On World Heart Day, doctor urges public to shun smoking

Help one another care for each other’s heart and start by discouraging everyone to even bite the temptation to smoke.

All forms of smoking “that set the tobacco on fire,” said Dr. Sherif Bakir, who, in over 40 years, has seen patients struggling to overcome.

Interviewed on Sept. 29, the 26th anniversary of the “World Heart Day” – originally observed every Sept.24 from 2000 until 2011 – The Heart Medical Centre-Abu Dhabi and Medcare Medical Centre Cardiology senior consultant -- discussed the basic which is to stub the tobacco through the 2019 “Stages of change, smoking behaviour, and acceptability of a text messaging intervention for tobacco cessation among cigarette, dokha and shisha smokers: A qualitative research study.”

Bakir, alongside eight other researchers, wanted to be enlightened on “the underlying motivators and barriers to smoking cessation among young Arabic-speaking smokers and to examine the suitability and preferences for tobacco cessation interventions (specifically text messages) and study the possibility of enrolment methods for a randomised controlled study using text messages as an intervention for tobacco cessation.”

Meanwhile, for the “World Heart Day 2026,” the theme of which, as decided by the international lead organisation World Heart Foundation, is “Don’t Miss A Beat,” the Ministry of Health and Prevention “encourages people to adopt healthy habits and avoid risk factors such as tobacco and alcohol use, obesity, and lack of exercise, raise awareness on the importance of healthy food, exercise, and adequate sleep; and raise awareness on the dangers of high blood pressure and cholesterol and how to prevent them.”

“I would say that any habit that puts smoke into your lungs works against your heart, and the single most protective decision is to stop inhaling smoke altogether,” said Bakir.

He had earlier discussed “one of the clearest findings” of the 2019 research, conducted in two universities and one hospital in the UAE and which involved 47 men and 10 women, 53 of whom were “current smokers.”

“From our work, we saw how differently people rank these habits in their own minds. Convinced that shisha is gentler because the smoke passes through water, that dokha is ‘pure,’ or that an occasional weekend session does not count. The evidence simply does not support that. A single shisha session can expose a person to the smoke of many cigarettes, and dokha delivers a rapid, potent hit with the same combustion products.”

“But the misunderstanding I would correct above all others; and I see it even among fellow doctors, is the belief that nicotine is what causes the harm. Nicotine is not what makes cigarettes toxic. A cigarette is dangerous because it is set on fire. Burning tobacco breaks down into more than 7,000 chemicals, some 70 of them carcinogens, along with tar and carbon monoxide, and it is that smoke that damages the heart and vessels.”

“The nicotine is simply the hook, not the harm,” said Bakir who also had children and adult heart patients in four other hospitals in the UAE and at the King Fahad Heart Centre in Saudi Arabia where he was the Cardiac Transplant Project deputy chief.

“What I most want people to understand is that the harm comes from burning. The smoke whether from a cigarette, a shisha pipe or a dokha midwakh. My message is not to rank one form of smoking as acceptable. For the young person, the most powerful gift you can give your heart is to never let smoke into your heart in the first place.”

“Nicotine is not risk-free. It is never for children, non-smokers or pregnant women. But separating the addiction, as nicotine is addictive, from the smoke, is one of the most important things we can do for public health.”

Early on, Bakir referred to the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US: “The UK NHS states plainly that nicotine itself does not cause cancer, lung diseases, heart diseases or stroke, and has been used safely for years in medicines to help people quit. The US FDA says the same. That nicotine keeps people using tobacco. But it is not what makes tobacco use deadly. It is the mix of chemicals in the smoke.”