People often ask if smoking can cause cancer or other life-threatening diseases and the answer is yes. In fact, there are many different types of cancers that can be traced back to people who smoke cigarettes. However, when asked about the long term effects of refraining from smoking benefits an individual’s health, the answer is simply “no.” When people think about how smoking damages their bodies they often fail to realize that they are often ignoring some of the best and most obvious ways that they are damaging their bodies.

When people think about how refraining from smoking reduces an individual’s risk of contracting certain types of diseases, they often focus on the short term problems that arise.

• One of the things that smoking does is that it decreases the concentration of certain hormones in the body.
• This means that people may become less tolerant to things like colds and coughs.
• As a result of this decreased sensitivity to these common health problems, people are at a greater risk of contracting them when they do not smoke.
• This also applies to diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and chronic bronchitis.

Another way in which smoking can affect an individual’s health is through the development of lung cancer. When someone smokes cigarettes, the tar and toxins that are present in the lungs are deposited into the air. As a result of this exposure to toxins, smokers are at a greater risk of developing cancers of the respiratory system, esophagus, lips, tongue, larynx, and others. When they smoke, the toxic residue continues to be present in the blood stream of smokers even after they have stopped smoking and this can lead to serious health complications in the future.

In addition to lung cancer, another way in which smoking reduces an individual’s health is through the onset of heart disease.

• Many experts believe that tobacco users are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease because they are at a greater risk of heart attacks as well.
• Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
• When an individual stops smoking, not only do they substantially decrease the risk of developing heart disease, they significantly reduce their risk of dying from it.
• This is because smoking increases the risk of high blood pressure and other conditions.

Smokers also face a number of health-related difficulties such as reduced fertility and reduced lung function. Smokers who do not quit suffer from conditions such as depression, stress, fatigue, insomnia, shortness of breath, and other physical ailments. Stopping smoking, therefore, provides a tremendous health benefit to smokers as well as non-smokers alike. Other smoking related illnesses include asthma, COPD, throat cancer, and many different forms of cancer.

The truth is that the tobacco companies’ claim that “this one cigarette” can give you cancer is simply not true. However, studies have shown that after just one puff, your entire body can suffer from the affects of nicotine. When you quit smoking, you not only improve your overall health, but you improve your chances of living longer and avoiding diseases that are caused by being a smoker. As you can see, there are many different ways in which “this one cigarette” can damage your body, but when you stop smoking, you take care of both your body and your long term health.