Physiological effects of smoking on the respiratory system & all other systems - medical information

PREPARED BY
MARTIN SHAJI
PHARM D
Physiological Effects Of Smoking On
The Respiratory System.
& all other body system – medical information

Smoking:
the act of inhaling and exhaling the fumes of burning plant material. A
variety of plant materials are smoked, including marijuana and hashish, but
the act is most commonly associated with tobacco as smoked in a cigarette,
cigar, or pipe. Tobacco contains nicotine, an alkaloid that is addictive and can
have both stimulating and tranquilizing psychoactive effects. The smoking of
tobacco, long practiced by American Indians, was introduced to Europe by
Christopher Columbus and other explorers. Smoking soon spread to other
areas and today is widely practiced around the world despite medical, social,
and religious arguments against it.

Effects Of Smoking:
No matter how you smoke it, tobacco is dangerous to your health. There are
no safe substances in any tobacco products, from acetone and tar to
nicotine and carbon monoxide. The substances you inhale don’t just affect
your lungs. They can affect your entire body.
Smoking can lead to a variety of ongoing complications in the body, as well
as long-term effects on your body systems. While smoking can increase your
risk of a variety of problems over several years, some of the bodily effects
are immediate. Learn more about the symptoms and overall effects of
smoking on the body below.

Tobacco smoke is incredibly harmful to your health. There’s no
safe way to smoke. Replacing your cigarette with a cigar, pipe, or
hookah won’t help you avoid the health risks.
Cigarettes contain about 600 ingredients, many of which can also
be found in cigars and hookahs. When these ingredients burn,
they generate more than 7,000 chemicals, according to the
American Lung Association. Many of those chemicals are
poisonous and at least 69 of them are linked to cancer.

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM :
One of the ingredients in tobacco is a mood-
altering drug called nicotine. Nicotine
reaches your brain in mere seconds and
makes you feel more energized for a while.
But as that effect wears off, you feel tired and
crave more. Nicotine is extremely habit-
forming, which is why people find smoking so
difficult to quit.
Physical withdrawal from nicotine can impair
your cognitive functioning and make you feel
anxious, irritated, and depressed. Withdrawal
can also cause headaches and sleep
problems.

RESPIRATORY SYSTEM:
When you inhale smoke, you’re taking in substances that can damage your
lungs. Over time, this damage leads to a variety of problems. Along with
increased infections, people who smoke are at higher risk for chronic
nonreversible lung conditions such as: emphysema, the destruction of the air
sacs in your lungs chronic bronchitis, permanent inflammation that affects the
lining of the breathing tubes of the lungs chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease (COPD), a group of lung diseases

lung cancer
Withdrawal from tobacco products can cause
temporary congestion and respiratory
discomfort as your lungs and airways begin to
heal. Increased mucus production right after
quitting smoking is a positive sign that your
respiratory system is recovering.
Children whose parents smoke are more
prone to coughing, wheezing, and asthma
attacks than children whose parents don’t.
They also tend to have higher rates of
pneumonia and bronchitis.

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM:
Smoking damages your entire
cardiovascular system. Nicotine causes
blood vessels to tighten, which restricts
the flow of blood. Over time, the
ongoing narrowing, along with damage
to the blood vessels, can cause
peripheral artery disease.
Smoking also raises blood pressure,
weakens blood vessel walls, and
increases blood clots. Together, this
raises your risk of stroke.

You’re also at an increased risk of worsening heart disease if you’ve
already had heart bypass surgery, a heart attack, or a stent placed in a
blood vessel.
Smoking not only impacts your cardiovascular health, but also the
health of those around you who don’t smoke. Exposure to secondhand
smoke carries the same risk to a nonsmoker as someone who does
smoke. Risks include stroke, heart attack, and heart disease.

INTEGUMENTARY SYSTEM :
(skin, hair, and nails)The more obvious signs of
smoking involve skin changes. Substances in
tobacco smoke actually change the structure
of your skin. A recent study has shown that
smoking dramatically increases the risk of
squamous cell carcinoma (skin cancer).Your
fingernails and toenails aren’t immune from
the effects of smoking. Smoking increases the
likelihood of fungal nail infections.
Hair is also affected by nicotine. An older
study found it increases hair loss, balding, and
graying.

DIGESTIVE SYSTEM:
Smoking increases the risk of mouth, throat,
larynx, and esophagus cancer. Smokers also
have higher rates of pancreatic cancer. Even
people who “smoke but don’t inhale” face an
increased risk of mouth cancer. Smoking also
has an effect on insulin, making it more likely
that you’ll develop insulin resistance. That
puts you at increased risk of type 2 diabetes
and its complications, which tend to develop
at a faster rate than in people who don’t
smoke.

SEXUALITY AND
REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM:
Nicotine affects blood flow to the genital
areas of both men and women. For
men, this can decrease sexual
performance. For women, this can result
in sexual dissatisfaction by decreasing
lubrication and the ability to reach
orgasm. Smoking may also lower sex
hormone levels in both men and
women. This can possibly lead to
decreased sexual desire.

EFFECTS ON PREGNANCY:
Women who smoke are more likely to experience
infertility and miscarriage (spontaneous abortion).
When a pregnant woman smokes, some toxins
from the smoke can be passed to the fetus. These
toxins can later affect an infant’s lung development
and lung function. Babies of women who smoke are
more likely to be born prematurely, to have a low
birth weight, and to have slower initial growth.
Smoking cessation within the first trimester lowers
these health risks to a level comparable to those of
people who have never smoked. Infants in
households where there is a smoker are more likely
to die from sudden infant death syndrom

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION:
Quitting successfully must generally start with a plan for managing behavior
associated with tobacco addiction. Common to virtually all therapeutic
approaches is the selection of and planning for a quitting date and adherence
to the plan. The plan should include strategies for avoiding or managing
situations that might stimulate a craving for a cigarette and therefore trigger a
relapse to smoking. For example, for a few weeks or months, some people
will need to avoid certain places and activities that they associate with
smoking. Others will find it useful to learn methods by which to cope with
stress or occasional cravings, such as breathing deeply, chewing gum, or
taking a brief walk. Major health organizations provide information on a
variety of successful strategies that can be tailored to an individual’s
situation.

Social and emotional support is often critical
in sustaining an individual’s efforts to quit.
Support can come from a structured smoking-
cessation program with group, one-on-one, or
telephone counseling. Counseling need not
be time-consuming or expensive. Studies
have shown that even very brief counseling—
as little as three minutes total—can make a
difference, although more extensive
treatment is generally more effective. Support
from family members, friends, and health
professionals can also play an integral part in
the process of quitting.

For many persons a nicotine medication that helps address the
physical aspects of nicotine dependence and withdrawal can be as
important and beneficial as medications used for the management
of other disorders, such as high blood pressure, in which behavioral
strategies are also important.

HEART DISEASE:
Smoking has long been recognized as a major risk factor in cardiovascular
disease, the risk being greater the more one smokes. As previously discussed,
the carbon monoxide present in cigarette smoke binds to hemoglobin in the
blood, making fewer molecules available for oxygen transport. In addition,
coronary blood flow is reduced, forcing the heart to work harder to deliver
oxygen to the body. Such strain places smokers at significantly greater risk for
myocardial infarction, or heart attack, and stroke. There are, however,
regional and sex differences in the incidence of smoking-related
cardiovascular disease.

In China, for example, where about 53 percent of adult males smoke
(as opposed to about 2.4 percent of adult females), cardiovascular
disease makes up a much smaller percentage of smoking-related
deaths than in the United States and Europe, where it accounts for
approximately 30 to 40 percent of all tobacco-caused deaths. Research
has also shown that for women even light or moderate smoking (from
1 to 14 cigarettes smoked per day) substantially increases risk for
sudden cardiac death. After quitting, a smoker’s risk for cardiovascular
disease falls faster than the risk for lung cancer, with reductions in risk
evident within one year of cessation.

Lung Disease:
It is not surprising that smokers suffer from many respiratory diseases
other than lung cancer. One such disease is chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease, or COPD, which is one of the major causes of debilitation and
eventual death in cigarette smokers. More than 80 percent of those
diagnosed with COPD are smokers, and most of these people die
prematurely, with a greater number of women dying from COPD than
men. COPD is a general term that refers to respiratory diseases in which
airflow is obstructed. Women’s airways appear to be more sensitive to the
effect of cigarette smoke.

Women with COPD often experience greater breathlessness and a
disproportionately greater thickening of airway walls relative to men with
COPD. Most commonly, COPD refers to chronic bronchitis (chronic cough
and phlegm production) and emphysema (permanent enlargement of air
spaces accompanied by deterioration of lung walls), although specific
diagnostic criteria sometimes differ. Active smoking and exposure to
environmental tobacco smoke are also responsible for increases in other
respiratory ailments, such as pneumonia, the common cold, and influenza.
Smokers who contract these ailments take longer than nonsmokers to
recover from them. Children are especially susceptible to the effects of
environmental tobacco smoke. When raised in a household in which they
are regularly exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, children are more
likely to suffer from asthma and chronic cough, and they may suffer from
reduced lung growth and function.

CANCER:
It is estimated that approximately one-third of all cancer deaths worldwide are
attributable to tobacco. Cigarette smoke contains more than 60 known
carcinogens, including tobacco-specific nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons. Although certain of the body’s enzymes metabolize carcinogens
and cause them to be excreted, these enzymes sometimes function inadequately,
allowing carcinogens to bind to cellular DNA and damage it. When cells with
damaged DNA survive, replicate, and accumulate, cancers occur. Cancerous cells
can metastasize—that is, travel to other sites in the body—causing the cancer to
spread. Cancer risk is partly determined by the toxicity of tobacco products;
however, the risk of disease is also strongly related to the amount and duration
of toxin exposure. The longer and more frequently a person smokes, the more
likely a tobacco-related cancer will develop.

How To Quit Smoking ?
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Physiological effects of smoking on the respiratory system & all other systems - medical information

Physiological effects of smoking on the respiratory system & all other systems - medical information

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Physiological effects of smoking on the respiratory system & all other systems - medical information