My tales of shisha

In a beautifully decorated transparent glass, water is poured, a metal head is placed to close the glass container and a flexible pipe is also connected to this construction. A flavoured tobacco wrapped in a tin foil is placed on the head of the metal, followed by a piece of burning charcoal that serves as the fuel. All is now set to smoke shisha.
Also known as hookah, hubble-bubble and narghile, since a few years now, Shisha has taken the world by storm. The idea dates back to many years ago where smaller copper containers and pure tobacco were used, this was very much consumed by poor people who found in it a temporary joy to escape the pressures of daily life.
Today, Shisha has become a trend, especially among youth who think the amount of nicotine consumed through smoking cigarettes is more than a session of the shisha’s smoke. Well, it seems science and research are proving them wrong, and it is becoming much clearer that smoking shisha is also very harmful.

My turn
I was introduced to shisha sometime back while sitting with friends in a coffee shop in a Middle Eastern country. The fact that one could choose a fruit flavour was amazing, and with time other flavours such as coffee and cappuccino arrived on the scene and made life even better. However, I kept the habit of smoking shisha restricted to times I spent with friends. I never took the matter seriously. But, around me, I saw how some started becoming addicts and could not let a day go by without firing away their hubbly-bubbly !
The shisha trend spread like wild fire and then there were even fully-fledged shisha bars opened in many parts of the world, including here in Africa. With time, people started realizing that although the smoke of Shisha is not as strong or as disturbing as cigarettes, they still caused harm and allergies to non-smokers. Also, with the publication of reports from reliable medical sources we came to know about the high levels of carbon monoxide and heavy metals that are consumed by shisha smokers, with more than one source confirming that smoking an hour of shisha can equal smoking 100 cigarettes. Many countries imposed bans on smoking shisha in closed areas, and while in a city such as Dubai the ban is very strictly followed, in other Middle Eastern countries no one really bothers.
On a good note, something very interesting happened to me as one day I was out with my friends, it was my turn to choose my shisha flavour, all of a sudden I had no urge to smoke. It was like an internal shut down, to my surprise and to my friend’s amazement, I have never gone back to smoking shisha. What a wonderful instruction my body gave me, and I obeyed!

Dangers of Shisha

*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, possibly leading to tobacco dependence.
*Hookah smoke poses dangers associated with second-hand smoke.
*For pregnant women, this 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.
-mayoclinic.org

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