Why Quit?

Quitting smoking now is the best thing you can do for your health!

“Since the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health in 1964, 27 additional reports have concluded that tobacco use is the single most avoidable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.” [Source]

How cigarette smoke does its damage

Disease consequences of smoking

How smoking damages the body

  1. Chemicals from cigarette smoke enter the blood stream when smoke is inhaled. Many of these chemicals are known to cause cancer. The toxic byproducts of cigarette smoke are carried through the body, damaging organs in many different ways.
  2. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide (CO). When cigarette smoke enters the lungs the CO mimics oxygen (O2) and binds to hemoglobin, effectively reducing the amount of oxygen the blood can carry. This deprives organs of vital oxygen.
  3. Cigarette smoke attacks a vital gene that protects you from cancer. The gene is called P53. If P-53 is damaged, deadly tumors can grow.
  4. The genetic code controling cell growth is damaged, causing excellerated and abnormal cell growth.
  5. Smoking may cause an artery in the brain to become blocked by a blood clot or other debris carried in the bloodstream—a stroke. This cuts off the blood supply to the surrounding brain cells and causes them to die.
  6. Smokers have a below normal blood level of antioxidants, an important means of repairing cells damaged by common environmental factors.
  7. Immune system function is altered by cigarette smoke, resulting in possibile increased risk of infections.
  8. Tobacco Smoke attacks and rots the air sacks in the lung that take in oxygen. The distruction of these sacks causes smokers to become short of breath. This lung damage leads to emphysema

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Diseases caused by smoking 
"For the Surgeon General to conclude that smoking is proven to cause a particular disease, there must be enough scientific evidence that smoking either increases the overall number of cases of the disease or makes the disease occur earlier than it otherwise would." [Source]

The list of diseases caused by smoking includes:

  1. abdominal aortic aneurysm
  2. acute myeloid leukemia
  3. cataract
  4. cervical cancer
  5. kidney cancer
  6. pancreatic cancer
  7. pneumonia
  8. periodontitis
  9. stomach cancer
  10. bladder cancer
  11. esophageal cancer
  12. laryngeal cancer
  13. lung cancer
  14. oral cancer
  15. throat cancer
  16. chronic lung diseases
  17. coronary heart and cardiovascular diseases
  18. reproductive effects
  19. sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
     

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Source: 2004 Report of the Surgeon General on the health consequences of smoking
Citation: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2004.

All SG reports on smoking and health – CLICK
2004 SG report – CLICK
Fact Sheets for the 2004 SG report – CLICK
Press release (May 27, 2004) – CLICK

Source of quotes: Fact sheet #10, How Do We Conclude That Smoking is a Cause of Disease? – CLICK

CDC: Health Consequences of smoking –  http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/hlthcon.htm

New York Times Essentials: Smoking and Smokeless Tobacco  |  Taming that overwhelming urge to smoke;