Stoptober

During October, there has been lots of events focused on helping people stop smoking. Smoking is a really addictive habit that lots of people struggle to give up after they have started, so Stoptober is a really great way of celebrating those who have managed to quit as well as raise awareness around the dangers and health risks of smoking.

Smoking is linked to dangerous medical conditions, such as cancer and can affect your health in the long term as well as affecting your health in the short term. Lots of information around quitting can be accessed by visiting the NHS website 

The school nurses have been visiting schools to hear what you think about whether vaping is less dangerous than smoking. We really enjoy hearing your views and helping you to understand more about the decisions you make about keeping your bodies healthy. Some students felt that vaping was less dangerous than smoking, because there are less chemicals in vapes and less evidence to suggest that it is dangerous for you. But some felt that being addicted to any substance was a bad idea that could affect your life. Students also felt that the way vaping is advertised is misleading and makes people believe that vaping is not bad for you. Students said that if they could tell government one thing it would be to only target vaping at those that are trying to give up smoking and make it prescription only.

Students in Camberley had a fun and informative lunch hour! They were able to test their carbon monoxide levels using a monitor. Interestingly students found that when someone in their homes smoked, they showed a higher carbon monoxide level in their body. However, everyone tested had some low level of carbon monoxide in their body, will will look at this in a future blog.

Interestingly, rates of smoking amongst young people have gone down over the last few years. This is great because it shows that more and more young people are choosing not to start smoking in the first place.  However, vaping is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to smoking, but because it is quite new there is not much evidence to tell us whether it is safe, but as our debate team suggested too much sugar is bad for us but you don’t see health warnings on cake, food for thought!.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to talk to us and share your views.