The Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Your Health

With 599 additives and 43 known carcinogens (substances known to cause cancer) the health complications are in the hundreds. The side effects are numerous and diverse. A smoker can develop anything from an annoying cough to something as deadly as lung cancer. Cigarette smoking can also harm people who inhale second hand smoke, and unborn children in a mothers womb. Three of the most common severe adverse effects of smoking are lung cancer, strokes, and emphysema.

Lung cancer originates in the tissues of the lungs and is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States in both men and women. Tobacco smoke contributes to 85% of deaths caused by lung cancer. Symptoms of lung cancer include coughing, shortness of breath, hoarseness, and blood in the septum. Lung cancer can spread to different parts of the body such as the brain, liver, bone, and bone marrow. The most common treatments are removing the tumor itself, external radiation therapy, or chemotherapy. All which are extremely painful operations.

One common misconception of strokes is that they only occur in the elderly. However, this is far from the truth. People of all ages can have strokes and it is extremely common in smokers ages 25-35. A stroke occurs when there is destruction of brain tissue as a result of infarction caused by thrombosis. Thrombosis is most often caused by inflammatory or toxic damage to the cerebral blood vessels by cigarette smoking. Stokes can lead to brain damage, deep coma, paralysis on one side of the body, and loss of speech. Most small strokes can be easily recover, but for the more severe it takes extensive rehabilitation.

Emphysema is the enlargement of the air sacs of the lungs. It is a major cause of pulmonary insufficiency in cigarette smokers, it is a progressive disease which often develops from bronchitis. Persons with emphysema can experience difficulty breathing, a cough with thick sticky septum, and a bluish tinge of the skin. After the disease progresses it can cause disability and respiratory failure.