SMOKING BANS HELP CHILDREN WITH ASTHMA

SMOKING BANS HELP CURB
KIDS’ SEVERE ASTHMA ATTACKS

ATLANTA - New research shows that smoking bans spare many children with asthma from being hospitalized, a finding that suggests smoke-free laws have even greater health benefits than previously believed. Other studies have charted the decline in adult heart attack rates after smoking bans were adopted. The new study, conducted in Scotland, looked at asthma-related hospitalizations of kids, which fell 13 percent a year after smoking was barred in 2006 from workplaces and public buildings, including bars and restaurants. Before the ban, admissions had been rising 5 percent a year in Scotland, which has a notoriously poor health record among European countries. Earlier U.S. studies, in Arizona and Kentucky, reached similar conclusions. But this was the largest study of its kind - and offered the strongest case that smoking bans can bring immediate health improvements for many people.

About 40 percent of American children who go to hospitals because of asthma attacks live with smokers. “The effects of smoke-free laws are way bigger than you would expect,” said Stanton Glantz, a University of California-San Francisco researcher who specializes in the health effects of smoking. Cigarette smoke is a trigger for asthma attacks. So researchers reasoned that tracking severe cases was perhaps the best way to measure a smoking ban’s immediate effect on children. Smoking bans have become increasingly common in the United States, where 35 states and the District of Columbia have laws that bar smoking in workplaces or restaurants and bars, or both. And more than 3,100 cities and towns have their own restrictions, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

“Acute asthma is the tip of the iceberg,” more easily tracked than less severe breathing problems, ear infections and other problems seen in children that have been linked to a caregiver’s smoking, said Terry Pechacek of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s office on smoking and health. Smoking is one of the unwanted things which are known as anarthas. If you simply chant the Holy Names, Krsna Himself will cleanse away your anarthas.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

There is still these anarthas in the heart and these anarthas are acting as magnets and they are attracting raja-guna and tamo-guna to cover us because when I have an anartha, when I have something unwanted, means it is illusory and I can’t get something illusory fulfilled if I am in the light of the truth by definition. ... Everyone here has experience of giving up some anartha and finding, “Why didn’t I do that a long time ago? It is wonderful!” You feel clean and refreshed like you just took a bath in a clear lake. ... So to get that courage that we can submit ourselves one has to develop some attachment to Krishna. One has to meditate on how wonderful Krishna is, how charming he is, how beautiful He is, how strong He is. Here we have descriptions of Him in the material world on how powerful He is. And if you can’t do that meditate on Him in water and light, gravity. How wonderful He is and after a while you will think, “I will do anything to get Him, whatever it takes. Kill me on the battlefield or whatever.”

Śrīmati Urmila devi dasi :
Live from Sri Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir
Class on the Srimad-Bhagavatam - Verse: 3.33.3
Date: February 24th, 2010
http://urmila.me.uk/
http://www.prabhupada.org/krishna/?cat=204
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