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Grab a lighter/matchstick, light it take it towards your mouth, light the thin cylindrical piece inside your mouth and blow off your life in that smoke with the lovely cigarette. The biggest enemy of a person in life is never some other person or a terrorist. It is always you. If you die or harm yourself it is always you the person who is responsible for that!

The biggest problem is the pack of cigarette itself says that, “Smoking Kills“. Still, people take it proudly, it effects your health badly. There are lot of other things that can be eaten but people chose rubbish things only. We need to understand the meaning of being smart and being mental!

There is a very famous hindi qoute saying, “अपने पैरो पर खुद कुल्हाड़ी मारना“, which means hitting your own feet with an axe. But, here you are not just hitting your feet but you are killing yourself. Read further to find out the Health Effects of Smoking.

Health Effects of Smoking

Why Does A Person Gets Addicted to Smoking?

Tobacco consists of a major ingredient which is nicotine, which is also known as mood-altering disease. The drug reaches the brain in mere seconds and makes you feel relaxed, happy and energized for some time. But in not much time the effect is over, then you feel tired and you crave for more. There, comes the bad point here the brain demands for more nicotine! This happens because when you smoke, you increase the number of nicotine receptors in the brain. Then the brain needs more nicotine. Due to which the person gets addicted to it and feels difficult to quit smoking.

Now, as you have been having it continuously or if you have had it just once or twice, you need it again and again and again. But, if you try to resist yourself, you will start feeling, depressed, anxious, angry and you will also develop a headache.

How Can It Effect You?

First and foremost smoking affects almost every part of your body. Some of them are very harmful and immediate. 

On the first-ever intake of the smoke of a cigarette, more than 5000 chemical substances come in contact with the bodies tissues. At first Tar, a black chemical substance begins to coat the teeth and gums, damaging the tooth enamel and causing decay. With time it also damages the nerve-endings in the nose, due to which the ability to smell is lost. Within 10 seconds nicotine reaches the brain and starts increasing the receptors. Cigarettes trigger the body’s DNA which then is responsible for forming cancers. Further, it becomes harder for women to get pregnant and for men, it can cause erectile dysfunction.

Let us look at some of the major parts of the body

(Lungs are the most affected which are discussed later in the blog).

Brain

• Nicotine in the cigarette directly reaches your brain and comes in action. Its addiction is very high as it changes your brain. It leads to many health issues.
• Stroke is a major health disorder, which is caused due to poor blood flow in the muscles. Moreover, it is also caused due to the thickening and narrowing of the blood vessels leading to the brain.
• When a person smokes it increases the likelihood for the blood vessels to clot. When clotting occurs the blood flow becomes poor.
• Smoking can increase the chances of having a stroke to 2-4 times.

Bones

• Smoking can decrease your bone strength and make them brittle.
• Smokers lose bone density at a much faster rate than that of non-smokers. As, a result they increase their chances for breaking many body parts, like the hips.
• All of this happens because smoking reduces the blood flow towards the brain and many other body tissues. It also decreases the body’s capability of accepting calcium, which is highly essential for strong bones.
• The nicotine in cigarettes slows down the production of bone-producing cells, called osteoblasts.

Immune System

• The immune system protects the body against infection and disease.
• Smoking compromises this and can lead to autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
• It harms the immune system and makes it less powerful to fight dangerous and normal diseases too.

Lungs

How Lungs are Effected?

• Smoking damages the airways and air sacs in the lungs.
• It also inflates and irritates the lungs and causes infections. Moreover, only a single cigarette is also enough for that irritation and coughing.
• It destroys the lung tissues.
• It also destroys the cilia, tiny hair-like structures present whose job is to keep the airways clean.
• Then it fills the alveoli, the tiny air sacs due to which the exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide occurs. A highly toxic gas Carbon Monoxide(CO) takes many places of oxygen in the haemoglobin in the blood. Causing shortness of breath.

• Smoking causes the cells that producing mucus in the lungs and airways to grow in size and number. As a result, the amount of mucus increases and thickens. Lungs cannot effectively clean out this excess mucus. So, the mucus stays in the airways, clogs them, and bring a cough. This extra mucus is also prone to infection.
• Smoking causes to age faster than normal and fiddles with the natural ability to of protecting the body against infections.

Lung Diseases Caused by Smoking

(They act as a great life taker because curing them becomes impossible. This happens as diseases caused by smoking takes years to come into the picture. Meaning when the disease would be diagnosed, until then it would have been advanced immensely or reached up to its final stage. Lung cancer is the biggest example).

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): This is a long-lasting disease which worsens over time. It causes wheezing(having a whistling sound while breathing), shortness of breath, and chest tightness. It was estimated in a 2009 survey that 40-70 per cent of people who had lung cancer also suffered from COPD. However, having COPD doesn’t necessarily mean you will get lung cancer. It does mean that you have a higher risk. As this disease can also lead to death!

Chronic Bronchitis: This happens when the airways produce too much mucus, and because of which the air-ways get inflamed leading to long-lasting coughs. In time, scar tissue and mucus can completely block the airways and cause infection and death too.

Emphysema: This is a type of COPD that reduces the number of air sacs in the lungs and breaks down the walls present in between them. Disabling the person’s ability to breathe, even when resting. In the latter stages, patients often can only breathe using an oxygen mask.

Smoking & Cancer

Smoking can Cause Cancer Almost Anywhere in Your Body.

• It is a significant risk factor for developing kidney cancer, and more the smoke greater is the risk.
• Smokers have an increased chance of getting stomach cancer or ulcers.

• Smoking can cause male impotence, as it damages the blood vessels that supply blood to the penis. It can also damage sperm, reduce sperm count and cause testicular cancer.
• The most serious damage that smoking causes are in the mouth and throat. There is an increased risk of cancer in your lips, tongue, throat, voice box and gullet (oesophagus). More than 93% of oropharyngeal cancers are caused by smoking.

What are the Effects when A Person Quits Smoking?

When a person quits smoking it shows immediate(which would be immediate) and long-lasting benefits.

• Just after 20 minutes of a final cigarette, the heart rate and blood pressure start returning to normal.
• After 12 hours the Carbon Monoxide levels stabilizing starts increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.
• The risk for heart-attack decreases after a full day, as the blood pressure and heart rate, have become to normalise.
• The nerve endings responsible for smell start to recover after 2 days.

• After 1 month the lung starts to become clearer reducing the coughs.
• The delicate hair-like cilia in the airways start recovering within weeks and become fully functional within 9 months.
• The heart disease risk reduces to half as the blood vessel function improves.
• The chances of having a stroke reduce to half as that of a non-smoker in 2 years, and the same as a non-smoker in 5 years.
• Risks for cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, and bladder drop by half within 5 years. Also, the chance of clot-forming reduces.
• The risk of lung cancer drops by half after 10 years.
• After 15 years the heart rate is the same as that of a non-smoker.

How to Quit Smoking?

There is a solution available to every problem that occurs. Nothing is impossible. Yes, with that mindset and thinking a person needs to develop himself/herself for the greatest quest of quitting smoking.

• The first and foremost point to this is that quitting smoking is not that difficult as it seems to be.
• This is because a person is never addicted to smoking. Yes, he/she is addicted to the nicotine drug which was discussed above.
• Quitting is very easy(because many people reject that fact just due to the state of mind, that it is not possible only). But that is not true!

• There are many alternatives to nicotine which can help resolve the craving.
• They are nicotine gums, sprays and patches. Patches being the best way and little-bit less harmful too.
• Halt! it does not mean that one would leave cigarette smoking and start taking nicotine patches.
• Be strong, trust yourself and start leaving them with time too.
• Keep yourself busy, stay involved in your favourite work and don’t leave your hands empty.
• Grab a family photo and put it on your working table, look at it again & again and scold yourself by saying you have to leave it for your family at least.
• At the end consult a doctor.

The worst fact about smoking in the universe is that, many well-educated people proudally consume tobacco and cigarettes. They say that nothing would happen. But, pack of cigarette itself says, “Smoking Kills, Tobacco can Cause Cancer”. Are’nt you educated enough to read and understand that!

Remember one thing in life, “Better Late, Than Never“. For your near & dear ones, for your Wife, Husband, Brohter, Sister, Mother, Father, Friend, Son, Daughter take the strongest and best  decision of your life by understanding the Health Effects of Smoking & Quit Smoking today.

Plus if your mind changes after reading this blog and you plan to quit smoking, do drop-in-a comment below!

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

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