Smoking can cause long-term negative effects on the body, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Smoking can increase your risk of certain health conditions over years, like glaucoma, cancer, and issues with blood clotting, some of the bodily effects happen immediately.
Whether smoked or chewed, tobacco is dangerous to your health. Tobacco products contain unsafe substances, from acetone and tar to nicotine and carbon monoxide. The inhaled substances can affect your lungs and the other organs in your body. According to the American Lung Association, cigarettes contain about 600 ingredients. Many of these ingredients are also in cigars and hookahs. When they burn, they generate more than 7,000 chemicals, many of which are toxic. At least 69 of them are carcinogenic, or known to cause cancer.
In the United States, the mortality rate for smokers is three times that of people who never smoked. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note that smoking is the most common preventable cause of death in the United States. And also according to World Health Organization, Tobacco kills up to half of its users, tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
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Overall health effects of smoking and tobbaco use.
Smoking can harm the organs in your body and negatively impact your overall health.
- Smoking can increase inflammation throughout your body and negatively affect your immune system. This may make you more susceptible to infection.
- A well-studied link also exists between smoking and many types of cancer. Smoking can increase your risk of developing cancer almost anywhere in your body. Such as the following cancer types; bladder cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, cervical cancer , colorectal cancer, esophageal cancer, kidney and uterine cancer, laryngeal cancer, liver cancer, etc.
- Smoking long-term can affect your vision and optic nerve. It may lead you to develop certain conditions that affect the eyes. These can include: Glaucoma, in which the pressure in the eye increases, which puts pressure on the optic nerve causing damage and loss of sight. Cataracts, which cause cloudy vision. Age-related macular degeneration, which causes damage to a spot in the center of your retina and causes loss of your central vision.
- Smoking damages the Respiratory system; Smoking causes lung damage and tissue loss that never comes back. which can also make you more susceptible to certain infections that affect the lungs, like tuberculosis and pneumonia, and increase the possibility of death from those illnesses.
- Smoking can cause you to develop a chronic cough. It can also worsen asthma attacks, if you have asthma.
- Smoking may also contribute to fertility issues and lower sex hormone levels in males and females, leading to decreased sexual desire. And can also increase the risk of other reproductive problems such as; early delivery, low birth weight, stillbirth, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), ectopic pregnancy, cleft palate and lip in infants.
- Smoking can damage the cardiovascular system, including your: heart, arteries, blood vessels. Nicotine causes blood vessels to tighten, which restricts the flow of blood. Smoking also raises blood pressure, weakens blood vessel walls, and increases your risk of blood clots.
- Smoking impacts your cardiovascular health and also affects the health of those around you who don’t smoke. Exposure to secondhand smoke carries the same risk to a nonsmoker as someone who does smoke. Risks can include; stroke, heart attack , heart disease.
- Smoking affect sexuality and reproductive system, Nicotine affects blood flow to the genital areas of both men and women.
Benefits of Quitting Smoking
Quitting smoking is one of the most important actions people can take to improve their health. Quitting smoking reduces many of the above mentioned risks. It also has both short and long-term benefits. Since smoking affects every body system, finding a way to quit can help you live a longer and healthier life.
Smoking cessation programs may help. Doctors may also recommend prescription and nonprescription medications to help you quit.
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