1) What are the benefits if you stop smoking today?
Your blood pressure, body temperature, and pulse rate will drop back to normal within
twenty minutes. Smoker¡¯s breath will disappear, and carbon monoxide levels in your blood drops
within eight hours. Your chance of a heart attack decreases within twenty-four hours. In
fourty-eight hours your nerve endings start to regroup, and that results in the improvement of
your ability to taste and smell improves. In three days, your breathing becomes easier. Your
circulation improves within two to three months and walking becomes easier. Your lung
capacity increases up to thirty percent. Sinus congestion and shortness of breath decrease and
energy increases within one to nine months. Within a year, the excess risk of coronary heart
disease is half that of a person who smokes. In two years, the risk of a heart attack drops to near
normal. In five years, the lung cancer death rate for an average former pack-a-day smoker
decreases by almost half. Strike risk is reduced, and the risk of mouth throat, and esophageal
cancer is half that of a smoker. In ten years, the lung cancer death rate is similar to a person who
does not smoke. Within fifteen years the risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a person
who has never smoked. (I showed this article to a friend of mine who smokes constantly and he
said that it is inspiring him to quit.)
2) Is Murray Bowen¡¯s statement,¡±There¡¯s no such thing as an individual. We are all family
fragments,¡± a true statement?
I cannot answer this question without stating it in the form of an opinion. This statement
itself is an opinion. I believe that it is very much false. How can there be no such thing as an
individual when we are all unique in every way possible. Yes, it¡¯s true that we are shaped by our
families and the way we were raised, but our lives and behavior is als...