Mental Health Care

Large population studies have found a strong association between tobacco smoking and several diseases. Heart disease, stroke, cancer, and lung diseases account for a number of deaths associated with smoking.

Heart disease

Tobacco smoking is a major risk factor in premature coronary heart disease. It acts in tandem with, and enhances other known coronary risk factors, viz. high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and a positive family history. It can be a major cause of sudden death in heart attacks. Smokers who undergo bypass surgery have a relatively poorer success rate than non-smokers.

The risk of heart disease decreases with cessation of smoking, and benefits appear at the end of the first year itself.

Cerebral Stroke

The risk of brain stroke, just as heart disease also rises in smokers. Large community studies have shown that the risk is dose-dependant and rises with the number of cigarettes one smokes. Among women smokers, who use oral pills for contraception, the risk is more severe. They are also vulnerable to haemorrhage.

Blockages of blood vessels

Tobacco smoking presents the most ominous risk factor of blockages in the arteries. These blockages can affect the blood vessels of the legs, and also the abdominal part of the aorta, and can lead to shortfall in blood flow to the legs which may result in gangrene.

Cancers

Tobacco smoking is the cause of nearly 90 per cent of lung cancer cases. Inhaled tobacco smoke, from cigarettes, bidis, cigars and pipes, also comes into direct contract with the tissues of the mouth, throat, voice box, and the food pipe. Several studies have found that smokers are four to five times more likely to develop oral and laryngeal cancer than are non-smokers. The risk of oral, laryngeal and oesophageal cancer is also high in those who chew or inhale tobacco. Studies have also linked smoking with the development of cancer in distant organs-that is, in organs not directly exposed to the smoke, such as the bladder, kidney, pancreas, stomach, and uterus.

Lung diseases

Smoking is a major cause of chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and other respiratory diseases. There is loss of protective ciliary action, chronic narrowing and clogging of the airway passages in the lung with increase in mucous secretion. This causes permanent damage and leads to chronic cough, sputum production and breathlessness. The body is starved of oxygen and may develop respiratory failure.

Smokers are also at increased risk of developing respiratory infections, pneumonia and colds. They have an increased vulnerability to lung complications following any major surgery.

Gastric and duodenal ulcers

Chewing and smoking tobacco increases the tendency to acid reflux and heartburn, worsens peptic ulcers in the stomach and duodenum, and increases the relapse rates of ulcers.

Pregnancy

Smoking may delay conception. It also affects the baby adversely during pregnancy. Infants, whose mothers smoke during pregnancy weight, on an average, 170 g less than infants whose mothers do not smoke. Mothers who smoke during pregnancy also run higher than normal risk of miscarriage, foetal deaths, and their babies may also die soon after the birth.

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When a person inhales tobacco smoke, he lets loose a chemical parade that marches through the most vital organs of this body. The smoke delivers more than 4,000 chemical compounds, tiny amounts of poisons such as arsenic and cyanide, and at least 43 cancer-causing chemicals to his lungs, blood vessels, heart, brain, and other key organs. Each one of these chemicals has far-reaching effects, but the most notorious and most powerful among them is nicotine.

Nicotine is the culpa prima. It is the chemical that keeps a person hooked on tobacco. Through a complex chemical action, it promotes abnormally high levels of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a natural chemical associated with a feel good factor. Researchers believe that the abnormally high levels of dopamine induced by tobacco encourage the smoker to increasingly seek pleasure in tobacco smoke.

Few smokers may accept this fact, but the dependence on tobacco is to a large extent psychological. It does not produce a physical craving like some other addictive substances. Some people, however, may complain of physical symptoms at first when they try to give up smoking. The withdrawal symptoms may include restlessness, lack of concentration, irritability, headaches and impaired psychomotor performance. These effects are transient and should not deter a person from his resolve to stop smoking.

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