Smoking And Its Consequences Essay, Research Paper

 My research paper is on smoking and other consequences of smoking. Many times when

people think of smoking diseases they think of heart disease and lung cancer. While those things

are very true there are subtle things that happen also. Most of the time after someone has smoked

their third cigarette they are hooked. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on earth.

Usually once people start smoking they never stop. The three most harmful substances in a

cigarette is tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide. Tar is a very interesting chemical. When a

cigarette remains unburned tar is not there. Only when the cigarette is burned does the tar show

up as a chemical. While filters on the cigarette keep out a little bit of the tar, it is still very

dangerous. The tar in the cigarette is actually the same as road tar. Tar causes numerous types of

cancer all over your body. One of the worst things that tar does is it fills up your lungs. The tar

goes directly into your lungs and stays there forever. This is the reason why smokers can not

inhale as much oxygen as non-smokers can. The place where that extra air should go is now filled

up with tar. The number on disease caused by death is emphysema.

Nicotine is the reason why people are addicted to cigarettes. Nicotine kills nerve endings

and mucosae. Mucosae is the thin layer of skin in your nose and mouth that are full of blood

cells. Nicotine goes straight to the brain. When the nicotine goes into the bloodstream, it travels

all over the body. That is why you can get cancer from smoking anywhere in your body.

Nicotine is actually the least harmful out of all the chemicals in a cigarette. Since people crave the

nicotine though they ingest all of these other life-killing chemicals.

Carbon monoxide is a chemical in a gas form. Like tar, it only appears when the cigarette

is burned. Unlike nicotine, carbon monoxide does not go to the brain. Instead, it goes to the

lungs and straight into the blood stream. When the carbon monoxide enters the lungs, the body is

deprived of the oxygen it needs.

One out of every six deaths are caused by smoking. In 1985 alone more than 400,000

people died from smoking. They died just because they wanted a dangerous substance in their

body. Many people believe that you have to be smoke free for a very long period of time for it to

make any real difference. That is not true. Even if you do not smoke for twenty minutes, it

greatly benefits you. When you do not smoke for twenty minutes it greatly benefits you. When

you do not smoke for twenty minutes your blood pressure goes back to normal, your pulse rate

drops to normal, and your temperature increase back to normal. When you stop smoking for

eight hours, the carbon monoxide in your blood drops down to the normal amount and more

oxygen goes into your blood. When you do not smoke for twenty-four hours, the chance of

having a heart attack or other serious heart problems, due to smoking, decrease. If you do not

smoke for forty-eight hours, the nerve endings that were killed, start to regrow themselves; your

ability to smell things and taste food is increased; also your ability to walk in a straight line

becomes easier. When you stop smoking for two weeks to three months, your blood circulation

improves and your lungs functioning ability increases by 30%. If you do not smoke from one to

nine months your coughing, sinus infection, and shortness of breath decrease; your cilia in your

lungs start to regrow which lets the body handle mucus better, it cleans the lungs, and reduces

lung infections. When someone does not smoke for one year the risk of serious heart disease is

half that of someone who sill smokes.

The top five causes of death are heart disease, cancer, strokes,, accidents, and chronic

obstructive pulmonary diseases (mostly bronchitis and emphysema). Every single one of those

reasons is usually caused by smoking. Even smoking causes a few accidents. When you smoke

your reaction skills do not function as well as they should. Therefore, some might be a little slow

to stomp on the break and have an accident. There are about three reasons why heart disease

occurs. Smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels are those three reasons. Not

only is smoking the top cause of heart disease but smoking also causes high blood pressure and

high cholesterol. In the year of 1986, 765,000 people died from heart disease. More than 40% of

those deaths would not have happened if people did not smoke. Cancer is the second main cause

of death. Over a half a million people die form cancer every year. 30% of that half a million

deaths are from smoking and over 90% of deaths from lung cancer was caused by smoking.

Beside lung cancer here are the most common cancers caused by smoking: bladder cancer,

pancreas cancer, kidney cancer, larynx cancer, mouth cancer, esophagus cancer, and uterine

cervix cancer. The third main cause of death is strokes. Every year more than 150,000 people die

from strokes. The main cause of strokes is again smoking. The fifth main cause of death is

chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Every year around 80,000 people die from COPD.

Eighty to ninety percent of those deaths were caused by smoking. Smoking effects the heart as

well as the other organs of the body. Smoking is known to increase your chances of heart disease

and heart attacks. Many people have bad hearts but when they smoke it makes their hearts worse.

Most people who smoke have high blood pressure. This is not a coincidence. The smoke you

breathe in from the cigarettes makes the arteries in your heart narrow down. Instead of your

arteries being open to its fullest extent, it because much smaller. This cause high blood pressure.

After someone smokes for a long period of time, doctors believe that whey they stop their blood

pressure will return to normal. Although your blood pressure may remain the same, your heart

works easier which reduces your chance of a heart attack.

Smoking sometimes blocks the arteries of heart which cause atherosclerosis. This disease

happens when the circulation through your heart decreases rapidly. It usually only occurs when

at least one artery is blocked. When you smoke not only does your blood pressure go up but you

may end up blocking your heart arteries in the future. These tow reasons are why many smokers

will experience atherosclerosis sometimes in their life. Another type of heart disease is coronary

artery disease. This happens when your blood vessels become too small. Doctors will prescribe

medications to help these heart diseases but they say that not smoking is the best medicine. Many

people are so addicted to cigarettes though that they may never stop. What many people do not

realize is that smoking does not just give you cancer in your organs. Smoking can give you

cancer in your throat, mouth, nose, and hip as well. Since the cigarettes harmful chemicals travel

through your blood stream you can have cancer anywhere. When doctors take the cancer out of

your organs you do not see the end result. They have to actually dig out the cancer tumor. When

you have cancer in your throat or face, everyone can see the result. Huge gapping holes are

everywhere because the cancer had to be carved out of your skin. After this you are deformed for

the rest o your life. Many times the cancer even comes back. If the cancer should come back in

the same place or near the same place , there is usually nothing that anyone can do. When you

smoke, the cancer can be anywhere. You could have cancer in your mouth and in your hip at the

same time. Since the chemicals in the cigarette travel through you blood stream, every part of

your body gets infected. Some people are lucky. Some people do not die from smoking, but in

most cases the people who smoke do indeed die. Many people know how cigarettes cause cancer

and other problems with your organs. Now new studies show that cigarettes seriously damage

your brain as well. When someone inhales nicotine from a cigarette it takes only ten seconds for

it to reach the brain. It rides through your blood stream and passes through the barrier around the

brain that is supposed to keep things out than can be harmful to the brain. Nicotines signal is

basically the same as one of the brains most important signal chemicals . When the nicotine goes

into the brain it fills up all of this space on the brain that the real chemical needs. 1.5 milligrams

of nicotine takes up this space through just one cigarette. With nicotine in your brain, it can

trigger many other chemicals to release into you body. So instead of these chemicals releasing

naturally when needed, nicotine releases them when you do not need them. One of these

chemicals is adrenaline.

The reason your body craves nicotine is also explained in your brain. After awhile these

nicotine cells kill off many of the chemical so cells that it replaces in your brain. With so few of

the real chemical left the brain needs the nicotine to function properly. The brain needs this

chemical because it is the only thing that can tell the other chemicals in the body when to release

itself into the body. Eventually the real chemical will increase to the necessary amount again but

it takes awhile so while the brain is making more of the real chemical it keeps saying that I need

more which is usually why people continue to smoke. When people go into shock from lack of

nicotine, it is because the brain is saying that it needs more of the chemical that has not had

enough time to fully restore itself. People feel tired and nervous if they do not smoke and fill up

the remaining space that is not yet taken up by the real chemical. They feel tired because there is

not enough nicotine cells to falsely release the adrenaline the body is so used to. This is very

dangerous because your brain ends up relying on nicotine.

Women suffer worse efforts from smoking than men suffer. If a woman is using birth

control pills while smoking, she has a greater risk of developing a cardiovascular disease. If

women smoke more than a pack of cigarettes every day, they have a higher chance of being

unable to conceive a child. For women who can still have children, the number of years that they

could possible conceive is drastically reduced because they smoke. Menopause usually starts a lot

earlier than normal when a woman smokes. When a pregnant women smokes, many dangerous

side effects can happen to her unborn child. A few of the problems that can happen are premature

labor, problems with breathing, and death. These things can even happen when the father smokes

and the wife does not smoke.

At least thirty percent of babies that are born to women who smoked during pregnancy are

very underweight. Their birth weight is always at least seven ounces less than a normal baby

which can cause other problems. The reason the baby is smaller is because it got too much

carbon monoxide and not enough oxygen. Around fourteen percent of pre-mature deliveries are

from women who are smoking while pregnant. Also about ten percent of all miscarriages happen

to women who smoked while pregnant. The chance of having a miscarriage is actually greater

with women who smoke while pregnant. Their chance of having a miscarriage is about twice the

chance of a women who does not smoke while pregnant. The nicotine and carbon monoxide that

the women inhales goes straight to the placenta. This also prevents the fetus from getting all of

the different nutrients and oxygen that it needs to be able to be healthy at birth. The nicotine is

still fed to the baby after he his born. When a mother who smoked through pregnancy, breast

feeds her baby, nicotine is transferred to the baby. All of this can happen even when the woman

herself does not smoke but her husband does.

Some other problems that usually occur are congenital malformation, bleeding in the

womb, rupture of membrane and SIDS. While growing up these children will continue to have

problems. Most of them will have brain function disorders, psychological abnormalities,

hyperactivity, asthma, more colds, bronchitis, and respiratory diseases.

Lately there have been more teenage smokers than ever before. Companies are making

their cigarette ads more noticeable to teenagers which is taking a deadly toll. The reason why

many kids feel the need to smoke is peer pressure. Kids see older kids or their friends smoking so

they smoke too. For teenage girls there is usually a different reason. They want to lose weight or

they want people to think that they are glamorous, like a movie star. Today there are going to be

one thousand adults who die from smoking while they were a teenager. Those one thousand

people wanted to be cool or maybe lose weight so they started smoking. Unfortunately those

thousand people are going to die for it today. The really sad part is that three thousand teenagers

will start smoking today taking the pace of those one thousand adults who died. Not only do you

endanger yourself, other people, and your children but people who smoke cigarettes usually end

up addicted to together drugs like marijuana. No matter what anyone says, smoking is a wrong.

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