The problem of smoking in modern society is very acute, and not only smokers themselves suffer from it, but also non-smokers.
Smoking is a slow suicide, a harmful and dangerous habit that develops according to the principle of conditioned reflex. Each cigarette costs a smoker 15 minutes of life, and a cigarette with a filter costs 5 minutes.
It turns out that if a person smokes from 1 to 9 cigarettes a day, he shortens his life (on average) by 4.6 years compared to non-smokers; if he smokes from 10 to 19 cigarettes, then by 5.5 years; if he smokes 20 to 39 cigarettes, by 6.2 years.
A pack of cigarettes a day is about 500 X–rays per year! The temperature of a smoldering cigarette is 700-900 degrees! The lungs of an experienced smoker are a black, rotting mass. After a puff, nicotine enters the brain after 7 seconds. Nicotine causes vasospasm, hence the disruption of tissue oxygen supply. Spasm of small vessels makes the skin fade. The harm of smoking is also that there is an unpleasant smell from the mouth, teeth turn yellow, throat becomes inflamed, eyes turn red from the constant irritation of smoke.
Some believe that smoking increases mental performance. But the increase in the excitability of the cerebral cortex when smoking is quickly replaced by the suppression of nerve cells, which requires repeated use of tobacco.
Nicotine is one of the most dangerous poisons of plant origin. For a person, the lethal dose of nicotine is from 50 to 100 mg, or 2-3 drops. It is this dose that enters the blood daily after smoking 20-25 cigarettes (one cigarette contains about 6-8 mg of nicotine, of which 3-4 mg enters the blood). For 30 years, a smoker smokes approximately 20,000 cigarettes, or 160 kg of tobacco, absorbing an average of 800 g of nicotine. Systematic absorption of small, non-lethal doses of nicotine causes a habit, addiction to smoking. Nicotine includes in the metabolic processes occurring in the human body, and becomes necessary. Children living in smoke-filled rooms suffer more and more from respiratory diseases. In children of smoking parents during the first year of life, the frequency of bronchitis and pneumonia increases and the risk of developing serious diseases increases. At the age of 5-9 years, the child’s lung function is impaired. As a result, there is a decrease in the ability to perform physical activities that require endurance and tension. Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy have a predisposition to seizures. They are much more likely to develop epilepsy. Children born to smoking mothers lag behind their peers in mental development. Smoking teenagers, first of all, affects the nervous and cardiovascular systems. At the age of 12-15, they already complain of shortness of breath during exercise.
In recent decades, scientists have found out that non-smokers have begun to detect diseases inherent in smokers. The reason? Non-smokers have been in the room with smokers for a long time. When smoking, 20-25% of toxic substances enter the human body, and 50% enter the air together with the exhaled smoke. And others breathe them. It turns out that non-smokers “smoke”. There was even a special term – “passive” smoking.
Smoking harms the heart, so the heart rate of a smoker is 15,000 beats per day more than that of a non-smoker, and the delivery of oxygen to tissues and especially to the brain is significantly reduced, since the vessels are narrowed, plus carbon monoxide, which better “clings” to hemoglobin and does not allow red blood cells to carry oxygen.
Smoking is especially harmful for a woman. A young girl cannot help noticing that she has a cough (especially in the morning), a hoarseness of voice appears, bad breath, the skin becomes flabby, teeth turn yellow and in general the girl looks older than her peers.
Due to the harm of smoking in women, the frequency of inflammatory diseases increases, which leads to infertility.
Women who smoke, as a rule, age early, they prematurely experience sexual wilt.
Smokers experience earlier and more pronounced facial wrinkling, especially around the eyes and mouth, depending on the number of cigarettes smoked and the duration of exposure to smoke. Many smokers develop a “smoker’s face” or wrinkles on their face. Facial wrinkles diverge at the right angles from the upper and lower lips, or shallow wrinkles appear on the cheeks and lower jaw.
Smoking is the main cause of malignant neoplasms of the lip, oral cavity and pharynx, larynx, esophagus, trachea, bronchi and lungs. 95% of those who died from lung cancer (according to statistics obtained in different countries) were heavy smokers, smoking 20-40 cigarettes a day, that is, it can be argued that almost all deaths from lung cancer are directly related to smoking. Moreover, among patients with laryngeal cancer, smokers make up 80-90%.
Smoking is a habit that is repugnant to vision, unbearable to the sense of smell, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs.