Renad Ghanem

Saudi Gazette

 

Many people will never really realize how smokers suffer in Ramadan when they need to abstain from a smoke during fasting. Smoking is an unhealthy habit, but this habit makes it difficult for smokers to have easy fasting day.



Smokers, who feel the urge to light up at various moments during the day, usually cannot prevent themselves from smoking for an hour, but during Ramadan they have to stop smoking for more than 12 hours until Iftar.



Many smokers consider Ramadan and fasting a chance to quit or at least cut the number of cigarettes they smoke.



Here are some tips that will help smoker in fasting in Ramadan.



• Eating foods that are rich in potassium and magnesium like dates, cherries and lettuce, because it is most important that smokers intake of these minerals would help them calm their nerves, and it will simultaneously limit the effect of nicotine in their body.



• Workout and sports —  smokers should make sports a part of their day, and all smokers should do exercises, because it helps to regulate their heart and breathing and reduces the urge for nicotine by the body.



• Smokers must eat food rich vitamins and minerals, like natural orange juice, because it contain vitamin “C”, and whole grains, rich in vitamin “A”.



This they need to do to overcome the negative effects of smoking as smoking decreases vitamins “C” and “A” and folic acid in the smoker’s body, and that affects the immune system and weakens it, especially the depletion of vitamin “C” which increases the sense of thirst and tension during fasting.



• Nuts and fish help in improving the smokers’ mental state because they provide unsaturated fatty acids that protects one from cancer and boosts the immune system to counter respiratory and lung system diseases.



• Also smoking causes the cholesterol level in the blood to go up triggering high blood pressure, so smokers must take care to eat food that boosts saturated fatty acids that help them to avoid high blood pressure, which in sequence increases tension.



Hussien, an ex-smoker, who quit smoking three years ago during Ramadan believes that the month of Ramadan provides a great chance for a smoker to quit this bad habit.



“I want people to be inspired by my effort in quitting smoking,” said Hussien. “The first thing when you feel that you want to smoke while fasting, is go and read some pages from the holy Qur’an, then go to the kitchen to help your mother in preparing food — even making salad is a help — go before Iftar and hand out some dates to people, play some sports or sit with your children and teach them the benefits that one assimilates during Ramadan.



And that helped me a lot. All I was trying to do was make myself busy during my fasting and that overrode my urge for smoking and I did succeed.”



“The other thing you can do is donate the cost of the cigarette packet every day to charity. When I started to do that I realized that the price of the packet could feed a family in poor countries, so that was another reason why I quit,” he said.