Smoking- Cyndi

[Guest guest]

Cyndi wrote:

> Smoking does acidify the body which lowers the immune response which in turn

> opens the door for ANYTHING.

______

Hi Cyndy,

Lowering the immune response is not inherently bad. In general,

anti-inflammatory substances (such as the tobacco) are anti-immune substances,

and

pro-inflammatory substances (such as arachidonic acid) are pro-immune

substances.

In a situation where the body requires a strong immune response (like,

apparently, cancer), the body needs more pro-inflammatory substances (by which I

mean substances that support inflammation, not substances that necessarily

" cause " it). So, for example, Suze once posted an article that found

arachidonic to

improve cancer, iirc, and I believe it also found omega-3 fats to worsen the

condition. (I don't remember the type of cancer or disease that it was.)

On the other hand, in an autoimmune disease, anti-inflammatory substances are

important to help curb an overactive immune system. So, fish oils are

greatly helpful with arthritis, according to some.

Since tobacco is anti-inflammatory, it can help with some diseases or

syndromes involving excessive inflammation. In Colby's book, that

has

referred us to, at www.lcolby.com, he cites a Norweigian study that found

some serious inflammatory lung disease to be cured (or very improved, I forget)

by tobacco smoke. Unfortuantely, my browser isn't opening it right now, so I

can't cite the material, although Colby's book is very short and could easily

be read in a few days in your spare time.

As a general rule, I'd recommend a very HEAVY degree of skepticism when you

get anything referring to " acid " and " alkaline " in *anything* that isn't a

respected chemistry or physiology text, because almost everything on the

internet i

s either complete junk, or all the chemists have acid/base totally wrong, and

all the physicists have negative/positive totally wrong, because most of the

acid-base-pseudoscience on the net conflicts with the basic laws of chemistry

and physics, in a way that falling off of a building and landing on the moon

does.

By the way, do you mean that smoking acidifes the blood? The " body " has

many, many different appropriate pH's, many of them acidic.

Chris