10 really bad smoking diseases

Smoking cigarettes doesn’t kill everyone. If only it did! Instead, it makes people suffer. It causes some really terrible diseases and it makes people suffer gruesome fate at times. Let’s look at some of the most horrible diseases caused by smoking:

1.     Lung Cancer

Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer does. Smoking cigarettes is the primary cause of lung cancers, responsible for more than 80 % deaths. Most people do not have a chance of surviving within 5 years of diagnosis.

2.     COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)

COPD makes it hard to breathe. It is an obstructive lung disease. It leads to serious long-term disability. It leads to an early death. It is one of the most tiring diseases as it makes it difficult to be active, to play, and to climb stairs and slowly makes it exhausting or impossible to walk even short distance. It’s been known to cause people being stuck in homes and 80 % of all COPD diseases is a result of smoking cigarettes.

3.     Heart Disease

Heart is not aloof from the hazards of smoking. Your heart suffers from the blockages and narrowing of arteries, all thanks to smoking. This means your heart receives less blood and oxygen and also circulates less to your body. So if you don’t want to let your heart suffer, quitting smoking is a good idea to consider.

4.     Stroke

Due to the effect of smoking on your heart and your arteries, your body can suffer from a triggered stroke. Since your body is receiving less blood and the blood supply to brain may be temporarily blocked, your brain cells tend to get deprived of oxygen and start dying. A stroke can cause altered brain function, slurred speech, death or worse still paralysis. A life of dependency is what smoking can lead to.

5.     Asthma

A chronic lung disease, Asthma makes it difficult to let air move in and out of your lungs. It makes breathing very laborious and difficult. Cigarette smoke causes irritation in air passages and triggers severe and sudden asthma attacks. In fact, even passive smoking of cigarette smoke can trigger / cause Asthma.

6.     Reproductive Effects in Women

Smoking can cause the fertilized egg to implant elsewhere. It can cause serious complications in pregnancy and can also be life-threatening. Smoking can reduce fertility in women and makes it difficult for a smoking woman to get pregnant. Not just this, it can cause a lot of other reproductive complications.

7.     Low Birth-Weight and Premature Babies

Smoking in women affects not just them, but also their babies. Pregnant women can face a lot of complications due to smoking; however, they do not suffer alone. Smoking during pregnancy can cause premature child-birth. It can also cause a baby to be born with low birth-weight.  Babies born too small or too early usually develop teir own health complications and even have an increased risk of death.

8.     Diabetes

Smoking increases the probability of getting type 2 diabetes. In fact, smokers have a 30 – 40 % higher probability of getting type 2 diabetes. Further, diabetes doesn’t come alone. It usually comes with a conglomerate of more problems like heart and kidney diseases, complications like poor blood flow to legs and feet, nerve damage, blindness and possible gangrenes and amputations. Smoking can increase the risks of all such diseases by increasing the risk of the root caus – Diabetes.

9.     Age-Related Macular Degeneration, Blindness and Cataracts

Smoking can affect eyes. It can result in damaged eyes and vision loss. It also increases macular degeneration that is age-related. In fact smoking is one of the leading causes of blindness in senior citizens.

10.  Over 10 Other Types of Cancer, Including Cervix, Colon, Liver, Pancreas and Stomach Cancer

But of course, saying that smoking is the cause for cancer is an understatement. For all types of cancers, which are almost more than 10 smokers have an extraordinarily high propensity of suffering from cancers. It can cause not just the primary lung cancer but also enhance the development of secondary cancers of various types.

The Hazardous Effects of Smoking on the Human Body

Smoke is extremely hazardous to human body and health. As against most myths, there is absolutely no safe way of smoking. The cigar, the pipe, the hookah are all equally dangerous and cause all health risks linked to tobacco and its products.

Cigarettes are frankly a storehouse of 600 + chemicals, most of them harmful. When they burn however, this number increases to more than 7,000. At least 69 of them are known to cause cancers and irrelevant of how you consume tobacco a lot of these ingredients are found in the pipes, hookahs and cigars.

The smoke affects not just your lungs but various other organs. Coughing up incessantly is not even half of it to be honest. Nor is feeling breathless, tired, exhausted and being unable to get rid of that pigmentation around your fingers. The environment surrounding you is full of the smoke and the stale smell with carcinogens finding their way to the parts of your body which you never imagined were being affected.  

In order to understand this better, let’s look at the most common organs that get affected by smoking:

Lungs

Obvious! I’m getting this out of the way early only because it’s so obvious. As you inhale the smoke with your breath your lungs and respiratory tract are the first to get affected. Consider emphysema, COPD, bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer and the breathlessness. Sadly, damaged lung tissue never heals. So damaged once, damaged forever!

Skin

We take skin for granted. Always! It’s easy to forget it exists. And skin is damaged by smoking not just on a cosmetic level but also in terms of increased health risks. Skin gets affected not only in terms of toughening, wrinkles, coloring, stretch marks or baggy eyes, but also suffers from psyriasis, warts, skin cancer and poorer wound healing. Skin is our first line of defence and damaging its immunity is doubling the risk of infections of all sorts.

Uterus

Ecotopic pregnancy becomes common in women who smoke. Result the uterus is unable to hold the embryo leading not just to complicated pregnancies, but at times also life-threats to the mother. Failure in trying to get pregnant, lower fecundity rates and adverse reproductive outcomes are often not given enough thought when women smoke aggressively.

Penis

Men suffer from smoking as well, even in terms of reproductive and sexual health. Smoking is known to cause erectile dysfunctional disorders. Nicotine is known to reduce the durability and the quality of erectile functioning in men.

Eyes

Eyes suffer not just the bags under them, but also blindness, glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration related to age. Smoking can trigger type 2 diabetes, thus also leading to blindness, forms of cataract and dry eye syndrome. It’s not just the smoke in front of your eyes that affects you but also the effect it causes on your blood flow and the lack of oxygen, caused by smoking, in the blood stream.

Liver

Sure most liver cancers are secondary, but the fact is the smokers tend to suffer from liver cancers far more than non-smokers. Smokers who smoke when they drink are actually the most prone to liver damage, thanks to combined effect of all the poisons of the smoke with alcohol.
It is often difficult to digest and accept the side effects of an addictive habit. However, with support it’s easier. At CCF, support is just a click or aphone call away !

Liver Cancer 101 – Part 2

So we’ll continue with the part 2 in this post. We’ll cover some more facts about the liver cancer.

Symptoms:

•    Weight Loss
•    Appetite Loss
•    Abdominal pain
•    Abdominal fluid
•    Jaundice

Detection of Liver Cancer
 
Liver cancer can be detected in many ways like CT scan, MRI, Blood Tests and Ultrasounds. The blood tests usually focus on checking whether the levels of alpha-fetoprotein are higher or not.

Treatments available for Liver Cancer

The treatment of HCC is unique to different patients. It depends on how fast the tumor grows and what’s the current stage of the tumor. Liver cancer may be cured by surgery, embolization (curing the tumor without surgery) or in the worst case, by a liver transplant. Embolization or tumor ablation may be done either by radiotherapy or by chemotherapy.

When does a liver transplant happen?

Liver cancers usually originate in other parts of the body and eventually spread to the liver. Similarly, the tumours that start in the liver are usually at a very advanced stage when detected. A liver transplant doesn’t cure any of these situations. Liver transplants work only when the cancer is restricted only to the liver, and is small.

Treatments and Prevention for Secondary Liver Cancers

Usually liver cancers are secondary in nature. Which means that before liver cancers are detected, there already is another site or a combination of sites where malignancy is present. In general, despite treatment, patients do not live longer than 1 year after hepatic metastases. Treatments include immunotherapy, chemo and radiotherapy.

Prevention is the best defence when it comes to the liver cancers. Prevention against chronic hepatitis B and C, less alcohol consumption in daily routine, avoiding binge drinking and maintaining general health of liver; are some of the best ways to avoid liver cancers. Regular screening helps in ensuring timely diagnoses and treatment.

Future of Liver Cancers

There are organizations and foundations that support research related to diagnosis, prevention and cure of various liver diseases, including cancers. All such research looks to development of new methods or combined treatments and control of the viral hepatitis infections to ensure reduction in the cases of liver cancers.

At Core Cancer Foundation, we try to stay at the top of the research news and our experts and volunteers are happy to share with you information, should you need it. Do feel free to reach us through our website at www.corecancerfoundation.org .

How to Self – check if you may be showing breast cancer symptoms

Disclaimer: Cancer can be accurately detected only by a trained doctor and / or through proper diagnostic tests. The advice below is merely indicative and extremely preliminary in nature. The absence of below symptoms does not necessary mean the absece of breast cancer. Please consult your doctor for proper diagnosis.

Step 1:
Shoulders straight, arms on hips. Now look in the mirror. Observe your breasts for the following key points :usual size, shape and color. If you see dimpling, puckering, bulging of skin, a changed or inverted nipple position, redness, rash, swelling or soreness; contact your doctor and bring the signs to their attention.

Step 2 :
As you look in the mirror, check out for any fluids oozing out of one or both nipples. Milky, yellow, watery or blood, any fluid oozing out should be brought to the doctor’s notice.

Step 3 :
Lie down and feel your breasts. Using right hand to feel the left breast and vice versa. It needs to be a smooth, firm touch using the fingerpads of the first few fingers. Fingers should be kept together and flat and a circular motion should be used, that is about one quarter in size.  Make sure you cover the entire breast. From side to side, top to bottom, from armpit to the cleavage and from collarbone to the top of the abdomen. Ensure you check for the same symptoms. Use varying pressure and ensure you cover from front to the back of the tissue.

Step 4 :
Check the symptoms when sitting or standing. This can be easier when in shower, because it’s easier when the skin is slippery. Use the same movements as described in step 3.

Remember all these initial home – checks are not foolproof. They need to be brought to your doctor’s notice. Upon recommendation, appropriate mammograms shall need to be done to ascertain the situation with accuracy. For more information, or an awareness camp you can also reach out to NGOs like us. We at Core Cancer Foundation, look forward to supporting you.

One of our own - A survivor story

My journey with breast cancer began in 2015. I was shattered, shaken, worried, and numb. I had a young child; I had ageing parents and a very loving husband. I had thought I was healthy at 38 and had a lot to look forward to in life. Would I be leaving all this behind?

Initial panic dissipated into fervent search for further diagnosis, doctors and treatments. The search led to confusion; so many myths, claims of what’s the right and not the right way of treating the ailment. My family and I were emotionally overwhelmed too.

We didn’t want someone who would treat only the cancer, we wanted someone who would treat me holistically. A bunch of professionals who would ensure not just the surgery, radiation and chemo, but also the counseling, therapy, preventive treatment further and much more. I needed holistic professional support.

I needed not just good treating doctor but also a good coordinating doctor. Someone who would help me make sense of my mammograms, X-rays, CTs and other diagnostic reports. Doctors who would share information with my family and me and help us make a good decision, rather than deciding for us. I was lucky I found a facility that miraculously fit the bill.

My doctors and other care members listened to us. We were lucky to have them sit down with us and plan my treatment in a way that suited ‘my’ needs rather than a cookie cut model. They were not just diligent but also compassionate. They connected us with support groups, through which we found more people like us. We figured out how to ask for support from friends and family. For some time, our careers, finances, family and emotions were all in an upheaval which we couldn’t have dealt with without this amazing support.

I was supported not just by my medical oncologist, but also my dietician, therapist, naturopathic consultant and the nursing staff. They were qualified, understanding, and gentle and yet fought my cancer alongside me. They made me feel my family and I were truly not alone in our battle! If not for them, my journey would have been very difficult.

After I got cured, I realized I had to give back to the community. That is when I associated with Core Cancer Foundation and started volunteering against this menace we call cancer. Giving back to the community as I worked closely with them is what finally gave me closure. Today, I’m healthy, happy, with my family in the US, but my heart remains in India, where we together fought cancer!

Liver Cancer 101

What causes liver cancer

Many factors. Liver filters blood from all parts of the body and hence cancer cells from anywhere can reach liver and start growing. Often cancers related to the gastro-intestinal tract lead to liver cancers. It is also surmised that the ability of liver to regenerate is in some ways linked to liver cancers.

Classification of Liver Cancers

Liver can have many types of tumors. Only some of these tumors are cancerous in nature. Hence, the most basic classification of the tumors is whether liver tumors are benign or malignant. Benign tumors are relatively harmless while the malignant tumors are capable of spreading beyond the liver and are serious.

Some facts about benign liver tumors

Hemangioma is the most common benign tumor found in liver. It begins in the fetal stages and is nothing but an abnormal growth of blood vessels. It is estimated that more than 10 % of the normal population has this situation any way. There are no symptoms, no treatments unless one of the tumors may enlarge and bleed. Surgical removal is performed in such cases.

Similarly, Hepatic Adenomas and Focal Nodular Hyperplasia are benign tumors of liver cells.  Most do not have symptoms but FNH can be difficult to differentiate from liver cancers. Adenomas occur more in women and seem to be triggerd in some cases by pregnancy or birth control pills.

Some facts about Malignant liver tumors

HCC or the hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type and can have different growth patterns. It is particularly dangerous as it may spread to other parts of the body in later stages. Liver cancer has also been observed to develop in more than one site and then multiple timorous growths. This pattern is common in people with liver cirrhosis.

Liver cancer can also originate in bile ducts and is called cholangiocarcinoma. Often liver cancers originate elsewhere and then metastacize in liver. They are considered wither as secondary liver cancers or cancer metastases. In fact the secondary liver cancers have 30 % higher prevalence than the primary liver cancers.

Risk Factors Associated With Liver Cancer

Liver cancer is rare in absence of chronic liver diseases. The exact reasons behind liver cancer are not known but it is commonly observed that men are more prone to it than women for reasons still unknown. Cirrhosis, certain types of inherited liver diseases and viral infections of the liver can also lead to greater chances of liver cancer. Alcohol, obesity, steroids and tobacco use are also among causes that increase the probability of liver cancers.

In this two – part article on Liver cancer, Core Cancer Foundation will bring you more information in the next article. Till then, stay safe !

The effects of smoking on the respiratory system

As one inhales smoke, one takes in their body, substances that can damage one’s lungs. In time, the lungs are no more able to filter the toxins in the smoke. They lose their ability to filter the inhales air. Since coughing is not fully capable of removing all toxins, hence these poisonous components remain trapped in the lungs.


As the chemicals in the cigarette smoke interfere with the body’s method of air filtration; simultaneously the smoke also irritates the lungs and causes them to overproduce mucus. The tiny hair – like structures in the airway called cilia are also paralyzed. Since cilia are responsible for cleaning the airway, their paralysis causes the deposition of mucus as well as toxins, thus causing lung congestion.

The extra mucus over years causes high probability in smokers to suffer from chronic bronchitis and the 'smoker's cough'. Smokers thus damage their lungs and fall victim to a higher risk of colds, flu and respiratory infections.

Chronic Bronchitis causes the inflammation of the lining of the lung tubes. In time, such issues can actually develop into much aggravated COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary diseases). In a layman’s language, all diseases that lead to difficulty in breathing over a long term fall into this bracket. Of course, one cannot even dare forget the high risk of lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the most common form of cancer caused by smoking. Over 80% of lung cancer patients are attributed to smoking.

Similarly, chronic and long term exposure of the lungs to smoke destroys the normal structure of the human lungs. This includes the breaking down of air sacs, loss of the elasticity and thus collapse of the walls of the smaller passages within lungs.

The resultant loss of the lung tissue reduces the surface area that facilitates the transfer of oxygen to the blood from the air. The lung capacity decreases, and results into a condition called emphysema develops and the air sacs of the lungs are destroyed. As such emphysema is common in all long-term / regular smokers, but the severity usually depends on the number of cigarettes and the duration of addiction of individual smokers.

While the damage to the lung tissue is irreversible, emphysema can still be prevented by not smoking, ensuring all chest infections are properly treated and avoiding all irritants o lungs. However, withdrawal from tobacco products is often seen to cause temporary respiratory pain and congestion as the lungs start clearing out.

Similarly, cigarette smoke is also well – known to be a trigger of asthma. People that suffer from asthma, their air passages are inflamed and thus become very sensitive. Such people when exposed to cigarette smoke, suffer from an asthma attack as the sensitive airways narrow down and cause extreme shortage of breath.

Smoking affects not just the smoker themselves, but also people who are exposed to the secondhand smoke. The children whose parents are smokers, often suffer from asthma attacks, wheezing and coughing more than children of parents who don’t smoke. Such children also have a higher rate of pneumonia, ear infections and bronchitis.

Like all wise people, at Core Cancer Foundation, our experts believe that prevention is better than cure. We strongly recommend that you either don’t smoke at all or else quit at the earliest. After all, even you wouldn’t want to suffer

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