Are You Aware of These Known Hazards of Smoking?

To smoke means to light tobacco, usually in the form of a cigarette, and then to inhale the smoke it produces. This practice is highly addictive due to the action of nicotine in the tobacco on the body. Understanding the hazards of smoking is subjugated to the intense need or craving to smoke.

In spite of the fact that there are so many advertising campaigns warning against the hazards of smoking, smoking is still embraced by many adults and even underaged teens. Peer pressure and curiosity have a lot to do with experimentation with smoking by children and young adults. For this reason, schools are sensing the need to educate their students about the hazards of smoking.

What exactly does smoking do to you? When you smoke, you inhale the cigarette. The smoke passes through your mouth to your lungs. Some of the main areas affected by the hazards of smoking are the respiratory system and the circulatory system. However, the hazards of smoking are much farther reaching than just these and many more areas of the body are affected.

When you smoke, you inhale oxygen and nicotine into your lungs. Your lungs then transport the nicotine and oxygen to your bloodstream. Nicotine constricts the blood vessels and veins, significantly decreasing their efficacy to carry blood with nourishment and oxygen to the whole body.

Heart attacks and the increased susceptibility to heart and lung diseases are serious hazards of smoking. Other dangers of smoking that affect the lungs include bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Smoking can cause the heart to pay a severe price by making it very vulnerable to high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and heart attack. There is also an increased risk of a stroke.

Cancer is probably the most scary result of smoking for most people. Lung cancer heads the list but there are also cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx and esophagus. These are located in the path that the smoke follows as it is inhaled by the smoker. Other cancers can develop and attack the pancreas, stomach, kidneys, bladder and other organs.

More and more serious consequences of smoking are being discovered all the time. One of the most recent is the discovery of a connection between age-related blindness and smoking. One would think that these hazards of smoking will prompt people to discourage taking up the habit or stop smoking, but it appears not to be so. Many adults still smoke and many children as young as 12 years are starting to smoke.

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