How Smoking Effects Your Children

Smoking kills around 114,000 people in the UK each year. In addition smoking can lead to fertility problems and increase the risk of cot death.

Dr Chris Steele, resident GP on TV show This Morning believes there are adverse effects for babies and children when their parents smoke.

"If you're planning to get pregnant the first thing you should do is give up the cigarettes. It does effect fertility but let's say you become pregnant and you continue smoking, you're inhaling smoke - more than 4,000 chemicals being inhaled into your body and those chemicals are reaching your baby as it's developing," he said.

Dr Chris added: "Nicotine is highly addictive, it's 10 times more addictive than heroin. You are subjecting your baby's brain to a powerfully addictive drug.

The baby is the ultimate passive smoker, it can't escape. If you're in a room with people smoking you can go out of the room and leave. The baby cannot leave the womb and so the baby is trapped. That baby is being subjected to 200 shots of 4,000 chemicals every day caused by the mother's smoking.

Smoking is also a risk factor for cot death."

Dr Chris has written articles on the subject of smoking for more than 30 years. He said the ultimate damage for smokers is that they are "killing themselves."

"One in two smokers will actually be killed by their cigarettes, that is horrendous," he said.

He added: "Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals and the consequences of that is all sorts of diseases. Cancer of the lip, the tongue, the throat, the gullet, cancer of the lung, heart attack, strokes, cancer of the bladder and cancer of the cervix.

Cervical cancer is more common in women who smoke than women who don't,".

The GP said there is help out there for smokers who want to quit but he knows it can be a lonely business.

"Non-smokers don't know what you're going through. Smokers will offer you a cigarette and ex-smokers will say 'I quit like that. No problem at all'."

There are different types of nicotine treatments available now from patches through to prescription drugs. Many surgeries also have smoking cessation services. For anyone who needs any advice on quitting smoking then why not contact your loacl health advisor or GP for more information. Most hospitals also run specialist cessation courses for people wishing to give up to.