When you think of how quickly my doctors were to jump on giving snuff the blame it really is a wonder that snuff has never been attributed to illness by any zealous health experts over time. Even my street aquaintances are sure it’s the cause of my recent woe so I’m sure it’s been thought many a time in the past. It’s funny that the doctors had asked me about exposure to coal as wasn’t it miners who used to use snuff in place of smoking because of the fire risk. Those guys must have had some pretty rough chests but mainly due to the coal. Maybe they had some way of protecting themselves with masks or something? Been thinking it’s time to really eventually cut down on my variety of snuffs to just a few of my favourites if I can ever get the others finished. FOJ now definitely has to be on the list after proving so worthy during my confinement and Creme de Figue another but picking snuffs is kind of like trying to nail jelly to a wall. I wonder what the ancient expression for that is? @logicalfrank: Started reading Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations and I have to say I’m already thinking I will read it again as soon as I finish the first run through. Very interesting stuff. Just having some Willie Pete. If that stuff doesn’t set my lungs off then it’s pretty much unlikely that snuff is the cause of my strange lung reaction. Produces a good cough that’s for sure and I do like it but defintitely difficult to control the intake.
After a hard weekend of white snuff snuffing I can certainly feel it my lungs when I work out. Stamina has clearly decreased… I also cough up mucus containing snuff. I sure can see overdoing snuff leading to lung problems, inhaling dust of any kind is clearly not good for you. My sense of smell has taken a hit as well. So show respect for the snuff folks, specially the whites.
You are more likely to die at the hands of a friend or a relative; than you are to a stranger or snuff usage.
At least we know what to ban now… ;))
I think it is very silly to talk about snuff per se as being the cause of anything. All snuff are different, some do not even contain tobacco (though I would say that a tobacco free snuff was a misnomer). The effects of one snuff will be different from another. All people are different, the effects of snuff on one person will be different from another. It is quite possible that some snuffs cause some lung problems for some people. But this is quite different from asbestos dust which will cause lung problems for all people. But to stop this academic stuff for a moment as @I_snuff_therefore___ has a real problem, I think it is a good idea to know what you are consuming (be it food, drink or snuff). If its an SWS product then I think it highly probable that it contains only tobacco and some innocuous processing material. Thai snuff, however, is claimed by medical authorities to be only 50% tobacco the remainder being “white earth” they believe this white earth may be responsible for Pulmonary Alveolar Microlithiasis. In other words, not the tobacco at all.
@I_snuff_therefore___ - Regardless of the cause, I wish you the best and a speedy recovery.
Agree with Logicalfrank. One of the main reason that I don’t use cigarettes is that I was always lead to believe that most US ones had a goodly percent of non tobacco product in them. This and the curing and processing methods used, seemed to me to be their main detriment. That said, it was also that ‘foreign made’ were difficult to obtain and if found expensive.
Well that Willie Pete experiment didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Pretty much straight after my breathing began to become more restricted and it’s still that way this morning although I slept fairly well. I’m just waiting to see how the steriod helps after it has a little time to take effect but this is definitely a little worrying. Could just also just be that I am gradually stepping down the steriod dose at present and went from 30mg to 25mg yesterday. Looks as though I will have to decide soon whether to take a snuff break. If my breathing doesn’t improve some today then I think I will have to pack the snuffs away for the time being and then if I have to go back to the hospital again I will be able to tell them that I am no longer using the e-cig and snuff and then maybe they will have to find what the real problem is and they won’t do that if I say I am still taking snuff. They might even say the problem is still because I took snuff in the past? They were even specultaing about me having done some painting of my living room walls around the time that I started to have problems so I really think they have no idea whatsoever and all their tests concluded nothing except to show things that I don’t have. Just had a couple good pinches of Thrice Brewed and it feels great. I really think this lung thing is totally unconnected with snuff although the Willie Pete wasn’t a good idea as it’s to fine and I definitely did get a lot in the lungs and it agrivated whatever lung problem I already have although it wouldn’t have done in the past. I don’t even think it’s the e-cig now either. I think it just that my lungs have had a hard time lately and so I can no longer tolerate the e-cig or fine dusty snuffs although yesterday I also tried Cheeta and that went ok. Think the steriod is starting to help now at least. Think I’ll take it very easy today and see how it goes but with this there seems no way of knowing that either. Since I am lost for ideas or able to make any sense of this in common with the doctors it is looking like I might have to go through some snuff withdrawal although that still seems a little dumb to me given that I snuffed loads in hospital without any ill effect? Still it’s lookng like it’s my only option at present if things don’t improve today so I’m very much hoping for an improvement or at least no decline.
Just back from a shopping trip and as always I went on my bicycle
If you are riding a bicycle in heavy traffic, or a city centre, you will be breathing in all sorts of poison. I few hours in the city centre always makes me feel ill. If you are going to give up the snuff it might be an idea to stay away from automobiles as well.
The anti-inflamitory steriod seems to be working again but I’ve just been reading up a bit on them and they seem to be something you definitely don’t want to be taking unless absolutley necessary although I’m not getting any side effects at present. I don’t cycle in heavy traffic normally but I do cycle into the countryside (on my doorstep) on occasion and am told that pollen is supposedly high this year so being as I got this around end of May I wonder if it’s simply that although I’ve never been affected by pollen before. I don’t have pets but I’m sure there must be a few dust mites around as dusting is not a favourite pastime of mine. So I give up. It could be absolutely anything. I just hope I can reduce and get off these steroids without any problems but it seems I’m definitely going to need them for now. Seems my lungs have just gone into overdrive reacting to something or other with no real way of telling what that is and the steroids are needed to counteract that. I really don’t have enough understanding of all of this and it seems such a vast complex area. Any snuff that might possibly irritate my lungs I will definitely avoid for now. I think I am just at the mercy of whatever will happen but as long as the steroid keeps me going ok, well at least that’s something. Maybe time will provide some more clue but anything like this when immune systems go haywire is not a good thing to have for sure. I wish it was a case of simply stop using snuff and that would fix it but apparently from what I read, even if I did that, it could still take months before any difference became apparent so seems I’m stuck with this for now whatever.
Any snuff that might possibly irritate my lungs I will definitely avoid for now.
The rational procedure for finding out the cause would be use just one snuff for a period and see what effect it had. Then use an other snuff and see what effect that has. But, of course, you are ill (not a lab rat) and not interested in scientific procedure in order to publish a paper in an academic journal. I would suggest, however, that if you are not going to give up and switch to nicotine tablets. That you do limit yourself to one snuff type and one where you are sure you know what the ingredients are. And give up the e-cigs.
Yes the e-cigs are gone for good. Pity that I had just ordered another lot of juices but no matter, I just don’t need them any longer and am sure I’m better without that now. I did really enjoy the e-cig at times but I definitely seem to have lost the desire and need for it. It served it’s purpose in helping me completely quit smoking. Even if I fully recovered I wouldn’t go back to using those again. I’d still recomend them for helping to stop smoking but this lung thing has definitely made me no longer see any attraction to it. Basically I’m just not able to inhale the vapour any longer so the decision is made for me but in the main I am glad that this has been forced upon me. One less thing to bother about. Just binned some old snuffs that seem to have lost their goodness and especially some of the very fine ones. Anything that hits my lungs when I take a pinch, which is easy to notice no matter how careful I am, is off the menu. I noticed that some snuffs like Toque Pomegranite for instance seem to be very easy on the system compared to others. Not one I previoulsy liked greatly but I see the advantage to it now but then again I still love that nose melting drip of things like Firedrac. I’ve perked up again a little today. No problem breathing at the moment and that feels good. Maybe a day without anything like Willie Pete will see me in better shape tomorrow. Now for some Creme de Figue. No danger with that one I don’t think. I’m hoping to get down to a set of snuffs that work ok for me so I’ll go through narrowing down what I have. I’d be happy enough just to have a few of my very favourites speaking of which Havana Toast. I was bowled over by this one and was using it regularly before my little hospital escapade. Now I seem not to be inclined to use it. I don’t think it caused any problem it just seems that it’s my most recent snuff memory from when I became quite ill so maybe subconciously I am avaoiding it now or it could be my preference has just changed again after enjoying the Fields of Juniper by itself for a week. I seem to have gone off all plain toasts for now and they were always a regular before. Oh well, all part of the snuff mystery?
It is great to see you back on Snuffhouse @I_snuff_therefore___. It is also good to know that you are now recovering from a highly stressful experience. I have always enjoyed your posts and I admire the attitude you are showing toward your illness. Please keep us informed as to your progress and how things are going in your recovery. The only “advice” I might have for you, is to learn as much as you can about your condition and to continue to study it more and more deeply. As you said, there is a “vast” amount to learn but the more you learn the less vast it becomes. In my own case I applied this approach to my highly painful lower back problems that back surgeons have told me only surgery can correct. I have also been to over 20 chiropractors (though the years) who have offered me varying treatments and opinions as to what is happening and how to correct it. So I read and studied everything I could about lower back pain and applied several different methods most of which did not work. But some did work. And now I am 98% pain free without resorting to surgery, much to the astonishment of my back specialist and surgeon (who is a great guy by the way). And by the way, most of the chiropractors were amazed as well, and only a few of the latter were actually helpful. Although the surgeon does not fully understand what I did to stop the pain, he clearly supports it. As he put it, he is “in favor of anything that works,” as he is not one of those surgeons who believes surgery is necessary for everything. Curiously, he told me that the MRI shows that my lower back shows considerable degeneration and expressed amazement that I now have no pain to show for it and I have not had the pain for over a year. What I am trying to say is that I have learned that in the end it is we who are ultimately responsible for our bodies and what we do to them. We may not have caused the condition but how we respond to it is our choice. In this same vein, we are also responsible for who we hire (and trust) to help us to treat our bodies so that we can heal and recover as fully as possible. In my view there is no substitute for knowledge and it is best to learn and intensively read about and study our condition so that we can better choose who to surround ourselves with who are knowledgeable healers. I think we should become as knowledgeable as possible so as to help the healers to heal ourselves. That may not be of much help to you but there it is for what it’s worth… Get well soon.
Many thanks indeed @fredh. Glad to hear you are winning with your back problem and long may that contiue. Almost makes me wince thinking about it but I guess we just have to cope with what comes. I’m sure I will certainly keep delving into this as more thoughts or questions come to me about it. I think it does help when discussing with doctors if you have at least some basic knowledge and good clues that they can work on but maybe I might not mention snuff next time although I probably wouldn’t have been able to hide it and in the end it was enjoyable to pinch away right in front of them. Think I will go through the hospital release letter and see if I can learn anythng from some of the medical terms they used on that. When I was admittd to hospital there was a sort of comeradery amongst the patients but a guy arrived shortly after me in a pretty bad way and I heard him say to his wife that he thought he had had it this time and it sounded like he was resigned to it but the nurses and doctors soon pumped him full of all sorts of drugs and finally gave him something as simple as two paracetomol and sure enough he started to come around and I was able to have a chat with him shortly after. Even just having a chat seemed to help a lot, for us both. I still feel lucky compared to some of the elderly patients I saw on the hospital ward or even my mother who died of lung fibrosis but at least I was able to help care for her in her final years. still you can’t help looking at them and getting a glimpse of the future so it’s enjoy each day for now if at all possible. While I was in hospital I asked if they would contact my uncle who is 83 (looks a very healthy 70 or so) so that he could bring me some changes of clothes and bits and pieces from the house and they couldn’t find him registered on their system. When I saw him later I asked him about this and he told me that he’d only only ever visited people in hospital and had never in his life been a patient and that’s why they did not have his details. I think his secret has been a simple clean living active life. Amazing man.
Playing doctor usually results in repeat hospital visits but the only way we will know for sure is if you stop E cig use and continue snuff. If you end up back in the hospital while continuing to use snuff at that point I would quit snuff all together and see how you feel. Even if you continued to use snuff and got better in the hospital that doesn’t mean that will continue to be the case once the medication they put you on wears off and you’re home.
All Doctors are liars. I know because I am a Doctor.
All Doctors are liars. I know because I am a Doctor.
Lol ok Dr Phil
All Doctors are liars. I know because I am a Doctor.
OK, @logicalfrank, regarding your post quoted above, I will attempt to state the obvious in the form of a syllogism. 1. “All Doctors are liars.” (your premise) 2. logicalfrank is a Doctor. (your premise) Therefore… 3. logicalfrank is a liar. (logical conclusion). You are clearly a smart man, Frank, and you no doubt posted your comment with tongue planted firmly in cheek. But is this your way of telling us that we cannot trust what you tell us? >:)
Well I’m not lying when I say I’m sitting here feeling around 80% back to full health. Ok with a little steriodal assistance currently but the good news is that last night I had some snuff for some nic during the night and also in the morning after a good sleep and although I did have some chest tightness and shallow breathing - which I had anyway before I took the snuff - I didn’t feel that I neccesarily needed to go and take the steriod, or as high a dose, which is good. The steriod wears off usually come night after having taken it in the morning and so during the night and following morning it basically isn’t having any supportive effect and so this is the time to best judge how things are going. I currently take 5x5mg tablets in the morning as directed but I think it might tbe better split 3 and 2 in the evening but I’ll stick to what they say. So if this continues then it’s looking like snuff is going to be ok and also getting off the steroid but still another 3 weeks to go to be sure and probably anything could still happen but for now it seems strange to be so much better than I was before I went to hospital. I can basically climb the stairs again without thinking about it any longer or having to recover my breath although it’s still a little harder without the steriod effect. I’ve been off the e-cig since just before hospital and that surely is helping and I also cut down on the caffeine and have bottles of water about the place as I picked up the habit of regular water drinking in hospital as they always supplied me with a fresh jug. Maybe when I snuff and drink water I’m convincing the body that it’s not a bad thing? If I do get any snuff in the top of my chest it does start some dry coughing and my chest is still pretty tender so I’ve got to try and avoid that as much as possible. Might possibly be that my improvement could be even greater if I cut all snuff use but basically I’m pretty attached to the habit and definitely think I’d miss it greatly even to stop for a while. So just a litttle update. Maybe just making those few changes is going to be enough to sort this all out. Be good to see the doctor again in good health and tell them that I still can use snuff without any problem and have a clear CT scan as proof. I’ll wait and see how things go for now of course but I do hope that today was a good sign of better to come.
All Doctors are liars. I know because I am a Doctor.
is this your way of telling us that we cannot trust what you tell us? >:)
Yes, quite right. You can not trust what I tell you just because I am a Doctor (or an economist or a lawyer or anything else). This is a fallacy in reasoning known as “the argument from authority” (I was using the “Paradox of the liar”, to illustrate this). Fortunately, @I_snuff_therefore___. is not making this error.
All Doctors are liars. I know because I am a Doctor.
is this your way of telling us that we cannot trust what you tell us? >:)
Yes, quite right. You can not trust what I tell you just because I am a Doctor (or an economist or a lawyer or anything else). This is a fallacy in reasoning known as “the argument from authority” (I was using the “Paradox of the liar”, to illustrate this). Fortunately, @I_snuff_therefore___. is not making this error.
I don’t agree with what you’re implying about doctors People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most. Doctors as a majority would rather get other doctors opinions rather than subject the patient to harm or potential danger. I’ve known plenty of doctors who order follow ups with other doctors obviously ( normally within the same hospital or hospital affiliate ) but my point remains valid. Plenty of doctors have the know it all complex and I understand that. However if the doc truly thought there was something urgent to be dealt with or something going on they didn’t know about they would have recommended a follow up with a specialist or brought one to his hospital bed or never discharged him in the first place No doctor in his right mind would discharge a person if they thought there was an urgent problem. They also wouldn’t come up with " escape goats " just to make themselves feel special. What the doctor is doing is eliminated all variables to make his diagnosis easier in the future if need be