It is widely known that cigarette smoking can cause health hazards. Here is a look at how smoking affects you when you light a cigarette up. You will know how quickly it can injure your health after reading this.

Your lungs

Smoking is dangerous to your lungs. Exposing them to constant cigarette or tobacco smoke can paralyze them and lead to stopping of their natural cleansing functions completely. Here are more lung conditions caused due to smoking.

•    The tissues of your lungs can be injured by chemicals released by the harmful gases. This, in turn, leads to increased mucus production and coughing up of sputum.
•    Pressure will be built up in the lungs due to increased respiratory rate that forces them to work harder
•    More mucus secretion means more viruses and bacteria. They increase the risks of flu, colds, bronchitis, bronchial allergy and other such reparatory infections. Smoking also affects your immune system, it weakens white blood cells. So, if you are affected with a flu or bronchitis, chances are WBCs cannot fight the invading microbes, which can worsen your condition.
•    It can cause asthma, a chronic lung disease, it can also complicate tuberculosis. Pneumonia or inflammation of lungs is another dangerous disorder that can be caused inhaling tobacco.
•    There are cells in your body called free- roving scavengers that are helpful in removing foreign particles from your lungs and their air sacs. Smoking can weaken them. Elastin is an enzyme that is known to keep your lungs flexible. Continued smoking can negatively affect elastin to increase chances of emphysema.

How smoking can affect your nose, throat and eyes

Smoking can cause several negative health effects on your nose, throat and eyes. When you light up a cigarette and inhale its smoke, certain gases like ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide and others start building up. They can cause irritation to your nose, eyes and throat.

You can experience running nose and watering eyes. When smoking is continued, the gases act to give rise to coughing. Persistent smoking will then lead to abnormal thickening of the throat lining membranes, that cause cellular changes in the throat. These, in turn, lead to throat cancer.

Blood vessels

Smoking is known to create havoc on blood pressure in some people. Each time you take a puff, your blood pressure is increased by ten to fifteen percent. This puts added pressure on blood vessels and heart that can lead to increased chances of stroke and heart attack. Smoking can cause more harmful effects on your blood vessels by increasing risks of Berger’s disease. This disease is known to cut off blood circulation in extremities of a human body and can lead to severe amputation.

Heart health

Most of us are aware of the fact that smoking can cause injury to heart health. When the smoke passes through lungs and reaches your heart, it forces heart to work harder. Heart starts beating thirty six thousand more times per day, which means, 25 times more per minute. Due to the irritating effects of nicotine and other harmful chemicals found in tobacco, your heartbeat will become irregular. According to the recent report of Surgeon General relating to harmful effects of smoking on heart, around 169,000 heart attacks are caused due to smoking.

Half of first heart attacks of smokers are deadly, according to an unofficial study on health effects of smoking on human heart. That means, in case of a heart attack, you have only 55% survival chances if you are a smoker. After their first heart attacks, about seventy five to eighty percent of survivors quit smoking.

Smoking has health effects on blood

Carbon monoxide present in all tobacco smokes is a chemical that is dangerous to human health. It is an odorless, colorless, fatal gas that can also be found in exhaust of automobiles. In cigarette smoke, this gas is present six hundred times more in concentration than what is considered safe in factories and industrial plants.

A non smoker’s blood contains 4- 15 times lesser carbon monoxide than that of a smoker. In a smoker’s bloodstream, carbon monoxide stays for around 6 hours after smoking is stopped. This means, a smoker is exposed to higher risks of sudden death within a few hours after he stops smoking.

The gas can pass into a smoker’s blood as soon as he takes a puff and inhales the tobacco smoke. It binds to the oxygen receptor sites and expels molecules of oxygen from your RBCs (Red Blood Cells). Due to this, reduced amount of oxygen will reach your vital organs like brain. More carbon monoxide load decreases the effectiveness of the red blood cells in removing the carbon dioxide to be exhaled from lungs during the gas exchange process.

Polycthemia is a health condition characterized by abnormally soaring red blood cell levels in the body. Continuous smokers have higher risks of being exposed to this condition. In addition to this, smokers experience easier blood clotting. It is said that these two conditions can raise heart attacks and stroke risks.

Smoking can have adverse effects on health of the skin

You can see visible effects of smoking on your skin. The habit results in compressing of the blood vessels of the skin. It reduces oxygen delivery to the organ. Premature wrinkling can be seen in smokers because of sun’s damaging rays combined with chemicals released from burning of tobacco.

Graphic films that are shown in some smoking workshops depict smokers in their fifties with a wrinkled skin. These films are aimed at giving a warning to smokers and it can be said that most of them have been successful in doing so. ‘Smoker’s face’ is a medical condition caused by smoking, characterized by yellow- grey coloration of the skin. Also, you can see that skin appears as though it is thinned and deep lines appear around the corners of the eyes and mouth. A study reveals that smoker’s face affects about forty six percent of smokers. If only smokers were motivated by pride, we would have lesser of them around.