Is smoking 14 cigarettes a day harmful?

Smoking is a common bad habit in daily life. If you smoke 14 cigarettes a day, it is considered a lot and is very harmful to human health. Long-term smoking can easily cause various heart diseases and blood clots. It is also very harmful to the brain, causing intellectual decline and memory loss. It is also easy to induce tumors, especially lung cancer patients, the proportion of which is relatively high among smokers.

Dangers of smoking

1. Smoking causes blood clots and various heart diseases

Inhaling carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke reduces the blood's ability to absorb oxygen. Nicotine can increase the heart rate, blood pressure, weaken the heart's ability to withstand stress, myocardial hypoxia causing coronary artery infarction, and local cardiac ischemia (or angina pectoris) promotes the accumulation of atherosclerosis and the onset of many heart diseases. Between the ages of 30 and 49, smokers are five times more likely to have a heart attack than non-smokers. People who quit smoking find that their risk of heart disease drops by half after one year.

2. Damage of smoking to the brain

Smoking can cause a variety of brain diseases, reduce the oxygen and blood circulation in the brain, cause bleeding and blockage of brain blood vessels, and lead to paralysis, mental decline and stroke. The cause of stroke is that smoking causes spasm of blood vessels in the brain, making the blood more likely to clot. Smokers are twice as likely to have a stroke as non-smokers.

3. Damage of smoking to the oral cavity

Smoking can cause mouth and throat cancer. The tar in cigarettes and the heat from the smoke can inflame the salivary glands, damage the taste buds, and greatly reduce the ability to taste and smell. Next, it is easy to develop oral cancer. About 2/3 of patients can still survive with difficulty after being diagnosed with oral cancer. At the same time, smoke can increase the temperature in the throat from 37°C to 42°C, causing micro-burns to the mucous membrane inside and producing chronic thermal trauma, which eventually leads to laryngeal cancer.

4. Damage of smoking to the lungs

Smoking can cause the cilia of bronchial epithelial cells to become shorter and irregular, as well as movement disorders, reducing local resistance and making it easier to get infected. Smoking causes lung cancer. 90% of total mortality is caused by smoking. Early symptoms may go unnoticed until the cancerous cells spread to blood vessels and other organs. Smoking can also cause emphysema. The toxic substances accumulated in the bronchi of the lungs will hinder the normal exhalation of the air inhaled by the human body, causing the lung cells to swell or burst, resulting in difficulty breathing for the patient.

5. Damage of smoking to the stomach

For people with gastrointestinal diseases, smoking can make the disease worse. For people with gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer, the healing of the ulcer will be slowed down and may even develop into a chronic disease. Smoking can stimulate the nervous system, accelerate the secretion of saliva and gastric juice, make the gastrointestinal tract often in a state of tension, and cause smokers to lose their appetite. In addition, nicotine can cause the blood vessels in the gastrointestinal mucosa to constrict and also reduce appetite.

6. Damage of smoking to bones throughout the body

Nicotine causes blood vessels to constrict, reducing blood flow to new bone. The carbon monoxide inhaled when smoking also reduces the rate of oxygen entering the body. Smoking can cause pelvic inflammation and back pain. Most people with severe back pain are heavy smokers. This is because smoking reduces blood flow to the disc, causing the disc to degenerate prematurely. Smoking can cause arthritis. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day will increase the risk of disease by 50%. Smoking causes faster bone loss. Smoking interferes with estrogen, an important hormone for bone development.