Smoking

What does smoking do to your body?

When you start smoking things start happening immediately, over 5000 chemical substances enter your body and tissue. Tar, a black substance that comes off of smoke goes into your mouth and into your body. When it goes in your mouth it sticks to your gums and teeth, it then starts to turn your teeth black. After a while the tar soon starts to stick into your teeth and start decaying the gum and enamel so that teeth start to fall off. It also starts to damage the nerve ends in your nose so that you won’t be able to smell as well as you used to.

 When smoke goes to your lungs it  can increase the likelihood of infections,chronic diseases. Two chronic diseases are called bronchitis and emphysema. This all happens when smoke damages the cilia, multiple tiny hairlike structures that's job is to keep your airways clean from anything that can harm your body.  Smoke soon travels towards your alveoli, tiny air sacs that speed up the absorption of oxygen between your lungs and your blood. Carbon Monoxide crosses your alveoli and into your bloodstream, slowly pushing off oxygen and placing itself onto hemoglobin. Hemoglobin are red blood cells that carry iron and oxygen from the lungs, into tissue and also carry carbon dioxide from tissue back to the lungs to be let out.

The bloodstream carries Nicotine, a poisonous substance found mainly in tobacco and smokes towards the brain. It triggers the release of dopamine, endorphins and other neurotransmitters to create pleasurable feelings and sensations towards your body, this is what makes smoking highly addictive. Nicotine and other chemicals from smoke cause the constriction of blood vessels and damage to their delicate lining, restriction of blood flow. This leads to thickening of blood vessel walls and cause blood platelets to become stickier, which will increase the possibility that blood clots will form. This can soon lead up to triggering heart attacks and strokes, which can potentially kill you. 

Many chemicals inside cigarettes can trigger mutations in your DNA which can become very harmful, most times it can create cancer. Additionally, other ingredients like arsenic and nickel can disrupt the process of DNA repairing, causing the body’s natural ability to fight many cancers to decrease heavily. 

Long term Effects?

Some long term effects of smoking are multiple types of cancer. Some examples are Lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, collateral cancer, liver cancer and more. It can cause you to have shorter breath, damaged eyesight and weaker bones.  It can make it harder for females to become pregnant and for males it can cause erectile dysfunction which equally makes it very hard to have children.

Benefits of giving it up?

Almost twenty minutes after smoking your heart rate and blood pressure begin to normalise. After twelve hours the carbon monoxide levels decrease, increasing the blood's oxygen carrying capacity. After a day of quitting heart attack risks begin to decrease as blood pressure and your heart rate normalizes. After two days your nerve endings responsible for smelling and tasting start to recover and heal, allowing you to smell and taste better than when you were smoking. A month later your lungs become healthier, allowing you to slowly breath normally. After weeks your cilia start to recover and in nine months they are restored, increasing resistance to infections. After a year of quitting your heart disease risk plummets to %50 and blood vessel function improves greatly. After five years a chance of clot forming decreases heavily, and a risk of getting a stroke continues to reduce itself. After ten years the chance of fatal lung cancer decreases by %50, probably because the body's abilities to repair DNA is restored. Fifteen years later the probability of developing coronary heart disease is almost the same as a non-smoker.

Is vaping any better? 

Vaping is actually almost exactly the same, if not worse than smoking as it puts nicotine straight into your lungs and bloodstream. Even if it doesn’t include  the smell of smoke or tar like regular cigarettes it is still pretty bad, especially if you use flavoured ones. Many chemicals that can cause cancer are in the vapor that is released from vapes. Some chemicals can actually get stuck in the deepest parts of your lungs, this includes formaldehyde, heavy metals and particles. Some flavours like cinnamon can actually cause inflammation of cells in your lungs. 

In an one milliliter bottle of vaping e-juice, it contains around 100 puffs or hits. This the equivalent to 10 cigarettes or half a pack of one.