News of the stupid

Background:  for some bizarre reason, I was diagnosed with asthma early in 2011.  Prior to the actual diagnosis, I had felt short of breath every once in a while, as if I couldn't couldn't actually breathe deep.  Anyway, it all came to a head when I ended up having to go to the Emergency Room of a local hospital in April (I think...) of 2011, gasping for air like a goldfish pulled out of its tank.  Fast forward to now and I have to take a daily medication and I possess two inhalers, neither of which I use with any regularity (I do use the rescue inhaler once in a while, mostly when I am somewhere with a lot of air pollution).  Anyway, among the crappy things that can happen to your health, asthma is by far and away one of the least crappy as it can be easily treated.  What's more, there is nothing I can't do relative to activities that I could do before the asthma diagnosis.  No harm, no foul.

Mindful of the above, one of the things that folks with asthma are never supposed to do is smoke.  Ponder this for a moment:  with asthma, your ability to breathe is compromised; when you smoke, you compromise your ability to breathe.  Seems logical.  Taking it a step further, here's what WebMD says:

"Smoke from cigars, cigarettes, and pipes harms your body in many ways, but it is especially harmful to the lungs of a person with asthma. Tobacco smoke is a powerful trigger of asthma symptoms.

How Does Tobacco Smoke Trigger Asthma?

When a person inhales tobacco smoke, irritating substances settle in the moist lining of the airways. These substances can cause an attack in a person who has asthma.

In addition, tobacco smoke damages tiny hair-like structures in the airways called cilia. Normally, cilia sweep dust and mucus out of the airways. Tobacco smoke damages cilia so they are unable to work, allowing dust and mucus to accumulate in the airways.

Smoke also causes the lungs to make more mucus than normal. As a result, even more mucus can build up in the airways, triggering an attack."

You can read the full article HERE.  Fortunately for me, I've never smoked and I never will.  Anyway, this whole thing sounds like a mental lay-up.  Well it would for those of sound mental capacity.  Enter Ms Lindsay Lohan...Lindsay Lohan Treated for Asthma Attack.

One level I genuinely don't really give a damn what Linday Lohan...or any number of other mock celebrities...do, in or out of the public arena.  But on another, it's just so, well, STUPID.  It's almost painful to think about actually.  Lindsay Lohan is someone who is known to smoke like a chimney, so this isn't a case of just doing something that you know to be bad for you, it's a case of knowingly engaging in a behavior that is MORONIC.  This is just amazingly stupid.

Now if fairness, I will also add this following to end this micro-tirade:  at work, we have a cafeteria that has glass walls; one of these walls looks out over our designated smoking area.  Years ago I was sitting in the cafeteria (I don't normally spend much time there, as I tend to eat in my office) and noticed someone using an inhaler...most likely for asthma...right as they were walking directly to the smoking area.  That's right, this person was opening up their lungs so that they could be an even more efficient smoker.  Damn.  Moronic behavior in this area, it seems, filters from the "famous" to the common folk.

As Forrest Gump's mother once famously observed, "stupid is as stupid does".