The Dangers of Smoking

April 3rd, 2012 No comments

Smoking is dangerous for everyone regardless of age, race, socioeconomic background, and any other factor you can think of. It increases the risk of potential fatal diseases including cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Even passive or second hand smoke poses similar risks. Being around passive smoke increases the risk of respiratory disorders such as asthma and bronchitis in children, and had also been linked with developmental and learning problems.

The Dangers of Smoking: Looking Beyond Lung Cancer

Many people are unaware of the fact that smoking affects much more than just the lungs alone. Of course, there is a clear and well known association between smoking and lung cancer, but smoking has negative effects on all of the body’s system, and can lead to a veritable laundry list of problems.

Increased risk of lung cancer and bronchitis are well established dangers of smoking, but very few know that cigarette smoking is a major contributor to heart attacks as well. A host of cancers in addition to lung cancer have also been linked with cigarette smoking. The list includes cancer of the larynx, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, cancer of the bloodstream, cancer of the large intestine, cancer of the tongue and mouth and bladder cancer.

Smoking raises blood pressure and elevates the heart rate due to nicotine stimulating the nervous system. Oxygen to the brain is reduced and the blood thickens, which increases the likelihood of blood clots. Over time, these symptoms lead to cardiovascular disease resulting in potential heart attacks and strokes. Smoking cigarettes also deposits tar in the lungs with damages air sacs and clogs arteries. Long term damage and shortness of breath are common effects.

The Dangers of Smoking: What Makes Cigarettes So Unhealthy?

Cigarettes contain approximately 4,000 chemicals, 60 of which have been linked to cancer. If there are any doubts remaining with regard to the seriousness of the health risks associated with smoking, they should be put to rest. The evidence is overwhelming, and all points to the same conclusions. This is not just scaremongering; there are years of research behind these statements. The dangers of smoking are real and well documented.

The average smoker will have a life expectancy 12 years shorter than a non-smoker. In addition to a shorter lifespan, many smokers spend their last years suffering from painful diseases that all but strip any enjoyment from their days.

When compounded with other conditions like diabetes, high cholesterol or other chronic conditions the risks associated with smoking are even higher. The good news; quitting smoking can reverse many of these conditions. The sooner you quit the more health benefits you’ll receive.

As mentioned above, lung cancer is not the only effect smoking has on the respiratory system. Smokers are more prone to pneumonia, influenza, and even common colds. Smoking has also been linked with Tuberculosis, and just about every known disease of the respiratory system.
The effects of cigarette smoking also reach out to those around you as well. Those who are exposed to second-hand smoke inhale about 15% the amount of nicotine as those who are active smokers, so for every ten cigarettes you have around your children, they may as well have smoked one a half cigarettes themselves.

As for the rest of the body, cigarette smoking can cause blood diseases, decreased circulation to the toes and feet, and slower healing wounds. The negative effects of regular smoking practically affect the entire body in one way or another. Smokers will often reference someone they know who is 85 years old and has smoked for 60 years, yet is in fine health. Perhaps these people exist, but there numbers pale in comparison to those dying painful deaths in hospitals around the world. Do you really want to roll the dice with those odds?

The Dangers of Smoking: Big Tobacco

If the health dangers of smoking aren’t reason enough to curb the habit, it was also found that the tobacco industry was knowingly marketing to children, tracking the behavior of the demographic in an attempt to turn them into smokers early and have a whole new generation of lifelong customers. They have also repeatedly downplayed the risks of smoking, even with irrefutable evidence aplenty.

Luckily legislation has been passed that regulates how and who the tobacco companies can market to. Descriptions including ‘light’, ‘natural’, ‘low tar’ and ‘ultra light’, as well as any other marketing language that attempts to downplay the health risks of smoking can no longer be used.

The Dangers of Smoking: Isn’t it Time?

If you’re a smoker and have been trying unsuccessfully to quit, now is the time to get serious about it and kick the habit. There are many proven methods being used by smokers to quit once and for all. Don’t keep gambling with your health; the help you need is available.

Dangers Of Smoking

March 28th, 2012 No comments

Smoking can be dangerous not just to the lungs alone but other parts of the body as well. Sadly, not everyone is educated on the dangers of smoking even though many connect smoking with lung cancer. To begin with, it must be known that cigarette is among the top contributors of heart attacks besides causing cancers such as bladder cancer, liver cancer, cancer of the throat, cancer of the larynx, cancer of the mouth and tongue, cancer of the large intestine, oesophageal cancer and cancer of the blood among others.

Even then some tobacco companies have been accused of marketing their products to school going children through youth groups. This is carefully done through tracking the behaviour of youth as well as hiding the serious dangers of smoking from them at a time when their bodies are actively developing. Contrary to arguments that the only effect of cigarettes to the lungs is lung cancer, there are other respiratory diseases and complications that arise from cigarette smoking. These include bronchitis, recurrent shortness of breath, persistent wet coughs. Even more, the victims may also get colds, asthma and pneumonia. For those people suffering from tuberculosis, smoking can only complicate their situation as well as those with other respiratory conditions.

The dangers of smoking cigarettes are not limited to you the smoker alone but are bound to affect those people who are around you. People who are exposed to at least 15% of the cigarette smoke may just take in large volumes of nicotine which may as well be equal to that taken in by active smokers themselves. Hence every packet of cigarette you smoke may amount to one or half of a cigarette for the secondary smoker.

It is for this reason that tobacco companies are prohibited from using terms such as low, ultra light, natural, light as well as other deceptive terms that do not offer perfect descriptions of what the cigarettes really are thereby appealing to the masses even though they are a health hazard. Other danders of smoking include decreased blood circulation to the toes and feet as well as taking too long to heal from wounds among other blood diseases. In fact, when carefully thought through, nearly all body parts are affected in one way or another either by active or passive smoking. It is all these reasons that you should consider quitting because it not only affects you but also those around you.

What are The Main Dangers of Smoking?

September 27th, 2011 No comments

There are different dangers of smoking that need to be mentioned and it can take a long time to talk about all of them. Because of this fact, we need to at least understand the most important and dangerous ones. These are actually caused by carbon monoxide, tar and nicotine.

Nicotine brings in the most important dangers of smoking. It will naturally be found in tobacco and basically has no color and no odor. However, it is psychologically and even physically addictive. It basically makes you want to smoke and feel like you need to smoke. The nicotine will enter our body through tar particles that appear in cigarette smoke. When you inhale it into the lungs it will quickly get passed to our bloodstream. It takes around 10 seconds for nicotine to reach our brain and just around 10 more to get to other parts of the human body. The immediate effect that nicotine has is an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. You will immediately feel more relaxed and more alert. The problem is that it only takes around 30 minutes for most of the nicotine to disappear and then you will feel that you need some more nicotine. This will cause the addiction.

Dangers of smoking also appear because of carbon monoxide and tar. The tar can easily accumulate on bronchial tubes that will go to your longs. Hot smoke will burn cilia and this will allow harmful particles to directly entering our lungs. The carbon monoxide levels will be higher in our lungs when smoking. This is a poisonous gas that quickly reaches the blood. The immediate effect is a reduction in the capacity to properly carry oxygen. This basically means that you need to exert more effort in order to do the same things that a nonsmoker would do. The one muscle that will really need to work harder is the heart and this is especially true during intense workouts. Increased carbon monoxide levels will impair vision, coordination and time perception.

Besides all that was mentioned above, we have to realize the fact that there are also other dangers that we need to take into account at all times. There are a lot of toxic substances put in cigarettes these days and we do have to make sure that we minimize the impact that smoking has on our body. This is even true for non-smokers.

An Introduction To The Dangers Of Smoking

April 13th, 2011 No comments

Dangers Of Smoking

It would be safe to say that worldwide, many people remain unaware of the perilous dangers of smoking but undeniably smoking is a lure that even people who are aware of the fact that smoking kills can’t resist. Increasingly, the world is seeing quantum jumps in the number of adept smokers and passive smokers and despite the fact that many organizations are currently fighting to increase awareness all over the world, not much is currently being achieved in terms of results.

Dangers Of Smoking | Smoking facts and smoking statistics

1. According to facts gathered by the World Health Organization, currently, approximately 25 diseases are occurring worldwide as a direct or else indirect result of smoking and it is believed that the full impact of the dangers of smoking is yet to be assessed.

2. Each year, smoking causes no less than 5 million deaths worldwide.

3. According to smoking statistics, by 2020, smoking will kill 10 million people each year worldwide causing on average 17.7% of all deaths.

4. Currently, according to smoking facts, the world shows 1.1 billion smokers or 800 million smokers in the developed countries of the globe.

460x60a An Introduction To The Dangers Of Smoking

Dangers Of Smoking | Perilous effects of smoking

Studies carried out by the World Health Organization not so long ago revealed that smokers over the age of 30 increase their chances of having a heart attack or else a stroke by 5 times so in the broader aspect of things, one of the dangers of smoking is the development of cardiovascular diseases. Cigarette smoke, as you most probably already, contains approximately 4000 chemicals, 3 of which being tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide and all three main constituents of cigarette smoke cause the narrowing of blood vessels depriving the heart and the lungs of sufficient oxygen. If a person smokes for the whole of his lifetime then there is a fat chance that his eventual death will occur earlier than it would have under normal circumstances and it will occur as a direct result of smoking.

As for the effects of smoking on the lungs, the dangers of smoking include things such as lung cancer, chronic bronchitis or else emphysema, all of which are medical conditions that prevent the normal functioning of the human lungs. Currently, lung cancer is killing 20 000 people in the UK each year and millions of people worldwide. A person who smokes increases his chance of getting lung cancer at some point or another by 22 times, not 5, not 10 but 22 times. Is smoking really worth the while? For one, when you smoke, you literally burn off money and for what? To land yourself deadly diseases and die a most painful death in your 40s? It is also important to note here that lung cancer is a disease that cannot be treated completely once you get it. The dangers of smoking are frightening in the true sense of the word particularly if you consider the fact that smoking does not only cause lung cancer but rather it also causes things such as uterine cancer, cervical cancer, leukemia or else stomach cancer.

Increasingly, it is being observed that more and more women are making a habit of smoking. The dangers of smoking where women are concerned include the effects of smoking we discussed above but in addition to that, other dangers include things such as more severe miscarriages and inhibited child growth resulting in babies being born underweight or else very fragile. Smoking can also cause infant death syndrome or else higher rates of what are known as infant respiratory illnesses such as colds, pneumonia and bronchitis. After reading this article I hope many will realize the dangers of smoking and take immediately action to quit now!

Dangers Of Smoking | What You Need To Know

April 12th, 2011 No comments

Dangers Of Smoking

One of the smoking facts that one should remember is that a smoker never grows older because smoking kills them at an early stage of their life. Most of the people start smoking at a very young age or in their teenage when probably they do not possess the information about dangers of smoking. Though most of the people at some stage of their life know about the potential hazards of smoking yet they are unable to quit the habit of smoking because of the heroic image associated with smoking cigarettes.

Let us come across with some of the dangers of smoking cigarettes. The addiction of cigarette is basically due to the nicotine that is released into the blood stream. But the fact is that the cigarette smoke is constituted with more than four thousand chemical substances and most of them have harmful effects on the body. Moreover, out of these four thousand chemical substances sixty are known to be potential carcinogenic substances that may cause serious health hazards such as cancer. It has been estimated that four hundred of these chemical substances are toxins that are used to manufacture rat poison, nail polish remover, wood varnish etc. And these substances are capable to adversely affect lungs and heart.

460x60b Dangers Of Smoking | What You Need To Know

Dangers Of Smoking | Smoking Statistics

If you look at various smoking statistics then you will easily realize the dangers of smoking that smoking is directly co-related with cancer. Majority of the cases of cancer due to smoking is the lung cancer whereas the incidence rate of cancer of the mouth, urinary bladder, pancreas, larynx, stomach, kidney, and esophagus is also high. Apart from this smoking also makes the smokers susceptible to critical lung disease including bronchitis and emphysema.

Smoking can be especially harmful for pregnant women as it predisposes to low birth weight babies, per mature birth and even miscarriages. Smoking can be risky for the pregnant women as there are high chances of vaginal bleeding, ectopic pregnancy abnormal placental implantation and so on. So, it is advisable to quit smoking before conceiving or at least during pregnancy. This will increase the chances of delivering normal healthy weight babies.

The dangers of smoking according to some researches it has been found that smoking also lead to impotency by affecting the ejaculatory control. Apart from this regular use of nicotine will also cause anxiety due to which you may experience early ejaculation while having sex. So, it is advisable that if you are suffering from impotency or from ejaculation issues then you should immediately quit smoking cigarette before having any problem in your sex life.

460x60a1 Dangers Of Smoking | What You Need To Know

Dangers Of Smoking | Second Hand Smoking

One of the complex issues associated with smoking is that it not only harms the smokers but also threatens the life of the people around the smoker. This kind of smoking hazard is referred as second hand smoking. That means the smoke of the tobacco is passively inhaled by the people around the smoker. Sometimes second hand smoking is also referred as environmental tobacco smoke, involuntary smoking and passive smoking. The most common source of second hand smoking is the cigarettes that are closely followed by smoke of the pipes and cigars. People can become victim of second hand smoking anywhere including their homes, their workplace and even at the recreational places.

There are many dangers of second hand smoking. One of the important hazards of second hand smoking is cancer. As in this case also the person in the vicinity of the smoker passively inhales the toxic smoke capable of causing cancer. It has been estimated that there are at least 250 chemical substances that are harmful and out of these at least 50 substances are carcinogenic which is responsible to cause cancer. After reading this article I hope many will realize the dangers of smoking and take immediately action to quit now!