According to WHO, tobacco use kills more than 8 million people around the world each year, a number that is predicted to grow unless anti-tobacco actions are increased.[1] Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable diseases and deaths worldwide.[2] But smoking does more than just cause cancer. It can also cause a number of other diseases and can damage nearly every organ in your body including your lungs, heart, blood vessels, reproductive organs, mouth, skin, eyes, and bones.¹

On average, people who smoke die about 10 years earlier than people who have never smoked.¹

How Smoking Tobacco Damages Your Lungs?

Smoking damages the airways and small air sacs in your lungs. This damage starts soon after you start smoking and gets worse as long as you continue to smoke. But it may take years for symptoms of this damage to be severe enough for lung disease to be diagnosed.¹

Smoke damage in your lungs can lead to serious long-term lung diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Smoking can also increase the risk of lung infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis. It can worsen some existing lung diseases, such as asthma.¹

How Does Smoking Cause Cancer?

Cigarette smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals can cause cancer. Other chemicals can interfere with the body's ability to fight cancer.[3]

Smoking can also:

·       Weaken the body's immune system. This makes it harder for your body to kill cancer cells. When this happens, cancer cells can grow and spread.³

·       Damage or change a cell's DNA. When DNA is damaged, a cell can begin growing out of control and create a cancer tumor.³

·       Cigarette smoking causes about one out of every three cancer deaths in the United States. Smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body including in the: bladder, blood (acute myeloid leukemia), cervix, colon and rectum, esophagus, kidney and renal pelvis, larynx (voice box), liver, lung, bronchus, and trachea, mouth and throat, pancreas, stomach.³

Research also suggests that men with prostate cancer who smoke may be more likely to die from prostate cancer than men who do not smoke.³

Cigarette smoking or secondhand smoke exposure cause nearly 9 out of 10 lung cancer deaths.³ People who smoke increase their risk of developing lung cancer by about 25 times that of people who don’t smoke.³ People who smoke have a greater risk for lung cancer today than they did in 1964, even though they smoke fewer cigarettes. One reason for this may be changes in how cigarettes are made. Another reason may be changes in the chemicals cigarettes contain.³

Quitting Smoking Can Protect People from Cancer

Quitting smoking is one of the most important actions people can take to improve their health. This is true regardless of their age or how long they have been smoking.[4]

Quitting smoking:

·       Improves health status and enhances quality of life.⁴

·       Reduces the risk of premature death and can add as much as 10 years to life expectancy.⁴

·       Reduces the risk for many adverse health effects, including cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, and poor reproductive health outcomes.⁴

·       Benefits people already diagnosed with coronary heart disease or COPD.⁴

·       Benefits the health of pregnant women and their fetuses and babies.⁴

·       Reduces the financial burden that smoking places on people who smoke, health care systems, and society.⁴

While quitting earlier in life yields greater health benefits, quitting smoking is beneficial to health at any age. Even people who have smoked for many years or have smoked heavily will benefit from quitting.⁴

Quitting smoking is the single best way to protect family members, coworkers, friends, and others from the health risks associated with breathing secondhand smoke.⁴

References:

1.     https://www.cancer.org/cancer/latest-news/world-no-tobacco-day.html

2.     https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/tobacco/health-risks-of-smoking-tobacco.html

3.     https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/about/cigarettes-and-cancer.html

4.     https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/about/benefits-of-quitting.html