Saffola Life - Keep Your Heart young

We all know what smoking means but in precise scientific terms, it refers to the inhalation of the smoke from burning tobacco encased in cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. So, you can say that you have a smoking habit if you suffer from a physical addiction to tobacco products. While casual smoking is more an act of smoking occasionally, in a social setting or to relieve stress, habitual smoking is a psychological addiction, and one that comes with serious health consequences.

An important point that you must understand is that smoking is a three-fold addiction; of the body, mind, and lifestyle. Your body becomes addicted to the effects of the nicotine, your mind uses the drug to cut stress, boost energy, and relax and your lifestyle will be driven by the habit.

Second hand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. Secondhand smoke has been classified as a known cause of cancer in humans and exposure to the same can cause disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke.

The smoke breathed in by the passive smoker may contain up to:

• 3 times more tar
• 3 times more nicotine
• 5 times more carbon monoxide
• 50 times more cancer-causing chemicals than the smoke inhaled directly from the cigarette tip

So what are the various risk factors that can increase your chances of catching
a smoking habit?
Read on to find out:

• Adolescence
• History of parental smoking
• Peer pressure
• Exposure to advertisements
• Lower educational level
• Depression
• Low level of exercise

When you smoke, you inhale about 4,000 different chemicals. Of these, the major ones are carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and nicotine. Minor components are acetone, acetylene, formaldehyde, propane, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, and many others.

These ingredients affect the body on multiple levels; from the internal functioning of organs to the efficiency of your body's immune system.

Health effects of smoking

• If you're a smoker, you'll find that you don't have the physical energy or stamina required to be as active as you want to be
• You're likely to suffer from a lower quality of life and be increasingly susceptible to depression, and increased anxiety.
• Science says that smoking can cut down ones life span by 13-15 years
• Smoking will predispose you to a lot of other illnesses. These include:

  Lung Disease: There has been found a strong link between chronic bronchitis, emphysema and smoking

  Cancer: Cancers of the lung, mouth, upper respiratory system, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, cervix, kidney, ureter, and bladder.

  This largely happens because of the oxidative stress that alters DNA and leads to chronic lung injury. (Oxidative stress is thought to be the general mechanism behind the aging process, contributing to the development of cancer and cardiovascular disease.)

  Tuberculoses: Smoking doubles the chances of smokers developing tuberculoses

  Complicated Pregnancies: Smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke increases the risk of miscarriage, pre-term delivery, stillbirth, and infant death, and low birth weight.

Heart disease and stroke including peripheral arterial disease i.e pain in the legs due to blocked arteries

Sexual Impotence and infertility

Cataracts, skin wrinkling, and skin discoloration.

Second-hand smoke can cause breathing problems (e.g., asthma) and heart disease in non-smokers. Spouses, children, and other people exposed to second-hand smoke get colds, the flu, ear infections, and lung infections a lot more easily than people who aren't around second-hand smoke.

Chemical effects of smoking:

Every time you take a puff, here's what's happening inside your body:

• The nicotine in the cigarette reaches your brain within 10 seconds after you've inhaled the smoke and leaves traces in every part of the body (including breast milk in the case of pregnant women)
• The carbon monoxide will bind itself to the hemoglobin in red blood cells and reduce their capability to transport oxygen
• The cigarette you're smoking contains carcinogens i.e. the cancer-causing agents. These damage important genes that control the growth of cells thus causing them to grow abnormally or to reproduce too rapidly
• On the whole, your smoking habit is going to affect the functioning of your immune system and will out you at an increase the risk for respiratory and other infections

Effects of Passive Smoking:

If you're a passive smoker, you'll suffer the same health risks as smokers, such as irritation to the eyes, runny nose, sore throat, headache and increased risk of lung cancer, heart disease and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Passive smoking can trigger severe attacks in people with:

• asthma
• bronchitis
• heart disease
• colds and allergies

Here are some Statistics related to Smoking:

• The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco caused 5.4 million deaths in 2004 and 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century.
• By 2020 the World Health organization expects 10 million people a year to die from smoking throughout the world. Although smoking is declining in many developed countries, it's on the increase in many developing countries.
• Similarly, tobacco use has been described as "the single most important preventable risk to human health in developed countries and an important cause of premature death worldwide.
• Rates of smoking have leveled off or declined in the developed world. Smoking rates in the United States have dropped by half from 1965 to 2006 falling from 42% to 20.8% in adults
• In the developing world, tobacco consumption is rising by 3.4% per year.
• Men who smoke are increasing their chances of dying from the disease by 22 times.
Studies from the UK show that smokers in their 30's and 40's are five times more likely to have a heart attack than their non-smoking peers.
• Passive smoking is the inhaling of smoke from the cigarettes that other people are smoking. This could occur at work, in the home or during leisure at bars, cafes etc. Foreign statistics show that about 3,000 people die every year from lung cancer due to passive smoking.