When I was a kid growing up, I had plenty of friends that liked tobacco.

It was nothing for many of my friends to carry some Red Man or Levi Garrett chewing tobacco with them.

It just seemed like a lot of kids my age chewed tobacco.

Trying to live up to the image of tobacco chewing baseball players

I played a lot of baseball and chewing tobacco was viewed as as something cool at the time.

At least for a kid around 10 to 12 years old it was. Mainly because we looked up to a lot of baseball players and we wanted to be just like them.

One day friends of mine were chewing tobacco and I decided to give it a try.

Yuck!

Are you kidding me? People like this stuff? They actually pay money for it? It tasted terrible.

Did I quit chewing it?

Absolutely not.

I had to be cool. Remember, it was the image of the baseball players image that I was trying to live up to so I had to tough it out.

It wasn’t long though before I started feeling queasy. I really started to feel sick. I was turning green.

I’m not sure how the the bunch of ten year olds got broken up but I made it back to my house and I went straight to bed and laid down. I had a queasy stomach that made me want to throw up. I had never felt such nausea before. That was mid to late morning and it took me almost the rest of the day to get over it.

My upset stomach was gone now and I was feeling much better. I knew then that I did not want anything to do with tobacco though. That was the last time I would ever stick that stuff in my mouth again. No more tobacco for me.

Fast forward a few years

I was a little older now and I was a friend’s house (a different friend) helping him out up Christmas lights on their house. He had some Copenhagen tobacco in a can and he asked if I wanted some. So I took a pinch as they say and put it in my bottom lip.

Did I not learn anything before? Did I have short-term memory loss?

Well 15 to 20 minutes later I felt so nauseous that I had to get down from the roof. Good thing I did because I was about to pass out. I had one serious queasy stomach and I vomited something fierce. It was amazing too. As soon as I blew chucks, I felt like a million bucks. I no longer had a queasy stomach and I was back to normal.

Tobacco can cause a queasy stomach

Well this is a short little story and I was a child and a teenager when both of these accounts took place in my life. So I was not seasoned to dip or chew tobacco.

Thank God I never kept doing it!

Even though I was young, I would suffer the same consequences if I used tobacco today at a later age. It is not for me and I will never have any problems turning it down in any form.

People have no idea though that tobacco can be related to a queasy stomach. Sometimes they overlook tobacco as a source and think it may just be something they ate. That is not always the case. In my experience, chewing tobacco had adverse effects on me. Smoking and excessive smoking can cause stomach issues as well.

One thing people overlook is how smoking changes the bodies ability for proper blood flow. Smoking cause the the vessels in a person’s body to restrict and therefore the body has to work harder to pump blood. The stomach also needs the proper amount of blood flow. It can change your blood pressure. People overlook this.

There are thousands of people that die every year from tobacco use whether it be from chewing tobacco or smoking. Tobacco has been proven to be very addictive and I feel for people that have a hard time quitting smoking or chewing.

The next time you have a queasy stomach and you are a tobacco user, consider the tobacco you are using as a possible source of your nausea. Just a thought.