“Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.” This tagline has been in use since God-knows-when. But even with all the warning signs displayed on cigarette packs and advertisements, millions of people are still users. For some, it is a way to calm the nerves and release stress. For others, it’s a craving that they have to constantly satisfy in order to feel satisfied. 

 According to the World Health Organization, tobacco smoking kills 8 million people a year all around the globe. Around 7 million of those deaths are attributed to the effects of direct smoking while the rest are a result of second-hand smoking.

The Effects of Smoking on the Body

There is no safe way to smoke. Exchanging your cigarette with a cigar, pipe, or chewing tobacco 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.

 No matter how you smoke, 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 but 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. You might not feel the effects now but you’ll definitely feel it as time goes on. Health problems linked to tobacco include:

• Nicotine addiction. 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. That moment of euphoria, along with the extreme habit-forming of nicotine, 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. 
• Nicotine also 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.
• Different types of cancer which includes mouth, throat, esophagus, cheek, gum, lip and tongue cancer.
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes bronchitis and emphysema
• Heart disease. Some forms of smokeless tobacco raise heart rate and blood pressure. This can lead to heart disease and stroke.

Effects of smoking on the mouth

Aside from cancer, there are also immediate effects of smoking to the mouth which includes

• Discoloration of the teeth (more than from the consumption of coffee and tea), dental fillings and dentures. This affects the overall aesthetics of the mouth. Smoking also causes bad breath and affects the ability for us to be able to taste and smell. Other effects of smoking to the mouth include:
• Hairy tongue which is characterised by an overgrowth of little “hairs” on the tongue known as papillae. The papillae may be stained white, yellow, brown, green, or black depending on the source of the staining. This condition is of concern as it does not look very nice, and also contributes to bad breath.
• Nicotinic stomatitis (smoker’s palate) which is seen in the mouth as a number of bumps and may have red centres, and occurs on the top of the mouth, which looks whitish in appearance.

No tobacco is “Risk-free”

• Any form of tobacco can cause serious health problems. Chewing tobacco and other smokeless tobacco products contain about 30 cancer-causing chemicals.
• Gum disease. Tobacco’s sugars and irritants can cause gum infections. Over time, gum disease can lead to tooth loss.
• Precancerous mouth lesions. Chewing tobacco can cause lesions where the chew is placed. These can become cancerous.
• Chewing tobacco has a lot of sugar, which if left in your oral cavity can cause caries that can worsen your oral health prognosis.

The dangers of second-hand smoke

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.

 Second-hand smoke has the same harmful chemicals that smokers inhale. It can cause health problems in people who don’t smoke. Children and babies are especially at risk. There’s no “safe” level of exposure to second-hand smoke. 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.

Quit while you can

Quitting is good for your mouth, and your health. It lowers your risk acquiring diseases such as heart attack, stroke, or cancer. The benefits of quitting start within minutes, and last a lifetime:

• Minutes after your last cigarette, your body starts healing.
• 20 minutes after quitting, your heart rate and blood pressure drop.
• 12 hours after quitting, the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
• Two weeks to three months after quitting, your blood flow improves and your lungs work better.
• One year after quitting, your risk of heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.
• Five years after quitting, your risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus and bladder are cut in half. Your cervical cancer risk is the same as a nonsmoker’s. Your stroke risk can be the same as a nonsmoker’s after two to five years.

Takeaway

Over the years many scientists have studied the effects of smoking to oral health and health in general and by this time it’s pretty much set in stone that tobacco smoking is dangerous to your health. Quitting smoking is difficult, but you can make a plan. Ask your doctors for advice. There are a variety of nonprescription and prescription medications that can help you quit smoking. You can also turn to our smoking cessation resource center. There are both short and long-term benefits to quitting smoking. Since smoking affects every body system, finding a way to quit is the most important step not only for you but for everyone around you to live a longer and happier life.