Do you smoke? Have you ever stopped to think about how smoking is affecting your body and your life? Most teens are aware that people who have smoked for awhile can get lung cancer and emphysema and eventually die, but many don't know about all of the bad things that smoking can to them right now. If you smoke, you owe it to yourself to find out about the effects of smoking on your life now..
I had seen a video that showed in my college(amrita university)that how it affects brain. The 80%of the brain get destroyed..this video was produced to show the research results conducteted by doctors and scientists..We find many holes in the brain.. it was a new information for me…
Why is cigarette smoking bad ?
Everyone knows that smoking can cause cancer when you get older, but did you know that it also has bad effects on your body right now? A cigarette contains about 4000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous. Some of the worst ones are:
· Nicotine: a deadly poison
· Arsenic: used in rat poison
· Methane: a component of rocket fuel
· Ammonia: found in floor cleaner
· Cadmium: used in batteries
· Carbon Monoxide: part of car exhaust
· Formaldehyde: used to preserve body tissue
· Butane: lighter fluid
· Hydrogen Cyanide: the poison used in gas chambers
Every time you inhale smoke from a cigarette, small amounts of these chemicals get into your blood through your lungs. They travel to all the parts of your body and cause harm.
What do all these chemicals do in our body?
What it gives to our body?
As you might imagine, even small amounts of the poisonous chemicals in cigarettes can do bad things to your body. Smoking makes you smell bad, gives you wrinkles, stains your teeth, and gives you bad breath.
· Smokers get 3 times more cavities than non-smokers.
· Smoking lowers your hormone levels.
· When smokers catch a cold, they are more likely than non-smokers to have a cough that lasts a long time. They are also more likely than non-smokers to get bronchitis and pneumonia.
· Teen smokers have smaller lungs and a weaker heart than teen non-smokers. They also get sick more often than teens who don't smoke.
www.youngwomenshealth.org/smokeinfo.html
What happens to lungs when smokes?
Every time we inhale smoke from a cigarette, we kill some of the air sacks in your lungs, called alveoli. These air sacks are where the oxygen that you breathe in is transferred into your blood. Alveoli don't grow back, so when we destroy them,we have permanently destroyed part of our lungs. This means that we won't do as well in activities where breathing is important, like sports, dancing, or singing.
Smoking paralyzes the cilia that line your lungs. Cilia are little hairlike structures that move back and forth to sweep particles out of your lungs. When you smoke, the cilia can't move and can't do their job. So dust, pollen, and other things that you inhale sit in your lungs and build up. Also, there are a lot of particles in smoke that get into your lungs. Since your cilia are paralyzed because of the smoke and can't clean them out, the particles sit in your lungs and form tar.
.(I had a pesonal experience that many of my friends who participated and the winners of athletic meets in district and state wise sports meet said that ‘ after they started smoking they slowly lost thaeir breathe, they cant even run 200 meters at a streach, they cant even finish the taget in desired time even at school levels’ I had seen them suffering ).
*****Many teens like the feeling that smoking gives them. This good feeling is from the nicotine in the cigarettes. Some teens think smoking will help them lose weight or stay thin. Many teens also feel like smoking gives them a sense of freedom and independence, and some smoke to feel more comfortable in social situations.
· Nicotine can make feel good, but is feeling good (a feeling that can also get from healthy activities like playing sports) really worth all the bad things cigarettes do to us? If we smoke, we'll get sick more often. we also have the chance of getting lung cancer or emphysema, which will make us really sick for a long time before we die. If we are very sick, that good feeling from nicotine won't seem so important anymore.
· Smoking doesn't really help people lose weight. If that were true, every smoker would be thin.
· Smoking lowers your hormone levels.
A lot of people put off quitting smoking, thinking that they'll do it when the time is right. Only 5% of teens think they will still be smoking in 5 years. Actually, about 75% of them are still smoking more than five years later. If we smoke, it will never seem like the right time to quit and quitting will never be easy. The longer we smoke, the harder it will be to stop and the more damage we will do to your body.
reasons to quit sooner rather than later…
· Most teens would rather date a non-smoker.
· You'll save money if you quit smoking. A pack of cigarettes costs about $5.00. Even if you only smoke a couple packs a week, you're spending about $40 per month and $480 per year on smoking. Think of all the other things you could use that money for.
· You only have one pair of lungs. Any damage you do to them now will be with you for the rest of your life.
· The longer you smoke, the better your chances are of dying from it. One out of 3 smokers die from smoking and many more become very sick. Think about your friends who smoke. 1/3 of them will die from smoking if none of you quit
How to quit????
Use chewing gums or some other ways that cant make u bad.
U can find more resons to quit or how to quit at
www.stopsmoking.com
Smoking can have serious effects on your life. The longer we smoke, the more damagewe do to your body and our health. Most people who begin smoking as teens say that they wish they had never started. The decision to start or continue smoking is all up to you and no one can make westop, but we should think really hard about whether it is the best thing for our body and our life
