Diseases From Smoking

How deadly is a cigarette? Before you light up, read the list below. They're the diseases that come from smoking.

Whether or not you contract these ailments depends on several factors: the number of cigarettes you smoke, the tar and nicotine content of the cigarettes, and the depth of inhalation.

But one thing's for sure. Smoking is bad for your health no matter how you look at it. If you're a smoker, it's best to quit now before it's too late.

Lung cancer - Many deaths from lung cancer are caused by smoking. This is not surprising since tobacco smoke is loaded with carcinogens that damage the lungs of smokers.

Still, aggressive advertising and marketing efforts of the tobacco industry have increased the number of smokers, especially women, in recent years. This has greatly contributed to a fivefold jump in the rate of lung cancer among women.

"Lung cancer is the most preventable cancer killer of women. By the mid-1980s, 30 years after an explosion in the number of women smokers in this country, lung cancer was killing more American women than breast cancer. In 1987 the disease killed 44,000 American women. Almost two-thirds of all female lung cancer deaths occur among women who current­ly smoke one pack or more daily, or who have quit within the last five years. Nine out of 10 lung cancer deaths occur in women with some history of regular cigarette use," revealed Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe and the Public Citizen Health Research Group in “Women's Health Alert.”

In addition to this, smoking causes other cancers as well. These include cancers of the mouth, larynx, the kidney, bladder, and cervix. The latter is apparently caused by carcinogens which concentrate in the cervix and later trigger the development of cancer.

"Cancer of the cervix is strongly associated with cigarette smoking, especially if the habit was taken up in the early teens or sooner. The cause is apparently the smoke carcinogens carried to the uterine epithelium by the circulation. Many young and middle-aged women die or are rendered sterile by surgery,” according to Kurt Butler of the Quackery Action Council of Hawaii and Dr. Lynn Rayner of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii in “The Best Medicine.”

“The total of tobacco-related deaths due to cervical and lung cancers in women exceeds he total of tobacco-related deaths due to lung cancer in men," they added.

Emphysema - is another lung disease that comes from smoking. In this condition, the tiny air passages (alveoli) of the lungs lose their normal elasticity and are injured or destroyed. The tar in cigarettes is responsible for this. This gives the smoker shortness of breath, a persistent cough, and a rounded or "barrel" chest.

"The alveoli eventually disintegrate into nonfunctioning scar tissue worthless for breathing. The damage is irreversible. Smoking is by far the most important single cause of emphysema," Butler and Rayner said. (Next: Smoking and impotence.)

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