How bad is smoking for you?
Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease in the world.
It exposes you to more than 4000 harmful chemicals, including over 40 that can cause cancer, such as nicotine, benzopyrene, cyanide, arsenic, formaldehyde, and carbon monoxide.
Some of these chemicals are also radioactive, such as polonium, lead, and bismuth.
Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day exposes you to about 500 X-rays per year.
The temperature of a burning cigarette can reach up to 900 degrees Celsius, damaging your lungs and other organs.
Nicotine is a highly addictive substance that affects your brain and nervous system.
It reaches your brain in just seven seconds after you inhale the smoke. It causes your blood vessels to constrict, reducing the oxygen supply to your tissues and increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Smoking also affects your appearance and quality of life.
It makes your skin look dull and wrinkled, your teeth yellow and stained, your breath foul, and your throat sore.
It irritates your eyes and nose, making them red and runny.
It reduces your sense of smell and taste, making food less enjoyable.
Smoking is responsible for 90% of all lung cancer deaths, 75% of chronic bronchitis and emphysema deaths, and 25% of heart disease deaths.
It also increases your risk of developing other types of cancer, such as mouth, throat, bladder, kidney, pancreas, and cervix.
About 25% of regular smokers will die prematurely because of smoking-related illnesses.
On average, they will lose 15 years of their life expectancy.
Quitting smoking can significantly improve your health and longevity.
It is never too late to quit, but the sooner you do it, the better.
If you need help to quit smoking, be sure to read this article carefully to the end.
In all likelihood, after reading the article carefully, you will be able to quit smoking soon
Remember, smoking is not only harmful to you, but also to those around you. Secondhand smoke can cause asthma, ear infections, respiratory infections, and cancer in nonsmokers, especially children and pregnant women.
By quitting smoking, you are not only saving your own life, but also protecting the health of your loved ones.
Why women should quit smoking for good
Smoking is harmful for everyone, but it poses some unique risks for women.
From reproductive issues to cancer, this habit can affect women’s health in many ways.
Here are some of the dangers of smoking that women should know about.
Tobacco use can make it harder to get pregnant and have a healthy baby.
Women who smoke may have more trouble conceiving than women who don’t smoke.
It can also damage the eggs and the uterus, increasing the risk of infertility, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and low birth weight.
Smoking during pregnancy can also harm the baby’s brain, lungs, and heart development.
Women who smoke are more likely to have premature babies or babies with birth defects.
Smoking can increase the risk of osteoporosis and early menopause.
It causes a significant loss of bone density, which can lead to osteoporosis and fractures.
Women who smoke have a 31% higher risk of osteoporosis than women who don’t smoke.
Smoking can also affect the levels of estrogen, a hormone that protects the bones and regulates the menstrual cycle.
Women who smoke may reach menopause up to two years earlier than women who don’t smoke, and may have more severe symptoms, such as mood swings, vaginal dryness, and fatigue.
This habit can cause various types of cancer, especially lung cancer.
It exposes women to more than 40 carcinogens, or cancer-causing substances, such as nicotine, benzopyrene, cyanide, arsenic, formaldehyde, and carbon monoxide.
Some of these substances are also radioactive, such as polonium, lead, and bismuth.
Smoking is responsible for 90% of all lung cancer deaths in women and men.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women, killing more women than breast cancer.
It can also increase the risk of other cancers that affect women, such as cervical, mouth, throat, bladder, kidney, pancreas, and cervix cancers.
Smoking can damage the heart and blood vessels, leading to cardiovascular disease and stroke.
It causes the blood vessels to narrow and harden, reducing the blood flow and oxygen supply to the organs.
It also increases the blood pressure and heart rate, making the heart work harder.
Smoking can cause blood clots that can block the arteries or travel to the brain.
It increases the risk of heart disease by two to four times, and the risk of stroke by two to four times.
Heart disease is the number one cause of death in women and men in the U.S.
This habit can affect the appearance and quality of life of women.
It can make the skin look dull and wrinkled, as it reduces the collagen and elastin production.
It can also stain the teeth and fingernails, cause bad breath and gum disease, and damage the hair follicles.
Likewise, it can irritate the eyes and nose, causing redness and runny nose.
Furthermore, it can reduce the sense of smell and taste, making food less enjoyable.
It can also cause coughing.
Harm of smoking and the human psyche
Studies have confirmed the fact that people with mental disorders tend to smoke.
It was found that people with mental disorders smoke 40% more than those without mental disorders.
Doctors believe that smoking and mental disorders are mutually reinforcing.
Harm of smoking to others
There is a growing body of evidence about the harmful effects of smoking on others.
As a result of second-hand smoking, 3,000 people die annually from lung cancer, 62,000 from heart disease.
2.7 thousand children die for the same reason as a result of the so-called syndrome of sudden infant death.
The risk of falling ill not only with lung cancer, but also with some other types of this terrible disease increases significantly.
The risk of spontaneous miscarriage increases.
If expectant mothers are exposed to tobacco smoke, they are more likely to have children with various defects, especially neuropsychological, as well as low weight (9.7-18.6 thousand such babies a year).
It is established that more than 50 components of tobacco smoke are carcinogenic, 6 adversely affect the ability to childbirth and the overall development of the child.
In general, inhalation of tobacco smoke is much more dangerous for children.
For example, secondhand smoke causes 8-26 thousand asthma and bronchitis of 150-300 thousand children every year, with 7.5 to 15.6 thousand children are hospitalized, and 136 to 212 of them dying.
A study of more than 32,000 passive “smokers” conducted by Harvard University experts showed that fair sex women who are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke at home and at work suffer from heart disease 1.91 times more often than those who do not inhale it.
If a woman smokes passively only occasionally, the incidence drops to 1.58.
According to data collected by the American Heart
In association, if people smoke in the home, children with high blood cholesterol levels are severely adversely affected.
Cigarette smoke reduces their levels of so-called useful cholesterol, which protects against heart disease.
What happens when smoking?
Nicotine appears in brain tissue 7 seconds after the first puff.
What is the secret of nicotine’s effect on brain function?
Nicotine seems to improve the communication between brain cells, making it easier to conduct nerve impulses.
Thanks to nicotine, brain processes are excited about a while, but then they slow down for a long time.
After all, the brain needs rest.
Shifting the usual pendulum of mental activity, the smoker then inevitably feels its reversal.
But this is not the only insidious thing about nicotine.
It manifests itself when smoking for a long time.
The brain gets used to constant nicotine handouts, which facilitate its work to some extent.
So, it starts demanding them, not wanting to work too hard.
The law of biological laziness comes into play.
Like an alcoholic who has to “feed” his brain with alcohol in order to maintain the normal state of health, and a smoker has to “pamper” it with nicotine.
Otherwise, there is anxiety, irritability, and nervousness. Then you will, willy-nilly, smoke again.
The respiratory organs are the first to feel the tobacco attack.
And they suffer most often.
Passing through the respiratory tract, tobacco smoke causes irritation, inflammation of the mucous membranes of the pharynx, hypopharynx, trachea, bronchi, and pulmonary alveoli.
The constant irritation of the bronchial mucosa can provoke the development of bronchial asthma.
Chronic inflammation of the upper respiratory tract, chronic bronchitis, accompanied by a debilitating cough – a lot of all smokers.
Undoubtedly, there is also an established relationship between smoking and the incidence of cancer of the lip, tongue, larynx, trachea.
In the last decade, more and more concern of scientists and practical doctors is caused by the deleterious effect that tobacco smoke components have on the cardiovascular system.
Damage to the heart and blood vessels in people who smoke a lot and systematically, as a rule, is the consequence of the violation of nervous and humoral regulation of the cardiovascular system.
Nicotine and other tobacco components also damage digestive organs.
Scientific research and clinical observations undeniably testify: long-term smoking promotes the appearance of peptic ulcer disease of the stomach and duodenum.
In a person who smokes a lot and for a long time, the vessels of the stomach are in a state of constant spasm.
As a result, tissues are poorly supplied with oxygen and nutrients, and the secretion of gastric juice is disturbed.
And as a result – gastritis or peptic ulcer disease, in 69% of patients with peptic ulcer disease the development of the disease had a direct link with smoking.
Of those operated on for perforated ulcers, about 90% were avid smokers.
Middle-aged women could have had much better dental health if they had avoided smoking in their youth.
According to studies, only 26% of nonsmoking women over the age of 50 needed dentures.
Among smokers, 48% had such a need.
Pregnant women are adversely affected by smoking.
Inhalation of smoke from cigarettes and cigarettes is accompanied by its active impact on the vascular system, especially at the level of small vessels and capillaries that supply inner organs with oxygen and necessary nutrients.
Vascular spasms and deterioration of functions of the lungs, brain, heart, and kidneys occur.
An adult who is used to smoking does not notice any unpleasant feelings, but the negative impact on the vascular system, gradually accumulating, is sure to manifest itself in the form of hypertension, angina sectors, a tendency to thrombosis.
During pregnancy, the negative effects of smoking are manifested much faster, especially in relation to the developing child.
It has been shown that if the mother smoked during pregnancy, the weight of the newborn is 150-200 grams less than normal.
