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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