Effects of Smoking

Effects of Smoking According to the Clinical Respiratory Journal an average of five million people will die globally every year from effects of tobacco smoke. The number of people that dies is shocking. Smoking has many terrible effects on the human body from effecting the lungs, heart, and even causes cancer if you did not know that already. Why do people smoke? Some people might ask. Well there is nicotine in tobacco which causes your muscles to relax and thus causing that relaxing non stressful feeling that people who smoke feels while “enjoying” a cigarette. The feeling can be really strong for a first time smoker causing a “buzz”, since their body has not built up a tolerance to the nicotine. When people do start to build up their tolerance level, the feeling of the pleasurable “buzz” or relaxation lessens to where you must smoke more than one cigarette to feel relaxed or even a slight “buzz”. But there is a drawback nicotine is a highly addictive substance. So addictive in fact that according to heart.org compares it to hardcore drug addictions like cocaine and heroin. So once people start they are caught in a trap. Heart.org states that approximately sixty-eight percent of smokers want to quit, but are unable to stop because of the high amounts of nicotine in his/her body. But what happens to those who cannot quit? Well let me start with the place smoke gets inhaled to: The Lungs. The harmful smoke from the cigarette causes immediate life threatening damage to the lungs the second the smoke enters. According to Lung.org cigarette smoke has over 4,800 chemicals with sixty-nine known chemicals to cause cancer. Even with just one inhale all of those chemicals will enter the lungs. Cigarette smoke has been also connected to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. On top of COPD, cigarettes also cause the lungs to shrink and turn black, thus causing inability to breathe deeply and less oxygen in the blood stream. That is way when smokers exercise they feel very light headed and out of breath, because there is not an ample supply of oxygen in the blood stream. How bad would that be to past out from lack of oxygen while playing with your grandkids? I would feel terrible to lead that kind of example of its ok to smoke and cause that kind of harm to the lungs to where a person can’t even spend quality family time with them.
I have wondered why the lungs just don’t clean all of those nasty chemicals out, or why do smokers cough. I have found out that these two things are related. Everybody has these little hairs in their longs called cilia that help clean out mucus and harmful substances in the lungs. The smoke from a cigarette paralyzes these hairs causing mucus to build up in the lungs which gives people terrible coughs by trying to hack the mucus out of the lungs. Which if the person coughs for long enough and hard enough, the cough will cause major irritation in the throat making the person cough up blood. Now back to the chemicals, the cilia cannot clean the chemicals out of the lungs because it is the chemicals that immobilize them and will eventually all will die out and stop working if the smoker smokes long enough. Which if that happens the persons lungs will be almost beyond repair with all of the mucus build up, the chemicals causing harm, and the lungs not being able to clean out the natural substances that could already cause harm to the lungs. All in all it is one highly deadly trio.
The lungs are one of the part of the body that most people think get harmed when a person smoke, but people do not think about the heart. Almost twenty percent of people that pass away due to cardiovascular disease are directly related to smoking. That is saying that if a hundred people died from heart disease twenty of them died because of smoking, and not of high cholesterol or some other reason. That number is scary because of the fact of instead of harming one major organ the body the person is harming two. Smoking causes the heart to increase its rate of speed causing the resting heart beat to be considerably higher than the average nonsmoker. With each cigarette a person smokes the chances of artery disease goes up. Which means that also the chances of heart failure and having a heart attack goes up substantially. In some cases the threat of heart failure has a greater chance of happening than lung failure. Taking all of these factors into consideration people still smoke because it is their body and they are only harming themselves well may I say that statement is false. Secondhand smoke kills a number around 70,000 of nonsmokers a year. That’s 70,000 people that care about their body day because of somebody else’s stupidity and no awareness of how their choices impact others. Some smokers say that secondhand smoke is harmless, but that is a complete lie. Secondhand smoke can cause the same exact health concerns from the lungs, to the heart, and can even cause cancer. Yes, smokers are not the only ones who get cancer; it is also the people who they are around. Kids are extremely vulnerable to secondhand smoke from smokers. The kid’s immunity system has not fully developed yet to even attempt to fight off the diseases from the smoke. Kids are already experiencing heart failure due to their parents’ cigarettes. I have personally known a sweet kid who had trouble with his heart because his parents smoked. It is truly heart wrenching to watch it happen.
If you are reading this please remind people to all of the health risks that smoking can impose. Such as cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease and along with telling them that smoking not only harms them but also their loved ones.

Citations
Carter, Charleata A., Manoj Misra, and Robert R. Maronpot. "Tracheal Morphologic And Protein Alterations Following Short-Term Cigarette Mainstream Smoke Exposure To Rats." Journal Of Toxicologic Pathology 25.3 (2012): 201-207. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. ello, Francescopaolo Di, et al. "Cigarette Smoke Induces Epithelial To Mesenchymal Transition And Increases The Metastatic Ability Of Breast Cancer Cells." Molecular Cancer 12.1 (2013): 1-11. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Starke, Robert M., et al. "Cigarette Smoke Modulates Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotype: Implications For Carotid And Cerebrovascular Disease." Plos ONE 8.8 (2013): 1-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
"Smoking - American Lung Association." American Lung Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
“Why Is It so Hard to Quit?" Why Is It so Hard to Quit? N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.

Citations: Carter, Charleata A., Manoj Misra, and Robert R. Maronpot. "Tracheal Morphologic And Protein Alterations Following Short-Term Cigarette Mainstream Smoke Exposure To Rats." Journal Of Toxicologic Pathology 25.3 (2012): 201-207. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. ello, Francescopaolo Di, et al. "Cigarette Smoke Induces Epithelial To Mesenchymal Transition And Increases The Metastatic Ability Of Breast Cancer Cells." Molecular Cancer 12.1 (2013): 1-11. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. Starke, Robert M., et al. "Cigarette Smoke Modulates Vascular Smooth Muscle Phenotype: Implications For Carotid And Cerebrovascular Disease." Plos ONE 8.8 (2013): 1-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. "Smoking - American Lung Association." American Lung Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. “Why Is It so Hard to Quit?" Why Is It so Hard to Quit? N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2013.