Negative Effects of Smoking
Cigarette smoking is not a good habit, that’s what one can hear even from smokers. Nicotine is addictive, making it difficult to give it up, and ex-smokers usually need a real fit of strong will to stop smoking. Sadly, because giving up smoking requires some strong will on the smoker’s side, many smokers simply do not bother with trying to give up. If they only really knew what is at stake…
Everyone probably knows that smoking damages one’s health, appearance, and image. It is dangerous to your family and workmates (if you smoke at work), inhaling smoke is not a pleasant feeling, and your clothes and you start to stink to heavens after only a few weeks of smoking. However, this is only the beginning of what happens to smokers. The whole truth is known only to few people – not because it’s secret, but because it is so hard to believe in all bad things we do to ourselves by smoking.
Smoking Kills. Really
The facts can’t be contested. Every year there are over four hundred thousand casualties of smoking a year in the United States alone. This is almost a hundred times more than died at the WTC attack and ten times more than the US has lost during the 6-year war with terrorism. The moment a smoker lights his or her cigarette, he or she inhales almost five thousand dangerous chemicals. 69 of those compounds are known to be carcinogenic. The risk is practical – over three quarters of lung cancer fatalities in the US is the direct effect of smoking.
Respiratory problems are only a peak of an iceberg. Smoking is also known for increasing the chance of a stroke and heart diseases even if you’re only a second-hand smoker. It gets worse if one has been exposed to the cigarette smoke when one was a child. Then, there is a good chance of developing severe asthma and allergies as well as nose, throat and ear infections. While these conditions do not normally kill, they may change a happy life into a nightmare – only because parents wanted to take a puff from time to time.
This is still not the end. Smokers also tend to suffer from other health problems. Pneumonia, wound healing problems and reduced fertility are among the most common ones. However, the real horror starts when a mother-to-be or someone in her vicinity smokes during the pregnancy. Premature deliveries, infant deaths or at least narrowed air passages in children’s lungs are more than common. No child is able to defend itself against the negative effects of their parents’ smoking, and they often suffer from it even before they are actually born.
Smokers’ deaths are only the beginning…
Smoking does not only kill us. It also makes us ugly.
First of all, smoking affects the color of your teeth, staining them yellow or brown. This makes dental cleaning every year a must. However, the gum problems that develop soon after are not so easily disposed of. Cigarette smoke prevents gums from receiving all necessary nutrients, making them weaker and eventually resulting in inadequate periodontal support for your teeth.
Change of color however, is only the first sign of coming problems. On average 18-year-old smokers lose five teeth before they turn 35. Other dental problems are also sad reality, especially that smoking slows down the healing process as inhaling the smoke prevents blood from circulating freely in the gums and mouth. Effect? Every extraction bears a real risk of the so-called dry-socket – a week of excruciating pain and great risk of infection. The risk is carried by both first- and second-hand smokers (though the latter are in slightly better position).
Compared to teeth loss and dry-socket problems other “niceties” of smoking look trivial. Nevertheless, they are also infuriating as well as 100% sure to show up. The changes include losing color by your skin, thinning of hair and its breaking off, and the terrible stink surrounding you, your clothes and your stuff. Even though you may not notice it at first – the change takes months and it’s not easy to spot a difference building up during so long time – other people will see it for sure. So, if you notice that people start distance from you during parties or try not to sit next to you, it is probably either due to the odor they smell or to your weary and unattractive look. Either way, do not blame them – you have done it to yourself.
The time is running. With every cigarette you smoke, you cause irrevocably damage to your health and (reversible) negative change in your appearance. The only right thing to do is quitting smoking right her and right now. Of course, nicotine is addictive and giving up cigarettes is much more difficult than one may think. Fortunately, Cig-Arette is able to minimize the negative symptoms you may suffer during the withdrawal period. Try it and it’ll help you get back in shape faster than you think!