Quit Smoking: Your Next Right Move For Good Health….
Every day I look around my friends in their breaks from work, happily puffing away on their favorite brands of cigarettes out in the open, apparently enjoying and indulging in the smoke like it was a drug. In fact, if you think about it, smoking is not just a habit. It’s an addiction that takes firm root in the early years of ‘manhood’ whenever kids start going to high school or college.
What most of the regular or chain smokers fail to realize that smoking is nothing more than suicide on an installment plan. Sure it may have been cool from the good ole days of Humphrey Bogart and of course the “peer pressure” in getting you to pick up the habit. However, if you really think about it, those puffs of smoke are obviously precious minutes of life being blown out without a care in the world.
Now you may think I’m sounding preachy, but it’s a bitter reality which a lot of people don’t admit till it’s too late. The World Health Organization calls tobacco the “leading cause of preventable death in the world. Cigarette Smoking has numerous side effects that account for an estimated 400,000 deaths (or nearly 1 of every 5 deaths) each year in the United States alone. Smoking causes approximately 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women. Smoking has been linked to more deaths each year; it takes the combined total of deaths from HIV-AIDS, drug & alcohol abuse, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders to match that amount.
And when I say it’s an addiction, I mean that literally. As soon as a cigarette is lit and puffed, it triggers a complex reaction within the nervous system and starts physical changes within the body as soon as you start inhaling. The most addictive component in tobacco is nicotine, which reaches the brain in less than a second. That immediate response to nicotine is where the addictive power of smoking is.
The brain actually has receptors for nicotine i.e. structures that receive and bind to specific substances. The younger the people are when they start smoking, the higher the number of receptors. This eventually results in being more addictive to tobacco and smoking in general from a very early age.
The respiratory airway is very effective in absorbing tobacco and all of its components. Scary enough, tobacco has thousands of components which include many toxicants and carcinogens. And so these components go immediately to the blood stream through the respiratory tract.
Carcinogens are substances that can lead to the development of cancer, a well-known risk of smoking. However, cancer is more than likely a long-term affect of tobacco smoking. Unfortunately, there are much earlier signs of smoking, such as nicotine addiction. And nicotine does play a role in acute episodes of some diseases by its stimulation of adrenaline release, which raises blood pressure, heart rate, and free fatty acids. These diseases may include stroke, impotence, and heart diseases.
Compared with nonsmokers smoking increases the risk of:
- Coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times
- Stroke by 2 to 4 times
- Respiratory diseases by 23 times (in men) and 13 times (in women)
- Dying from chronic obstructive lung diseases (such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema) by 12 to 13 times
Heart diseases:
While the body craves nicotine once addiction sets in, damage is being done to the cardiovascular system. Smoking has been a major culprit to coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries) and puts smokers at risk for developing peripheral vascular disease (i.e., obstruction of the large arteries in the arms and legs that can cause a range of problems from pain to tissue loss or gangrene). An obstruction in the wrong place can stop the flow of blood to the heart, triggering a heart attack.
Respiratory Disease
Cigarette smoke also reduces lung function, even if inhaled as second-hand smoke. People working in or frequenting environments where smoking was prominent (such as bars, clubs, trains etc) are found to have higher levels of cigarette chemicals in their bodies, regardless if they were smokers or not.
Smoking causes lung diseases such as Emphysema, Bronchitis and Chronic airway obstruction by damaging the airways and alveoli (i.e., small air sacs) of the lungs.
Ageing
While smoking causes damage on the inside, there are signs on the outside that also offer insight to the overall damage. The skin starts ageing and wrinkling more rapidly than it should, as much as 10 years more. Apart from that, yellow teeth & fingernails and discolored gums are a staple sign of long-term smoking. Dental health is also adversely affected.
Cancer
Smoking is known to cause cancers such as acute myeloid leukemia, kidney cancer, cancer of the pancreas, bladder cancer, larynx (voice box) cancer, pharynx (throat) cancer, cervix cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, esophagus cancer, oral cavity (mouth) cancer, uterus cancer.
Other Health Effects
Cigarette smoking has many adverse reproductive and early childhood effects, including increased risk for:
- Infertility
- Preterm delivery
- Stillbirth
- Low birth weight
- Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
Women with special conditions face tougher symptoms of smoking; such as lower bone density and increased risk for hip fracture for postmenopausal women who smoke than those who have never smoked.
In conclusion, smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general, period. It’s how the saying goes:
“Stop Smoking or Stop Breathing.”
“Smoking is highly addictive. Don’t Start.”