| By Lizzy Adie.
People take up smoking for a variety of reasons. Young people are especially vulnerable because of pressure from their peers and the image that smoking is clever, cool or grown up. Just trying a few cigarette can be enough to become addicted. Many people say that smoking helps them to feel more relaxed or cope with stress but nicotine is a stimulate not a relaxant, so it doesn’t help stress.
Cigarette smoking contains about 4,000 different chemicals which can damage the cells and systems of the human body. These include at least 80chemicals that can cause cancer (including tar, arsenic, benzene, cadmium, and formaldehyde) nicotine (a highly addictive chemical which hooks a smoker into habit) and hundreds of other poisons such as cyanide, carbon monoxide and ammonia. Everytime a smoker inhales, these chemicals are drawn into the body where they interfere with cell function and cause problems ranging from cell death to genetic changes which leads to cancer. There are hundreds of examples and volumes of research showing how cigarette smoking damages the body. For example, UK studies show that smokers in their 30s and 40s are five times more likely to have a heart attack than non – smokers.
Smoking contributes to coronary artery disease (atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries) where the heart’s blood supply becomes narrowed or blocked, starving the heart muscle of vital nutrients and oxygen, resulting in a heart attack. As a result smokers have a greatly increased risk of needing complex and risky heart bypass surgery. Smoking also increase the risk of having a stroke, because of damage to the heart and arteries to the brain. If you smoke for a lifetime, there is a 50 percent chance that your eventual death will be smoking related, half of all these deaths will be in middle age.
Effects Of Smoking On The Body.
1. It causes premature aging by reducing the level of protein and vitamin A.
2. More than 30 chemicals found in cigarette are known to cause cancer.
3. Smoking can deform sperm by causing damage to sperm DNA.
4. It increases the risk of miscarriages.
5. Reduces the stomach resistance to bacteria that causes Ulcers.
6. Smokers are 4times more likely to develop heart disease than non smokers.
7. Your bones will lose density as you will have less oxygen in the blood.
8. Smokers are 3 times more likely to develop ear infections.
9. One in seven smokers will develop emphysema.
10. You are 1.5times more likely to suffer with tooth decay.
Smoking does enormous damage to the lungs and also increases the risk of the following cancers : Oral, Uterine, Bladder, Liver, Kidney, Stomach, Cervical, Leukaemia. Even more common among smokers is a group of lung conditions called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or DOPD which encompasses chronic bronchitis and emphysema. There conditions cause progressive and irreversible lung damage, and make it increasingly difficult for a person to breath.
Although, the health risks of Smoking are cumulative, giving up can yield health benefits, regardless of the age of the patient, or the length of time they have been smoking.
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