How does smoking affect health?
Cigarette smoke contains about 4,000 different chemicals which can
damage the cells and systems of the human body. These include at least
80 chemicals that can cause cancer
(including tar, arsenic, benzene, cadmium and formaldehyde) nicotine (a
highly addictive chemical which hooks a smoker into their habit) and
hundreds of other poisons such as cyanide, carbon monoxide and ammonia.
Every
time a smoker inhales, these chemicals are drawn into the body where
they interfere with cell function and cause problems ranging from cell
death to genetic changes which lead to cancer.
This is why tobacco smoking is a known or probable cause of approximately 25 diseases. According to WHO
figures, smoking is responsible for approximately five million deaths
worldwide every year. However it also contributes to, or aggravates many
other diseases and may play a part in many more deaths. Even the WHO
says that its impact on world health isn’t fully assessed.
WHO
says smoking is a greater cause of death and disability than any single
disease. By 2020, the WHO expects the worldwide death toll to reach 10
million, causing 17.7 per cent of all deaths in developed countries.
There are believed to be 1.1 billion smokers in the world, 800 million of them in developing countries.
Risk factors of smoking
People take up smoking for a variety of reasons. Young people are
especially vulnerable because of pressure from their peers and the image
that smoking is clever, cool or 'grown-up'. Just trying a few
cigarettes can be enough to become addicted.
Many people say that
smoking helps them to feel more relaxed or cope with stress but
nicotine is a stimulant not a relaxant, so it doesn’t help stress. What
people are describing is more likely to be relief from their craving or
withdrawal symptoms.
Smoking damage
There are hundreds of examples and volumes of research showing how
cigarette smoking damages the body. For example, UK studies show that
smokers in their 30s and 40s are five times more likely to have a heart attack than non-smokers.
Smoking contributes to coronary artery disease (atherosclerosis
or hardening of the arteries) where the heart’s blood supply becomes
narrowed or blocked, starving the heart muscle of vital nutrients and
oxygen, resulting in a heart attack. As a result smokers have a greatly
increased risk of needing complex and risky heart bypass surgery.
Smoking also increases the risk of having a stroke, because of damage to the heart and arteries to the brain.
If
you smoke for a lifetime, there is a 50 per cent chance that your
eventual death will be smoking-related - half of all these deaths will
be in middle age
Smoking and lung problems
Smoking does enormous damage to the lungs, especially because these
tissues are in the direct firing line for the poisons in smoke. As a
result there is a huge increase in the risk of lung cancer, which kills
more than 20,000 people in the UK every year.
US studies have shown that men who smoke increase their chances of dying from the disease by more than 22 times.
Women who smoke increase this risk by nearly 12 times.
Lung
cancer is a difficult cancer to treat - long term survival rates are
poor. Smoking also increases the risk of the following cancers:
- Oral
- Uterine
- Liver
- Kidney
- Bladder
- Stomach
- Cervical
- Leukaemia
Even more common among smokers is a group of lung conditions called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
or COPD which encompasses chronic bronchitis and emphysema. These
conditions cause progressive and irreversible lung damage, and make it
increasingly difficult for a person to breathe.
Harm to children from smoking
Smoking in pregnancy greatly increases the risk of miscarriage,
is associated with lower birth weight babies, and inhibits child
development. Smoking by parents following the birth is linked to sudden
infant death syndrome, or cot death, and higher rates of infant
respiratory illness, such as bronchitis, colds, and pneumonia.
Smoking and young people
Smoking is particularly damaging in young people.
Evidence
shows people who start smoking in their youth - aged 11 to 15 - are
three times more likely to die a premature death than someone who takes
up smoking at the age of 20.
They are also more likely to be
hooked for life. Nicotine, an ingredient of tobacco, is highly addictive
– it takes on average on about six cigarettes before nicotine receptors
in the brain are switched on, generating a craving for nicotine which
may continue for the rest of the persons life. In less than one packet
of cigarettes, a person’s brain can be changed forever from that of a
non-smoker to a nicotine addicted smoker.
Although the health
risks of smoking are cumulative, giving up can yield health benefits,
regardless of the age of the patient, or the length of time they have
been smoking.
If you join a proper smoking-cessation service,
using all available help including medication and counselling, your
chances of quitting may be as high as one in three (compared to just
three per cent if you go it alone).