MUST DO WITHOUT.
Next we come to the e-cigarette. Here is a device that in just a few years has taken 1.3 million people partially or completely off cigarettes in Britain. This is something that the ban on smoking in public places completely failed to do, as will the cutting of cigarette displays or the proposed introduction of plain packaging. Yet e-cigs must be legislated against and if possible banned. They must be stopped! No matter that they are saving lives. Ban them. No matter that they are no more harmful than a cup of coffee. Ban them!
Why is that? I submit that it is due to the puritan and punitive instincts of many ‘activists’ who are no better than proselytizing religious zealots. In a transition to a green renewable energy culture the hair shirts must be distributed, to be worn over bodies already self-flagellated by sustainable birch twigs. You must go without cars, beef steaks and must sit shivering in your house squinting at the latest Greenpeace pamphlet in the light of a low-energy bulb, if the power is on. If you’re a stinky smoker then how dare you find a way to avoid all the dangerous aspects of smoking and still enjoy its pleasures! You must suffer all the torments of withdrawal, or become a medicated patient of the NHS and suffer the humiliation of quit-smoking classes for your instruction, and only then, when suitably chastened, are you fit to join the company of your betters.
And, of course, in both cases: ONLY THROUGH SUFFERING CAN YOU ATTAIN REDEMPTION!  

Cigarette Sales Down (because of e-cigs)

Posted on by Neal Asher
Despite Best Efforts of Anti-Smoking Groups, Cigarette SalesWere Down 600 Million Units in First Quarter of 2013
Despite the best efforts of many anti-smoking groups, cigarette sales were down 600 million units in the first quarter of 2013. Why? Because electronic cigarettes competed successfully with tobacco cigarettes and drove their sales down.
Utter madness of the anti-smokers: they would rather people died than found a viable alternative to smoking, because it looks like smoking. Incidentally today I’ve been off the roll-ups an on an e-cig for one month.

Calorie Counting

Posted on by Neal Asher
So I have decided to try bringing my weight down. On Monday I ate nothing at all and that brought me down from 13 stone 9 pounds to 13st 4lb (I weight myself at exactly the same time in the morning, after a shower, after having drunk just one cup of tea). Of course I’m aware that I hadn’t actually lost 5lbs of fat and that it was more to do with fluid and other processes going on, but a good start nevertheless. The next day I just ate veg and a couple of hard boiled eggs in the morning, then a meal in the evening with cabbage supplanting the potatoes. Next day my weight was 13st 6lb and on the ensuing day I did the same and my weight remained unchanged.
By this time a lot of people were telling me to count calories and, since I’m a bit anal about this sort of thing, I started looking up some stuff. On the internet I found that the amount of calories I need to maintain my weight ranges from 2300 to 2800. I mean, is cycling 8 miles 3 times a week, and weight-training for half an hour once or twice a week, moderate exercise? I don’t know. Anyway, to lose 1lb a week I needed to reduce my calorie intake by 500 a day, apparently, so I started counting up. By my calculations I consumed 2090 calories on Thursday and that was really hard work with me spending most of the day feeling hungry.
The result this morning was a weight of 13st 7lb. No matter – I know that when you start doing this your weight can yo-yo but that it is the average that counts and, thus far, my average weight is sitting at 3.5lbs below what it was last week. Of course I can’t judge any of this on just a few days dieting and one day counting calories but … but I suspect that my maintenance need is at the upper end of the scale and that a sensible weight-losing calorie count for me is about 2300 or maybe a bit more. Seriously, cutting out the food to the extent that you end up sitting on the sofa in the evening eyeing up your wife’s leg and thinking of mustard is maybe just a bit extreme.   

Weight-losing Time!

Posted on by Neal Asher
So, when we went off to Crete in April my weight was hovering at about 13 stone 3 pounds. I know this because I’m quite anal about this sort of thing and record my weight in my journal just about every morning. I even did a graph of it last year… Anyway, that weight wasn’t ideal. It didn’t pass the shop window test i.e. when I saw my reflection in a shop window I was horrified and immediately attempted to pull my gut in. I expected to lose some more weight on Crete because we’re more active there and the heat operates as an appetite suppressant. I soon became fitter because of the gardening, extra walking and then swimming a number of miles each week when the sea was warm enough. My gut receded quite a bit too. However my weight climbed to 13st 6lb. This is a case of fit fat man: I built up muscle and tightened everything up but lost none of the original fat.
Next, because of an accumulation of small facts about our own health and that of others around us, a tipping point being us coming back to England so Caroline can go into hospital, we decided to give up smoking. Now I damned well knew my weight was going to climb as a result of this but didn’t mind too much if I could manage to kick the habit. Well I have kicked the habit and my weight has duly climbed, but perhaps not as much as expected because I got straight into cycling and weight training, plus a walk at the weekend, the moment we got back here. However, it now stands at 13st 9lb and I don’t pass the shop window test even if I prepare beforehand by sucking in my gut (and yes I’m sucking in my gut in the picture here).
Time to lose some weight.
My approach to this is probably not the best and I know that some tut-tut about it when I talk about it. It is surely unhealthy, completely the wrong thing to do etc etc. Bollocks. I occasionally have days off – days when I eat nothing at all. I find it easier to do this than eat a small amount. No no no, cry the diet experts. I think they’re talking out of their backsides. In evolutionary terms fat goes on to get us through times when there isn’t much food available. The simple fact is that the less you put in your gob the less ends up around your waist. Also, I find that after the ensuing night’s sleep I feel no hungrier in the morning than usual, which brings home to you how hunger is just a mental thing.
The other thing I do is cut out four main carbs: potatoes, pasta, rice and bread. What I do is go out and buy cabbage. Savoy is my preference though red cabbage is good too. Then, instead of those carbs I have a pile of boiled cabbage. Spaghetti Bolognese? Yup the meat sauce goes on the pile of cabbage. Steak? Pile of cabbage where the chips normally sit. I also eat slowly, finish hungry and wait. The hunger passes in half an hour. Sometimes if there’s an oversupply of veg available – runner beans, courgettes or whatever – I just double up on them instead of the cabbage. But you get the idea.
This all starts today. Caroline is going on a shopping trip to Westfield and will be eating out. I’ll take my eight mile bike ride to my mother’s and, when back here, try to eat nothing at all. Maybe I’ll fail but even then I’ll try to make that failure an apple or a raw carrot.  

Day 24 on the E-cig

Posted on by Neal Asher
Day 24 of not smoking today. My slight sore throat has passed as has the wheeziness and I now put them down an adjustment period or leftover ill effects from the real cigarettes and not something permanent. I’m also sleeping a lot better – the amount of sleep I’m getting stabilizing where it was before at about 7 hours. Though I did have some cravings during the first week or so, they have now completely gone. Also my ability to concentrate is returning and I’m getting back to some work. And again I seriously think this is it: I’m finished with tobacco cigarettes.

Meanwhile I’ve been discovering more about e-cigs and the quite ridiculous reaction to them. A number of train companies have banned them, Wetherspoons has banned them (and will never again receive one penny from me) etc. And why? Well, the only reason any of these seem to be able to give is that e-cigs might encourage the chiiildrennn to think smoking is okay. Since when has that been their business? Our government and the EU want to legislate them out of existence too. It’s madness. There are people out there who put anti-smoking ideology before public health. There are people out there so determined to totally ban cigarettes or anything remotely like them that they are prepared to let people die to forward that goal. It is estimated that 1.3 million people are now using e-cigs in Britain and I submit that most of those are erstwhile smokers. I further submit that the majority of them will be back on ‘real’ cigarettes if e-cigs are strangled at birth.
Then there is the negative propaganda being spread about e-cigs. In some e-liquid antifreeze glycol was found, so the idea is propounded that they all have this in. There are some bad things in them and this is focused on, and the fact that the same things are found in conventional NRT and that the quantity is so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant is ignored. Normal cigarettes are sold everywhere yet something that can get you off them and does not contain the 20+ carcinogens, the arsenic, carbon monoxide, cyanide or supposed 4,000 active and potentially nasty chemicals must be controlled, legislated against, stamped on?  
It is an unfortunately reality that many people hide their dictatorial instincts under the guise of concern for you. Something out-field like e-cigs comes along and whips away their camouflage to show us what they really are: autocrats, little tin-pot Hitlers and righteous prigs.

Vaping on the Thames

Posted on by Neal Asher
We took a boat trip on the Thames yesterday. This came about because neighbours of Caroline’s parents had booked the Pocahontas out of Gravesend for a birthday party trip and because couple of people had dropped out we were invited along to fill the gap. Why not, we thought, boat trips are always enjoyable. We took a coach from Althorne – just down the road from us – to Gravesend, this took about an hour and a half, and off we went. I was a bit worried because looking at the others I was a bit underdressed in cut-off jeans shorts and a sleeveless top, but it was very warm and I was glad of the choice. It was enjoyable, with a ploughman’s lunch aboard and a few glasses of wine. I filled up the memory card of my camera, but mainly with a few video clips that don’t look too hot. Usual pictures were taken of Westminster, the Dome, Gherkin, Tower Bridge, Tower of London etc. but it’s the less commonly seen views that interest me more. Here’s a few of them:

While aboard the boat I was of course vaping, especially when I had a few glasses of wine. I still feel a bit wary of doing this in areas where you are not supposed to smoke and I guess I should have a bit more of a ‘fuck you’ attitude, but this was someone else’s birthday party and being a last minute stop-gap guest I didn’t want to end up arguing with anyone. But in reality that’s not likely because you don’t smoke these things like a cigarette – you feel the urge for a toke, have one, and before anyone really notices the thing is back in your pocket. A few who did notice were curious about the device, and one or two smokers were very definitely interested. It seems that a lot of smokers have encountered e-cigs like the plastic Vapestick you can buy in Tesco but not the thing with the ‘clearomizer’ or the idea that you can buy e-liquids that work out a lot cheaper.
Continuing with the subject of vaping, here’s a few things I’m noticing: Alcohol doesn’t fuck me up as much as before. Expected hangovers are not arriving. Before, when I’ve had a few glasses of wine throughout the day like I did aboard the Pocahontas, I’ve always been weary and a bit red-eyed come the evening, but I was fine. The skin of my face is now a lot lot clearer. I suffered with acne rosacea over a few years, which gradually moved away from my nose to form spots on my cheeks and where my sideburns would be if I had them (these ones particularly being the ones that bleed). They’re disappearing and my skin feels tougher. Yeah, I’m liking this a lot.
Note: For those who have been ‘quittin’ with Asher’ – some even using the same e-cig as me – here’s something else I’ve found out: The e-liquid I first bought was 18mg USA mix from Hangsen. It was good, did the trick, but tasted slightly medicinal to me. I’ve since tried one from the same maker called Red Tobacco and it’s much better.     

Day 16

Posted on by Neal Asher
Well, it’s strange to realize that it has now been two weeks and two days since I smoked a cigarette. I am also finding it difficult to say that I have given up smoking when I’m puffing on an e-cig. It’s far too much like the real thing and using it has made giving up the real thing far too easy. But face facts: while vaping I’m now just taking in nicotine, water vapour and glycol. It is also the case that I’m naturally taking in less and less nicotine as time goes on. Today, for example, I chewed a 4mg nicotine gum in the morning and now at gone midday haven’t felt the need for anything else.

Now, about the e-cig: the thing may have its adverse effects. The glycerin or propylene glycol dries out your mouth and your throat and, since using the thing, I’ve had a ‘bit of a throat’ – that feeling you get when you’ve either smoked too much or have a cold coming on. I’ve also been wheezy a few times and have found myself coughing up phlegm. However, I wrote ‘may’ for a reason. I recently read an article detailing similar effects from an e-cig and how, after a couple of weeks, they die off, but I’m also aware that in stopping smoking my susceptibility to colds and other bugs has gone up, and that, after decades of smoking, wheezing and coughing are going to be constant companions for some time yet. In essence all the symptoms I’m feeling might have nothing to do with the e-cig at all.

Update: I’ve just learned something. If any of you have got the same e-cig as me with the EVOD battery you need to know that the battery has to be turned on. You click the button five times within two seconds to do that.  

Day 14

Posted on by Neal Asher
Today is day 14 of not smoking and I’ve finally come to the realization that I won’t be smoking again. You may think that’s a daft thing to say after just two weeks and just a few weeks back I would have agreed with you. But that was before I properly tried out an e-cig. The things are excellent, delivering nicotine as a vapour to your lungs without all the other horrible stuff you get from a tobacco cigarette. Also, upon seeing more of these devices and enjoying the enthusiasm of what seems to be a massive growing subculture, I’m hooked. I mean, how can I resist e-cigs that look like a sonic screwdrivers?

Update:
It’s also worth mentioning for those who have tried e-cigs in the past and not been impressed, that these devices have come on in leaps and bounds. They are no longer like trying to suck a pea up a straw, give a good volume of vapour and a good hit. 

Of course the question I’m now asking myself is can I give up vaping … and will I want to? 

E-Cigs

Posted on by Neal Asher
The more I find out the more I’m coming to the conclusion that e-cigs are a game changer. As it was the situation was that the anti-smokers and ‘health professionals’, or ‘useful idiots’ as they are sometimes called, kept calling for further controlling legislation on smoking to which nanny government happily agreed, while it was also happy to have the excuse that ‘it’s for your own good’ to keep raising the taxes on cigarettes and tobacco. Meanwhile their buddies in Big Pharma were happy to screw large profits from smokers with expensive NRT and, this being a corporatist society, government was happy to open up the tax coffers to them via the NHS. It was all very comfortable and tidy and to the profit of governments and the drug companies. Smokers of course were being screwed, but such filthy creatures of course don’t matter. Other tax payers were also being screwed (consider how much NHS NRT costs) but so what, that’s what they’re there for.

Then e-cigs arrive on the scene being produced by lots of small companies. These companies are all in competition with each other and, as a result, prices of e-cigs are steadily tumbling. But they’re also in competition with conventional NRT and Big Pharma doesn’t like that at all. It therefore goes to its buddies in government and does what big companies always do in our corporatist society: calls for more legislation, more rules, more red tape. You see, big companies can afford to employ people to deal with all that crap and the more of it there is the more the little guy gets squeezed out; the easier it is to kill truly capitalist competition. However, I rather suspect that with the arrival of the £1 e-cig they haven’t moved fast enough. The cat is out of the bag, the game has changed.

One upshot of all this is that we’ll clearly see just how much of the rules, regulations and taxes that have been loaded on smoking are really ‘for your own good’ – are really about concern for the health of smokers. If activists from the likes of ASH are pushing for them to be banned then that will show you that it’s not the negative health aspects of smoking they hate, but simply smokers and smoking. It will also demonstrate that like most people running such organizations they’re righteous pricks who are addicted to bansturbating. If government pushes for them to be banned it’s then all about the money: they’re seeing revenue streams being threatened, they’re under pressure from their Big Pharma buddies and the kick-backs and jobs for the boys might dry up etc. What weare seeing is an attempt to legislate e-cigs out of existence and, if that doesn’t work, I’ve no doubt that government will find some excuse to load them with massive taxes. Doubtless there will be studies along the lines of the second-hand smoke farrago clearly demonstrating that e-cigs are dangerous.