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Bad Breath: Each year, pack-a-day smokers smear the equivalent
of one cup of tar over their respiratory tracts. Tobacco tar comes
back up as bad breath every time smokers exhale.
Sexual Problems: Female smokers have an unusually high rate
of infertility. Male smokers suffer decreased sperm count and have
a more difficult time maintaining erections.
Mouth & Throat: Every puff
exposes smokers to gases that irritate the eyes, nose, throat, and
gums. Continued smoking spurs a thickening of the throat lining,
eventually leading to throat cancer. Smokers are also at increased
risk of gum disease and tooth loss.
Lungs: As in the throat, the body
thickens the bronchial lining, trying to protect it from smoke.
The process eventually causes lung cancer. Smoking progressively
impairs the lungs’ ability to oxygenate the blood, leading
to emphysema.
Heart: Smoking increases the heart
rate by 10 to 25 beats per minute, or up to 36,000 beats a day.
Smokers have a greater risk of irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias),
which increases the risk of heart attack. Smoking also constricts
blood vessels, triggering blood pressure increases of 10 to 15 percent
– a key risk factor for both heart attack and stroke. Because
the smoker’s heart cannot fully circulate blood, smoking also
contributes to congestive heart failure.
Arms & Legs: Smoking-related narrowing of the blood vessels
causes peripheral vascular disease, a condition almost exclusively
confined to smokers, who may suffer amputation as a result.
Premature Aging: It takes a little as five years of smoking
to have it hit you in the face. Smoking narrows the blood vessels
(vasoconstriction), notably the capillaries of the face, decreasing
the flow of oxygen and nutrients to facial skin cells. The result
is premature facial wrinkling, with deep crow’s feet radiating
from the corners of the eyes, and pale, gray, wrinkled skin on the
cheeks.
Weakness/Shortness of Breath:
A key component in cigarette smoke is carbon monoxide (CO), the
colorless, odorless, poisonous gas in car exhaust. CO binds to the
same receptors on red blood cells as oxygen, kicking oxygen out
of the bloodstream. It takes only a few packs of cigarettes for
smokers’ blood to contain up to 15 times as much CO as nonsmokers’
blood. Less oxygen reaches the brain and muscles, slowing athletes’
reaction times and impairing their energy, strength, and coordination.
Meanwhile, the nicotine in smoke boosts the heart rate, increasing
the body’s need for oxygen. That’s why smokers become
short of breath so easily. Their bodies need more oxygen, but their
blood carries less.
Pregnancy: Pregnant smokers have
higher rates of miscarriage and premature babies. Babies born to
smokers have higher rates of sudden infant death syndrome.
Children: Children exposed to
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (2nd-hand smoke) have high rates of
colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia. ETS aggravates nonsmokers’
respiratory conditions, particularly asthma.
But finally, smoking just kills people:
1. Every cigarette costs smokers 5 to 20 minutes of life. Tobacco
is the underlying cause in the U.S., of over 420,000 deaths a year;
1 in 5 of all deaths in the U.S., including about 90 percent of
the lung cancer deaths – 130,000.
2. Every day, more than 1,000 Americans die from smoking–related
diseases, the equivalent of three jumbo jet crashes with no survivors.
3. Smoking kills 17 times more people each year than are victims
of homicide and 50 times more than die from illegal drugs.
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