Harmful Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Health

Overview

Smoking is bad for your health in various ways, it raises the risk of causing many infectious illnesses such as the common cold, pneumonia, or influenza. These conditions can result in a respiratory infection as well as lung damage. It also harms your physical fitness as well as damage the cardiovascular system, which results in serious health problems such as a heart attack or stroke. Smoking cigarettes also raises the chance of cancer, most commonly lung cancer as well as malignant tumours in the mouth and throat. People who smoke cigarettes for a long period, they easily infected with tuberculosis. 

When you smoke, your body suffers from serious problems. If the woman smokes cigarettes, it can cause complications during pregnancy. Women who smoke cigarettes while in their pregnancy conditions are more likely to cause miscarriage, and ectopic pregnancy. If their babies are born too early, they are usually with low birth weight. It increases the chances of having a cleft in the lip or palate and It is more likely for an infant to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

If a man smokes cigarettes, he is more likely to have problems with his sexual life, Smoking cigarettes can lead to affect the flow of blood vessels in the penis region, which might result in erectile dysfunction, decreased libido, and infertility in males. 

Harmful effects of cigarette smoking

1. Lung Damage is one of the common harmful effects of cigarette smoking:

When you smoke cigarettes, it immediately affects your lungs and your blood contains toxic chemicals such as carbon monoxide. Smoking may harm the lungs at any age. Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy may have defective lungs, and teenagers who smoke might have smaller, weaker lungs that never grow to full size. Smoking is the leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (also known as COPD). People who have COPD have breathing problems, and ultimately they will die because of a lack of oxygen due to their condition. There is currently no permanent treatment for COPD.

2. Coronary illness is one of the common harmful effects of cigarette smoking:

Smoking cigarettes can reduce coronary blood flow and decrease myocardial oxygen which results in coronary artery disease, due to the narrowing of the epicardial arteries. These temporary abnormalities in coronary blood oxygenation may cause cardiovascular disease. 

The chemicals that are released when you smoke cigarettes cause atherosclerosis by causing adherence of plaque on the surface of blood vessels. This makes it more challenging for blood cells to move through arteries and oxygen through blood vessels to reach vital organs like the heart and brain. This can cause blood clots, leading to a heart attack, stroke, or even death. 

3. Fertility problems:

Cigarette smoking may harm a woman’s ability to conceive. It is because cigarette smoke, which contains chemicals (including nicotine, cyanide, and carbon monoxide) that speed the process by which eggs are lost. Unfortunately, after eggs are passed away, there is no way for them to rejuvenate or be replaced. This predicts that menopause will develop earlier from one to four years sooner in women who smoke (compared with non-smokers).

Male smokers will experience reduced sperm counts, motility, and irregularly shaped sperm. Smoking cigarettes will reduce the sperm’s capacity to fertilize eggs. Male and female smokers had double the infertility risk, as compared to nonsmokers. Therefore regular smoking of cigarettes increases the chances of fertility problems.

4. Pregnancy Complications:

If a woman smokes cigarettes during her pregnancy, her unborn child may be at risk of developing tissue damage, especially in the lungs and the brain. Women who smoke during pregnancy have an increased risk of delivering their babies before the due date. There is a significant increase in the risk of death, disability, and infection for newborns when the baby is delivered prematurely. Low birth weight is observed in one in every five children delivered to women who smoked during their pregnancies. 

The substances in cigarette smoke may increase your chance of having an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is when the fertilized egg does not attach properly inside the uterus and instead starts to develop somewhere else in the body. This dangerous condition usually always results in the death of the unborn child, and in several situations, it also results at the end of the mother as well.

As per the CDC, smoking cigarettes can influence pregnancy in more than one way, including:

• Increasing the danger of ectopic pregnancy
• Reducing the child’s birth to the world
• Increasing the danger of preterm conveyance
• Damaging the lungs, cerebrum, and focal sensory system
• Increasing the danger of unexpected newborn child passing condition
• Contributing to innate anomalies, like congenital fissures

5. Hazard of type 2 diabetes:

The chemicals in cigarette smoking can be harmful to the cells in your body and affect the normal function of such cells. Inflammation may spread to the entire body as a reaction to this, which may result in insulin providing less action. 

Compared to non-smokers, smokers have a 30–40 per cent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Because high amounts of nicotine may reduce the efficiency of insulin, smoking cigarettes will make it more difficult to manage the condition and control insulin levels. As a result, smokers may need a larger amount of insulin to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

6. Weakened Immune system:

Smoking cigarettes weakens the immune system and may decrease the body’s functioning in preventing infection. The immune system is the body’s defence mechanism from infection and sickness; it is effective against the common cold and influenza. It increases the risk for various immunological and autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, joints, and swelling pain.

7. Vision issues:

If you smoke cigarettes, you face the risk of causing damage to vital components of your eyes, which are important for maintaining your eyesight and vision. This damage may result in blurred vision, diminished vision, or even total blindness. Additionally, it has been shown that tobacco addiction increases the risk of suffering sight-threatening eye disorders, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataracts, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy.

8. Poor oral hygiene is one of the common harmful effects of cigarette smoking: 

Cigarette smokers are more likely to have oral health issues, including gum disease, tooth loss, post-operative difficulties after oral surgery, and most importantly oral cancer.

When a person stops smoking, their chance of having gum disease and oral cancer decreases, as well as they react better to care for gum disease.

Regular dental checkups with a dentist are particularly essential for smokers, who want to maintain the health of their teeth and gums.

Indications of gum infection include: 

• Swollen and delicate gums
• Bleeding when brushing
• Loose teeth
• Sensitive teeth

Tobacco products tend to affect the mucosa of the mouth, turning it brownish-black. This is referred to as Melanoma. Not only it is unesthetic in appearance, it further increases the chances of cancer of the mouth.

Using tobacco may harm a person’s ability to taste and smell food. Additionally, it can discolour the teeth, causing them to become brown or yellow. Such stains are not removed with normal brushing and require professional cleaning by dentists.

9. Undesirable skin and hair:

Cigarette smoking causes premature skin aging, delayed wound healing, increased infections, and many skin diseases, including psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa, and cutaneous lupus erythematosus. Smokers are more strongly affected than non-smokers by many inflammatory skin conditions, including acne and other problems.  

Cigarette smoking is associated with the early start of androgenetic alopecia (AGA), a kind of hair loss that affects both men and women. Androgenetic alopecia is also often known as male- and female-pattern baldness.  Cigarette smoking also creates plaque accumulation in the blood vessels, which increases the chance of suffering from diseases. Insufficient blood supply to the scalp due to smoking may result in hair loss or hair damage.

10. Hazard of different diseases is one of the common harmful effects of cigarette smoking:

Smoking cigarettes leads to cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking also increases the probability to caused tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and immune system problems, such as rheumatoid arthritis. 

11. Digestive system:

Smoking cigarettes will affect your digestive system. Smokers get heartburn and ulcers more than nonsmokers. Smokers are more likely to cause peptic ulcers, or stomach or small intestine ulcers. It also causes Crohn’s disease and gallstones. Smoking stimulates the passage of bile salts from the intestines to the stomach, which makes the stomach acids more harmful.

Cigarette smoking is associated with an increased risk of both Crohn’s disease and gallstones. Additionally, smoking also causes pancreatitis symptoms more severe. In addition, smoking leads to cancer of the digestive organs, including the head and neck, stomach, pancreas, and colon, all of which may develop in smokers. 

12. Risks of other cancers

Cigarette smoke contains potentially thousands of different compounds.  It doesn’t come as a surprise that cigarette smoking is a contributor to the growth of several forms of cancer due to the high level of toxicity and the presence of so many carcinogenic substances in the addiction to smoking cigarettes. Additionally, smoking cigarettes interfere with essential bodily functioning, which can lower the body’s immunity to cancer and increase the probability that the disease will develop.

Smoking cigarettes can increase the chances of cancers like:

• mouth cancer
• laryngeal cancer
• throat cancer
• oesophagal cancer
• kidney cancer
• cervical cancer
• liver cancer
• colon cancer
• acute myeloid leukaemia

Used smoke or Secondhand smoke (Passive smokers)

Secondhand smoke is the smoke from burning tobacco products like cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, or pipes. It also includes smoke that the smoker has breathed out. Even short-term exposure to secondhand smoke may affect children and adults. Secondhand smoke is common in homes and workplaces. The smoke may be found in pubs, restaurants, casinos, and cars. Secondhand smoking affects the heart, blood, and vascular systems, increasing heart attack risk. Secondhand smoking may damage blood vessel lining and make platelets thicker. These abnormalities trigger heart problems.

Effects of being exposed to secondhand smoke include:

• Increasing the risk of colds and ear diseases
• Making asthma worse
• Raising blood pressure
• Damaging the heart

Is smoking addictive?

Smoking is very addicting, nicotine is the main drug that causes people to become addicted to tobacco products, like cigarettes. In this way, when you use drugs like heroin and cocaine, you also become addicted to them. Addiction is defined as obsessive drug use with unfavourable health effects. Half of the smokers attempt to quit every year. Most smokers require numerous tries to stop permanently. When a person stops smoking, withdrawal symptoms peak within days and decreases within weeks. Nicotine makes you want to smoke and use other tobacco products. Nicotine in the tobacco plant also wants to make cigarettes with enough nicotine to make people addicted and keep them hooked on them.

If you are getting too much addictive to cigarettes, then start the treatment by consulting doctors. The doctors may prescribe you to get rid of cigarette smoking, and he/she may recommend medications such as Varenicline, antidepressants (e.g. bupropion), and nicotine-replacement therapy.

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