What Smoking Does to Your Body

MalcolmX

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4 Jul 2011
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The average cigarette is gone in 10 puffs and five minutes, but that's five minutes of havoc as 4,000 chemicals infiltrate your organs.


0 to 10 Seconds

As you take the first drag, smoke passes through your mouth, leaving a faint brown film on your pearly whites. Toxic gases such as formaldehyde and ammonia immediately put your immune system on alert, causing allover inflammation.

Once in the windpipe, the cigarette smoke temporarily slows your cilia, the tiny sweepers that work to clear your respiratory system of mucus and invading particles. Meanwhile, airborne nicotine passes instantly into your bloodstream through the millions of capillaries in your lungs.

Your body gets a jolt of energy as that nicotine hits your adrenal glands, triggering an outpouring of adrenaline that raises your blood pressure and heart rate. Your heart is unable to relax fully between beats—and you are now at a higher risk of having a stroke.

At the same time, carbon monoxide (a toxic component also found in car exhaust) from the smoke is starting to build up in your blood, limiting your body's ability to transport oxygen to your vital organs.

Via the blood-stream, nicotine hits your brain, where certain nerve cells respond by letting loose a torrent of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine.


After 5 Minutes

As dopamine levels quickly plummet back to normal, your body yearns for another high—even if you're not aware of it. If you frequently give in to the craving, your brain will get hooked and you'll crash into withdrawal when you try to stop smoking (some experts posit that nicotine could be just as addictive as heroin).

The cigarette smoke is gone, but your body will be mopping up toxic substances for the next six to eight hours.


Forever

The cigarette's parting gift: gooey brown tar in your lungs.


source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/women-smoking
 

MalcolmX

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4 Jul 2011
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Smoked Foods and Health

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says one of the flavorings used to give smoke flavor to meat, cheese and fish may be toxic to humans.

The smoke flavorings are products which can be added to foods to give them a "smoked" flavor, as an alternative to traditional smoking.

EFSA says it "cannot rule out concerns" about a flavoring called Primary Product AM 01, which is obtained from beech wood. The wood particles are burnt under controlled conditions and the hot vapors are dissolved in a solvent. The Panel says the use of the substance "at the intended levels is a safety concern".


source: http://onlinehealthnews.org/2010/01/is-smoke-flavored-food-toxic/
 

prosu

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4 Jun 2011
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smoke smoke smoke one day dont smoke dont feel shiok
 

clan_NEt

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4 Jun 2011
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just read this from todayonline..

Some women are smoking through pregnancy because they want to give birth to a smaller baby, according to British researchers.

Even though most women now understand there is "overwhelming evidence" that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they still continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.

Prof Macklon and a team at the university's department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first "hard evidence" that women who stopped smoking upon discovering they were pregnant could protect their unborn children from harm.

In the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Stockholm, he said that people who believe that giving birth is easy with a smaller baby should take into account "the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers, as well as the risk of disease later in life which goes with low birth weight".

Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy "affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta".