Health Effects of Smoking

"Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 438,000 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and victims of “secondhand” exposure to tobacco’s carcinogens..."

Let’s take a look at the health effects of smoking i.e. what actually happens inside your body each time you light up. Think about how quickly tobacco smoke can produce harmful effects. The following are some of the health risk of smoking.

Your Eyes, Nose, & Throat

The health effects of smoking can be found on your eyes, nose and throat. Within a few seconds of your first puff, irritating gases such as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and others begin to work on sensitive membranes of your eyes, nose, and throat.

Your eyes water, your nose runs, and your throat is irritated. If you continue smoking, these irritating gases will contribute to your smoker’s cough. Continued smoking produces abnormal thickening in the membranes lining your throat, accompanied by cellular changes that resemble those that occur in throat cancer.

Lungs

The health effects of smoking are very dangerous with regards to lungs. Continued exposure can entirely paralyze the lungs’ natural cleansing process. (Smoking and Lung Cancer)

• Your respiratory rate increases, forcing your lungs to work harder.
• Irritating gases produce chemical injury to the tissues of your lungs. This speeds up the production of mucus and leads to an increased tendency to cough up sputum.
• Excess mucus serves as a breeding ground for a variety of bacteria and viruses. You become more prone to colds, flu, bronchitis, and other respiratory infections. And if you do come down with an infection, your body is less able to fight it, because smoking impairs the ability of the white blood cells to fight invading organisms.
• The lining of your bronchi begins to thicken, predisposing you to cancer. Most lung cancers arise in the bronchial lining.
• Smoke weakens the free-roving scavenger cells that remove foreign particles from the air sacs of the lungs. Continued smoke exposure adversely affects elastin, which is the enzyme that keeps your lungs flexible, predisposing you to emphysema.
• Many of the compounds you inhale are deposited as a layer of sticky tar on the lining of your throat and bronchi and in the delicate air sacs of your lungs. A pack-a-day smoker pours about a pint - 16 ounces - of tar into his or her lungs each year. This tar is rich in cancer producing chemicals.