Tobacco use kills 5.4 million people a year worldwide - an average of one person every six seconds - and accounts for one in 10 adult deaths worldwide. It kills up to half of all users. Most of tobacco's damage to health does not become evident until years or even decades after the onset of use. So, while tobacco use is rising globally, the epidemic of tobacco-related disease and death has yet to reach its peak.
In Singapore:
Smoking is the largest cause of preventable death in the world. Don't let yourself or your family become the next victim.
No. All cigarettes can damage the human body. Any smoking is dangerous. The cigarette is the only legal product whose advertised and intended use - smoking - is known to harm the body and cause cancer.
Some people think that switching from high-tar and high-nicotine cigarettes to those with low tar and nicotine makes smoking safer, but this is not true. When people switch to brands with lower tar and nicotine, they often end up smoking more cigarettes, or more of each cigarette, to get the same nicotine dose as before.
Smokers have been led to believe that "light" cigarettes have lower health risk and are a good option to quitting. A low-tar cigarette can be just as harmful as a high-tar cigarette because a person often takes deeper puffs, puffs more often, or smokes them to a shorter butt length.
Menthol only adds to the flavour of the cigarettes. It does not make the cigarettes any less dangerous.
In fact, menthol cigarettes may even be more dangerous. The added menthol produces a cooling sensation in the throat when the smoke is inhaled. It also decreases the cough reflex and covers the dry feeling in the throat that smokers often have. People who smoke menthol cigarettes can inhale deeper and hold the smoke in longer.
Yes. The nicotine in cigarette smoke causes an addiction to smoking. Nicotine is an addictive drug just like heroin and cocaine.
Not everyone will get these withdrawal symptoms but don't lose heart if you do. They will disappear in one or two weeks and they are actually signs that you are getting better.
Yes.
In large doses, nicotine is a poison and can kill by stopping a person's breathing muscles.
Smokers usually become dependent on nicotine and suffer physical and emotional (psychological) withdrawal symptoms when they stop smoking. These symptoms include irritability, nervousness, headaches and trouble sleeping. The true marker for addiction, though, is that people still smoke even though they know smoking is bad for them -- affecting their lives, their health and their families and friends in unhealthy ways.
Anyone who starts smoking is at risk of becoming addicted to nicotine. Studies show that cigarette smoking is most likely to become a habit during the teenage years. The younger a person is when he or she begins to smoke, the more likely he or she is to become addicted to nicotine.
Cigarette smoke contains chemicals that irritate the air passages and lungs. When a smoker inhales these substances, the body tries to protect itself by making mucus and coughing. The early morning smoker's cough happens for many reasons. Normally, tiny hair-like formations (called cilia) beat outward and sweep harmful material out of the lungs. Cigarette smoke slows the sweeping action, so some of the poisons in the smoke stay in the lungs, and mucus stays in the airways. While a smoker sleeps, some cilia recover and begin working again. After waking up, the smoker coughs because the lungs are trying to clear away the irritants and mucus built up the day before. The cilia will completely stop working after they have been exposed to smoke for a long time. When this happens, the smoker's lungs are even more exposed and prone to infection and irritation.
The same noxious chemicals that cause the simple smoker's cough can lead to far more serious conditions such as bronchitis, emphysema, pneumonia and lung cancer.
Your lungs start to function properly again and are working to clear tar, dead cells and extra mucus accumulated from the cigarettes.
Smoking causes a build-up of fatty deposits in the blood vessels, resulting in narrowing and blockage of the vessels. If the blood supply in these vessels leading to the brain is blocked, the surrounding brain cells will die, resulting in a stroke.
The moment you light a cigarette, thousands of poisonous chemicals in the cigarette smoke enter your body and are absorbed into the bloodstream. Some of these chemicals make your blood vessel walls sticky, damaging them, and causing them to collect the tiny fatty deposits that float in the bloodstream. The more you smoke, the more the fatty deposits build up.
Yes. Similar adverse effects take place when the blood vessels leading to our heart are blocked by fatty deposits. This cuts off the blood supply to our heart muscles, killing the tissue. As a result, a heart attack occurs.
Lung cancer can begin from cell damage caused by smoking just ONE cigarette.
Research has found that one of the cancer-causing substances in cigarette smoke (benzopyrene) directly attacks and damages the p53 gene which blocks cancer and prevents cancer cells from growing. When cancer threatens a lung cell with a damaged p53 gene, a deadly tumour starts to grow.
Yes. It is never too late to quit smoking. The sooner you quit, the more you can reduce your chances of getting cancer and other diseases. Within minutes of smoking the last cigarette, your body begins to restore itself.
Smoking begins to cause damage right away and is highly addictive. Some studies have found nicotine to be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.
Cigarette filters may trap part of the tar and nicotine, but they do not remove any poisons from the cigarette smoke.
when i was younger, i have tried smoking.
not nice haha