Saturday, September 19, 2009

Stop Smoking for the sake of life

Smoking is injurious to health is known, but regardless of the risk involved people continue to smoke .Most of the people know that smoking can cause lung cancer, but it can also cause many other cancers and illness. Cigarettes contain more than 4000 chemical compounds and at least 400 toxic substances .When you inhale, a cigarette burns at 700c at the tip and around 60c in the core .This heat breaks down the tobacco to produce various toxins.

World wide more than 1.3 billion people smoke cigarettes or other tobacco products.
Tobacco currently causes an estimated 4.9 million deaths annually,(8.8 percent of all deaths)
The products that are most damaging are ;
Tar, a carcinogen (substance that causes cancer).
Nicotine is additive and increases cholesterol levels in your body.
Carbon monoxide reduces oxygen in the body. Components of the gas and particulate phases cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).

Research has shown that smoking reduces life expectancy by seven to eight years. Smoker tend to develop coronary thrombosis 10 years earlier than non smokers and make up to 9 out of 10 heart bypass patients . Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to get cancer than non smokers .This is particularly true of lung cancer, throat cancer and mouth cancer, which hardly ever affects non smokers.

One in ten moderate smokers and almost one in five heavy smokers (more than 15 cigarettes a day) will die of lung cancer. The more cigarettes you smoke in a day and the longer you have smoked , the higher your risk of lung cancer. Similarly, the risk rises the deeper you inhale and the earlier in life you started smoking. For ex-smoker , it takes approximately 15 years before the risk of lung cancer drops to the same as that of a non- smoker.

There are a variety of symptoms of lung cancer, including difficulty breathing, coughing up blood , chest pain , loss of appetite, weight loss and general fatigue. Some lung cancers do not cause any noticeable symptoms until they are quite advanced and have spread to other parts of the body.
If current smoking patterns continue ,by 2020 the global burden of disease attributable to tobacco will reach 9 million deaths annually with 7 million of these in developing countries.
So, stop smoking !
Give yourself a life!

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