This excerpt about the wide variety of damages from smoking is from the book "
100 Things You're Not Supposed To Know", by author
Russ Kick. It's an interesting little book, filled with secrets and facts that aren't very well known — but pretty shocking when you learn about them.
The fact that smoking causes lung disease and oral cancer isn't exactly news, and only tobacco industry executives would express (feigned) shock at being told. But cigarettes can lead to a whole slew of problems involving every system of your tar-filled body, and most people aren't aware of this.
Here are some of the things that cancer sticks do to your body:
1) Besides cancers of the head, neck and lungs,
cigarettes are especially connected to cancers of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, and cervix. Newer evidence is adding leukemia and colorectal cancer to the list. Recent studies have also found at least a doubling of risk among smokers for cancers of the vulva and penis, as well as an eight-fold risk of anal cancer for men and a nine-fold risk for women.
2) Smokers are at least two to three times more likely to develop the heartbreak of psoriasis. Even if that doesn't happen, they'll look old before their time. The American Council tells us, "Smokers in their 40s have facial wrinkles similar to those of nonsmokers in their 60s."
3) Smokers require more anesthesia for surgery, and they recover much more slowly. In fact, wounds of all kinds take longer to heal for smokers.
4) Puffing helps to weaken bones, soft tissue, and spinal discs, causing all kinds of musculo-skeletal pain, more broken bones and ruptured discs, and longer healing time. "A non-smoker's leg heals an average of 80 percent faster than a smoker's broken leg."
5) Smoking is heavily related to osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass, which results in brittle bones and more breaks.
6) Cigarettes interfere with your ability to have kids. "The fertility rates of women who smoke are about 30 percent lower than those of nonsmokers." If you're an idiot who continues to smoke while you're expecting — even in this day and age, some people, including stars Catherine Zeta Jones and Courtney Love, do this — you increase the risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth, low birth weight, underdevelopment, and cleft pallet. If your child is able to survive outside the womb, it will have a heavily elevated risk of crib death (SIDS), allergies, and intellectual impairment.
7) Smoking also does a serious number on sperm, resulting in more deformed cells, less ability of them to swim, smaller loads, and a drastic decrease in overall number of the little fellas. The larger population of misshapen sperm probably increases the risk of miscarriages and birth defects, so even if mommy doesn't smoke, daddy could still cause problems. What's more, because smoking hurts blood flow, male smokers are at least twice as likely to be unable to get it up.
8) Besides shutting down blood flow to the little head, smoking interferes with the blood going to the big head in both sexes. This
causes one quarter of all strokes. It also makes these strokes more likely to occur earlier in life and more likely to be fatal.
9) "Depression — whether viewed as a trait, a symptom or a diagnosable disorder — is over-represented among smokers." Unfortunately, it's unclear how the two are related. Does smoking cause depression, or does depression lead to smoking? Or, most likely, do the two feed on each other in a vicious cycle?
10) "Smokers experience sudden hearing loss an average of 16 years earlier than do never smokers."
11) Smokers and former smokers have an increased risk of developing cataracts, abnormal eye movements, inflammation of the optic nerve, permanent blindness from lack of blood flow, and the most severe form of macular degeneration.
12) Lighting up increases plaque, gum disease, and tooth loss.
13) It also makes it likelier that you'll develop diabetes, stomach ulcers, colon polyps, and Crohn's disease.
14) Smoking trashes the immune system in myriad ways, with the overall result being that you're more susceptible to disease and allergies.
15) And let's not forget that second-hand smoke has horrible effects on the estimated 42 percent of toddlers and infants who are forced to inhale it in their homes:
"According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), children's 'passive smoking,' as it is called, results in hundreds of thousands of cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, and worsened asthma. Worse yet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 702 children younger than one year die each year as a result of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), worsened asthma and serious respiratory infections.
