Smoking begins to reduce your lifespan with the first cigarette you smoke because contains cancer-causing agents that can start damaging your DNA within minutes. Smoking directly damages the delicate tissue in the lungs and can lead to chronic bronchitis and emphysema, together called COPD. Smoking also will damage your heart. Each cigarette you smoke is estimated to rob you of 11 minutes of your life.
DNA Damage
DNA contains all of the information on both the form and function of your body, and it is in the chromosomes in every cell that has a nucleus. Healthy DNA replicates and carries out its functions for generation after generation of cells, but mutations can occur in DNA. The information in mutated DNA contains errors that are passed to the next generation of cells. Smoking causes mutations in DNA.
Mutations and Cancer
DNA mutation is the first step in the development of cancer. A study at the Masonic Cancer Center demonstrated that mutations in the DNA occur within 30 minutes of lighting a cigarette. In every subject, the compound PAH, which is in the tar in tobacco smoke, changed to a form that causes DNA mutation. Smoking is a primary cause of lung, pancreatic and other cancers.
Heart Damage
Heart disease shortens your life. According to MayoClinic.com, your heart suffers when you smoke or are exposed to secondhand smoke. The narrowing of arteries from the action of nicotine reduces blood flow to the heart, raises your blood pressure and increases your heart rate. Some of the oxygen in your blood is replaced by the carbon monoxide in smoke, which makes your heart work even harder. All of these factors weaken your heart.
Lung Damage
Lung disease shortens life and greatly affects your quality of life. Your lungs are intended to be self-cleaning: There are tiny, hair-like structures called cilia that move debris up and out of the lungs when you cough. There also are enzymes that break down harmful chemicals. The nicotine in inhaled smoke paralyzes and eventually destroys the cilia and the tar interferes with the chemical cleaning process. Damage results when the lungs lose their ability to clean themselves.
COPD
The delicate air sacs in the lower lungs are where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide, and damage to these eventually results in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The CDC estimates that 90 percent of COPD is caused by smoking. COPD patients often spend their last years nearly suffocating, and most eventually have to rely on nebulizer treatments to ease the breathing, and on oxygen, which must be carried everywhere. As your lungs and body get weaker, death usually results from pneumonia or respiratory failure.
Other Damage
Smoking also causes damage that might not shorten your life but will make it far less enjoyable. Smoking harms almost every organ. All your cells require oxygen and the carbon monoxide in smoke reduces the ability of the blood to deliver oxygen. The result to your skin is premature wrinkles. The hands and feet also suffer from the reduced blood flow, resulting in nerve damage. If smoking does not kill you when you are young, you can look forward to having a gravelly voice and a chronic cough in a wrinkled body that is old before its time.
References
- "Chemical Research in Toxicology": Immediate Consequences of Cigarette Smoking: Rapid Formation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Diol Epoxides; Yan Zhong, et al; Masonic Cancer Center and Department of Pharmacology, University of Minnesota; December 2010
- New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Pamphlet); 2005
- MayoClinic.com: Heart Disease; 5 Medication-Free Strategies To Help Prevent Heart Disease; Mayo Clinic Staff
- CDC: Smoking & Tobacco Use; Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking
