Smoking - The Short & Long-Term Health Consequences

Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 chemicals.Each puff of smoke that smokers exhale is just the tip of the iceberg, as the majority of these chemicals are either invisible gases, or condense and remain in the smoker's mouth or lungs. A good number of the chemicals found in cigarette smoke are either carcinogenic (cancer-causing), mutagenic (causing permanent damage to DNA) or both.

Cigarette smoke starts off by paralysing and killing the cilia (small hairs which line the lower respiratory tract and remove debris from the lungs). This opens the door to a number of respiratory problems including:

• pneumonia
• chronic bronchitis
• emphysema
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Smoking also does a number on the body's circulation system. Smoking introduces a number of gases into the blood, including carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide displaces oxygen and attaches to haemoglobin (the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood) with a bond more than 200 times stronger than the bond between haemoglobin and oxygen. This drastically reduces the level of oxygen in the blood. Nicotine also causes a build-up of fat and plaque on blood vessels, thereby making them inelastic. Both of these mechanisms require the heart to work harder and result in a higher risk of:

• heart disease and / or heart attack
• peripheral vascular disease
• aneurysm
• high blood cholesterol
• stroke

And this is just the beginning. The further long-term consequences of smoking include heightened occurence of:

• cancer of the mouth, throat, pancreas, lungs, kidney and urinary bladder
• ulcers
• bowel problems
• cataracts
• erectile dysfunction
• miscarriage

Fortunately, many of these health consequences begin to reverse themselves once smoking is ceased. Find out the benefits of quitting smoking.