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Now I know that all of you smokers out there know darned well that smoking isn’t good for you, so I’m not going to go on and on about the main problems that smoking can cause you, these things are already well documented, but I will say this; you can eat five portions of fruit and veg a day and exercise regularly, but healthy behaviour means little if you continue to smoke.

Whilst all the messages of smoking causing ill-health are pretty much ignored nowadays, due mainly to overkill I think, I have included in this article a few of the lesser known problems that are caused by smoking:

Cigarettes contain more than 4000 chemical compounds of which at least 400 are toxic substances, how can you knowingly suck that into your face?? When you inhale, a cigarette burns at 700 degrees C at the tip and around 60 degrees C in the core. This heat breaks down the tobacco to produce various toxins. As a cigarette burns, the residues are concentrated towards the butt, so you get the full dose of toxins as you finish your cigarette.

The most damaging products are:

1) Tar, a carcinogen (substance that causes cancer)

2) The addictive substance is nicotine, which raises cholesterol too

3) carbon monoxide lowers the oxygen in your body

Smoking causes differing levels of damage depending on:

1) The number of cigarettes smoked

2) If the cigarette has a filter or not

3) How the tobacco has been prepared

More recent research has shown that smoking reduces life expectancy by seven to eight years and of the 300 people who die every day in the UK as a result of smoking, many are now comparatively young smokers.

The number of people under the age of 70 who die from smoking-related diseases exceeds the total figure for deaths caused by breast cancer, AIDS, traffic accidents and drug addiction.

I know you’re all going to shout, ah c’mon at this one, but the ugly truth is this…if you started smoking at an early age, smoke more than 20 a day and inhale deeply, the greater your chances of getting lung cancer. It then takes roughly 15 years for your risk of getting lung cancer to drop to that of a non smoker.

Other cancers that are not so publicised are cancers of the mouth. If you smoke the risk is four times that of a non smoker to get cancer on or under the tongue, or on the lips. Another illness that smokers do not tend to be as aware of as lung cancer is COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), for which smoking is responsible for 80 percent of cases.

Emphysema is also a disease caused by long-term smoking, and here are a couple of scary numbers for you. If you smoke 20 a day, when you die and your lungs are examined, you will have a 94 percent chance of there being emphysema present. As a non smoker, however, that percentage drops to 90 who have little or no emphysema at all.

When anyone ages, it is a natural process for their lung function to slowly reduce. However, for a smoker this can be as much as three times faster. Over years, you can expect to become more and more breathless, until needing constant oxygen, hospital care and then death due to slow suffocation…NOT GOOD.

Here’s one that I bet you guys didn’t know about (at least, not until it was too late!). For men in their 30s and 40s, smoking increases the risk of erectile dysfunction (ED) by about 50 per cent. Erection can’t occur unless blood can flow freely into the penis, so these blood vessels have to be in good condition. Smoking can damage the blood vessels and cause them to degenerate; nicotine narrows the arteries that lead to the penis, reducing blood flow and the pressure of blood in the penis.

Don’t think that because you have no problems now, that you won’t. Oh no…this narrowing problem increases over time so things could get worse later on (no apologies for scare tactics here). More importantly, a smoker with erectile problems should see a doctor, as this can be an indicator that cigarettes have already damaged other blood vessels, including those that supply blood to the heart.

The ’side-stream’ smoke that comes off a cigarette between puffs carries a higher risk than directly inhaled smoke, so you’re not doing your non-smoking partners, kids, friends, etc., any good either…feeling guilty yet…?

When a child is brought up in a home where one or both parents smoke, the instances of asthma and bronchitis are twice that of non smoking households. The prevalance of allergies is also much higher. There is a much greater risk of cot death and chest infections amongst the very young.

For adults, passive smoking seems to increase the risk of lung cancer, but the evidence for an increased risk of heart disease is not yet conclusive, but what is certain is that non-smokers and ex-smokers can look forward to a healthier old age than smokers.

The message after all of this (and you must be a little bit interested if you’re still with me) is that there are people around who care about you, and programmes out there that can help you to quit. So do it for you (and for me)…stop smoking now!

Tags: Personal Development

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