Puffing Ain’t Pretty

In most mornings before school I would take my breakfast real quick. A few weeks ago a poured myself a bowl of cereal and munched it down like I’ve never eaten cereal before; the morning was growing late. Coincidentally, my dad had to go to work earlier so we had our breakfast at the same time. We agreed that he’ll take me to school on his way to work. My mom and my sister already went first.

Dad told me to wait outside while he get his things packed and have the car ready. But while I was waiting I spotted some guys across the street having breakfast. Sadly, their breakfast was less (much, MUCH less) healthier than mine: some sticks of cigarettes.

I started coughing just seeing it. And they made a few coughs too.

Then I started thinking: how much does smoking REALLY affects your health? Particularly on a certain specific system.

That is what I, hobo #1, am going to discuss about in this here post. Since my article should revolve around the physical health of the respiratory system, I think that I should bring this old case up and go back to square one. You know, just to make everything clear and all.

An overview

Let’s see the difference between a healthy person’s lungs and a smoker’s lungs:

Eww.

We can understand that smoking is not modest at all in choosing its victims. It is not sexist, racist, anarchist or any kind of –ist. If smoking was a person, he would be very well respected. But, NO, it is not a respectable person. It is a harmful habit and it should not be tolerated at all, AT ALL!! I cannot stress that enough.

Yay for descriptive pictures!

In any case, smoking is also not modest in choosing its target organs. For one thing, it increases your chances of having all kinds of heart diseases and cancer. If you think the smoker is doing himself something awful, try the non-smokers who sit next to them on their way to work in a public transportation who inhales more smoke than the smoker himself. That’s just a new level of being extremely rude. Anyway, speaking of inhaling, it gives us a very clear idea on what them cigarettes harm the most: your poor lungs. Heck, it’s actually the whole enchilada: your respiratory system!

What’s in them?

You like smoking paint and batteries, dont you?

Let’s be bad cooks for a while and discover the ingredients that are in cigarettes, shall we?

First up is tar. Tar is a sticky chemical and it is arguably the big cheese in causing respiratory health problems from smoking. It mostly affects the cilia which are these tiny brooms found a lot in the trachea. Its main function is the same as real brooms: to sweep dirt. But it won’t work well with tar covering it; dirt will get stuck on it instead. Tar also affects the amount of mucus produced by the glands in the trachea by increasing it. Having excess mucus and dirt in your trachea can narrow the airways, making it harder for air to flow. Sooner or later it gets worse and your cilia won’t work at all.

The trachea isn’t the only part of the airway that is affected. Your bronchi will also fall as a victim. Hydrogen cyanide is our culprit now. Combined with the powers of tar and other chemicals, it aggravates the already damaged airways and exacerbates the bad effects on your bronchi. This can cause chronic bronchitis which makes you cough really, really hard. Like, ouch.

These violent coughs affects out little air sacs or alveoli that are in out lungs. Since harsh coughs exerts pressure to the air sacs (the place where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide happens) so much, it damages the physical shape of the partition walls of the air sacs which will make them lose their elasticity and it becomes hard for gaseous exchange to happen. This results in short breaths. This is a chronic disease called emphysema.

Emphysema yo!

Other ingredients (a whole 4000 of them!) affect every other system in your body. Nicotine, for example, raises blood pressure. Carbon monoxide (the stuff from your car’s exhaust pipe), is a dangerous poison to your circulatory system, too. But that’s a story for another pie.

But, if you haven’t developed any of the chronic diseases, there’s still chance to heal your lungs! By just simply stop puffing cigarettes slowly, the body’s cells will repair itself after a long while so your lungs will go back to normal. Not only that, but we’ll throw in a ten times decrease in chances of having lung cancer with no additional price! Isn’t the human body awesome?

To learn a bit more about how smoking affects to the body and the benefits of  quitting, go here and here.

So, now that you’ve read a lot here, you must’ve learned a nugget or two about smoking and how it affects the respiratory system. It truly brings more bad than good if you think about it. Even only a few sticks could cause pain to you and those around you so it’s better to just call quits before you have emphysema or lung cancer or death, right kids?

And now for a real quick video on how smoking affects the lungs.

Have a nice day!
-Hobo #1 (Ivanova Anjani)