How Smoking Affects Your Body – Part 2  Let's look at how smoking affects your heart and the rest of the body, whilst seeing if there’s anything you can do about it.
Your Heart: You may not think it, but the heart is as severely affected as the lungs by smoking. The carbon monoxide reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood so all parts of the body get less of it and in the heart it contributes to an increased chance of heart attack, due to cholesterol deposits developing on the artery walls. These deposits also cause impotence, loss of circulation in your toes and fingers and even strokes. Whilst the nicotine makes the heart beat faster, raises the blood pressure and causes the blood to clot easier. Smoking increases the risk of getting all the major diseases of the heart and devastates this most vital of organs Your Other Organs and the Rest of Your Body:  Smoking affects the whole body, not just the heart and lungs, as cancer can develop in the throat, oesophagus, mouth, pancreas, the cervix (in women) and even the bladder (due to the deadly carcinogens being in the bladder when expelled in the urine) due to smoking. Pancreatic and bladder cancer are often fatal. Smoking raises the blood pressure causing kidney damage and also can cause heartburn and ulcers, as more stomach acid is produced. Smoking whilst pregnant increases the risk of damage to the unborn child, through being underweight, premature, miscarried or even dead. Smoking increases your body's need for key vitamins and minerals, so you become more vulnerable to illness generally.
What can be done:  How likely you’re to get any of these things depends on how long you’ve smoke, how many you smoke a day and how you smoke, meaning whether you take short puffs or long drags. Someone dies from a smoking related disease, every 5 minutes in the UK and this could easily be prevented by stopping.
However if you’re still in good health and only been smoking for a short time stopping will lower your risks of getting these diseases in a short space of time, as the body can repair itself. However the long you take to quit the longer it takes to repair itself, if you smoke 20 a day for 20 years it takes 3 years for any decrease in risk and more than 10 years to get back to normal. There’s no chance, unfortunately, once disease like cancer or emphysema set in so quitting now be hard but if it means avoiding the stuff above and getting your normal health back quickly…it seems worth it, doesn’t it? If you or anybody you know are having problems with smoking try the following places for help and support @ the Addictions Links Page. Read:
by ChrisM
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