A Divine Intervention...

Yesterday..as all the nation was celebrating Eid-Ul-Fitr and Ganesha Chaturthi..i was no exception.

These two Festivals, once considered the most important in the Muslim calender, while without the other, the Hindu calender isn't complete.

Anyways..so i was celebration mode, with the Ganapti celebrations in the colony, and the Eid celebrations at a friend's place. the Eid celbrations, well..ate nothing but the Sheer Korma, which i absolutely gorge on and for that reason always waiting for the Eid to come.

So, the as Eid celebrations wore on, they took me and my friends to a neighboring Hookah Parlor, and as we all know how the craze of the hookah is catching on with the youth of today. So, belonging to that same youth and with the sheer curiousity of tasting a hookah, i went on with friends and got seated at a table. Though having smoked it quite a few times before, this time i had a feeling it would be something new. Just as we started smoking, a good friend of mine happened to text me, and i told her about what i was doing when asked by her. As soon as i said, m smoking a hookah, the next text from her and i quote,"Tu Hookah bhi peeta hai? :| :|", and i was like yes i do..Getting angered by my positive reply, she started telling me how bad hookah is and i was its fine and not as dangerous as smoking a cigerette, but then as the conversation went on, i thought to myself,"Is hookah really bad? Is it really better than its counterpart, the cigerette?"

Then i decided to find out about the history of the hookah, its origin and its effects. And here is what i find.

Read on...

A hookah (Hindustani: हुक़्क़ा (Devanagari), حقّہ (Nastaleeq) huqqā) or waterpipe is a single or multi-stemmed (often glass-based) instrument for smoking in which the smoke is cooled and filtered by passing through water. Originally from India, hookah has gained popularity, especially in the Middle East and is gaining popularity in North America, Europe, Australia and Brazil.

The hookah lounge (also called a shisha bar, especially in Britain and parts of Canada, or a hookah bar) is an establishment where patrons share shisha (flavored tobacco) from a communal hookah or nargile which is placed at each table.

Some hookah lounges are business modeled as such from their inception. Others are cafés or other establishments to which the element of hookah smoking was added later. Hookah lounges of all sorts have become popular in parts of Europe and North America in the last decade.

An elderly patron of an establishent in Turkey describes the advantages of the hookah lounge as follows:

"Smoking a hookah is nothing like smoking a cigarette...cigarettes are for nervous people, competitive people, people on the run...when you smoke a hookah, you have time to think. It teaches you patience and tolerance, and gives you an appreciation of good company." 

A younger customer adds:

"The important thing is not what you put in the pipe, but who is with you while you're smoking...it's a complete experience...in a cafe like this one, you find the good people, the old people, the interesting people. As long as there is a need for company and friendship, as long as people want to stop and think, there will be nargile cafes."

Effects of Hookah :

Hookah smoking is not safer than cigarette smoking. Also known as narghile, shisha and goza, a hookah is a water pipe with a smoke chamber, a bowl, a pipe and a hose. Specially made tobacco is heated, and the smoke passes through water and is then drawn through a rubber hose to a mouthpiece. The tobacco is no less toxic in a hookah pipe, and the water in the hookah does not filter out the toxic ingredients in the tobacco smoke.

Although the use of Hookah has been commonly attributed to be much worse than regular tobacco smoke, tests remain inconclusive as to the true "damage" of the hookah. Some studies conclude that Hookah smoke is safer than tobacco cigarette smoke, while other studies refute this claim.

Each hookah session typically lasts more than 40 minutes, and consists of 50 to 200 inhalations that each range from 0.15 to 0.50 liters of smoke. Reports by the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society have shown that, in a one-hour hookah session, users consume about 100 to 200 times the smoke and about 70 times more nicotine than they would in one cigarette.

The water used to filter the smoke does not work efficiently to remove all the harmful chemicals.

A study on hookah smoking and cancer in Pakistan was published in 2008. Its objective was "to find serum CEA levels in ever/exclusive hookah smokers, i.e. those who smoked only hookah (no cigarettes, bidis, etc.), prepared between 1 and 4 times a day with a quantity of up to 120 g (the average bowl in holds 30g) of a tobacco-molasses mixture each (i.e. the tobacco weight equivalent of up to 60 cigarettes of 1 g each) and consumed in 1 to 8 sessions". Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a marker found in several forms of cancer. Levels in exclusive hookah smokers were lower compared to cigarette smokers although the difference was not statistically significant between a hookah smoker and a non-smoker. Also the study concluded that heavy hookah smoking (2–4 daily preparations; 3–8 sessions a day ; 2 to 6 hours) substantially raises CEA levels.

(Courtesy - www.wikipedia.com)

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While research about hookah smoking is still emerging, evidence shows that it poses many dangers:

-Hookah smoke contains high levels of toxic compounds, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens). In fact, hookah smokers are exposed to more carbon monoxide and smoke than are cigarette smokers.

-As with cigarette smoking, hookah smoking is linked to lung and oral cancers, heart disease and other serious illnesses.

-Hookah smoking delivers about the same amount of nicotine as cigarette smoking does, possibly leading to tobacco dependence.

-Hookah smoke poses dangers associated with secondhand smoke.

-Hookah smoking by pregnant women can result in low birth weight babies.

-Hookah pipes used in hookah bars and cafes may not be cleaned properly, risking the spread of infectious diseases.

I had no idea that hookah was bad for you when it was first big, I think that because the tobacco is flavored and the smoke is filtered before you inhale it, people don't realize how bad it is for you.