How Smoking Harms Your Body: Could Knowing the Risks Help You Quit?

Health Risks of Smoking

Smoking is one of the main causes of serious health diseases, such as cancer, stroke, and heart problems. If you have no plans of quitting today, having knowledge of the different types of illnesses that you may experience through years of smoking may change your perception and lead you to stop smoking.

In this section, you will discover how smoking affects various parts of the body, including the eyes, nose, throat, lungs, heart, skin, blood, etc. Here are some possible health effects of smoking:
- Lung Cancer
- Heart Diseases
- High Blood Pressure
- Bad Breath
- Gum Disease
- Depression
- Snoring
- Diabetes
- Infertility in men and women
- Thyroid Disease
- Harmful effects on Bones and Joints

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Things to Keep in Mind

- Try to pick a good time to quit. Don't try to quit during the holidays, finals week, right before a big presentation, or any other time when stress levels are heightened. This will decrease your chances of success and give you an excuse to start smoking again.
- You may gain a small amount of weight when quitting smoking. This is normal. Most people gain between 5 to 10 pounds after quitting due to the decreased metabolism that quitting nicotine can cause. Weight gains of more than 10 pounds are usually caused by people substituting food for cigarettes in their diet.
- Be prepared to try quitting more than once. Most people are not fully successful the first time they try and need to attempt it a couple of times before they finally quit for good.
- Don't get discouraged if you aren't successful at first. Like anything worth doing, it may take you a few tries to get it right.

Regards,
CRK

Prepare to Quit

Set a quit date. Decide on a day within the next two weeks when you will stop smoking entirely. You may want to pick a day that has added significance, such as your birthday, wedding anniversary, or the first day of the New Year. If you smoke at work, consider quitting on the weekend, during a vacation, or on a day off.

Remove all tobacco products, ashtrays, lighters, and matches from your home, car, and office. Having even one pack of cigarettes at home will make it much easier to start smoking again.

Notify friends and family that you plan on quitting. Warn them that you may be irritable or have mood swings for a week or two. Ask them to be patient and supportive during the process. If someone close to you smokes, ask that they refrain from smoking around you (or even better - suggest that they try quitting with you).

Talk to your doctor about your decision to quit smoking. Find out if this may have any effects on the medications you are currently taking. You may also want to inquire about medications that may help you overcome the withdrawal symptoms of quitting smoking.

Regards,
CRK

There are two factors that will determine your success in quitting smoking for good. They are:

Will - You must have the desire to give up your habit of smoking and create a strong will to avoid a smoking relapse.

Mindset – You must learn about the effects of smoking, understand its consequences, and face the fact that you need to stop smoking and follow, finish, and maintain a quit smoking plan.

The Dangers of Smoking

The ingredients of tobacco smoke are chemically active. They can start dramatic and fatal changes in the body. There are over 4,000 chemicals, which can be damaging to the smoker's body. They include tar, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, metals, ammonia, and radioactive compounds.

Scientists and doctors know much more about the effects of smoking today than ever before. They know smoking causes immediate effects on the smoker's body. It constricts the airways of the lungs, increases the smoker's heart rate, and elevates the smoker's blood pressure. The carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke deprives the tissues of the smoker's body of much-needed oxygen. All of these are dangerous short-term effects.

There are more serious long-term effects as well. Smoked tobacco in the forms of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars causes lung cancers, emphysema, and other respiratory diseases. In fact, smoking causes ninety percent of all lung cancer cases. Twenty percent of heavy smokers get the chronic lung disease called emphysema, which causes the narrowing and clogging of the airway passages in the lungs. This disease is seldom seen in nonsmokers. Smokers are also at least four times more likely to develop oral and laryngeal cancer than nonsmokers.

Smoking contributes to heart disease. It increases the risk of stroke by nearly 40% among men and 60% among women. Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine, a drug that is addictive and can make it very hard, but not impossible, to quit. More than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are from smoking-related illnesses. Smoking greatly increases your risks for lung cancer and many other cancers.

Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family members, coworkers, and others who breathe the smoker's cigarette smoke, called secondhand smoke.

Among infants to 18 months of age, secondhand smoke is associated with as many as 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia each year. Secondhand smoke from a parent's cigarette increases a child's chances for middle ear problems, causes coughing and wheezing, and worsens asthma conditions.

If both parents smoke, a teenager is more than twice as likely to smoke as a young person whose parents are both non-smokers. In households where only one parent smokes, young people are also more likely to start smoking.

Pregnant women who smoke are more likely to deliver babies whose weights are too low for the baby's good health. If all women quit smoking during pregnancy, about 4,000 new babies would not die each year.

Why Quit Smoking?

Quitting smoking makes a difference right away—you can taste and smell food better. Your breath smells better, and your cough goes away. This happens for men and women of all ages, even those who are older. It happens for healthy people as well as those who already have a disease or condition caused by smoking.

Quitting smoking cuts the risk of lung cancer, many other cancers, heart disease, stroke, other lung diseases, and other respiratory illnesses. Ex-smokers have better health than current smokers. Ex-smokers have fewer days of illness, fewer health complaints, and less bronchitis and pneumonia than current smokers.

Quitting smoking saves money. A pack-a-day smoker, who pays $2 per pack, can expect to save more than $700 per year. It appears that the price of cigarettes will continue to rise in coming years, as will the financial rewards of quitting.

Quitting smoking may be hard but not impossible, and remember where there is a will, there is a way.

Regards,
CRK
[Email Removed For Privacy Reasons]

How Smoking Affects Your Body

There's hardly a part of the human body that's not affected by the chemicals in the cigarettes you smoke. Let's take a tour of your body to look at how smoking affects it.

Starting at the Top

As a smoker, you're at risk for cancer of the mouth. Tobacco smoke can also cause gum disease, tooth decay, and bad breath. The teeth become unsightly and yellow. Smokers may experience frequent headaches, and lack of oxygen and narrowed blood vessels to the brain can lead to strokes.

Lungs and Bronchi

Moving down to your chest, smoke passes through the bronchi, or breathing tubes. Hydrogen cyanide and other chemicals in the smoke attack the lining of the bronchi, inflaming them and causing that chronic smoker's cough. Because the bronchi are weakened, you're more likely to get bronchial infections. Mucus secretion in your lungs is impaired, also leading to chronic coughing. Smokers are 10 times as likely to get lung cancer and emphysema as nonsmokers.

Smoking and the Heart

The effects of smoking on your heart are devastating. Nicotine raises blood pressure and makes the blood clot more easily. Carbon monoxide robs the blood of oxygen and leads to the development of cholesterol deposits on the artery walls. All of these effects add up to an increased risk of heart attack. In addition, the poor circulation resulting from cholesterol deposits can cause strokes, loss of circulation in fingers and toes, and impotence.

Smoking and the Body's Organs

The digestive system is also affected. The tars in smoke can trigger cancer of the esophagus and throat. Smoking causes increased stomach acid secretion, leading to heartburn and ulcers. Smokers have higher rates of deadly pancreatic cancer. Many of the carcinogens from cigarettes are excreted in the urine where their presence can cause bladder cancer, which is often fatal. High blood pressure from smoking can damage the kidneys.

The Results

The health effects of smoking have results we can measure. Forty percent of men who are heavy smokers will die before they reach retirement age, as compared to only 18 percent of nonsmokers. Women who smoke face an increased risk of cervical cancer, and pregnant women who smoke take a chance with the health of their unborn babies.

But the good news is that when you quit smoking, your body begins to repair itself. Ten years after you quit, your body has repaired most of the damage smoking caused. Those who wait until cancer or emphysema has set in aren't so lucky—these conditions are usually fatal. It's one more reason to take the big step and quit now.



CRK

AnnaBanana's Quit Smoking Story

"I began smoking at 13 years of age..."
By Terry Martin

I have tried many times over the last few years to kick this addiction once and for all, but somehow, I always managed to be lured back into its clutches after a few weeks or even after a 6-month quit. I thought I had it beaten! I think it must have been the "just one" lie which got me the last time. I smoked for another couple of years before I found the willpower to try again. Every time I failed, I felt ashamed. Other people were quitting and staying quit, but I kept falling by the wayside and smoking more as a result. How could they get it right and not me?

I began smoking at 13 years of age... just one or two with a friend in the evenings when we were out. In those days, many moons ago, we were able to buy loose cigarettes, usually unfiltered, from any shop! We would each have our money, and the bravest one of us would walk in, hoping not to bump into anyone we knew, and buy 4 cigarettes! Two each for the coming evening, usually smoked outside, behind the youth club. It was hidden, a dirty little secret, even in those days. My parents would have murdered me had they found out, though they were both smokers themselves. I didn't "come out" with the fact that I smoked till I was working, around 16 years old. I smoked about 10 a day then!

So it continued...

I never thought of the damage I was doing to myself. I felt exciting, in the swing of things, and accepted as an adult. So I had a bad cough after a cold, and my teeth weren't as white as my sister's, who never smoked. I no longer played any sports, but most of my friends smoked, so I never felt different.

I met and married my husband Paul when we were 22, both smoking like chimneys. I had 2 children by the time I was 26, and life went on as normal. We smoked around our children, never thinking it would be doing them any harm. They both begged us to stop when they learned about the dangers of smoking. We just rolled our eyes at each other, patronizingly poo-pooing their pleas. We weren't going to die! Other people did that!

My son has never smoked, while my daughter does, starting when she was 18. We never thought she would! My parents quit smoking, my aunts quit smoking, but they were older. I had loads of time to quit further down the line. Paul's mother died from a heart attack at only 55, after suffering a brain hemorrhage the year before, both smoking-related illnesses. And still we smoked.

At age 36, I had a child with profound mental and physical retardation. We moved outside to smoke, as she had such trouble breathing, and we didn't want to add to that! Thank God no doctor ever said to us that Sinead's condition was smoking-related. I couldn't have borne that guilt!

My father died a few years later from cancer throughout his body, as well as emphysema - already damaged even though he had quit for years. Still I smoked, even as he asked me on his deathbed to try to stop. I did mean to, but thought that I had too many worries to cope with. How would I cope without a smoke?! Little did I know then, the smoking was only adding to my inability to cope, clouding my whole world in smoke.

Sinead died after almost 11 years in our home. I smoked more than ever. Paul had a stent inserted into a valve in his heart - caused by blockage, smoking-related! We both quit for a while then, began to exercise more, and for the first time, realized that we were not invincible, and would surely die of some horrible disease if we didn't give it a darned good try! Even though I intended to cheat while Paul was at work, and then pretend to be smober when he came home, I found that the only person I was cheating was myself. After a spell of self-loathing, I put my heart and soul into it!

This is our last and most successful quit. Both of us still feel that we will never smoke again. I only wish we could have found this strength of purpose before. I know that this wonderful forum has kept me focused and educated me fully about the addiction to nicotine and how to beat it. I have found a peace this time, which I had never experienced before... an awareness of my world and everything in it. I have an abundance of energy, a joy in living, more confidence than ever before, and after 11 months of smobriety, I am more committed to this quit than ever before!

- Anna (Annabanana)

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