A Nurse Explains Exactly What Smoking Every Day Does To Your Lungs

Sep 26, 2018 by apost team

Most people already realize that smoking is terrible for their body, but there is a difference between knowing that it is harmful and seeing the actual harm. Unfortunately, 38 million Americans smoke cigarettes. This terrible habit hurts your lungs, but it can also impact the rest of your physical health.

If you smoke cigarettes each day, it can cause damage to your lungs and respiratory system. It can also impact your immune system and lead to inflammation.

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When you smoke, it hurts your immune system. This means that you are more likely to catch a cold or a cough. Over time, smoking can lead to serious diseases like pneumonia, lung cancer an emphysema. According to research studies, smoking is the cause of 84 percent of lung cancer deaths. It is also the cause of 83 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) deaths.

Smoking causes your airways to narrow. Over time, it destroys tissue in your lungs so that it becomes harder to breathe. It can cause you to develop COPD, which can lead to shortness of breath, frequent chest infections and a persistent, phlegm-producing cough.

Your nicotine addiction can cause other diseases as well. About 93 percent of oropharyngeal cancer cases are caused by smoking. This addiction can lead to throat and mouth cancers that can be fatal.

If you smoke each day, it can cause inflammation in your lungs. This makes your air passages shrink. It also makes breathing harder. Your lungs have tiny air sacs that are known as alveoli. These air sacs help your lungs exchange oxygen. When you smoke all of the time, it destroys the tiny air sacs. It is impossible for the alveoli to grow back, so they are permanently destroyed.

There is a reason why smokers get infections and colds more often than non-smokers. When you smoke, it paralyzes cilia. These are tiny hairs within your airways. Normally, the cilia are responsible for keeping dirt and mucus out of your lungs. When the cilia are paralyzed or destroyed, you are more likely to become ill. You need the cilia to filter out harmful contaminants.

Not every smoker will develop lung cancer or breathing problems, but smokers are still more likely to die than the nonsmoker. One study was conducted on smokers and non-smokers in Norway. Researchers found that people who smoked just one to four cigarettes a day had a much higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease.

Now that you are aware of all of the risks of smoking, it is time to actually look at a photo of a smoker's lungs. This picture shows what a smoker's lungs will look like after 20 years of smoking. If the health risks were not enough to make you quit, this picture definitely will.

Amanda Eller is responsible for this shocking photograph. She is a nurse in North Carolina who constantly sees people with health problems from smoking. One day, Amanda decided to upload videos to Facebook to show exactly how terrible smoking is for your body. In the videos, she compared a smoker's and non-smoker's lungs.

The first video shows the lungs of someone who smoked for 20 years. Amanda is in the video blowing air into the lungs. In the second video, she is blowing air into a different set of non-smoking lungs.

You can clearly tell which lungs are from the smoker. The black, disgusting lungs are from the smoker. Meanwhile, the pretty pink lungs are from the non-smoker. You can also see that the smoker's lungs barely expand. Even though she pumped the same amount of air into both sets of lungs, only the non-smoker's lungs expanded normally.

People start smoking for many reasons. Some people began smoking as a teenager to look cool around their friends. Other people picked up the habit because they were under constant stress at work and wanted to escape. No matter what the reason for starting this addiction, smoking can quickly damage your lungs.

Cigarettes have more than 5,000 different chemicals such as nicotine and tar. When you inhale from a cigarette, these chemicals go into your body. It is far better to use yoga or meditation to de-stress than to reach for another cigarette. You can protect your health and keep your lungs from turning black by quitting smoking now.

Save your friends' lives and let them know about the terrible risks associated with smoking.

Our content is created to the best of our knowledge, yet it is of general nature and cannot in any way substitute an individual consultation with your doctor. Your health is important to us!