Smoking Effects, Different Effects of Cigarettes Smoking

Despite all of the knowledge available, smoking is still one of the leading preventable causes of disease and death in the world.

Smoking is extremely addictive, and it does not take long before you find yourself craving cigarettes. Recent statistics show that every cigarette you smoke takes six minutes off of your life.

Cigarettes and more specifically tobacco smoke are full of chemicals and poisons. Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, many of which make smoking harmful.

Smoking kills. Every year hundreds of thousands of people around the world die from diseases caused by smoking. One in two lifetime smokers will die from their habit. Half of these deaths will occur in middle age.

The mixture of nicotine and carbon monoxide in each cigarette you smoke temporarily increases your heart rate and blood pressure, straining your heart and blood vessels. This can cause heart attacks and stroke. It slows your blood flow, cutting off oxygen to your feet and hands. Some smokers end up having their limbs amputated.

Tobacco smoke also contributes to a number of cancers. Tar coats your lungs like soot in a chimney and causes cancer. Lung cancer from smoking is caused by the tar in tobacco smoke. Men who smoke are ten times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers.

A 20-a-day smoker breathes in up to a full cup (210 g) of tar in a year. 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.

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 let less air into your lungs.

Smoking causes disease and 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 again and again, and suffer lung and heart failure.

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body; causing many diseases and reducing the health of smokers in general. The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 438,000 deaths, or nearly 1 of every 5 deaths, each year in the United States. More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.