Health Risks from Smoking
1. Every year hundreds of thousands of people die from diseases caused by smoking.
2. People who smoke all their life will die from their habit, or a disease associated with smoking.
3. Tobacco smoke also contributes to a number of cancers, primarily lung and throat cancer.
4. The mixture of nicotine and carbon monoxide in each cigarette temporarily increases your heart rate and blood pressure, putting strain on your heart and blood vessels.
5. Smoking can cause heart attacks and stroke. It slows your blood flow and cuts off oxygen to your feet and hands. Some smokers end up having their limbs amputated.
6. Tar, from nicotine, coats your lungs like soot in a chimney which is a leading factor in causing cancer. A pack-a-day smoker breathes in up to a full cup of tar in a year!
7. Changing to low-tar cigarettes does not help because smokers usually take deeper puffs and hold the smoke in for longer, dragging the tar deeper into their lungs.
8. Carbon monoxide robs your muscles, brain and body tissue of oxygen, making your whole body, and especially your heart, work harder. Over time, your airways swell up and lets less air into your lungs.
9. Smoking is a slow way to die. The strain put on your body by smoking often causes years of suffering. Emphysema is an illness that slowly rots your lungs. People with emphysema often get bronchitis and suffer lung and heart failure.
10. Lung cancer from smoking is caused by the tar in tobacco smoke. People who smoke are ten times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers.
11. Heart disease and strokes are also more common among smokers than non-smokers.
12. Smoking causes fat deposits to narrow and block blood vessels which leads to heart attack.
13. Smoking causes about one in five deaths from heart disease.
14. In younger people, three out of four deaths from heart disease are due to smoking.
15. Female smokers may give premature birth, or experience fetal damage during pregnancy. Smoking also increases your chances of a low birth weight.
16. Female smokers who also take birth control, increase their chances of getting fatal blood clots.
Consider these facts the next time you want to light up. Your last cigarette may be sooner than you think.
www.quit-smoking-stop.com
www.yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com
Published by Jennifer Taylor
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