How Does Smoking Affect Your Body

If you're wondering how does smoking affect your body, you might be surprised how many negative health effects result from this habit. There are many ailments proven to be caused by smoking. I'll discuss the major effects on the body here.

First, smoking decreases the amount of oxygen received by the body, which contributes to numerous health problems. Oxygen helps cleanse the body of all disease and impurities. That's why some people use oxygen therapy to actually treat disease.

Inhaling smoke immediately starts damaging the cilia in your body. Cilia are hair like extensions that help move cells around your body through fluid such as blood. So your circulation is affected greatly by smoking.

Since your circulation is affected, skin is damaged by smoking too. A common trait of older smokers is their wrinkled, old looking skin. Many smokers have more wrinkles than they would if they didn't smoke. This is because of the damage to skin cells caused by smoking.

Smoking damages the alveolus in your lungs immediately. These are tiny air sacs in the lungs that help the transfer oxygen and carbon dioxide from the body. Once these are damaged, new alveoli are produced which aren't as healthy as previous alveoli.

This damaging cycle in the lungs is the major cause of emphysema and some other chronic lung related illnesses. Like many other diseases, emphysema results in many other collateral illnesses because the person doesn't get enough oxygen into the body.

If you're still asking how does smoking affect your body, hopefully you're beginning to understand the numerous risks. Smoking also affects your body by creating an addiction for nicotine, which must be fulfilled or it creates side effects in the person. The withdrawal process and need for more nicotine actually starts immediately after a person stops smoking a cigarette or other tobacco product.

The craving intensifies until nicotine is provided to the body again. When stopping, common side effects are irritability, lack of concentration, and headaches. Nicotine addiction is very powerful. Many compare it to being a slave to a deadly substance.

Studies have shown that one milligram of nicotine placed on the skin of a rat will kill the rodent. People inhale approximately one milligram of nicotine when smoking a cigarette. This helps put in terms the toxicity of nicotine on the human body.

In conclusion, since smoking decreases the amount of oxygen in your body, every part of your body that depends on oxygen is negatively affected. Basically, your whole body needs plenty of oxygen. Besides the major problems I already discussed, smoking also affects your teeth, fat deposits, and many other areas of the body.

Hopefully you've learned how does smoking affect your body and you'll choose to not smoke or quit if you've already been smoking for a while.

Good Luck :D!