If you smoke, you risk contracting dozens of life-threatening diseases. Smoking kills 5 million people a year worldwide and 450,000 people in the U.S. This costs the government tens of billions of dollars a year in medical bills and lost productivity. How many people are ill is harder to find out, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, estimates 8.6 million Americans have serious illnesses due to smoking, from lung cancer to erectile dysfunction.
Smoking and Morbidity
Morbidity is defined as the amount of people ill or diseased in a particular nation or geographical area. To decipher how many people are ill due to smoking in the U.S. the CDC referred to the national census and various health surveys and found 59 percent of people ill through smoking had emphysema or bronchitis, while lung cancer made up 1 percent.
Lung Disease
When you smoke, you inhale more than 400 poisonous toxins into your lungs. The tar and carbon dioxide that lodge in your lungs damage cells in your airways, making breathing difficult. The most common illness associated with smoking is chronic bronchitis. Chronic means it recurs and lasts for long periods of time. You will get a smoker's cough several times throughout the year, and phlegm will build up in the back of your throat. Wheezing, chest pains, fever and fatigue are also common symptoms, according to the U.S. National Institute of Health, whichs say the most important thing you can do when you have bronchitis is quit smoking. A worse lung disease is the potentially fatal emphysema, highly common among smokers. Some smokers get tuberculosis, which kills 2/3 of sufferers within five years.
Cancer
Of the 400 poisonous chemicals in cigarette smoke, 80 are known to cause cancer. Nine in ten people who have lung cancer are smokers, according to the CDC. Smoking may also play a role in the development of cancer of the throat, nose, mouth, liver, stomach, bladder, kidney, bowels, ovaries and pancreas.
Heart Disease
Smoking clogs your arteries, which fill up with fat. It also increases your blood pressure, decreases the amount of good cholesterol in your body and makes it harder for you to exercise. All this leads to coronary heart disease. The morbidity survey by the CDC also found that 19 percent of Americans ill through smoking had suffered heart attack, which equates to around 1.6 million people.
Other Illnesses
Smoking can lead you to contract osteoporosis or suffer stroke. You may contract vascular disease or aneurysms and have to have a limb amputated. Smoking can lead to erectile dysfunction and infertility, as well as stomach ulcers and poor eyesight. It can also worsen colds, flu, fevers and asthma, and make you more susceptible to gum disease and psoriasis.
Quitting
After quitting smoking for just 20 minutes, your heart rate and blood pressure return to their normal state and circulation improves. After eight hours, you will breathe easier. A day later you may get a sore throat; this is because lung tissue is finally growing. Mucus will start to clear. After three days, your energy levels will improve. After a year, risk of heart attack is halved, and after 10 years risk of lung cancer is halved.
Considerations
Cigars may not cause the same damage to your lungs as cigarettes, but your lungs, heart and veins are still affected. And cigar smoking regularly leads to mouth cancer.
