10 reasons why smoking should be stopped
Many elements in tobacco are chemically active. There are more than 4,000 active chemicals in cigarette smoke that can lead to serious and sometimes deadly changes inside the body. Some of these ingredients include carbon monoxide, tar, hydrogen cyanide, nitrogen oxides, ammonia, metal substances, and harmful mixtures that can do you serious harm.
Here are some parts of the body affected by cigarette smoking. You'll see how it disturbs your body thoroughly:
1. Eyes
Research has shown that many different chemicals in cigarettes can result in damage to the macula of the eye, which is the most sensitive aspect of the retina. There can be small blood vessels overflowing through macula, leading to damage that is often permanent. Smoking also results in physical and practical changes in the lens of the eye and the retina, because it causes atherosclerotic plaques that can lead to thrombosis and eye damage from the vessels of the eye.
2. Digestive System
Smoking is a known risk factor for all types of digestive cancers, such as cancer of the mouth, larynx, and esophagus. People who smoke have 20-30 times the risk of death due to laryngeal cancer when compared to non-smokers. These are just some of the disadvantages of smoking. Smoking can also cause a variety of GI diseases, including peptic ulcers, heartburn, gallstones, Crohn's disease, and stomach cancer.
3. Circulatory System
Smoking affects the circulation and heart function by causing two main things: (1 it markedly increases the blood pressure; 2 it causes an increase in the heart rate.) This effect occurs because the nicotine in cigarettes directly affects the nerves, resulting in an increase in heart rate and shrinking of the blood vessels. Because smokers have lungs full of deadly gasses, the heart needs to pump much harder to get oxygen to the entire body. Smoking also causes an increase in blood fat and the levels of fibrinogen in the blood. These lead to heart diseases, such as an aneurysm, coronary artery disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.
4. Lungs
It is primarily the tar in cigarette smoke that does the most damage to the cells within the lungs. This can lead to lung cancer. It can also lead to long-lasting disruptive respiratory disease, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis. Several factors can affect cigarette smoke's role in cancer of the lungs. These include the length of time the person has smoked, the daily amount of cigarette smoking, and the type of tobacco being ingested. This is surely one of the biggest disadvantages of smoking.
5. Brain
Smoking causes a buildup of fat and other fatty types of plaques within the carotid artery leading to the brain. When a blood clot forms in the area of these plaques, a stroke can grow. Other things that tobacco smoke does to damage the brain include a decrease in the amount of oxygen that hemoglobin can carry to the brain cells because of carbon monoxide, a rise in blood pressure from excess nicotine, and a thickening of the blood that increases the risk of clotted blood.
6. Skin and Hair
Smoking causes damage to the smoker's skin by reducing the amount of collagen in it. Collagen is what gives the skin its elasticity. Smokers ultimately get very deep lines in the skin of their faces because the nicotine badly affects the skin capillaries, which are necessary to keep it nourished. In addition, people who smoke run an increased risk of developing early graying and thinning of their hair.
7. Muscles and Bone
The chemicals that make up tobacco smoke are poisonous and can inhibit the growth and development of tissue cells in the muscle and bones. The various tissues of the body in smokers can't get a satisfactory amount of blood supply, so it heals poorly. This means that smokers put themselves at a higher risk of osteoporosis. (a medical condition in which the bones become brittle and fragile from loss of tissue, typically as a result of hormonal changes, or deficiency of calcium or vitamin D.)
8. Reproductive System
This is one of the shocking disadvantages of smoking. Smoking is a known cause of infertility and decreases the chances of fertilizing the egg in both men and women. Men who are smokers have a reduction in total sperm count and a reduction in the ability to fertilize the female egg. Smoking also lessens the ability of the female ovary to make eggs that are healthy enough for fertilization. If you smoke and are also pregnant, you are more likely than non-smokers to have a preterm baby or low birth weight, baby. About 20-30 percent of babies who are born with low birth weight and 14 percent of preterm births are caused by smoking during pregnancy. What's more, once born, the infant born to a mother who has smoked during pregnancy has an increased risk of reduced lung function and asthma.
9. Cigarettes Are Expensive
Smoking not only damages your health, but it is a very expensive habit. An individual who smokes only a pack a day for 20 years will smoke about 7305 packs of cigarettes at a cost of more than $21,915. Smoking, according to the American Lung Association, results in total costs in the US of about $193 billion, which includes about USD 97 billion in lost work productivity and USD 96 billion in direct costs for health care.
10. Smoking Is Bad for Those Around You
When you smoke, you do not just harm yourself. There is also the issue of passive smoking, which consists of breathing in tobacco smoke from those who are smoking around you. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 90 percent of people who do not smoke are exposed to used cigarette smoke or environmental smoke. This type of exposure doubles the chances of developing a heart attack as well as other heart diseases and death from these diseases for a non-smoker. It can affect the taste of growing children, causing stunting of their growth and an increase in smoking in teenagers. This is one of the scary disadvantages of smoking.
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